From FALLEN - Marcus

My last science fiction and fantasy submission for the semester. This time I tried to introduce a lighter element by showing Gabriel having a friend. There are in the Ministers of Grace who have gotten past his appearance and nature. One of them is Marcus, a student from America who was sought out for his manifestation of powers of superhuman strength. He tries to be a good friend, even when it's hard, and calls Gabriel "Batman." There's also a mention of Rachel, who is an English student with the power of empathy, and her agnosticism has not been improved by witnessing what Gabriel has to go through.



Gabriel knew him a mile away. No one could sneak up on him under the best of circumstances, and he heard the heavy tread making its way up the stairs even before the cheerful humming. Gabriel waited there, perfectly still, so still that he might have been a carved gargoyle, but for the ceaseless slow twisting of his tail.

“I swear you do that to freak out the freshmen.”

Gabriel’s head turned over his shoulder. There was Marcus, still half-in his rugby gear, a six-pack of some cheap local beer in one hand and a steaming box of pizza balanced on the other.

“Do what?”

“The whole part-of-the-architecture thing.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes. “If they’re spotting me, then I must not be doing it right.”

“Don’t stop now, Cameron loves it. He likes to gaslight the kiddies when they talk about seeing some creepy statue coming to life on the battlements.”

Marcus sat beside him on the ledge. Gabriel turned around and watched him dig enthusiastically into the pie. “Why is it always pizza and beer with you?”

“Just properly representing myself as an American. Plus I miss the States. You can’t get a decent pizza in the Irish countryside.”

“You still eat enough of it.”

“Lousy pizza’s better than no pizza at all.” He popped a beer out of the plastic rings and scooped up a steaming slice, then held them out with a tilted head and a raised eyebrow. Gabriel wasn’t much of a drinker, but he accepted the pizza with a nod.

Marcus grinned. “You know, for a hellspawn, you have remarkably few vices.” He cracked open the can and took a long slug. “For my part, I mean to completely undo all the healthful exercise I just got in.”

Gabriel bit carefully into his slice. His teeth were not particularly suited to pizza, but he liked the cheese, and he was glad for the company that came with it. He didn’t even mind the way Marcus teased him, casually throwing around words like creepy and hellspawn as if they were nothing. Quite the contrary, Gabriel was grateful for it. It meant that Marcus was not afraid. That alone made it worth it.

Normal conversation, too, was unusually rare for him, so he was glad to take the opportunity for it when he could. “How was practice?”

Marcus made a face. “Good as it’s going to be. Football’s my game, but they don’t even know what that is here. Rugby’s the closest I’m going to get.”

“I’m surprised they let you play. You have something of an unfair advantage.”

Marcus laughed. “Hey, I never crack that out on the field, okay?”

“How would anyone know?”

“Because I never left anybody a grease spot, that’s how!”

“Didn’t your power first manifest in the middle of a football game?”

Marcus affected an innocent face and tipped his head airily from side to side. “That may have been the case… but that was before I developed my superb level of control. And that kid only spent a month in that body cast, it could have been a lot worse! He was wearing a helmet, you see, so it was okay. You should come to a game sometime.”

“I’m sure Braden would love that.”

“Oh, so perch in some tree and watch me from there. Next one’s Sunday night!”

“Can’t. I go to confession then.”

His friend looked surprised. “You doing that again?”

“Now that there’s somebody to hear it.”

Marcus chewed thoughtfully for a moment. “Oh, yeah. Father… Julien, is it?” He swallowed and grinned. “Should have known you’d be all over that.”

Gabriel shrugged. “I like him. He’s kind. He… he tries hard.”

“All priests walk on water to you.” The young man snorted. “Even old Cortes could do no wrong.”

“Have you met him? He’s not like Cortes.”

“There’s something in his favor.” Marcus made a face. “Well, you seem somewhat less miserable than you did coming back from it, so he must be an improvement somehow.”

The fanged jaw tightened. “That wasn’t Cortes’s fault.”

“Yeah, I’m sure you’re just fine at torturing yourself on your own.”

“It’s not about that.” Marcus had never understood Gabriel’s confessional habit.

“I still think you’re too hard on yourself.”

He cast about for something, some words he could use to explain the thing that had always been. “I… I need it, Marcus,” he said lamely. “I need to do it.” The words sounded so pitifully wrong. But they were easier to say than to describe to a normal person the feeling of hell breathing down his neck.

Marcus grinned in that wry way of his. “As they say, God doesn’t make junk.”

It was a kind thing to say, and Gabriel was grateful for it, but… “It’s not so simple. Not for me.”

He rolled his dark brown eyes. “Whatever you say, Batman.”

There was nothing Gabriel could say. Catholicism amused Marcus. Born and raised in a loving and social church community, his version of the religion was more about picnics and volunteering in soup kitchens on Thanksgiving than the powers of hell and mortal sin, even now that he’d seen such things face to face. Nuns wore funny hats, Christ’s love was complete and uncomplicated, and people got credit for doing the best they could. The rest was all slightly absurd.

Gabriel wished he could take it all so lightly. It was the whole of the world he lived in, and for all the burdens it laid on him it was still the source of the only comfort he’d ever known. He loved it as he loved all the good things in his life, with the sad, hopeless love that lived with the knowledge that he would never be worthy of any of it. He had no choice but to walk the path, but that did not take away the thorns.

Marcus sighed at the abrupt plummeting of Gabriel’s mood, sorry but not surprised. He stretched out one arm to laid across the crenellation and regarded the demon as if considering what he was about to say next.

“Gabe… can I ask you something?”

Gabriel nodded once in silent assent, not looking at him.

“What did you do?”

Now he lifted his gaze, and saw his friend’s expression was uncharacteristically serious. “What?”

Marcus shifted uncomfortably under the weight of those eyes, but still he pressed on. “I’ve seen the way everyone acts around you… the way they treat you. You’re scary, you’re a monster. There’s… something bad about you. I mean, I get it. Hell, I’ve seen you tear things apart when we’re out on missions. Nobody has to tell me that part.”

He took another sip of his beer and licked his lips. “But… you do that to fight monsters. To save people from them. But still. You’re always this bad thing for some reason. And I got to tell you, I don’t really know why. It’s like… everybody else knows it, but nobody talks about it. Nobody told me, and… that’s not the Gabriel I know.”

He pressed those white all-American teeth together and swallowed hard. He looked up and forced himself to return that golden stare.

“So… what bad things did you do? Why do you feel so guilty?”

Gabriel rose from his crouch on the ledge and began to pace. “It’s… it’s what I am.”

Still Marcus didn’t understand. He stood up too and followed after. “What is that? Is it… is it the violence? The-the killing stuff? Like they’re afraid you’ll go off on all of us—?”

“Of course they are!” Gabriel spun around so fast that he drove Marcus a step back. “You said it yourself. You’ve seen.”

He stood his ground. He was a six-foot-one running back, but Gabriel’s massive frame dwarfed even him. “Have you even ever done that?”

“Yes, I have! Braden—”

Marcus threw up his hands at him. “Oh, screw that! Braden’s the most badass telekinetic on the planet! He could nail your ass to the wall tonight, much less when you were half your size!”

Gabriel turned from him again, wanting to escape, before the rage welled up, before the truth broke out of him. But Marcus would not let him go.

"I know you, Gabriel. No matter what you or anybody else thinks about you. How could you be damned if you haven’t done anything worth damning you over!?”

“I don’t know!” he snarled. “I don’t know, all right!?”

He turned back around to see Marcus shocked, staring at him. His head shook back and forth, uncomprehending.

“I do everything I can to keep a hold on the monster in me. I don’t do all the terrible things they all think I’m going to do! I confess and I atone and I am so God damned sorry every minute of my life! And still… I know, in my guts, that no matter what, I’m damned.”

But Marcus didn’t see it, his whole life was built on the wide open arms of grace. “You can’t know—”

“I’m something that in a perfect world never would have come to be!”

Gabriel had so rarely spoken of it aloud. He hated it, wanted to disbelieve it with all of his soul, but again and again, he found himself crushed against that stark truth. The truth for which he would spend the rest of his life atoning.

“And all I can do is keep trying, and keep hoping… and I don’t know if I ever can. I don’t know if I can ever make up for it.”

The words felt empty, inadequate. No, he could not make light of it. It meant everything in the world.

Gabriel’s head bowed low on his long neck. Suddenly it was too much effort to hold it up. He blew out hard through his teeth. “I am demon, Marcus. Whatever else, I’ll never get away from that.”

He sank in a crouch back on the wall, not looking at anything. After a moment Marcus settled in beside him, the strength seeming to have run right out of him. “Jesus, Gabe.”

The hawk-like talons flexed and clenched. “Still think I’m just torturing myself?”

“I don’t believe it.”

“Of course you don’t.” How could he ever? How could Gabriel convey to him that he felt it, felt it in his bones, how far off grace was when his very existence was an affront against God? The weight of the shame of that knowledge?

“It’s not always that bad. Right?” Marcus shook his head. “Sometimes you seem okay. Like now… you laughed just now. I can get you to laugh.”

Gabriel stared off into the dark. He was out of words.

His friend’s usually amiable face was twisted in sorrow. “Can’t blame me for trying, man. Can’t stand knowing you’re off somewhere alone and hating yourself.”

His head did not turn, but suddenly Gabriel was struck. “Marcus… how did you know I was up here?”

He forced a laugh. “Wasn’t hard to figure out. Batman's always brooding on ledges.”

Gabriel regarded him with his golden hunter’s eyes. Marcus couldn’t meet his gaze. At last he sighed. “Rachel told me, okay?”

“Rachel?” The demon tried to keep his expression neutral. “How… how did she know? I haven’t seen her—”

“Gabriel. She always knows where you are.”

He shifted his wings against his back, shaking his head in feigned dismissal. “That makes sense, I guess. I— I don’t read like anyone else. I stand out.”

“Gabe. Come on.” Marcus crossed around to Gabriel’s other side so he could look him in the eye. “She thinks about you a lot.”

Gabriel stared.

“And… I know you think about her.”

“Marcus… don’t.”

He leaned against the wall and tried to smile. “So… what is that?”

“I don’t know.” It was the truth.

“I have a guess.”

“Don’t. Don’t say it.” He shook his head helplessly, fangs grinding as he gnashed them together. “It can’t… it can’t.”

His friend regarded him sadly. “But what if it is?”

“Marcus…” He spread his claws. “Look at me.”

Marcus did, and his expression broke.