Title: Fatal Imbalance
Author: RavenWolf
Pairing: Vaguely Angela/Gabriel
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After her initiation into the world of John Constantine, Angela begins losing faith. Gabriel doesn't help matters.
A/N: So, this could be either het or femslash, depending on which you see Gabriel as. Isn't that fun?
*~*
The walls have all fallen down inside Angela's head, and now it's always busy in there. The little thoughts she had, always clamoring for attention, now compete with the big ones. Sometimes she swears she sees a giant-horned demon crouching on her shoulder when she looks in the mirror. But if that's so, where's the angel?
She's always been a devout Catholic. But where does that leave her now? She goes to mass, makes her confessions, but it's all empty. She's seeing angels and demons and somehow they've pushed God down and out of the way.
She feels like she's drowning in all the faces, which is mostly why she comes to church now. It's quiet there, and though it's such a self-serving reason to come to worship, it's true.
You can never go back.
She sits in the library, and she reads. She reads and she reads, and doesn't give in to the paranoia because that would be too much like losing. That would be like admitting that she can't handle it, that it's too hard, that Isabel was better at this than her and that maybe she should be the one that's dead, not her.
She sees them out of the corners of her eyes and it makes her focus on her book harder. The words blur together.
...after the demon has been summoned it must be contained in a ring of salt.
She sees her standing by the fireplace, always. Blocking out the light with ironically black wings. Blonde hair and a masculine suit.
As long as she doesn't see me, I'm all right.
She makes herself smaller. Her useless gun is in her purse, along with her badge. She hasn't been to work in a week. She can't look at their faces, can't see demons on the police force and still have faith that she matters. She's always thought she was jaded, with everything she's seen in her line of work, and her insane sister, but now she knows what it really means to be jaded.
She hides inside herself, scared to death to even go outside. Which is, of course, why she does it.
When she puts the book down, the woman/angel is gone. She knows she should relax, but she can't. It's like her blood has frozen solid in her veins, leaving her immovable and vulnerable.
She looks to the side, cautiously. The angel is sitting next to her, staring into her eyes, and she feels caught, skewered. Fight or flight wars within her and she's like a frightened rabbit. She doesn't speak; she can't, even despite the sounds she's making in her throat.
The angel smiles, an expression obviously meant to put her at ease. But it does no such thing. “Don't be frightened of me, little girl,” Gabriel says, crooning softly.
Angela doesn't know how she knows that the other woman's name is Gabriel. She just does, and really, it's frightening, because Gabriel is an archangel. Isn't he? Only she never knew he would look so beautiful.
Still, she mistrusts him/her because there's never an angel on her shoulder when she looks in the mirror and what you can't see is always more dangerous. She learned that when she killed her first man.
“For you, I'll be a woman, I think,” Gabriel says, and as she says it, Angela sees, the subtle shift that really isn't a shift at all. And she's so beautiful.
“What do you want from me?” she asks, scooting her chair backwards.
Gabriel smiles, a heart-breakingly beautiful expression, and reaches out to touch Angela's cheek. “Nothing, dear. Nothing at all.”
Angela jerks backwards from the touch. Their skin together feels like a betrayal, and she has a flash-forward of the two of them, naked and twined together as they dance in the fires of hell.
“No,” she mutters, pulling further away. She fumbles in her bag for her gun, only when her hand touches it, she feels like a traitor, because she really, really can't shoot an angel in a church and expect not to go to hell for it.
And, hey, at least she still believes in hell. She knows what she's seen, and it's really quite amazing that she's seen hell and she doesn't believe in it, and she's felt God and she doesn't believe in him, either. But it's a tiny solace that makes her think maybe she's not completely mad.
Gabriel withdraws her hand and smiles crookedly. “Don't worry so much, darling. I will take care of everything.”
She pulls back and her wings float out behind her, powerful and menacing, and Angela really feels threatened now. “Please just go away,” she says, keeping her voice steady.
I don't want to be in this anymore. I just want my sister back.
“Alright, my love.” Gabriel leans in and kisses Angela affectionately on the forehead. Angela closes her eyes despairingly. “I'll be seeing you.”
The wings flutter disturbingly, like a crow gone silent and warped, and Gabriel is gone.
Angela keeps her eyes closed.