It’s winter and it’s coming up to gifting season, so! Welcome to the Archangels’ Winter Gift List!
What is it?
The Archangels’ Winter Gift List is an angels and archangels-centric gifting event for the Supernatural fandom. Participants create wishlists of up to 5 requests that others then browse and fulfil. Gifts will be kept anonymous and unrevealed until the 25th of Dec, when the collection will be revealed and gifts will be delivered. You must have an AO3 account to participate.
If your gift cannot be hosted on AO3 (rec lists, playlists etc) you must have and include your tumblr account name in your request so that you can be alerted to any gifts on the 25th Dec.
🎁🎁🎁Click here to join! Sign Ups are OPEN!🎁🎁🎁
(rules and timeline below)
What can go on a wishlist?
Each participant can make up to five wishes. These can be for fic, art, graphics (icons/moodboards/headers etc), meta requests, character playlists, fic/art recs, or vids. You can also make general requests, e.g. “I love Gabriel and would love any gift related to him.” Or “I love Anna and would welcome any fic/art of her.”
All wishes must be angel or archangel-centric, and they must be safe for work. If you’re over 18 you may indicate you’re open to receiving NSFW gifts.
What type of gift can I make?
There is no minimum participation requirement! A 100 word drabble fill or a single icon is just as valid as a 15k fic or a 20 icon set of every single Lucifer smirk.
Multiple fills for the same wish are allowed and encouraged. You may answer as many wishes as you want to and have time for.
You do not have to make a wishlist to create gifts.
What is not allowed?
No requests for underage content or fills containing underage content are permitted. No character or pairing bashing. Any such requests will be deleted and fills will be rejected.
Requests that are not angel- or archangel-centric will be deleted.
Examples:
YES - A request for a fic where Donnie Finnerman muses on what it was like to be Raphael’s vessel would be accepted.
YES - A request for meta on how vessels experience angelic possession would be accepted.
YES - Pairing fic, human/angel, angel/angel is accepted. Human/human only if it is specifically focused on them as vessels.
NO - A request for a fic where Sam and Dean go on a hunt and no angels or plot about them specifically as vessels and what that means would not be accepted.
The Timeline
You can submit your wishlist from now until the 20th Dec, but be aware that very late wishes are unlikely to be answered.
Nov 1st - Event opens for new wishlists. Anonymous gift filling, and claims open.
Dec 20th - Wishlist submissions close. Gifting still open.
Dec 24th - Non AO3-hosted gifts/gift links posted to tumblr.
Dec 25th - All gifts revealed, collection no longer anonymous. Gifts posted to tumblr reblogged. Gift advert posts linking to AO3 gifts reblogged.
If you are posting a rec list, playlist, or any other content that AO3 doesn’t host, please post your link/content on tumblr on the 24th or 25th and use the tag #ArchangelsWinterGiftList These will all be reblogged to this event blog on the 25th and following days. (Likewise we’ll reblog your fic/art advertisement posts on tumblr if they’re in that tag, but please do not post them publicly until after the reveal on the 25th!)
If you’re having any trouble navigating AO3’s claims system or have any other questions, asks are open. Please do ask if you’re not sure, there’s likely to be someone else wondering too!
Your mods are @fandom-space-princess and @bluecookiesforrick.
(credit for original post and event to @ophanir-deactivated20211113)
Based on a prompt by @fandom-space-princess for the Archangels Winter Gift List hosted by @archangelswintergiftlist
Rating: G
Word Count: 1,892
Summary: Benjamin takes a vessel simply to complete a mission but the experience changes him profoundly.
Read on AO3 or under the cut.
Her name was Áurea, after the anchorite saint Áurea of San Millán, a woman who left the world and committed herself entirely to an ascetic life. She was truly faithful, Benjamin could see it in her soul and he was drawn to her because of the strength of her devotion. He spoke to her in his true voice and she listened carefully. He told her that she was a part of God's plan, that he had great work that needed to be done on earth and much would be asked of her but God's plan would prevail if only she had faith.
Áurea wanted to believe, he could tell, but she had small doubts as humans do. Human beings, with their limited perception, were still so unwilling to trust the few senses they did have. So he set her to a test of faith—if she would stick her hand straight into the fire in the fireplace, he would use his angelic powers to protect her from all harm. She gave him her trust and thrust her arm into the fire and, in turn, he protected her from harm, as he promised he would.
And so Áurea consented to being Benjamin's vessel.
Benjamin built Áurea a quiet space for contemplation in her own mind. There was a long winding path through wildflower fields and dense wooded areas, alongside creeks and through rocky hills. The weather was frequently perfect but not always, for Áurea would not want to live in a perfectly perfect world. He carefully designed this world to keep her content. She was a good woman and he wanted her to be at peace.
Then he joined with the other angels of his flight to kill their former comrade and his abominable offspring.
_____________________________________________
Benjamin stands tall between Castiel and Mirabel as Ishim leads them to the house where the nephilim is hiding. There is something strange about the child. It should have sensed them approaching the house but it has not threatened or provoked them; it has not even tried to flee. Benjamin can sense three presences in the house, one definitively angelic, the other two seemingly human. He can sense the child and it seems to be a perfectly ordinary human child.
“That is the dangerous thing about nephilim, brother,” Ishim mutters darkly. “They look perfectly normal. They can keep themselves completely cloaked from us. It is only a small thing now but it will only grow in power as it ages.”
Ishim did this often, monitoring their thoughts when they were on a mission. Benjamin was quite used to it by now as Ishim said he needed to be aware of every thought of every angel under his command so he could ensure the cohesion of the flight and the success of the mission. To try and hide anything from him would have been disobedient.
Castiel reads Akobel’s sentence as Benjamin holds one of his arms and Mirabel performs a quick and efficient execution and then they wait outside as Ishim goes to take care of the nephilim.
“It’s unusual, isn’t it? That Ishim would leave us out here before going to deal with such an enormous threat as a nephilim,” Benjamin muses.
"It’s as Ishim says,” Castiel replies. “The nephilim is not a threat yet. He’s simply stamping out the potential of something that would surely become a threat.”
“Perhaps—” Benjamin begins.
“Perhaps you talk too much, Benjamin,” Mirabel interrupts, her command unspoken but understood and they all fall silent.
Angels are made to wait and watch and so they wait and watch. Benjamin has watched the world for millennia now but most of those were spent in heaven. It is different, observing from here on earth. He found the dampness of Earth very unsettling at first but he's grown more accustomed to it. He looks up to the trees and the sun, the warmth of the sunlight sinks into the skin of his vessel and he sees the trees’ leaves glowing with its rays. The sounds of screams come from the house.
Benjamin feels himself slip into his usual watchful mode, alert but meditative. His thoughts float towards his new vessel, Áurea. She would like it out here, he thinks. The weather is kind and the house looks comfortable. It looks like the kind of place a human would enjoy. He wonders if he should build her a house to rest in somewhere along the endless loops of nature trails he built in her mind. He shifts his grace to touch her soul, his only intention is to feel for himself if she is happy in her own little world but when his grace brushes up against her soul, something of her slips into his consciousness. Her mind is still occupied elsewhere but with this connection to her soul, he is suddenly flooded with the feeling of her benevolence and he sees the acts they have committed for what they have truly done.
His former comrade, dead for the crime of loving. And a child, killed for existing.
Benjamin had seen the world through her eyes since he took her as his vessel but now he could see the world through her humanity as well. Benjamin was a gifted soldier, a loyal and unquestioning weapon of heaven, and now he feels remorse for these acts done in heaven’s name. But the mission is over, what is done is done. Ishim comes out of the house to collect them and return home.
Walking through the gates of heaven, Benjamin shifts to encompass Áurea, carefully cradling her fragile human body inside his true form. The other angels do the same. They all return to their usual posts except for Ishim, who leaves to report back to Zachariah.
Benjamin returns to waiting and watching, as he has done for thousands of years but observing humanity from this distance once again feels…wrong. He now feels as if he has been dislocated from earth and its humans, so he draws part of himself inward, into Áurea and the place he made for her. She’s sitting by a placid lake, enjoying a light breeze on a sunny day.
“Benjamin,” she smiles warmly. “I didn’t think I would see you again.”
“You can see me?” he puts the thought into her mind so he can speak to her.
“I can feel you,” she sighs happily, closing her eyes and tilting her face towards the sun. “I can feel your presence.”
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Counting the ripples on the lake,” she says.
“May I join you?” he asks.
“Of course,” she says, looking back to the lake.
Benjamin watches the lake, the lake that he created, the lake that only exists in Áurea’s imagination, but he also watches Áurea. He can feel her soul in a way he’s never felt a human soul before. He allows himself to be engulfed by it, by her goodness and her faith. He cannot tell her what they did. She would never forgive him. And so, as penance for a crime she’s unaware that he committed with her body, he offers her something else.
“Áurea,” he says. “Would you like to see heaven?”
“More than anything,” she whispers.
“I can show it to you,” he offers. “Some of it is…it’s too much for the human mind to comprehend but with my grace, I can show you parts of heaven that only angels see.”
Áurea’s eyes fill with tears, “I wouldn’t think I’d be fit to see something so holy.”
There’s a deep ache inside Benjamin. He has seen all of heaven and he knows that it is not the type of holy that she thinks it is. Still, he can show her the beauty and the grandeur and shield her from the rest.
"Come with me, Áurea," Benjamin says. "See all the things you've ever dreamed of."
"I'm not worthy of it yet," she shakes her head, wiping her tears away. "I intended to spend a lifetime in contemplation of the divine before reaching heaven."
“Think about it, if you ever grow tired of this place,” Benjamin offers.
“I don’t think I could ever grow tired of this place,” Áurea says quietly.
Benjamin senses another presence nearing him and withdraws from the calm center of Áurea’s mind. With his full attention brought outward, he realizes Castiel lingers near him.
“Were you…communing with your vessel?” Castiel asks curiously.
“Yes,” Benjamin says simply.
“I didn’t know we could do that,” he says, his many heads tilting with interest.
“It’s quite peaceful,” says Benjamin. “And informative. Humans…they see things so differently than us.”
“They do have a strange way of looking at things, don’t they?” Castiel muses. They sit in silence for a moment, contemplating the enigma of the human mind. Benjamin has always felt a strong kinship with Castiel, both of them fierce warriors and calculating tacticians, and though the other angels said there was something unusual about Castiel, Benjamin had always felt that was the same thing that drew him to him.
“Abandoning your post already, brother?” Ishim’s glare is apparent in all three thousand of his eyes as he appears before them, staring Castiel down.
“I was merely confering with Benjamin for a moment,” Castiel replies.
“Then you’d best return to your post,” Ishim says.
“Of course,” Castiel drifts off to another section of heaven, where he can more clearly see the area of earth he has been assigned to keep watch over.
“Did I hear you say you’ve been communing with your vessel?” Ishim turns his many judgemental eyes on Benjamin.
“Just for a few moments,” Benjamin says. The threat in Ishim’s energy is so palpable, Benjamin feels an odd protective instinct to wrap Áurea even more firmly into himself.
“That’s a dangerous road,” Ishim warns. “Humans cannot be trusted.”
“Can’t they? These vessels…these humans, they have given everything to us,” Benjamin argues. “They trust us, why should we not trust them?”
“Humans are erratic, they may trust you now and change their small minds later,” Ishim’s energy vibrates with something Benjamin can’t quite understand, something that feels peculiarly like betrayal. “It's better to ignore them completely. Leave the vessel’s mind to its own affairs, you only need its body.”
Benjamin begins, “Castiel agrees—”
“Castiel has always had an unnatural fascination with humans,” Ishim interrupts darkly. “I caution you, brother, don’t repeat his mistakes. Humans are fickle creatures, untrustworthy and undeserving of our companionship.”
“But if—”
“Have you forgotten that I am your commander?” one of Ishim’s heads growls.
“No, Ishim,” Benjamin replies. “You’re right, I’m sure.”
“See that you don’t forget it,” Ishim eyes him mistrustfully before moving on.
Benjamin returns to watching the earth but, after ensuring Ishim is far away, he sends part of himself into Áurea’s mind to invite her to watch with him. This invitation she is happy to accept. They sit together, an angel watching humanity and a human watching the earth from the heavens above.
Benjamin feels a new level of rightness rise within him, a sense of partnership and understanding. He knows now that he has a new mission, one never assigned by heaven. Áurea gave him her trust, allowed herself to become a vessel for divine missions and, in turn, he would protect her from harm, as he promised he would.
Michael and Raphael decide to send Gabriel a little card since he won’t answer his phone.
Very late @archangelswintergiftlist entry for @nalivaa, who requested: “I would love any fluffy sibling content from them, be it pre or post canon timeline. Whatever floats your boat, as long as it’s them and (mostly) fluffy. I don’t mind angst at all, just please no tragedy ajdkakls”. Sorry for the late reply, hope you enjoy it! <3
hi! sorry for the late hour, the background gave me a bit of trouble but here it is! i missed my little guys so it was really nice to do something with them <33
let's be clear here, if michael falls down, he's dragging adam with him, he's not going down alone, and he won't even feel a smidgen of guilt for it, the hand on his chest is not just for stability it's not even a threat that's a promise
Gabriel and Castiel flying together, made for @wizardofrozz who requested: “I loved the few brotherly moments between Cas and Gabe but I wish there was more of their relationship […] I’d really like something from when Cas was a fledgling but it’s not required” for @archangelswintergiftlist! Hope you like it ^^.
Based on a prompt by @whisperoftheheart925 for the Archangel Winter Gift List hosted by @archangelswintergiftlist
Rating: G
Summary: After the archangels are created, they hear God's name for the first time.
Read on AO3 or under the cut
Before the beginning, there was the initial singularity of the entirety of the universe, an infinitesimally small but inconceivably hot and unfathomably dense material existing at a single point in a steady state. And then space itself expanded and the universe expanded with it. And then there were the two twins, the Darkness and the Light, Creation and Destruction. Unequally yoked, the only beings in a rapidly expanding universe, they were joined together and at war with one another; what one made, the other wiped away.
Then, Creation reached into the center of the universe, gathered a lump of primordial atoms that were born from its expansion, and shaped the Archangels: Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, and Gabriel.
These beings came into consciousness as they were being ripped apart from one another, now separate but bonded by the matter of their essence. They were born mid-battle between Creation and Destruction, the first moments of their existence spent in chaos, caught between two beings far older and more powerful than them.
Then, Destruction called out to her brother, the first word the archangels ever heard, an enormous, incredible, formidable word, a word that would later prove to be incomprehensible to beings other than the ones present in this specific moment: the true Name of God.
At the true Name of God, each one of the archangels felt something surge inside of them. Michael, the archangel who would become the great captain and leader of the heavenly hosts, felt a calming sense of rightness, as if every aspect of this tumultuous universe he had just been born into was suddenly slotted smoothly into place like joinery. A sense of duty arose from his new understanding, a firm conviction of how the cosmos should be ordered and a sworn fealty to the being that could end the bedlam around them.
Lucifer, the archangel who would become the morning star and bringer of dawn, felt the coursing excitement of a thunderstorm, the awesome power of a lightning strike, the adrenaline of racing after a tornado through it's path of destruction, the deep desire to throw himself straight into the battle raging before him.
Raphael, the archangel who would become both Heaven's great warrior and Heaven's great healer, felt the swelling of a thousand symphonies within him, visions of the hosts of angels who might one day exist singing in harmony with himself at the front, trumpet poised to welcome in an era of total peace.
Gabriel, the youngest, the archangel who would become both the faithful defender of Israel and later the faithless deserter, felt an overwhelming combination of horror and awe, a clarity of both the beginning and the end of all things as if he were standing at a lookout point in time, able to see the greatness and the cruelty of the universe all at once.
Then their father called them to his side and they took up arms with him to defeat his sister. They fought as one, joined together by the heat of battle, and then their father bestowed the Mark upon Lucifer, his most trusted lieutenant. They worked in unison to lock his sister away for all eternity but hearing their father's Name for the first time had shaped their destinies. The Name had caused cracks in their close bond, cracks that would eventually widen into cavernous rifts between them, forcing them apart like repelling magnets.
God had created them and God would tear them apart.
A short story for @saint-raphael, for the Archangels' Winter Gift Exchange. Inspired by this beautiful comic, and the question 'what if Raphael had left with Gabriel after Lucifer's fall, rather than remaining in Heaven?'
Read below, or on AO3
In the beginning, they ran.
Descent from Heaven (voluntary or otherwise) was treacherous then, and all the more so for being a relatively untested experience. For the rest of Raphael’s long existence, what would stay most firmly in her memory was this: the winds at the border of the physical and ethereal planes, tearing through her wings, wrenching fragments of her Grace free to whip back and away and mingle with her brother’s own like feathers caught in a hurricane. Her hand clutched in his, as those winds bit and snarled around them. His grip a vise that would not be prised loose from hers, even as they came screaming out of the ether and down, down through the atmosphere of the Earth, their landing a psychic detonation that flattened trees for leagues in every direction in that uninhabited northern waste. Even as they clawed their way to physical certainty and pulled matter into form around themselves, scrabbling together bodies like shelters or prisons in this realm that was not built to hold them, that longed to spit them back into the void from whence they had come...
… even then, Gabriel held on. Her first experience of physicality may have been pain, but Raphael did not endure it alone.
When they were real enough, they collapsed into each other’s arms, and clutched and sobbed for the one brother who would not have had even that small comfort.
---
Time passed strangely at the boundaries of Heaven and Earth.
Their fall had felt like a minor eternity, and like it had taken no time at all. Raphael shuddered to think how it must have compared to that other Fall, the length of time for which Lucifer must have fought those dire winds, and the longer eternity still which stretched before them all.
“Better not to think about it,” Gabriel reminded her. Her brother sat at the mouth of the dwelling they’d constructed for themselves. In the short span of years they’d spent here, beyond the reach of Heaven, the humans had grown numerous beyond counting. Left without guidance as they all had been, Adam’s descendants had expanded, crafting a niche for themselves, assembling in groups beyond simple family units: the first cities. Gabriel and Raphael’s home overlooked one of these. On a high rocky cliff scraping the stars at the boundaries of the human settlement, Raphael had reached power into the Earth and drawn forth thick twisting tree trunks, looping vines and creeping ivy. Had poured her will through hands and feet into the craggy ground and forced it out again, yearning skyward, until the forest reshaped itself about their clearing into a vaulted emerald cathedral.
The humans did not approach, although Raphael had seen them wondering up at her from time to time. She did not know what they must have thought of their angelic presence, there at the edge of the place to which they had laid claim; did not know what she wanted them to think, if anything at all. They watched each other from a distance, in wary silence and contemplation. For now, it was enough.
“I can’t help it,” she responded, after long moments. Gabriel turned to her, firelight reflecting against his eyes. “What if I’d been able to... do something? Something more?” She studied her hands in the orange glow, slender fingers, shadows picking out muscle and bone. “What if there was something I missed, some perspective or knowledge that could have helped?”
Gabriel shook his head. “You know nothing we could have done would have changed the outcome.” His voice was gentle, neither scolding nor unkind.
“I’m not so sure. I know what he did was wrong, to go against our Father. I know that, as surely as I know that we could never have stood with him in it.” She sighed. “But this—what our home has become, how can that be right, either? Look at them.” Her gaze strayed to the outline of the village in the distance, profiles of low dwellings cast in silhouette against the expanse of darkness by the humans’ own campfires. “They have no more direction than we do. Considerably less, in many matters. And yet they make their way.” A flash of memory: Lucifer gone, Father gone, and Michael’s face, shuttered, shattering, terrible in those first moments when they had learned that it was now—and would only ever again be—just them. She squeezed her eyes shut. “Even leaderless, they’re the furthest thing from adrift. They are building their foundations on a peace not forged in force, but in something else. What is it, Gabriel? Could I have learned the trick of it? Could I still?”
She sighed. A rustle of fabric, and Raphael opened her eyes when she felt her brother’s hand slide into her own, the weight of him settling beside her.
“All we can do is give Michael space,” he replied. He slung his arm around her back, and she leaned into his side. “Maybe we’ll be able to help yet, and maybe we won’t, but staying there and falling apart with him, watching while he mistreated our brothers and called it leadership? That wasn’t helping anything. It was only hurting us.” He paused. “Hurting you.”
He was silent a beat, then, quietly: “I’m glad you came with me. You can’t imagine how much.”
Raphael allowed her cheek to drop onto his shoulder. “I am, as well.” A small smile curved her lips. “As much as I may dislike you for being right. What should we do?”
Though she did not raise her gaze to see it, she heard the grin in his voice.
"Dad wanted us to love humanity, right? We might as well go see what all the fuss is about.”
---
Thus, they descended into the village to walk amongst their Father’s mortal creatures. Though these visits were at first both brief and infrequent—the humans skirting past them (when they noticed them at all), this odd and uneasy brother-sister pair with no ties and no sense of belonging to anywhere in particular—as time passed, they found themselves mingling with the population with greater frequency. Gabriel took to the people of their little village with particular enthusiasm, and watching her twin wring joy from the most unexpected of sources time and again was a great pleasure, one of which Raphael never tired.
To her surprise, she found that she, too, was beginning to value them in unforeseen ways.
On a rare stroll through the outskirts of town without Gabriel (he having wandered into the market at midday, drawn by the bright colorful swathes of fabric displayed by one of the resident weavers), Raphael rounded a corner and found herself in an open, dusty clearing filled with children. They were embroiled in one of those most fascinating of childhood activities: kicking and chasing a large ball, bound of some thick and fraying animal hide, back and forth across the clearing.
There appeared to be no rhythm to the game, no set goal. Raphael settled back into the shadows to watch. Half a dozen older boys scuffled for control of the ball, stirring up dust, to the occasional accompaniment of jeers and sweet-natured laughter from a group of younger children seated nearby. Darting along behind was one smaller girl-child, fast and wiry, clearly a few years the junior of her companions. Despite lacking the size and strength of the older boys, she was quick of both eyes and feet, and more than once Raphael watched her claim control of the game by dint of these skills alone.
Raphael felt something stir in her, watching them. A family—if not by blood, in the way humans measured these things, then certainly by camaraderie. Choosing to do—what? Neither working nor obeying, though their elders must certainly have had uses to which they could be set. Doing nothing so structured. These children chose to spend their time glorying only in the passing of the day, in the presence of each other, in the dirt which ground into their skin when they fell and the sun that flashed in their eyes when they stood. Knocking each other down and pulling each other up again, nothing but joy in the motions of it.
As the afternoon wore on, clouds had begun to cluster at the horizon, threatening rain. Unexpectedly, the wind picked up, and the ball sailed out of the blur of bodies. It rolled to a stop at Raphael’s feet. The girl, brazen, came chasing after it, and she too skidded to a stop before her, raising her eyes to meet Raphael’s own. They were clear, river-rock grey, and they seemed somehow too large, too hungry, for her slender face.
“Can I have it back?” she asked, without prelude. Her voice was strong, no tremble in it that would have belied a fear of this almost-stranger. Raphael was unused to being addressed by a human so directly. Without looking away from the girl, she lifted her foot and toed the ball forward. The girl stopped it with the sole of her own foot, then stood rolling it slowly along the ground.
“What’s your name, child?” Raphael asked.
The girl sized her up, with the caution of children. She sniffed. “Rahima.”
Raphael smiled. “A pleasure to meet you, Rahima. You’re very good at your game.”
The girl’s eyes gleamed with pride. “Better than my cousins. Someday I’ll be better than my brother, even.”
One of the larger boys loped away from the group, tired of waiting, and drew up behind her. He dropped a hand on her shoulder, then faced Raphael. A twinge in her heart; his eyes were as clear as Rahima’s, but far darker, slate-steel grey, storm grey. Those eyes, in this boy’s serious face, a protective hand on the shoulder of one he cared about—
She bit back a sudden homesickness.
“Thank you for our ball. I’m Amir,” the boy said. “We’re sorry to bother you.” There was a suspicion there, not unfriendly exactly; closer to adulthood, he seemed more unconsciously aware of the Otherness in Raphael, an aura of something distinct from his own humanity. Then, to Rahima: “Come on, Reema. We should get going.” He glanced up at the sky. Raphael felt it, too; the first drops of rain were touching her skin, misting her cheeks and sinking into her hair. Early in the season, for a storm like this, but the children were already scattering, seeming mostly concerned with getting home without getting drenched.
The older boy—he must have been her brother—tugged at her sleeve, but Rahima frowned. “What’s your name, anyway?” she said, remaining stubbornly in place.
“You may call me Rafa,” she replied. “Your brother is right. Run home, now, before you bring the rain in with you.”
Another instant, during which Rahima looked as though she wanted to say something more; but then her brother took her hand, pulling more insistently. “Let’s go, little gazelle. Race you home!”
The challenge was enough. A spark lit her face, and then they were gone.
Raphael stood long enough to watch the rain scrub the dust from the air and the afternoon turn to turbulent dusk before she felt the pull of Gabriel searching for her, and finally departed, flutter of wings hidden amid thunderclaps.
---
Angels are not men. Raphael knew this, although she often felt it would be more pleasant to forget, as her brother seemed eager to do. Not to leave their other lives behind, never completely; she was her Father’s devoted creature, and knew in her heart that she would be so until her return to the void of her creation. But as they walked with the humans, sharing in their joys, feeling their sorrows, she wished that she could understand them more completely. The distance between empathy and sympathy had never felt so vast as when she watched her children (as she had come to think of them) play, learn, and grow.
Then again, Raphael was not her brother, either. She watched her twin move through the people with something akin to awe. Gabriel saw them, knew them, in a way she wondered if she would ever truly be capable of doing.
Gabriel knew her doubts, and in these moments, he offered her only comfort. “Your way of loving them is quieter than mine,” he often told her, hand clasped in hers and a bright spark of tenderness in his eyes. “That doesn’t make it less. Look at them, Raphael. How different they are from one another, and still, they manage to cherish each other.” He’d smile at her, spin her in place as though to music only he could hear, until she gave in and laughed along with him. “It doesn’t matter how we love them. Only that we do.”
And there were so many opportunities to love them.
The years passed, and their small city continued to grow. A square grew up at the center, a courtyard surrounded on three sides by high stone walls, and the people began to congregate there regularly. Once, passing nearby, Gabriel and Raphael were drawn by the sounds of a crowd. Intrigued, they made themselves invisible, and flew up to perch atop the walls and gaze down into the assembly.
A tent had been erected at the fore of the yard. It sheltered an altar, stone carved low to the ground. The smell of sweet burning incense hung in the air, smoke on the breeze, and the atmosphere was one of muted joy, subdued but festive. The people appeared to be waiting for something. Raphael edged nearer Gabriel, craning her head to see.
Before long, the muttering of the crowd dimmed, and bodies parted as a stream around a stone. Four men stepped forward. The eldest, clothed in robes of clean and sturdy cloth, approached the altar and knelt before it. The younger men took up their places behind him, arms laden with bread and grain, jugs of water and wine, fruit from the orchards, vegetables from the fields. Raphael recognized Amir—almost a man, now—leading the trio. After a moment, their elder stood, turned, and together they laid the bounty of food along the stone.
When he was satisfied, the robed man addressed the crowd. Lifting his arms, he began to speak of gratitude; of plenty, of security, of the harvest to come and of their duty to give thanks. With some small measure of surprise, Raphael realized that the man was calling them to worship of her Father, and she turned her head, a question for Gabriel on the tip of her tongue.
“Wait,” he murmured, his gaze never leaving the man at the front of the crowd. “I want to hear this.”
A hush descended, then—
The man began to sing.
A single note, at first; a tone that reverberated through the air, inviting a response. One by one, the people around him added their voices to his. She thought she could pick out Amir’s voice, near the front, and a high soft thread from further in that might have been Rahima? Then the crowd was singing in unison, a human hymn, a call to glory and charity and the divinity of mercy, the mercy of the Divine.
Raphael listened, rapt. Something was there, she thought, that other thing for which she had so long been searching. In these people who together created such beauty, who could will such concordance from thin air. Perhaps she might learn the trick of it from them yet.
Her reverie was abruptly shaken by the realization of Gabriel’s voice beside her.
When she looked to Gabriel, it was to find his eyes clenched tightly shut. Light reflected along lines of moisture there. But when he opened them and looked back to her, his tears did not fall. The expression on his face was many things, she thought, but she knew what it was not: no part of this was sorrow.
She tilted her head back, exposing the long column of her throat, feeling the sun on her face. When she raised her own voice to join in the song, she felt it in every cell of her earthly body.
---
More years passed, and Raphael and Gabriel in turn passed the time in the way to which they had become accustomed: making their home among the humans they had claimed as charges, as companions. It was a small world, by comparison to what had come before, but it was theirs, and they loved it fiercely.
But the world has always been capable—would always be capable—of changing in a blink.
Raphael sat astride one of the crumbling stone walls of the village square. Two remained.
Yesterday, there had still been three.
Yesterday, there had been rain.
In truth it was not yesterday’s rain that was the problem. It was all the days before it. A wet season that started too early, that brought water like a deluge of Heavenly wrath onto a city already sodden to bursting. Gabriel and Raphael had watched from their cliff as the rains fell; had done all that they could to ease the weather here within the bounds of remaining hidden, of minimizing their interference in the natural world around them. It couldn’t be enough. In the night a vast stretch of mud on the hillside across the valley had broken loose. It had roared into the town and through it, indifferent natural rage made into a battering ram for houses and bodies unlucky enough to be caught in its path.
They had felt it as it came. And in those crucial minutes when the landslide began to crash toward the people (our people, Raphael had thought, wild-eyed; had seen it reflected back at her out of Gabriel’s face, too: these are our people), they had reached a decision, without needing to speak it.
They did not save the town—buildings fell, walls still crumbled under that onslaught. When the sun rose that morning, it did so to find more than half of those structures gone completely, buried under rubble and mud.
But the sun rose on something else, too. In the light of day, when the people congregated in the town square to take an accounting of their dead, of their injured, they found to their amazement that they were whole. Not a soul missing. Just stories, whispered in awe and fear, traded between them: stories of near misses, of miraculous escapes, of waking far from the homes they’d fallen asleep inside. Homes which would have fallen around them.
Staying hidden be damned.
Gabriel was down there now, moving among them unseen. Passing through, gifting them small touches: a shoulder here, a forehead there. Where he passed weeping abated, breath eased. Nothing showy, nothing gaudy; only miniscule, essential applications of Grace. Of love.
Looking down, Raphael saw a man on his knees. Elbows on the altar, head bent in prayer or anguish into his hands.
She appeared at his side in an instant. Laid a hand across the back of his neck.
“Amir. Are you well?”
Amir looked up, startled. He turned his tear-streaked face up at her. He had grown into a man over the years, broad of chest and long of bone, but his eyes were still the eyes of a boy cautiously watching over his sister. The boy she had first met so long ago.
She did not know what she looked like, to him. Whether she looked the same. Whether he remembered her at all.
“I...” She could see the faint confusion of partial recognition in him, but he shook it off with a blink. “Our home is gone.” He exhaled, long and low. Seemed to settle himself. “But I breathe air, and not mud. My sister and mother, all my cousins, they breathe with me. It is a blessing beyond words.” He looked at her again, then, his confusion returning. “I apologize. Do I know you?”
“I think I do,” came a voice from behind them. They turned as one. Rahima strode to her brother’s side, kneeling next to him. She had grown, too. A woman, now, still small and wiry and strong as her brother, in her way, and still with such hunger in her eyes. She looked up at Raphael steadily, something in her gaze which was neither a question nor an accusation, and also both of these. “You told me your name, once.”
“I told you a name, yes.”
Rahima stood, pulling Amir to his feet beside her. She threaded her arm through his, eyes never leaving Raphael. “It’s a miracle, I think. For all of us to have survived. The world and our Maker must love us dearly, to bring us through to see this dawn.”
Her feet shifted, stirring the mud, a little-girl challenge in her eyes.
“You are certainly held most dear,” Raphael replied. Her gaze swept over the people in the courtyard, filthy, weary, leaning on each other. All of them helping the others to stand, or to rest and recover. Showing their love in this, the truest way they knew: being present. Offering their steadiness, and the strength of their hands. “See that you remember that, as you rebuild. Care for each other as though you are worth cherishing. Because you are.”
She felt Gabriel approaching at her back. She nodded, one last time, at the children she had watched grow. Then she turned away.
“Will... will we see you again?” called Amir.
Raphael cast a faint smile over her shoulder, a small and melancholy thing.
“I’ll see you,” she said, and in the next instant she was gone.
---
Even in their lofty refuge, the singing of the people in the valley below was faintly audible, drifting up on the breeze.
Gabriel perched on the edge of the cliff outside their home. The sky was calm and cloudless, the rain having spent itself and gone, and the moon cast the village in ghostly blue. It felt unnatural, eerie, that any night could be so still after what had come before.
Raphael stood at his back. She looked over his shoulder, at the darkened skyline they had come to know so well. Odd and uncanny, to see it so reduced after all these years of growth. She grasped tightly at that feeling, at what it stirred in her, and tucked it away deep inside her heart.
This moment, this quiet determination and clarity... this, she would keep.
It would be necessary, in the days to come.
“I’m going back,” she breathed into the night. “I know where I’m needed, Gabriel. I know how I can help.”
“I know, Raph,” Gabriel sighed. He half-turned, looking back at her. “I know.”
“Are you angry with me?”
He chuckled. Reached out and grasped her hand. She allowed herself to be tugged down beside him, as they had done so many times before: sitting and watching their little vista, their own private sanctuary, this stolen, sparkling fragment of the universe.
Her head fell onto his shoulder. For a moment she allowed herself to pretend that they could go on as they had been. But it passed, floated away on the night air between strains of song.
“I couldn’t be angry with you if I tried,” he replied. “If this is your decision, you have my support.”
“They just...” she started. She spoke as though feeling her way, choosing her words with care. “This place is beautiful, Gabriel. These people? They are worthy of better than what is in store for them. This is our Father’s world. What is our purpose, if not to cherish it as we once cherished each other? What if I can help Michael see how to do both more clearly?”
She pulled away from Gabriel. He remained sitting, looking up at her. “I’ll miss you,” he whispered.
“As I’ll miss you.” She scrubbed the back of her hand across her eyes, once; he did not mention it, and neither did she. “Will you stay here? While they rebuild?”
He shook his head.
“I think I’ll go north,” he said, eyes tracing the horizon. Then he stood at last. He pulled her into a bruising hug. “If Michael gets to be too much again, you know you can always come find me.”
“I know,” Raphael replied. His eyes searched over her face, once, committing it to memory. And then, in a stir of wings, he was gone, and Raphael was left standing alone in what had been their home.
He never was one for long goodbyes.
Before the heat of his hands could fade from hers, she turned her face upward, toward the stars. Heart full to bursting with something she was hesitant to name—but which might have looked, from a certain angle, like the love of a brother or a challenge in storm-grey eyes—she, too, allowed her wings to carry her onward.
And all that remained were the fading strains of hymns on the wind.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Characters: Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, God
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: There was something in the middle of the Light. A figure, wrapped up between its own luminescent wings, trembling with sensations like Michael had been in his very first not-moments. He cautiously approached it, extending a tendril to brush the new presence.
In which God creates the Light, and Michael becomes a brother.
Written for @missingjackklinehours as part of the @archangelswintergiftlist ! <3
“Hello, Sam,” Lucifer says, voice soft like cold mist, nothing like Ruby’s ever was. “I thought I’d try something else tonight; I wonder if you’ll like it better. After all, you believe I’m just her—” she gestures at the body she’s wearing as if at a foreign object, “—all over again, don’t you?”
for @flaming-michael-sword’s prompt for @archangelswintergiftlist!
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
Characters: Michael, Dean Winchester, Mary Winchester, John Winchester
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: A few months after the birth of his one true vessel, Michael pays the Winchester household a visit. It's not much of a Nativity scene, but it will have to do.
Written for @whisperoftheheart925 as part of the @archangelswintergiftlist !
a gift for @fandom-space-princess for @archangelswintergiftlist! heavily inspired by the last scene from their gorgeous fic Pyrphoros, which i love to distraction <3
A set of moodboards for @archangelswintergiftlist as a gift to @regnumveritatis ! The prompt was the Archangels in the medieval era. I was inspired by medieval history, high fantasy and Arthurian literature to make these. Hope you enjoy it! <3
