"Gabriel?", his oldest brother whispers into his ear and the youngest archangel turns around, not quite ready to slip out of the comfortable, trance-like state he has fallen into, blinking at Michael like a half asleep owl.

"Mhm?"

Michael scoffs in response and Gabriel already knows what his brother is going to say now. Use full sentences, Gabriel. You are an archangel, so talk like one.

As a fledgling Gabriel hated that particular scolding and always to correct himself before Michael had a chance of saying it, which probably was what his older brother intended with it. He could do it now, but he chooses not to, leaning back into his brother´s arms and grinning at him, daring him.

And Michael grins back. "Use full sentences, Gabriel. You are an archangel, so talk like one"

And with a warm, fuzzy feeling spreading in his stomach, Gabriel knows that little moments like this one are the reason why he hasn´t run away from Michael, like all his instincts have screamed at him to do. Why he is still able to relax in his arms and feel only slightly guilty for it, which he would have thought impossible, considering what Michael did to Raphael, Balthazar and heaven in general.

Of course he hasn´t forgotten anything he has heard about his older brother in the last few days and he hates the cold Michael he has gotten to know at Kali´s. He also absolutely hates and is scared of the Michael, Raphael and Balthazar have gotten to know.

But in little moments like this, Gabriel feels like he is getting a glimpse behind some heavily guarded wall and is sure that there is still his Michael behind it somewhere, the Michael who was his awesome big brother and the most reliable person in the world, always a bit stiff and unimaginative, but that made it even more endearing when he went out of his way time and time again to make sure that Gabriel knew his big brother loved him with all his heart.

This is the Michael Gabriel is seeing now, grinning about a scolding that has somehow turned into an inside joke over time, the one he hopes will stay, no, has to believe will stay for him. And if the Michael from the garden is still alive in some way, then maybe, just maybe there is still an innocent fledgling waiting somewhere deep inside Gabriel, the one Loki and the Trickster have tried their damnedest to kill.

He has pronounced that part of himself weak, the moment he ran from heaven, something that was just slowing him down and couldn´t possibly survive in the harsh world he was entering now, quite fittingly led by Death. He has tried for millenniums to eradicate that naive, little fledgling, to look back now and wish he could have that joyful innocence again.

For one strange moment he wonders if Michael could take away all his memories from Loki and the Trickster, everything after Lucifer´s rebellion, which probably would be the only way to get that fledgling back. Then he realizes that Michael would probably do it, if he thought it would safe his little brother some pain and then he suddenly thinks about Balthazar´s empty eyes, when the younger angel told him about what Michael called reeducation, about how much Balthazar and Raphael suffer from their missing memories and then he has to turn away from Michael, burning with shame about even thinking of that cowards approach towards his past.

"Gabriel?" Michael´s hand is on his shoulder, worry clear in his voice and radiating over the bond Gabriel is having some difficulties getting used to again. He has to constantly remind himself to keep the shields down for his brothers, guarding himself having become more natural then just letting the bond flow like it was always supposed to. "What are you thinking about? I know it is upsetting you"

"Just the craziness of the whole situation", Gabriel lies, with the ease and the grin of the Trickster. "I mean, two days ago I wouldn´t have ever thought this possible"

"Well, you were not the only one", Michael murmurs, drifting into his own thoughts about the situation, as Gabriel was sure he would, leaving the younger archangel slightly shaken.

He always knew he was good at lying and had ample opportunity to practice during the last centuries, but lying to Michael´s face with the two of them only inches apart and the bond active and Michael not suspecting a thing?

He is not sure if he should be proud or freaked out. Michael was always able to read him like a book and this little incident makes him feel strangely disappointed in his brother.

Glaring at Michael, he sees the oldest archangel still hasn´t quite found back to reality from the mess of feelings Gabriel deliberately pushed him into and that sight succeeds in actually sending Gabriel into thoughts of his own, about how crazy the whole situation is.

About three days ago, he wanted nothing more than kill Michael.

Less than two days ago, he was kneeling in front of the Norse, frightened in a way he had never fathomed before, absolutely sure he was going to die a horrible, fiery death and Balthazar would have to watch.

He quickly tries to steer away from the memories of these endless moments of pure terror, but now they are joined by the memories of what Frigga did to him afterwards and he can almost feel the angel blade cutting into him again, no he can feel it again, deliriously watching his grace seeping from his wounds, blue and red mingling on the sand…

"Gabriel, snap out of it! You are safe, I promise you are safe! Gabriel, come back to me, Gabriel please!"

Michael sounds way too scared out of his mind himself to be reassuring, but somehow his voice however panicked is just what Gabriel needs to snap back to reality.

"What?", he wheezes, unable to stop his sudden shaking and clinging to Michael harder than his pride would usually allow. "I´m getting a panic attack, so you´re getting a panic attack, about me getting a panic attack? How did we end up being such a mess? This isn´t even funny"

Michael draws in a shaky breath and starts systematically messing up Gabriel´s hair and just as systematically cutting off the flood of emotions he is sending over the bond, quickly forcing himself to regain his bearings to put his little brother first and said little brother isn´t sure if he thinks that sweet or sad.

"I don´t know about you", Michael says, with just a slight hint of bitterness in his voice", but I am pretty sure fun wasn´t on the list of Father´s top priorities, when he planned our lives"

"And I´m pretty sure if I would have said that, someone would have labeled it blasphemy",Gabriel responds, cherishing the half-smile his comment gets out of Michael. In his opinion, Michael has always clung to fanatically to Father, taking the sense of duty and devotion all angels felt toward the creator to a whole new level. The absolute peak of Michael´s desperate obsession to please Father was reached, when throwing Lucifer into the pit and so Gabriel is glad to see that Michael is getting a bit more relaxed around the never easy topic of Father and blasphemy.

"So, what did you want when you first called me?", Gabriel asks to get his little breakdown out of both their minds. "Or were you just checking if I was still alive?"

Michael blinks at him, obviously trying to remember, but not quite managing to concentrate on something that seems ridiculously long ago now. "I think I wanted to ask you if you were ready to go back to heaven", he finally says. "But it´s alright if you are not feeling like it now, I wanted to choose a good moment to ask, but then you got upset and we got distracted and you..."

Michael is talking himself into every available corner again, as he tends to do when he gets nervous, but Gabriel has stopped listening the moment he heard the word "heaven" anyway, a word that has never failed to bring him to a halt during all of his chosen exile, letting him drown in a strange mixture of fear and longing.

When he thought of heaven in the past, he thought of shelter, of this feeling of being wanted and at home you always take for granted, till it gets ripped away from you. He thought of Michael´s embraces, Lucifer´s breathless laughter, Raphael´s reassuring smiles, the little ones endless, unbound energy and then he thought about how it was all lost to him forever and then he suddenly hated heaven for teaching him hope, when the real world had no place for silly feelings like that.

But now it turns out he has actually a chance to get at least some of it back and he is frustrated with himself, how hard he is instinctively trying to push the chance away, how frightened he is of returning to a place that can´t possibly still be the one he is really longing for.

He wants to go home so hard it´s burning him inside out, but he keeps finding new reasons why going back is a horrible idea.

He will be under Michael´s control and what is the cold Michael he hates returns?

He will be disappointed by it anyway, since he spent centuries idealizing it.

He is just not ready for it.

Only that he´ll never be ready, as he suddenly realizes now. He´ll never be ready and with each second he is sitting around, putting going back off and off a bit longer, he is getting less ready. He is overthinking all of this, searching for problems everywhere, because returning to heaven always was his secret wish and he finds out for a fact that the ideal heaven in his mind, will now rest a dream forever, he won´t be able to handle the loss.

Actually, this is a moment shouting for the Trickster. The Trickster would just get going, saunter in and take a look. But he doesn´t want to see heaven through the eyes of the Trickster, when he sees it for the first time since Lucifer´s rebellion, so Gabriel somehow has to muster the same kind of spontaneity to finally get home-.

Which isn´t as easy as it sounds, because Gabriel cares how this day is going to end, while the whole point of the Trickster is that he doesn´t care about anything.

Alright, getting up in three, two,…

He rises as quickly as he can, loosing patience with his self set countdown. He doesn´t have the time now he has set the goal, at zero his little drop of determination and braveness would have evaporated already.

"Let´s go", he interrupts Michael, whose guilt filled rambling has turned into an indistinguishable roar in Gabriel´s ears. "Now, before I lose my nerves and run away instead"

Michael looks absolutely struck and the moment he takes to react, feels like centuries to Gabriel, now that he is intent on going through with this and adrenalin is rushing through him, like he about to enter a fight. Thankfully Michael doesn´t comment on Gabriel´s sudden change of mind at all, probably as afraid that it won´t last long as Gabriel himself is, grabbing his little brother´s arm and…

"No, no way you are carrying me! This isn´t our freaking wedding!", Gabriel shouts at him, the tension of the situation making his voice way louder and harsher than intended.

"Alright" Michael looks like Gabriel just stabbed him in the chest, but he is quickly trying to hide his feelings, making Gabriel feel even more guilty about loosing it for a second. "But at least let me steer, to make sure we land somewhere nice, you know"

"Whatever", Gabriel mumbles still feeling guilty, letting Michael take his hand. He feels like he won´t be able to stand still one second longer, his urge to just run away and hide growing larger with every second.

"Ready?", Michael asks and Gabriel almost shouts at him again for wasting further time when Gabriel´s nerves are being shredded by a wood chopper, but the bond tells him that his big brother also is beyond frightened and when Michael is scared he tends to cling to predictable things. Like lists or routines, or questions that only have one socially acceptable answer, even when your mind is screaming to say the opposite.

"Yes", Gabriel lies to Michael´s benefit and then he closes his eyes, trusting his big brother to bring him home and trying not to feel, like he just stepped off a cliff.

The flight seems to take up ages and last no time at all. Suddenly there is grass under his feet again and then that feeling hits him, the one that only the garden can give him, the feeling he has searched for in Asgard and in his goose chase for the sacred spots, that feeling telling you, you are home, really home and nothing can harm you anymore.

He has sworn himself after he ran away, to always remember how it felt like, safety and peace pulsing through him in a way not even the archangel bond could challenge, like the garden itself was some giant telepathic being, connected to the angels and there to help them back to their feet every time they fell.

Well, trying to remember he definitely failed miserably. It´s like his whole being just got taken over, but in a way so gentle and lulling, he doesn´t even care those feelings aren´t his. They are now. He is safe. The garden is welcoming him home, he is safe.

It´s absolutely overwhelming and he stumbles, would have fallen without Michael´s grip on him, because it´s just impossibly to take in.

He is safe.

He is home.

He didn´t even remember than concept anymore.

He tries to regain his bearings again, to make opening his eyes and seeing the garden for the first time in millenniums some big and ceremonial moment, but the lulling safety of the garden and his grief at having missed out on this for so long are clashing so hard, he isn´t even able to stand on his own, let alone make a show out of this.

So he opens his eyes, while hanging in Michael´s grip and is immediately glad he hasn´t tried to stand on his own, because he is absolutely blown anyway by how everything is exactly as he remembers. Every tree and every flower is at his place, the rushing of the waterfall is exactly where it should be and this all has to be a dream, because there is just no way the garden can be so perfect after all this time.

"So, how is it?", Michael asks, hope and worry laced tight in his voice and Gabriel almost breaks into laughter, because there are just no words in all of creation to describe the mixture of feelings rushing through him right now.

"How is it?", he echoes numbly, because his emotions can´t possibly be expressed by his voice anymore. "How is it?"

His vision is starting to blur rapidly, but when he turns and smiles at his brother it isn´t the smug Trickster grin or the wicked Loki smile, but the wide, almost forgotten smile of an innocent, little archangel.

"Michael, I´m home"

So, that was the longest think I have ever written and I´m really excited about having pulled through to the end. Thanks to everyone who read, reviewed, followed or favorited. You are all fantastic :)

Special thanks to Sekkiera, the most loyal reviewer on the planet, writing me about every! single! chapter! Thanks doesn´t quite cut it for you and neither does fantastic. You are brilliant and kept me going through all of this, always encouraging me with your messages. I know stories are usually being dedicated at the beginning, but anyway I would like to dedicate it to you now. There you go, you deserve it :)