The Empty – Hearseeno

denugis:

For @samprincesschester, who asked for Sam, Dean, Gadreel, and “closure” for this prompt post. I’m sorry, I’m sure you wanted Sam & Dean closure for Gadreel, but that’s something that eludes me, so I’m afraid all I’ve got is Gadreel and making things worse.

Heaven’s prison had been narrow, a strait, unendurable corridor of time, stripped of the loops and folds and points his Father had created His angels to travel. That had been punishment indeed. Gadreel misses his brief guardianship of the wonders of Eden, he misses his even briefer return to Earth, despite his erroneous choices, and he misses the moment of certainty, sacrifice, kinship that ended it all. But this Empty with its featureless expanse is at least no prison. It is unconfined. It is not terrible. Gadreel is content.

He nods gravely to the shades of his brothers and sisters when he encounters them, but they don’t speak. It’s not that they shun him. He’s achieved that redemption. It’s just that there’s nothing to say. Even the arrival of two human souls excites no remark. The Empty is knowledge without contemplation. Everyone knows why Sam and Dean Winchester are here. It was a reasonable step. They need to be outside the reach of purpose, anyone’s purposes. The Empty is purposeless.

That decision must have been handed down from Death’s court. God would have gone with something personal and dramatic, reward, punishment, both.

But while God is free to be arbitrary in his partiality and Death in his justice, Gadreel is bound. Not by a prison, now, but by an obligation. He goes to find Sam and Dean.

“You!” says Dean. Sam is silent.

“I owe you a debt,” says Gadreel. He had betrayed Dean, with whom he had a bargain. Perhaps he had also betrayed Sam, even while he healed him.

“What do you want?” says Dean. He sounds angry, unfriendly. His emotions were always gaudy and easy to manipulate. The Empty hasn’t yet bled him grey.

Sam just watches.

“I want you to remember me kindly,” says Gadreel, because it’s the truth. Sam and Dean’s memories don’t mean as much as those of his brothers and sisters, but they still matter for his honor.

Sam stirs.

“You helped us,” he says, “I’m, uh, to be perfectly honest I’d rather not think about the whole thing at all. But I know you helped us. You don’t have to, like, apologize. Really. I’ve done stuff. I’m not out for revenge or anything.”

“I didn’t think you were,” says Gadreel.

“Why don’t you shove off, then?” says Dean. “No hard feelings, no offense, whatever, but you heard Sam. You’re not someone we want around here.”

“I apologize,” says Gadreel, though Sam had asked him not to. But Dean has a claim as well. “I’ll withdraw.”

And he does, to a careful distance. That encounter was less than satisfactory. But it’s hard to say what more he could have done. After all, he can’t sacrifice his life again. He doesn’t have the option of closure.

But he can still manipulate mortal memory.

The Empty has none of the warm pockets of heaven, or the cruel concentrations of hell. Sam and Dean’s memories stretch all around them on a level plain, none more important than another, without the inflections of landscape. But there are some that they would prefer not to have. And those are also things Gadreel would as soon see expunged from the record.

It will be a kindness — Sam has said he prefers not to remember.

Gadreel sets to his work of unmaking. He had charge of a garden, once. He still remembers how to weed.