Do You Hear What I Hear? [Metatron/Gabriel]

March 5th, 2012
2:17 PM
Gabriel's Office
Akashic Repository

The silence had become something of a deafening roar.  Like hearing the static in the background of a mistuned television or the rush of wind on an empty plain on a clear blue day.  It was the silence that surrounded the crunching constancy of voices Metatron filtered 24 hours a day to the great Celestial archive, a silence not of the angelic host but of the halls of the Repository.  It had been weighing on his mind for the better part of a month, and only recently had he realized just how deeply he'd been affected by the silence.

When it came down to it, the problem were the words.  He had never known Michael particularly well, and had related only poorly to the methods he seemed to employ in problem solving.  Very old testament, wrath and anger, divine righteousness and victory by force.  That was certainly part of god's style, no question about it.  But he tended more towards the leveraging of knowledge.  After all, that was his job.  Why record history at all if all you want is to watch it burn?

Still, the problem wasn't the approach, it was the response he'd received.  His angelic abilities had never been able to hear the words of Lucifer before, it was a tainted and broken connection to the Angelic Host and Metatron had never had purpose nor power to accept the words of the fallen one.  But through Michael's ears he had.  For the first time in his existence, the words of Lucifer had been recorded in the Celestial Archive and he felt...dirty for it.  Tainted, touched, unclean.  Yet for all this worry, for this creeping silence in the home of his work, he'd been unable to figure out what do to about that feeling.

Nothing in his vast array of recorded experience prepared him to react.  Worst of all was the feeling that these might not be the plans of god at all, merely another ambitious angel reaching beyond their rights.  And still...one could not doubt.  It was not his place to doubt the words and will of an archangel.

So for the first time in thousands of years of memory, Metatron had made up his mind to speak to the archangel he served......Gabriel.  Theirs was a difficult relationship, but one he believed was made difficult more by his superior than himself.  After all, there was a reason god had ascended his mortal form and given him a task so core to that archangel's duties.  But he could not allow pride to leak into his existence and tried his best to serve and supplement.  They clashed, but managed to operate as a cohesive unit.  Yet now...Gabriel was the only one Metatron could think of speaking to, who might understand the weight of that silence.

It was with this in mind that he travelled quietly and confidently to the doors of Gabriel's office and entered with little more than a knock.  The tome that portrayed his words appeared floated before him, saying simply "Might I trouble you for a word, sir?"

This would be an interesting afternoon...

A brow knotted in concentration, the dust and disorder of his office not noticed, the task at hand commanding all of the archangel's attention. With fingers moving so slow, so carefully; the hummingbird could not be as steady as his hands, for there was too much at stake.

"Aaaaaaaaaalmooooooooost..."

"Might I trouble you for a word, sir?"

A shattering of the carefully maintained silence broke Gabriel's posture, and a wild glare shot up angrily to Metatron, face full of indignant impatience. "What's wrong with you, farm boy?! Don't they knock on doors from wherever you were picked up!" He shouted, seeing no need to be cautious, before he looked back to his old, cluttered desk. "Look, just go away and come back later, I'm very busy," he said, before bringing the two cards in his hands back towards the house of cards he was building. Tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, eyes peering to his work with great dedication, he finally placed the two cards in a triangle on the house. He moved away slowly, and the whole structure collapsed anticlimatically. Gabriel huffed, before looking up to Metatron like it was his fault that the house had fallen down. Gabriel honestly didn't like his 'secretary'; while it made sense to Gabriel to have the wisest of the archangels (himself, he presumed) educate the angel and take him under his wing, Metatron seemed to be under the impression that he already knew everything. Of course, This was a woeful misunderstanding of Metatron's role on Gabriel's part, but he let the kid hang around so long as he didn't intrude too much, which he was right now.

"You see, that was you," he accused. "If I was playing with those bricks with the writing on it and you burst in like that, I would've broken them and you'd have to go back to Mickey and explain why you broke his Eight Commandments." The archangel slumped back into his chair, sighing frustratedly. "I don't even know where they are right now, you haven't seen them, have you? Big things, you can't miss them. The cherub's must have misplaced them."

In fact, it was Gabriel who had misplaced the Ten Commandments; he was using one slab as a trouser press and the other to prop up one of the shelves that was broken in the Arabic Literature section. The slab he was using as a trouser press was right behind him.

"Well, you might as well ask me, but if it's about this war, then forget it, Mickey's already told me all about it," he said knowingly, despite the fact that he hadn't been listening at the time when Michael was notifying him and in fact he thought that Michael was planning to start a war with Luxembourg. "I mean, personally, I don't see what he has to gain from it, it's a tiny place and all they've got is cheese. It'll never work. But anyway, you had questions, I will answer."

Metatron stared, practically agape as he watched Gabriel fail in his attempts to complete his house of cards.  It was very much like the archangel to spend his concentration on seemingly trivial pursuits and yet treat them as though they were issues of life and death, damnation or salvation.  He'd never understood it, but then again there was much about Gabriel he'd never understood (despite having spent millennia attempting to do just that).

"What's wrong with you, farm boy?! Don't they knock on doors from wherever you were picked up!  Look, just go away and come back later, I'm very busy," as his final movements destroyed the teetering tower before him.  It seemed a fitting visual analogy for much of Gabriel's work.  A tower of cards, important only to himself and always on the verge of collapse.  Of course now there was a literal mess of cards mussing up the table before him, setting of Metatron's somewhat order obsessed sensibilities something fierce.

He'd known better than to come and try to have this conversation, but now it was too late to walk away.  Leaving would probably just infuriate the archangel, which was highly counterproductive.  He could of course reconstruct the tower of cards through his control of gravity, but he was certain Gabriel would view it as an affront.  No, he was going to have to wait and share his feelings when the storm of madness passed.

And the storm came as expected.  "You see, that was you," he accused. "If I was playing with those bricks with the writing on it and you burst in like that, I would've broken them and you'd have to go back to Mickey and explain why you broke his Eight Commandments.  I don't even know where they are right now, you haven't seen them, have you? Big things, you can't miss them. The cherub's must have misplaced them."  Once more, Metatron was tempted to answer his boss, being intimately aware of exactly how many commandments there were and where the tablets had been stored, but it was too obvious and too insulting a path to head down.

He grinned and bore it as best he could, worry and a lack of patience slowly creeping across his face though he tried to remain calm.  Through it all, Gabriel truly did have the best perspective for him to discuss matters.  He knew the facts beyond Metatron's existence and memory and perhaps buried in that mass was a truth that would ease his mind (although he had already begun to doubt it…)

"Well, you might as well ask me, but if it's about this war, then forget it, Mickey's already told me all about it, I mean, personally, I don't see what he has to gain from it, it's a tiny place and all they've got is cheese. It'll never work. But anyway, you had questions, I will answer."  It was almost too much idiocy to bear, but Metatron chose to ignore the obvious non-sequitur and share his thoughts anyway.

As always, the floating tome that was his only means of effective communication placed itself between himself and Gabriel, his words forming on the page rapidly:

"Sir, it's not just the war that's been bothering me.  It's that through Michael, for the first time in the recorded history of the Celestial Archive, the words of the first fallen one have been recorded.  And between him and Michael…it is unclear which is embodying sin and which salvation.  Does Michael truly believe the demonic congregation can be subjugated?  Is this truly the divine rule or is it merely retribution?  I do not doubt, Gabriel.  But I do fear…"

"Sir, it's not just the war that's been bothering me. It's that through Michael, for the first time in the recorded history of the Celestial Archive, the words of the first fallen one have been recorded. And between him and Michael…it is unclear which is embodying sin and which salvation. Does Michael truly believe the demonic congregation can be subjugated? Is this truly the divine rule or is it merely retribution? I do not doubt, Gabriel. But I do fear…"

To this, Gabriel had to ponder for a few seconds.

"So Luxembourg is working with Lucifer now," he said, as if this was a profound discovery that he himself had discovered, rather than so far off the mark that he couldn't even see the mark. "It's deeper than I thought. I shall have to reconsider my plans for this afternoon; I was going to spend it..."

There was a very sudden and very long pause. Gabriel's gaze drifted to the bookcase next to him, then to his trousers under the first five commandments, then to the wall, and back to Metatron.

"I knew him, before his downfall," he said to his apprentice (or at least what he thought was an apprentice, rather than someone to keep him in line). "Lukifo, or whatever his name is. Second best angel there ever was. Looked weird. Not sure why everyone ranted and raved about how awesome he was." He then looked back to the scattered cards across his desk. "Then he did a silly thing. He told Caesar to get off his chair because... I don't know, it was a long time ago. Of course, if he really wanted the chair so badly, he could've asked me to get it, Caesar was always a lot more likely to listen to me. I'm his favourite, after all. I'm the only one that he'll tell a joke to."

There was another pause and, for a brief flash, something dark passed through Gabriel's eyes. Not another side to Gabriel, but something more twisted. Something within in that knew the terrible truth and, for his own and the sake of others, hid it from him. Another side of his mind. And, like that, it was gone. The archangel, having forgotten the question, looked back up to the tome.

"Yeah, words and retribution and shit," he said. "Well, what is retribution but a harmful action against a person or group in response to a grievance, eh? Exactly." He then picked up one of his playing cards and threw it at Metatron, hoping that the card was one of those cards that occasionally gives some insightful clue. Instead, it was the Jack of Clubs. "I mean, you're... you were only human. Wanting to know that you're on the right side is completely natural. Doubt's healthy, it means that you know what your limits are, what right and wrong is." Gabriel then pointed to himself. "Using myself as an example, I only stopped doubting myself when I found out that I was always right and couldn't possibly be wrong, but I shan't deprive you of that discovery, it's an important step in growth."