Two Uriel Ficlets

[icarus_chained]

Prompted by comment_fic Theme is redemption.

Conviction

They floated together, in a vastness. They did not have to. But the emptiness was too much to bear apart.

And the company, perhaps, too much to bear together.

"You left, brother," Uriel whispered savagely, the strength and virulence of his conviction a weight, a stone, even here. "You left, Gabriel. You do not have the right to speak to me of right and wrong. Not now."

"I left," the archangel shot back, testy, appalled. "I left, but I killed no-one. You murdered them, Uriel. You murdered our brothers! And for what? For the one brother with a bigger bodycount than you? On what sphere is that ever the right thing to do!"

"You left," Uriel whispered, shaking. "You did not see, Gabriel. You did not see what we had become. What ... what all of us had become. I did what I thought was right. I did what I thought would ... would bring us back, would make us ... what we were before." He looked away, somewhere beyond the bounds of void, at something, perhaps, only he could see. "When we were beautiful, Gabriel. When all our brothers were at our side, and we were ... so very beautiful ..."

"You're wrong," Gabriel murmured softly. Watching him, with only sadness in his gaze. "I saw, Uriel. I saw everything. That's why ... I made the choices I made." He sighed, a hollow echo. "I get it, kiddo. I do. But Lucy ... Lucifer wasn't ever going to bring anything back. Lucy's too far gone to do anything but destroy, now." A phantom hand rose to a phantom chest, and the archangel grimaced. "Trust me on this."

Uriel turned to him. What had once been an archangel in his own right turned to Gabriel, and looked upon him with eyes that saw things only he could see, and then Uriel smiled. A mad, distant smile, a yawning void more terrible than the one in which they rested. "I know," Uriel said, with the madness of conviction, and smiled his terrible smile. "I know." His shoulders shaking, his wings trembling, he crumpled to his knees, and above the smile hot, desperate tears spilled from mad eyes. "I know," Uriel cried, and his voice broke. "Brother, I know."

And Gabriel took him, curled his wings around his brother's shaking form, tugged Uriel to his chest and cradled him as gently as he could. "Oh, brother," he whispered, and his eyes were as blind as those of the brother he held. "I know. I'm so sorry. I know."

Forgiveness

"Castiel. Brother. I ... was wrong."

The words stung his lips, weighed like stones on his tongue. He looked at the angel he had called brother, for so long, so many battles, so many triumphs and losses. He looked at the angel he had forced to his knees. He looked at the angel he had almost killed.

And for nothing. For false hopes, a cause without meaning. He'd seen that. He knew that, now.

Castiel looked down at him. Uriel, shrunk in death even more than he had been at the last. A remnant. A shade. Castiel, who had only grown, looked down at him. "Yes," he said, and Uriel bowed his head.

And then ... Castiel reached out a hand, a wing, a shining tendril of grace. "I was wrong too," the angel whispered softly to him. "A different wrong, but still. I was ... wrong. And that was ... terrifying, yes?"

"Yes," Uriel whispered, feeling the blackness of his mistakes crowd behind him, feeling the void of uncertainty beneath his feet. Uncertainty. That which should never dog an angel's steps, and from that moment, he had never been free of it. From that moment, he had been lost inside it. Shuddering against it, lost and blind, he curled into his brother's grace.

"I did much before I found my path," Castiel continued softly, distantly, and his hand twitched towards the blade at his side, and the shadows of blood upon it. "Much that was ... not right, though I saw no other way."

Uriel shook, the weight of old convictions choking him, the memory of an angel bloodied and kneeling at his feet strangling him. "Brother," he managed. "For what I ... for harming you, I ..." The words would not come, the remnants of pride too strangling, the remnants of courage too demanding. "Brother ..."

"I know," Castiel said simply. Distantly gentle, and there was that twitch to his lips, that almost-smug expression that Uriel remembered, and hated, and enjoyed. "Shall we begin again, Uriel?" He tightened his grip, drifted close and shining. "A new world, brother. Shall we begin again?"

And though he did not believe that, though there was no certainty in this course, though the void still yawned beneath his feet and he deserved no hand to help him out of it ... there was forgiveness, and the hand held him tight, and, perhaps, it was enough. So he whispered:

"Yes."