damned_institute | Day 66: Game Room (Fourth Shift)

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Day 66: Game Room (Fourth Shift)

The game room, huh... In normal, everyday life, it wouldn't have sounded too terrible, but as things were, it seemed like more of an annoyance. Games were fine, but priorities.... On the other hand, Kyousuke seemed to have hit a block in figuring out the clues to the the illness, and just thinking without getting anywhere wasn't very productive, either. At this point, it may have been best to push it aside and come back to it fresh. He had his reservations about it, especially since the end of the day was rapidly approaching, but... Frustration wasn't going to get him any closer.

He poked around what games were there with resignation, still half wondering what he was even doing and trying not feel guilty for needing a break. After a while he came across an electronic device marked "Game Boy Color" and picked it up out of curiosity. He'd heard of those before... If he was right, this thing was older than he was, by quite a bit. Flicking it on confirmed his suspicions; the sound and graphics from it spoke for themselves.

Shrugging, he took it a random seat, wincing at the pain in his ribs as he sat down. He guessed it wouldn't kill him to mess around with this thing for a little while.

[Lloyd!]

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The floodgates opened when the younger man pulled Murphy into an embrace. It was such a small and simple human gesture...

And yet it was the first time someone had hugged him in almost a decade. Even something as commonplace as a hug had been denied to him. A key turned, somewhere deep inside the ex-con. That horrible box was open now, and everything came rushing out.

Murphy shuddered and then he was sobbing quietly, clinging to Gabe's shirt and just letting the torrent come.

Murphy had definitely needed this. Gabriel gripped him a little bit tighter, running his hand reassuringly over the man's back. In his touch he put as much of his own comfort and reassurance as he could. Given the depths of Murphy's anguish, it wouldn't overtake the man's own emotions, but they would dull the edge and help them subside a little easier.

The Archangel didn't speak, because he didn't know just what or who Murphy cried for, or whether 'It'll be okay' was a lie or not. But he hummed. Nothing really in particular, just a simply flowing melody that shifted somewhere between the many songs Gabriel already knew. There was no magic in it, but it was soothing and light.

And then Gabriel just waited, patient and unmoving aside from the movement of his hand, for Murphy's grief to run dry.

Murphy just let it all come. He rested his head on Gabe's shoulder as the sobs turned to heavy breathing and his shaking tapered off just to trembling. He felt as though he were full of forces that were fighting to get out of him.

"I killed a man." The words were spoken quietly, desperately. But he had to say it. He'd learned the lesson, but he hadn't faced it. Not really. Not in a way that he understood or could quantify. Revenge was bad, yes, and he'd sullied the memory of Charlie...

But he hadn't dealt with the simple fact that he'd taken another human being's life.

The words just came tumbling out, ragged and halting but painfully honest.

"I...I made a deal with the devil. So I could kill a man. So I could be alone with him and no one would ever find out it was me and I could kill him. I beat him with a bat. And then...it broke. And he wasn't dead so I used a knife. But I...it got stuck. In his shoulder. And he was screaming and crying and begging me not to and I...I just started beating him...."

Gabe's breath caught, partly in surprise at the way his human heart seemed to skip and his chest tightened, but partly not. The reassuring stroke of his hand didn't waver. Nor did his grip, or his position, at all. He just kept holding Murphy, this broken man who really had needed to talk so badly. The Archangel did stop humming, though, so Murphy could talk, unburden himself without competing with other sounds.

The story and the way it was told made tears come to Gabriel's eyes, ones that fell as the Archangel pressed his cheek to the top of Murphy's head. He said nothing, neither condemning or absolving, and wouldn't even try until he was sure Murphy had said as much as he could or wanted to. But he held Murphy tighter, and he wept for him.

"It wasn't even...it was cold blood. I planned it. For...for months." Because Murphy had to be entirely honest here and now. Maybe this wasn't proper confession, but his soul didn't know the difference. All it knew was that a burden was finally being lifted in some way.

"He...he was a bad man. I know that doesn't matter, but...I had a little boy. He was eight. He was only eight..."

And then Murphy's breath was hitching again and he found himself struggling with words. "And this man...he took Charlie. And he...he hurt him. Ways...nobody should ever be hurt but especially not a little kid. And then he tied him up and...and put him in a sack...like...like the kind potatoes come in. And..."

And Murphy couldn't go on. He'd never talked about it. It was why counseling had failed, why his marriage had failed. Even when he was beating Napier to death he couldn't bring himself to articulate what the man had done. All he could do was cling to this kind man he hardly even knew, pouring out his miserable inner demons.

"There's no need to force yourself to talk about the parts you can't yet," Gabriel said gently, his own voice rather raw. It was surprisingly difficult to talk when you had a gigantic lump in your throat, he was discovering. "Take it slow. There's no rush."

None except the next shift, anyway, but if any nurse tried to interrupt them before Murphy was finished, bell or no bell, by the Lord they were going to have a fight on their hands.

"That's...that's it, mostly. He raped and killed my son and he got away with it." Murphy's throat was thick now, and talking was difficult mainly because of that. But he didn't pull away. He couldn't. Someone was holding him and listening to him and being kind...

No one had been kind to him since Frank.

"They...they got him when he did the same thing to another kid from Charlie's school. My wife left me. I...I don't blame her. She should've left me before she did. I...I stole a cop car. Went to the same prison. So...so I could do it. And I did. I thought...I thought it was the right thing to do. I know...I know it wasn't."

But it didn't change anything.

Gabriel wished he had his real senses. He wished he could see so he could know exactly what to say, how to navigate the minefield that was Murphy's soul and avoid causing more grief. But he couldn't see, not the way he ought to have been able. The Archangel felt a little out of his depth, and just as he had during the wager, he didn't enjoy that feeling when it came to something for which he'd been intended to begin with.

There was a kind of justice in Murphy's actions. A terrible, achingly misguided kind of justice, the exact sort Lucifer always utilised best. Except that Murphy had done what so many of Lucifer's couldn't: he'd torn free of the Devil's hold, recognised that he'd done wrong.

Not everyone was able to manage that, let alone beg genuinely for penance afterward. If he could have, Gabriel would have granted the man some measure of the absolution he deserved for that courage, but the Archangel knew he couldn't now. Not even to make an educated guess at his Lord's intent, on Murphy's behalf, by revealing his true circumstances. Murphy wouldn't take to his identity well. He was too broken.

And so Gabe didn't dare say anything at all, to judge or not. It wasn't his place anyway. His was just to listen. It was always just to listen, and watch, and remember.

The Archangel rested his hand on the back of Murphy's neck, shifting enough so he could place a soft kiss on the top of the man's head and making no move to release him until Murphy himself was ready. It wasn't much to offer, but maybe it would help.

"Things happened to me..." he went on, because he realized no, no that wasn't mostly it. "I don't know...I don't know how much God had to do with it, but...I saw things. Horrible things, and things that...that made me realize how fucking stupid I'd been. And a good man died because...because the asshole who let me at Napier wanted a favor. Only the favor turned out to be killing a really good guy. Someone...someone that had been good to me, when I didn't deserve it. I couldn't do it, but...Frank died anyway. And I got blamed. I...I was on death row. They were transferring me and...there was a bus crash."

He was just resting against Gabe now, his shaking tapering off the more he spoke.

"And that's when I started to see things. A nun...she told me I'd gone far too from the right path. She wasn't real, but... And this cop was after me and...it was her father that had died. And she blamed me. She...she saw me as a monster. I saw me as a monster. And she...she was trying to kill me. I couldn't...I couldn't hurt anybody else so I...I let her."

Another shudder, now, as he remembered Anne bearing down on him, screaming at him, gun raised...

"And then I woke up here. I...God wouldn't even let me rest."

Gabe's chest ached with sorrow and grief and horror. He hadn't quite understand how emotions could affect the human body like this. He'd known, he just hadn't understood. Even though he was still hugging Murphy pretty tightly, he managed to do so just a little bit more. How was it possible for people to endure such things? He'd always wondered, and now that he'd failed so badly at that himself, he could only wonder more.

But one thing, right now, which seemed crystal clear to the Archangel was that this was Murphy's second chance. If he was meant to have died, and yet hadn't--well, if he had it was quite likely he wouldn't have gotten the 'rest' he wanted. And the Lord didn't generally bring people back to life directly except in special circumstances.

Second chances, however ... Even second chances in another universe ...

What do I say? Gabriel asked the air desperately, hoping somewhere in his heart that someone was listening. What did he say that hadn't been mis-used until it was ridden into the ground and had lost all meaning?

The truth. The truth as best as he knew it, as best as he could explain it.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm any kind of expert," he said quietly. He wasn't. He knew more than most, but expert? No one was an expert at God. Gabriel was His closest companion and even the Archangel didn't understand Him most of the time. "But the way it looks to me, you're getting a second chance. What you do from here on out is up to you. And you can choose to do anything."

Because it was ordained, from the very beginning, that every man and woman would have the right to choose. No matter what Murphy had done in the past, he still had that right, no matter what kind of societal or circumstantial limitations had been imposed on him by others or even himself.

Murphy pulled back now, needing to compose himself. He was starting to feel...overwhelmed, he guessed. He wasn't sure. But he drew back gently from Gabe, his eyes bright but at least no longer actively leaking. He wiped at them with the back of his hand and shook his head.

Second chances.

"Second chances usually don't happen in a supernatural hellhole you're not likely to survive," he pointed out, bluntly. "It's like the worst of both worlds. Prison and scary voodoo shit that wants me dead."

If that wasn't a pretty obvious sign from God, Murphy didn't know what was. But there was less conviction than there normally was, when he swore up and down that the good Lord had abandoned him.

"Uh, sorry for the language."

Gabriel let Murphy draw away, squeezing the man's hands in final reassurance before letting them go and folding his own in his lap. At that, the Archangel couldn't help but laugh. Hadn't his Master given Arthur, Lancelot and Guinevere their second chance on the cusp of disaster? "You'd be surprised," he said with a smile, "where second chances can arise. Sometimes the best ones are in supernatural hellholes you're not likely to survive."

Where better to prove a man's mettle than in the face of adversity? There was a reason the wagers had usually taken the same basic tact. People who were blessed with a rich life didn't need second chances. They didn't need to be dressed down, to prove their worth to themselves and to Lucifer. They didn't need the opportunity such places offered.

"Oh, I don't mind," Gabe said with a shrug and another laugh. "There's cause; I wouldn't say it's an inaccurate description of this place."

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Day 66: Game Room (Fourth Shift)

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