Post Chapter Four - Gabriel (Patreon)

A/N: Post Chapter Four, assuming you went with Gabriel and Belladonna to the gates.

The old wooden door slammed shut.

A tear. A fissure within the Night Market. Not a gate. Not an entrance to another world. But a damn fissure. Gabriel could deal with many things but this one felt overwhelming in a way that he didn’t quite understand yet.  It was new and something the Velvet Guard had not tracked, though that shouldn’t have been a point of vexation for Gabriel.

Yet, Gabriel was vibrating with the intensity of his emotions.  He had stormed through the rest of the market, barked out several orders to faceless guards that had gotten in his way upon returning to his office, and then sat at his desk for three agonizing minutes before he shot back up.

“I’m taking the afternoon.” He didn’t even know who worked at the front desk today. Just that he needed to get out of there. The cave walls were far too small, and the air was cloying.

The house he stood in was familiar in a way that he rarely admitted. An old waterwheel was attached to the broken down boat house, churning the river in a frothing mixture of algae and fresh mountain stream.  The boathouse itself was dark and Gabriel was unsure whether the occupants would be home. Not that it mattered. He was always welcome at this particular doorstep.

“Whiskey?”  A dark skinned man stood near a stained kitchen table, a bottle in hand.  He was in a state of undress, shirt long since discarded in the heat of the night and pants torn and dirty from working on the docks all day.  Scars were etched into his skin in the familiar shape of wild lightening, crackling faintly against him now that he was home and settling for the night.

“Yes.” Gabriel said without hesitation.

The man gave a low whistle as he handed Gabriel the bottle. When Gabriel didn’t even reach for the glass the man was getting, but instead swigged it from the green neck, the room fell into a tension filled silence.

“Well, I’d say it’s nice of you to visit your dear old dad, but I’m wondering if that joke is going to fall flat with the way you look.”

“I’m fine,” Gabriel intoned.

“You look it.”

Gabriel looked wrung out. Hair out of place. Top button of his shirt undone.

“Want to tell Papa Reese what’s going on?”

Gabriel shot him a look over the bottle. “Must you speak like that?”

Reese snorted in laughter, kicking out a chair.  “When it breaks you out of whatever little pattern you got yourself in you bet your fucking ass I will.  Now, sit. What the fuck happened?”

“Nothing.”

Reese nodded, reaching across and taking the whiskey from him and pouring his own glass.  “Alright.  We could do it this way. But you know for a fact I’m not a patient man, so I wouldn’t advise it.”

Sinking into the chair, Gabriel stared out the dirty window above the refrigerator.  It was coated in grime and last night's rain.  “I’m not supposed to tell you what is on my mind.”

“So it has to do with the gates,” Reese said.

Gabriel’s lack of response was probably enough of an answer.

“What’s new that’s got you all in a twist.”

“Nothing,” he said quickly.  “Nothing that should change anything we already know.”

“Then what’s the issue?” Reese was staring at him, his patience already thin from a long day within the market itself.  His adoptive kid was not what he had expected when he reached home that night.

“I told you. Nothing.”

“You don’t come here unless you’re upset, Gabriel,” Reese said with a irritated sigh. “So just fucking spit it out, so we can both get drunk and forget about it all.”

Gabriel’s jaw twitched, eyes adverted. What was he supposed to say? The individual he had been keeping an eye on came through a tear in reality and not a gate. Somehow, that was significant, but it was only significant in the respect that he didn’t know how to protect them?

Apparently, that was exactly what he said, because Reese was staring at him with that look on his face. That one he gave Gabriel often when he came to visit with a problem at hand.

“You like this person or something?”

“I don’t have to like someone to be concerned for them,” he snapped.

“It helps.”

Gabriel sighed. It was a deep one he felt rattle through his chest. Though the whiskey was helping put him at ease.

“What is it you’re looking for here, Gabriel? I don’t know much about the gates themselves and this tear or rift or whatever you’re calling it–”

“Fissure.”

“Don’t fucking care.  What is it that you’re wanting me to do for you here?”

Gabriel didn’t know. He didn’t know why it upset him in the first place. Why the entire night had put him on edge. There was just something about it that had set him off. That made him wind up here, the very place he avoided most days, seeing the disappointment of a man that had fallen so fucking far from who he had once been.

Slumping in his chair, Gabriel shoved the whiskey aside. “I don’t know what I’m expecting from you.  The day was long and rough.  I did not expect to have to deal with a gate opening and then traversing through the market with one of my old prisoners and Belladonna.”

Reese laughed deeply. “How is old Bells?”

“Don’t call her that.”

“Why?” Reese said with a raised brow. “Still territorial?”

“Reese, please.”

He held his hands up in surrender.  “Look, if that’s what this is, you having a shit day at work and walking around with Belladonna and who I’m assuming is your new squeeze, I get it.”

“You get nothing.”

“Come off your high horse, Gabriel.  Sometimes, we just have a bad day. You are not immune to it, despite your angelic past and your position as Warden. Fucking accept that, welcome the pain and then decide if you want to do anything about it.”

Gabriel’s lips curled downwards in an angry frown. He should have known Reese would give him nothing but sarcasm.  The man had never been good at comfort. Not since Elias and it was questionable if he had been before.

“Gabe,” Reese said softly. “I mean it. You are allowed to have a bad day.”

Standing, he straightened his coat. He shouldn’t have come here.  He had paperwork. And given what they now knew about the fissure, he needed to get back to his office and go over the reports they had on the gates.  Perhaps there was more than one. Maybe they had mistaken some earlier gates. They would all need rechecked, of course.

“Gabe, come on, stay.” Reese said. “It’s been a while.”

“Not tonight.” Turning on his booted heel, Gabriel stopped, feeling his shoulders tense.  Closing his eyes, he shook his head. “We’re going to be contacting all the Baron’s,” he told him.  “They want to name the one who came through the rift namekeeper.”

Behind him, there was a marked silence. Then; “Interesting.”

“Please don’t pretend like you know me.”

Whiskey poured into the dirty glass echoed through the room.  Reese said nothing to that.  When Gabriel left the house, the door shut behind him much quieter than when he had come in.  Only momentarily did his face twist in grief for the man inside. For who he had used to be. Then, the Warden was back in his place once more, ready to greet whatever was to come.