numberthree | Mask or Menace ☂ IC Phone Post

[ Luther.

Luther.

Luther is the one who told him any of that?

Allison is almost annoyed she doesn't have a record of the conversation to flip through beside her vision. Specific phrases thought are still by-blow lightening burned on her veins. For all her calm, still pricked under her nails with bamboo shoots. About their house. Their childhood. Luther as ... her brother. And that last one. That last one that almost makes it hard to think of again.

Especially when she's crinkling the brow of her new face and trying to parse exactly what that comment about not needing makeup is even supposed to mean. ]

That's ... a lot.

[ It's still so weird, to be able to pause between words again.
(Not weird that she feels defensive about the rest if it. For herself. Or Luther.) ]

What exactly were you trying to learn from him?

how to be you while we have been swapped. And then I wanted to understand it.

[He gestures at his form.]

Your family and mine are different. Human beings and Celestial creatures. I want to understand it.

[He is not normally this direct but staring at her abruptly Gabriel looks away.]

This is the closest exposure I've had to anything like this. He talked about your mother too but I want to hear from you what it's like. It's...different. My family is made up of 10 million and we aren't close like this. WE don't talk to each other like you do, or share meals or do any of this. I'm sorry to ask but I figured you're connected to Celestial energy. And you have wings. I'm amazed you haven't tried flying yet.

[ Allison is already beginning to wonder just what Luther didn't talk about when Gabriel-in-her-face adds that he talked about Mom, too, and Allison is really having an incredibly hard time picturing Luther -- Luther, of all people -- talking about their childhood, their mother, and her makeup choices with anyone. This place really is insane.

(She has to guess that there is another side of this story.
Maybe even one that will make more sense if she asks him later.) ]

You don't have to 'be me." [ Allison lifts her hands to make quotation marks as she says it. ] You just mostly have to make sure I'm still one working piece by the end of this. You don't have to try and do everything I do. God knows I'm not trying to do all of it in this. Er. You.

[ A second, and because she has the feeling this isn't ending soon. ]

You should probably know those aren't going to be conversations anyone in this house has easily without warning.

Edited 2019-12-25 02:16 (UTC)

[He nods slowly but then scowls and pulls out the comm again and types at her.]

I gathered that. It's frustrating. You all know every single inch of my family's history. All of it. Trying to understand the bonds that Lucifer and I had would be difficult but you all still know he betrayed us and Aziraphale

[Allison's eyes stare at nothing. Then types slowly.]

I tried to kill him. Because he chose himself and his love over our mission. Over our family. But I'm not upset. He's not my problem anymore. I'm not upset at all. But see? Now you know all of it.

[Gabriel forgets that he's in Allison's body however, or perhaps he just doesn't know, and so his features look very upset. Incredibly upset. And then he points.

And types. And his hands slow before he slowly turns it around.]

Did your problems really hurt you all that badly? They seem very small. But you're all small. And sensitive. we shouldn't have made you so sensitive.

Edited 2019-12-25 02:32 (UTC)

[ It's strange seeing what her own face looks like when she's lying badly. Primarily when she can act nearly anything required of her, and she can manage to usually rebuff anyone from truly knowing what is going on in her thoughts if she doesn't want to be bothered. She's earned millions with that face. And bewilderingly, this is what her face looks like at this point.

When this is an expression, she doesn't even think she'd be comfortable with anyone seeing.

Still, the rest is. Well, it's unexpected, but she doesn't grimace much. It probably says something that Allison would overreact largely to not being in her won body, but she seems rather unsurprised by mentions of family betrayal and-or plots that involve someone trying to kill someone else in their family and then having Massive HangUps About That Person Still. ]

I don't actually know all of your family's history. Most of my family can probably say the same. We weren't raised with any specific spirituality or religion, and by the time any of us left home, we were basically adults already, and none of us seem to have gone much out of our way to look into since then either.

[Gabriel sits back and puts the pieces together because this peace is obvious acceptance which is good.

His focus is sharp on her because he's putting more pieces together there's a sense and his sense while here has not been working well it still works and in this case it's a certainty.]

...It's hard to think of you all as adults sometimes. Everyone here. Especially in this you are all very sensitive.

[Pause.]

Is that why you didn't believe me when I told you who I was?

[ Allison shrugs a little. There's nothing like being in a body with wings, that doesn't need to eat or sleep, that changes your mind at least a very little bit about some things. ] There's no proof of angels in my world, but--

[ And this gets a little emphasis. ] Even with the proof that you are what you say you are, or something near enough to it, there's no proof that angels exists on the world I came from and not just this one, or this one and the world you actually came from. And. It's not like it's caused me to have some great Come to Jesus break down about you, this place, or religion as a whole.

Unless that will somehow get us switched back faster.

[ Beat. ]

It wouldn't, right?

[A shake of his/her head is all she gets before - with the absolute certainty of a Celestial creature - Allison's shoulders shrug.

And Gabriel types.]

Do you really want to be alone so badly? One way or another this has been...exciting. And I do like these.

[Gabriel extends her nails back at Allison before nodding and smiling.]

They are pretty. but you should get them painted purple or violet. Also since you won't tell me about yourself I must insist you at least tell me if you tried to fly.

[ Allison's expression doesn't shift. At least not much. She's gotten better at it. She'd never admit it, but she's spent some time in the mirror with this face. Like she spent years doing with her own while acting. Gabriel might be fine letting the riot of his emotions ride her face, but Allison still cared a good deal about what was hers and what was the worlds.

Still there's something that stings to his first question.
The one he leaves so quickly. The one that defines a decade. And more. ]

Then maybe you should start somewhere smaller, and more straightforward. And no. It's still hard enough to handle walking with them sometimes. I've nearly crashed off beds and chairs more often than I'd like to admit because I have forgotten just for a little while that they were there at all.

[ There's a ponderous second before Allison says the insane words her brain had collected together. ] Do you want me to paint them for you?

[Allison has probably offered the expression Gabriel uses now on her face. It's the expression of someone who is privy to a great secret but.

He types.]

I don't use my wings to fly.

[The thing about being so old is that sometimes you go young again. Gabriel will never admit he has pleasures but there is great pleasure in his running and flying and going fast.

Then she offers the second part and...

He stares at her hands and his eyes go wide with glee.]

...That would be excellent. You really would look good in purple. Or pink. Those are my favorite colors but purple yes they should be purple I would...I would like that very much please.

[ Allison can't quite believe she's doing this, but maybe it will help him calm down and as much as she doesn't love any of this, it'll give her something to do with her hands, something to take up some time, sometime she's not half-agonizing over where Gabriel has gotten to and what he is doing with her body until she can't focus on anything all over again. Even if she can't really see herself doing this with anyone else. Vanya maybe. Ben, if there was another spa day. ]

You can explain it to me when I come back. Just wait here. I'll be right back.

[ Allison pushes herself off the couch. The first step always a little ginger. A little like stepping on a boat, before she remembers where her new center of balance is. In her body. In her feet. Across the high center of her back. It only takes that half step and then she's off on quiet feet through the house.

Returning two or three minutes later with three bottles in purple.
A flat purple, a metallic purple, and one with glitter int it. ]

Here. Options. You can choose.

[Stunned? That doesn't begin to cover it.

Instead he points at the flat purple before typing one handed -]

I like that one. It's sensible and practical. It's not vain. Or a sin.

[He has had centuries to justify this to himself, to document it and write reports and memos about it. Sitting he glances around wondering what else he needs and looking at her much like a child before staring down at his hands.]

What's your favorite color?

Neither are the other two.

[ Allison says it before she can stop herself, and half because if it were one of her siblings she'd never have even thought to. But then her family has probably any number of thoughts about her vanity, especially Klaus who's somehow decided to make her his suzy homemaker scapegoat, and maybe others. But she doesn't think any of them, at all, believe in sin any more than God or Angels.

He holds out a his-hand for hers, trying not to be really weirded out by the juxtaposition.
Breathe. She'd been through truly horrific things. This was just waiting out weird. ]

I'm surprised someone else here hasn't explained the Mental Network to you yet. I probably should've the first day. Sorry about that. [ She's hypocrtical, but what else is new. Allison blinks a little and settles for doing the thing she hasn't had to in days (which hasn't quite meant she's given up saying a thing of two to Luther, across rooms and through walls, with it, even now that she can talk)

Without looking away from her own delicate thin fingers and shaped nails sitting in her not-own too-large hand, she types a message in her thoughts, watching it form at the edge of her own vision, chooses the cold, clear letters that are all she's had for months, and hits send once the message is complete. Waiting for it to appear in his own vision, just a little down and one the side from looking forward. ]

To: The Archangel Gabriel

Hello.

This might be easier while your hands are busy.

[Gabriel's features widen. Eyes wide as he offers her hands to her in shock because he's stunned. Genuinely stunned.]

...Oh! Oh this is great! It's been so frustrating not being able to talk. I'm her messenger and I- I've tried to be nice about it but it's been very distracting. Thank you for showing me.

[Busy hands. Setting the communicator down Gabriel beams.]

Can you hear me? Oh thank Her will I don't have to mute myself. Thank you.

[ Allison is certain she's regretting this already, from the moment his first rambling set of words appears in flat text in front of her vision. But she's, also, certain she's the only person in this house that gets what it's like to suddenly be out the ability to talk. For months and months and months, with no warning. She doesn't wince, and it's definitely a choice, that one, but she hopes that she won't be loudly regretting this in less than an hour, or a day.

Allison switches back to speaking, because her days of being able to already down and counting. Sue her. ]

No. There's no sound. It's just another part of The Network you can use on your communicator. Except it's in your head. Write the message by choosing the letters with your thoughts, and hit send once it's complete. Same as texting. Everyone has it, from the moment they get here, but no one seems to know that they have it. It's designed as part of a battlefield program that apparently we all have, and no one about, and no one seems to need anymore.

The late leader of Aegis showed me it during our Swear-In.

[He has to think about this. Staring at her, Gabriel frowns before shrugging his shoulders and frowning. His shoulders shrug and he frowns, his features contort in confusion.]

I'm happy to listen if you so desire. I'm a vain creature- no. Not-

[He frowns]

...Maybe I am vain, but it matters to me. Is that strange??

You think you're vain --

[ Allison's voice, though it is not hers, edges ironic, and she very specifically doesn't lift her eyes as she turns her own hand in Gabriel's larger ones, painting a nail. Both because it takes focus to do anything with his larger hands, but also because after reading his message to her, there's just something too biting ironic to it is. ]

-- this isn't even my voice. It's yours, and I'm already going to miss it.

Each word I use is already one closer to whenever this ends and I have none of them again, not really, and I spend a week, or two, three, regretting every word I never figured out how to say when I had the chance to say them. Even if it wasn't my own voice it was being said in. It's one step closer still than I had before this happened.

what happened to your voice?

[Gabriel stares at her slim hand and considers this because...]

I can't imagine not talking. No matter what anyone says. I was made to do it. I'm her messenger. And you're an actor!

I was.

[ Those words are so small. Two only. Four letters, and five spaces if she'd typed them. Words she hasn't said to anyone. Not even Luther. They sounding damning in her ears, even when she keeps Gabriel's voice blank, focused on the nails she's painting with excessive slowness given the awkwardness of her new hands.

Anything but looking that punch in the teeth in the eyes. To anyone.
Especially someone who doesn't understand. What it means. That she did.

Especially, when the rest --

Gabriel's lips press for a moment, then. ]

As to how.

I made a bad choice, and it had a heavy price.

[...Human beings are frustrating. First there's Anathema who doesn't know what she's doing now, and it excites her - not knowing.

Then there's this person, mourning it, and he realizes...he has no frame of reference for that. He doesn't end, per say - except -

Allison's hand man unconsciously touch his just now before her eyes stare at her and he looks...ashamed? Confused?]

I know what that's like. Making a bad choice. When I first got here I was infected by that otherworldly anomaly. I went mad with power and it burned my wings. The only thing that can technically kill an angel is hellfire and this...was that.

[He pauses.]

It put into perspective of something that I did back home - trying to kill Aziraphale.

[He bites his lip.]

Except that he defied her orders and our plans and- Not important. What's important is. Your life is short. It's too short to be consumed and suffer.

[ Allison's gaze shoots up for a second, the strangest huff of breath at his last words. ]

You're really in the wrong house for that kind of sentiment.

[ It's still nothing quite like straight-on, but he knows enough and too much already.
Even in just what he's mentioned off-handedly that Luther said to him.
Without that opener, it's more word that she never would have. ]

...I stand by what I said.

[Staring at himself is strange. Frowning, he sets the concern aside.]

I'll drop it out of courtesy. Do you want me to show you how to fly? I can walk you through it. You should try it at least once.

Your choice. [ Allison doesn't have much need of him to drop it, but then she's, also, the one of them who bears up the best and the most untouched, unchecked by even Diego's drastic acidity. Gabriel had hardly done anything to even near the arena of what she could take from anyone before she hit her double digits. ]

Maybe. When these are done, and dry, and set.

[ Which isn't the job of a few seconds. She skipped a base coat, but she's not skipping that there will be multiple layers of the color, and a setting top coat after that, too. Which he's bound to figure out as he has to stay there a good while, within drying between rounds, too. ]

Why do you have wings if you don't use them to fly? Why are they there?

I was made that way.

[A pause. Gabriel watches the acting painting with interest because this is great and they're such a nice purple.]

I suppose that's not entirely accurate. When we were issued corporations mine didn't have wings but I have wings. Human beings conceive of angels and think of a human looking being with wings. I added some because I'm made of wings. I'm built for speed. I fly by riding lightning. Or jogging. Do you jog?

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