Chapter 118: 17.1.5.2
told from gabriels perspective. gabriel’s friends arrive. koen is currently sprawled infront of the hearth idly playing with the fluffy rug he’s laying on. whenever koen moves too quickly the room tilts and he goes all spacey while his brain tries to right itself. one of gabriel’s friends brought their own celeset along. the celeset’s name is deano and actually recognizes koen, the two of them were friends growing up. deano was the planner and koen thanks to his regeneration was the doer. deano is gutted when he realizes koen doesn’t remember him. while koen doesn’t recognize deano he feels some kind of bond with this person so he tries to comfort deano. gabriel explains he had to do a lot of memory editing with class-b drugs to get koen to finally submit
The rhythmic rapping of the iron door-knocker was a dull, official sound. Gabriel didn’t startle. He’d felt the ripple of their arrival a moment before, the subtle shift in the ether as two of his peers manifested at his gate. A flick of his wrist banished the half-written report on ‘stabilization’ to a locked drawer. He straightened his cuff and cast a quick, evaluative glance towards the hearth.
Koen was right where he’d been for hours: sprawled on his stomach on the thick fur rug before the fire. His ashen hair was a messy spill against the dark pelt. He wasn’t asleep. His focus, such as it was, was entirely consumed by his own hand. He was slowly, meticulously, running his fingertips back and forth over the same patch of dense wool, his orange eyes following the movement with a drugged, profound fascination. The rise and fall of his shoulders was lazy, his legs bent slightly at the knee. He looked like a large, contented cat sunning itself. The J-dose was doing its job beautifully; he was a study in placid, hazy comfort. Good. A presentable tableau.
Gabriel opened the door to find Seraphiel and Raziel on his step. Seraphiel, ever the pragmatist, looked the part of a minor nobleman in earth-toned wool. Raziel, the archivist, had a perpetually distracted air, but his eyes were sharp. And beside Raziel, leashed by a slender silver chain attached to a delicate collar, stood his celeset.
Gabriel’s gaze flicked over the young man. Mid-twenties, slight build, anxious brown eyes that darted around before settling on the floor. He looked well-kept, clean, his hands clasped neatly in front of him. Standard issue.
“You’re letting the heat out,” Seraphiel said, already brushing past him into the hall. “We heard you finally got one. Had to see the saint’s patience pay off.”
“It was a project,” Gabriel said mildly, ushering Raziel and the celeset in. He closed the door against the chill. “But a rewarding one. Come through.”
They moved into the main living area, the firelight washing over the stone. Their footsteps were the only sharp sound. And then the celeset, Deano, Raziel had called him, made a small, choked noise. His head had snapped up. He was staring past the angels, past Gabriel, directly at the figure on the rug. His mouth had fallen open, all protocol forgotten. The color drained from his face.
Koen, oblivious, had moved on from stroking the rug to examining his own fingers against the firelight, turning them this way and that. “Ko… Koen?” The name was a shattered whisper.
Koen’s head lifted slowly, as if it were made of stone. The movement was too abrupt for his current state. His eyes lost their soft focus, his pupils dilating as the room performed a slow, sickening lurch around him. He blinked, hard, trying to force the world back into alignment. He didn’t look alarmed, just profoundly disoriented, like a boat rocking on a sudden wave.
Deano took an involuntary step forward, the silver chain going taut. “Koen! It’s me.Deano.From Beth’s Crossing. We… we used to…” His voice cracked.
Koen managed to get an elbow under himself, pushing up slightly. The room tilted again. He froze, his body tense, waiting for the spin to stop. His confused gaze finally landed on Deano. There was nothing there. No spark of recognition. No warmth. Just a fuzzy, placid curiosity. He tilted his head, a faint, blissful smile on his lips. He tried to speak. What came out was a soft, mushy sound. “Hhhhiii?”
Deano flinched as if struck. He looked from Koen’s empty expression to Gabriel, his eyes wide with dawning horror. “What… what’s wrong with him? What did you do?”
Gabriel sighed, the picture of weary, benevolent exasperation. He walked over to the divan and sat, gesturing for the others to do the same. Raziel gently tugged Deano’s leash, guiding him to sit on a cushion on the floor, but the celeset remained rigid, staring at his old friend.
“He’s fine,” Gabriel said, his tone soothing yet firm. “He’s happy. He’s adapting.”
“He doesn’t know me,” Deano whispered, the hurt raw in his voice. “Koen would know me. He’d… he’d have some stupid joke. He’d punch my arm too hard. Something.”
On the rug, Koen watched the distressed young man. The smile had faded from his own face, replaced by a faint, concerned frown. The chemical empathy of the Js was working; he sensed Deano’s pain, even if he had no context for it. He pushed himself up to his knees, a slow, careful motion to avoid the tilting world. Then, on all fours, he crawled the few feet across the rug towards Deano’s cushion.
He moved with a strange, liquid grace, a predator’s body operating on a kitten’s instincts. He stopped just before Deano, sitting back on his heels. He peered into Deano’s face, his orange eyes wide and soft. He reached out one hand, clumsy but gentle, and patted Deano’s clasped hands where they rested on his knee. It was a simple gesture. Atonal comfort.
Deano stared at the hand covering his, then up at Koen’s gentle, vacant face. A tear tracked down his cheek. “Koen,” he pleaded, voice breaking. “It’s Deano. We… we stole Old Man Hemsley’s apples. I planned the climb, you did it ‘cause you knew you could survive the fall if you got caught. We camped in the Whisper Wood. You kept the ghouls away. Don’t you… remember?”
Koen’s brow furrowed again, the effort of processing visible. He was trying. But the files were gone. Scoured. He made a soft, sympathetic sound in his throat, a hum. He leaned forward and, in a gesture of pure, instinctual feline-demonic affection, bumped his forehead gently against Deano’s shoulder. Then he nuzzled there, a slow, comforting rub.It was a gesture of bonding. Of offered solace. But it was for a stranger.
Deano began to cry in earnest, silent sobs shaking his shoulders. Koen, alarmed by the increase in distress, clumsily wrapped his arms around Deano in a loose hug, resting his chin on the other man’s shoulder, patting his back.
Seraphiel watched, an eyebrow arched. “Troublesome acquisition?”
“Exceptionally,” Gabriel said, swirling the brandy he’d conjured without getting up. He watched the scene not with jealousy, but with clinical interest. Koen’s innate loyalty, his drive to protect, was still there.It was just unmoored. Redirected. “The hostility was… profound. A real feral streak. Clever, too. Not book-smart, but cunning in a fight. He actually landed a blow.”
Raziel whistled softly. “And you didn’t smite him?”
“Where’s the challenge in that?” Gabriel took a sip. “But it necessitated a more aggressive recalibration. The Class-B protocols had to be extensive. Deep memory editing. Wiping the foundation of that defiance out completely was the only way to finally achieve submission. What you see now is the result. A clean slate. Well, a mostly clean slate. The basic personality matrix is intact, just… peaceful.”
On the floor, Deano was clinging to Koen, his face buried in the hunter’s shoulder. “They took your memories,” he wept. “They took you.”
Koen just held him, rocking slightly, making those low, soothing hums. He looked over Deano’s head at Gabriel, his expression soft and questioning, as if seeking approval for this comforting he was providing. Gabriel gave him a small, approving nod.
Koen’s face lit up with a sunny, dopey smile, thrilled with the positive feedback. He returned to nuzzling the distressed celeset, his mission clear: comfort equals praise.
“He seems… very affectionate now,” Raziel observed, watching his own celeset being tenderly cared for by the half-demon.
“The Js ensure that,” Gabriel explained. “He’s cuddly, touch-sensitive, generally happy. It’s a stable maintenance dose. The aggression is gone. The memories that fueled it are gone. This,” he gestured with his glass towards the two on the floor, “is just his base nature, unfettered by trauma or rebellion. Simple. Loyal. Needy.”
Seraphiel nodded, a pragmatic gleam in his eye. “Efficient. Messy, but efficient. And the regeneration handles the physical side effects of the B-dose?”
“Perfectly. Headaches, neural fatigue—his body burns through it. The consciousness takes a little longer to clarify, as you can see. But the physical vessel is flawless.”
Deano’s sobs had quieted to hiccups. He pulled back, looking at Koen’s smiling, empty face. The hope was gone from his eyes, replaced by a grim, heartbroken acceptance. He reached up and touched Koen’s freckled cheek. “I’m glad you’re not in pain,” he whispered, the words clearly meant for the friend he remembered, not the gentle stranger before him.
Koen caught his hand and, with that same drugged fascination he’d shown the rug, turned it over to trace the lines on Deano’s palm, his head cocked.
Gabriel stood, the conversation clearly moving on. “Drink, Raziel? I have a ‘37 ambrosia-vintage that’s passable.”
As the angels drifted towards the decanters, their talk shifting to choir quotas and celestial trade disputes, the two celesets remained by the fire. Deano sat, wilted and still, staring into the flames. Koen, having exhausted his interest in palms, had slumped against him, his head resting heavily on Deano’s thigh, his eyes half-closed in fire-warmed contentment. One hand still rested protectively on Deano’s leg. The bond was palpable. A ghost of what was, replaced by the simple, chemical-fed empathy of what now existed. A planner, and a doer. One remembering everything, the other capable of nothing but the present moment. And in the center of it all, Gabriel sipped his ambrosia, satisfied. The project was not only stable. It was, for all the visiting party to see, a success.
The ambrosia was smooth, the conversation drier than the parchment they filed their reports on. Seraphiel and Raziel debated inter-choir logistics with the passion of accountants, their voices a low drone against the crackle of the hearth. Gabriel participated with half his attention, the other half monitoring the quiet disaster by the fire. Deano had stopped crying, but he looked carved from wet ash, motionless under the weight of Koen’s drowsy, affectionate head on his thigh. Koen’s fingers occasionally flexed against Deano’s leg, a mindless, grounding press. Every so often, he’d look up and offer that vacant, sunny smile, and Deano would flinch as if each one were a fresh cut.
Finally, with a soft clink of chain, Deano moved. He carefully slid out from under Koen’s head, guiding him down to rest on the rug instead. Koen made a soft sound of protest, but Deano just patted his shoulder until he settled, curling onto his side with a sigh. Then Deano stood. He approached the angels not with servant’s grace, but with the stiff-legged dread of a man walking to a gallows. He stopped a few feet from Gabriel’s chair, his eyes fixed on the floor between the archangel’s boots.
“Your Grace?” The title was a rusted thing in his mouth.
Gabriel tilted his head, the very picture of polite inquiry. “Yes, pet?”
Deano’s throat worked. He glanced back at Koen, who was now watching the fire again, lost in the dance of the flames. “You said… you used the Class-Bs. To edit his memories.” He swallowed. “Can you… put some back?”
Seraphiel snorted into his drink. Raziel looked mildly intrigued.
Gabriel set his crystal glass down with a deliberate click. The sound made Deano jump. “An interesting question.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, studying the trembling celeset. “Therapeutic reversal isn’t standard. The risk of synaptic clash is considerable. Why would you want that?”
“Because he’s empty!” The words burst out of Deano, sharp with a pain he couldn’t contain. He immediately shrunk back, but the plea was out. “He’s not Koen. He’s just… a nice shape. I knew his mind. It was brilliant in its own way. It was stubborn and loyal and stupidly brave.” He dared a glance up, his eyes glistening. “You took the bad ones, right? The hostility. What if you just gave him… the good ones? The ones of us? Just… just the happy parts?”
The silence stretched. Raziel looked faintly disapproving. Seraphiel seemed bored. Gabriel’s light blue eyes held Deano’s, calculating. The curiosity was genuine. He had reforged the weapon into a cushion. What would happen if he selectively reinserted a single, benign component of its original forging? Would the substrate hold? It was a fascinating, unsanctioned experiment.
“A limited, targeted infusion,” Gabriel mused aloud, tapping a finger against his lips. “Only positive valence memories associated with a single individual. No conflict triggers. No recall of violence or rebellion.” A slow smile spread across his flawless face. It wasn’t kind. It was the smile of a scientist presented with a novel variable. “Alright.”
Deano stared, disbelief swamping his fear. “R-really?”
“Really.” Gabriel stood, flowing upward with unnatural grace. “Consider it a gift. A testament to my craftsmanship.” He walked to his cabinet, not the one with the liquor, but the polished walnut one with the celestial lock. He passed his hand over it, and it opened with a sigh. Inside, vials gleamed under their own soft light. He selected a slender syringe and a small ampoule of pearlescent fluid, different from the clear Class-B solution used before. This was a refiner, a targeted vector.
Koen, sensing Gabriel’s movement, rolled onto his back and looked up, his expression soft and questioning. “Petal?” Gabriel said, his voice dropping into that hypnotic murmur. “Just a little touch-up. Something special for you.”
Koen’s trusting smile returned. He blinked slowly, offering no resistance as Gabriel knelt beside him. Deano hovered, hands clenched at his sides, his breath held. The other angels watched from their seats, spectators to a quiet, profound violation.
Gabriel found the same spot on Koen’s neck. The needle slipped in. “Think of apple trees, petal. Think of campfires and shared blankets. Think of plans made and trusts kept. Only the warmth. Only the light.”
He depressed the plunger.
Koen’s eyes went wide. Not with pain, but with a sudden, internal overwhelm. His body went rigid for a single, arresting second, then completely limp. A soft, shuddering breath escaped him. His pupils swallowed the orange of his irises, becoming vast, dark pools. He was gone, sinking into the churning sea of his own mind as decades of curated happiness flooded neural pathways that had been scrubbed raw hours before.
Gabriel stood, examining the empty syringe. “He’ll be dazed. The integration isn’t gentle. Don’t expect coherence.”
Deano was already on the floor, scooting close, ignoring everything else. He tentatively touched Koen’s shoulder. “Koen? Can you hear me?”
There was no response. Koen lay utterly still, his chest rising and falling in a slow, deep rhythm. His eyes were open but unseeing, fixed on some point far beyond the vaulted ceiling. Occasionally, a faint tremor would pass through him, a flicker beneath his eyelids. Deano stayed there, talking in a low, steady stream. He talked about the specific tartness of Hemsley’s green apples. He described the exact pattern of moss on their favorite sitting stone by the creek. He recited the terrible, joking prayers they’d made up to ward off wood ghouls.
Time stretched, syrupy and vague. The fire burned lower. Gabriel refreshed his guests’ drinks with a flick of his wrist, the ambrosia decanter never emptying. Seraphiel and Raziel had settled in, their celestial curiosity outweighing any pressing duties elsewhere. They watched the silent drama on the rug with detached, academic interest. This was a novel diversion. Deano’s voice grew hoarse from whispering. He described the crackle of their campfire, the way Koen would whittle useless sticks into pointier sticks, the sound of the creek at night. He held Koen’s limp hand, fingers laced with his own.
Koen did not move. But his breathing changed. It hitched, then deepened, then shallowed again. A minute tremor became a sustained shiver that raced along his limbs. His orange eyes, fixed and glassy, began to swim with a slow, confused focus. He blinked once. Twice. His head turned a fraction on the fur, his gaze scraping across the stone floor until it found the hand holding his. He stared at their intertwined fingers, his brow furrowing not with fuzzy bliss, but with a nascent, painful concentration.
“Dea…” The syllable was a dry leaf, crushed underfoot.
Deano froze, his own breath catching. He leaned closer, his shadow falling over Koen’s face. “Koen? Hey. Look at me.”
Koen’s eyes dragged upwards, tracking slowly over Deano’s wrist, his sleeve, his shoulder, finally finding his face. The vacant softness was being burned away by a rising, bewildered heat. Recognition was a lightning strike in a murky swamp. It lit him up from the inside, searing through the chemical fog. His fingers tightened convulsively around Deano’s.
“Deano?” His voice was rough, scraped raw from disuse and drugs, but it was his. It held a question, a profound disbelief. He tried to push himself up on his other elbow. The room swayed, but he fought it, his demonic stubbornness reasserting itself against the dizziness. “What… where…?”
“You’re safe,” Deano said automatically, the old lie tumbling out. He couldn’t explain the where. Not now.
Koen’s eyes darted past Deano, taking in the tall, watching figures in the chairs, the high ceiling, the opulent room that meant nothing to him. Panic flickered, a wild animal sensing a gilded cage. Then his gaze snapped back to Deano’s face, anchoring itself there. The panic banked, replaced by a surge of something else, something so vast and simple it overwhelmed every other signal in his drugged, battered mind.
A stupid, brilliant grin split his face, erasing the confusion. It was the same grin he’d worn after surviving the ghouls, after stealing the apples, pure and unfiltered.
“You’re here,” Koen breathed, the words filled with awe. The complicated questions of how and why evaporated. Only the fact remained. Deano was here.
Then he moved.
With a hunter’s instinctive, ungainly speed, he surged forward. He didn’t stand. He launched himself from the rug, a tangle of limbs and joy, and collided with a seated Deano. The force knocked the air from Deano’s lungs and sent them both sprawling backwards onto the stone floor with a thud that made Seraphiel raise an eyebrow.
“Oof! Koen, what—” Deano wheezed.
Koen wasn’t listening. He was a whirlwind of tactile relief. He wrapped all six feet of himself around Deano, burying his face in Deano’s neck, nuzzling, inhaling deeply as if confirming his scent. “You’re really here,” he mumbled into his skin, his arms locked in a vice-like, cuddling embrace. “Thought I… thought I made you up. In the fuzzy parts.”
Deano lay pinned, flustered, his face burning. “You didn’t make me up. I’m real. Can you—could you ease up a little?”
Koen pulled back just enough to look at him, his orange eyes blazing with a clarity that had been absent for hours. The stupid grin was back, wider now, showing his sharp canines. The drugs were still there—the floaty happiness, the lack of inhibition—but they were now channeled through a lens that knew exactly who he was looking at.
“Nope,” Koen said, his voice a low, affectionate rumble. His gaze dropped to Deano’s mouth.
And he kissed him.
It wasn’t gentle. It was hard and desperate and messy, all clumsy pressure and shared, startled breath. It was the culmination of every playful shove, every shared secret, every unspoken look across a campfire that had never been allowed to mean anything. Koen poured a lifetime of dense, unrealized longing into it.
Deano made a muffled, shocked sound against his lips. His hands, which had been pushing weakly at Koen’s shoulders, froze. His brain short-circuited, a blizzard of static and panic and a warmth he refused to name.
Koen broke the kiss as abruptly as he’d started it, leaning back just an inch. That ridiculous, beautiful grin was plastered across his face, brighter than the hearth light. A faint blush tinged his tan cheeks beneath the freckles.
“Always wanted to do that,” Koen admitted, his words slurring just slightly from the lingering J-dose, but his meaning crystal. “Big. Huge. Like, massive gay crush. Forever. Since the apples.”
Deano stared up at him, utterly wrecked. His lips were tingling. His heart was a frantic bird in his chest. He couldn’t form a single word, his mind a white void of ‘what’ and ‘how’ and ‘oh no.’
From the armchair, Raziel let out a delighted, cooing sound. He clapped his hands together softly. “Oh, will you look at that! That’s just the sweetest thing.” He beamed at Gabriel, genuinely pleased. “A reclaimed bond, flowering into something new! I’m so happy for him. What a breakthrough.”
Seraphiel merely took a slow sip, his expression unreadable. Gabriel watched, his head tilted. He had expected rekindled camaraderie, perhaps a nostalgic tears. Not this. This was an unforeseen variable, a wild bloom in his carefully pruned garden. A slow, contemplative smile touched his lips. It was, he supposed, a form of bliss. And the celeset was, undeniably, happy.
Koen, still pinning a speechless Deano to the floor, looked over at the sound of Raziel’s voice. His grin didn’t fade. He seemed to finally process the audience. He gave a cheerful, drugged little wave with one hand, the other still possessively wrapped around Deano.
“Hi,” Koen said to the angels, utterly without fear or reverence. Then he looked back down at Deano’s flushed, stunned face. His expression softened into something unbearably tender. “Your face is all red.”
Deano finally found his voice, a strangled whisper. “Koen. Get. Off.”
“Don’t wanna.”
koen is in a daze for a bit after gabriel is finished, deano keeps koen company while koen very very slowly comes out of that daze. all the angels decided to stay to see what happens. when koen recognizes deano he tackles deano to the ground with cuddles before kissing deano hard. koen has a stupid grin plastered over his face as he admits he’s always had a big gay crush on deano. deano is a flustered wreck and koen is still very drugged but now recognizes deano. raziel thinks it’s just the cutest thing and is very happy for his celeset