Title: The Forgotten Archangel
Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Changing Channels
Summary: Gabriel is standing in a ring of holy fire, and there's an unknown archangel just outside it, and that is not possible.
Author notes: So, I was wondering, why is it that the Supernatural verse only has four archangels, when Christian tradition says that there's seven? This fic doesn't actually answer that question.

The Forgotten Archangel

So Gabriel is standing in the middle of a circle of holy fire, spilling his guts to a couple of annoyingly resourceful morons, wondering how he got himself into this one, when one of the morons takes exception to what he's saying.

It's the tall, quieter one, rather than the shorter mouthy one, and apparently even he has a fuse somewhere, because Gabriel seems to have lit it.

"I am so sick of this!" Sam Winchester explodes, with a violence and frustration that suggests he's been bottling this speech up for some time. "We've been coerced, and extorted, and blackmailed – I mean, what the hell happened to free will? You angels make this big deal about how we have to make choices, how things only work if we do them ourselves, but you spend so much time and effort manipulating people that there's no choice for us to make because we only have one option! You're breaking your own rules!"

Gabriel listens to the rant with a raised eyebrow, waiting for the kid to finish so that he can respond, but at Sam's last few words the world catches fire in a rain of Grace, and for a minute everything is light and Grace even to Gabriel, swirling around the circle of holy fire like a maelstrom.

Abruptly all the Grace is sucked away into a single point not too far from the circle, and when Gabriel blinks and turns his head –

There's a totally unknown archangel kneeling on the floor, gasping and making little soft noises as all six of their wings unfurl invisibly upwards towards the warehouse ceiling, the outer feathers just skimming the surface.

Gabriel recoils right to the opposite edge of the circle, because this isn't possible. He knows all the other archangels. Everyone knows all the other archangels. Since Dad had first set up shop and opened for business there had been four archangels; no more, no less, and all of them had known each other inside and out, in a way no human could possibly understand.

But there's an alien, unfamiliar archangel breathing in the very last of their Grace, on a patch of floor that was completely empty only moments ago.

"Finally," the archangel says, in a soft, tired, but most definitely relieved voice. The vessel is redheaded and female, in her early twenties or thereabout, and completely empty but for its angelic occupant. "I expected that months ago, Sam."

Sam just stares at her in stunned disbelief, while Dean Winchester and even Castiel gape in surprise.

"Remy?" Sam asks, like this is just one more shock on top of way too many.

"Wait, Remy?" Dean demands. "Like 'your-imaginary-friend Remy?' "

The archangel manages a weak grin at that, like she's exhausted, but can't help grinning anyway.

"Yeah," she says. "I could talk to him until he was old enough to really know what was real and what wasn't."

Gabriel stiffens, because the implications of that… are disturbing, to say the least.

"What the fuck just happened?" Dean explodes. Short temper, that boy.

"I made a deal, my existence in exchange for a certain outcome," 'Remy' explains. "The deal was broken, and so my existence was reinstated."

"What do you mean, your existence?" Castiel asks, with intense frowny eyes. Gabriel was beginning to wonder if he was going to say anything.

The look the archangel gives him is complex and whoah, there's no way Gabriel can decipher that in one glance.

"I mean that until a few minutes ago, I never existed, and I'm guessing that my history hasn't reasserted itself, either, because you're looking at me like you've never seen me before." She climbs to her feet, and stands tall, as her wings fold in behind her. "My name is Remiel."

Compassion of God. Well, if the angel of compassion had been erased from existence, maybe that explained something about why the universe was the way it was. Divine compassion was definitely lacking among Gabriel's brothers.

Gabriel doesn't think that he's exactly a good example of divine strength, but Michael certainly hasn't found anyone who measures up to Dad, and Raphael had been all about healing once upon a time, so perhaps Remiel was the source of the angel's collective compassion and her absence is why things have turned out so badly.

Remiel turns unexpectedly to meet Gabriel's eyes, and he freezes, unsure of what's going on here.

"I'm so sorry," the alien archangel says, her eyes and voice sad and pained. "I didn't realise how much you depended on me until I saw what you had become without me."

What? Gabriel thinks in annoyed bafflement – he can take care of himself; he's always taken care of himself – but she's already turning back to Castiel and the Winchesters.

"So," she says lightly, "we have a world to save."

"You're helping us?" Sam blurts out, his eyes lighting up with hope and something more guarded.

Remiel rolls her eyes dramatically, and Gabriel stares, because… that mannerism is his, right down to the little quirk of the mouth.

"Of course I am," she says kindly. "I'm the Angel of Compassion. I'm the Advocate, kid." Something twitches across her profile. "I've always been on humanity's side."

Dean just stares at her for a moment, presumably trying to assess her sincerity.

"Okay," he says eventually. "Fine. Sam, Cas, let's go. You too," he adds to Remiel, a little grudgingly, because he's always been the one who understands that any gift they're given might turn out to be a Trojan Horse.

Although Sam's probably learning, by now. The whole 'trusting a demon and accidentally letting Lucifer out of Hell' thing had to have taught him something.

"Uh, guys?" Gabriel calls, with a surge of sudden dread, as the group of humans, angel, and archangel make towards the door. "What, are you just going to leave me here forever?"

Dean turns at that, just before he reaches the doorway.

"No, we're not," he says, and Gabriel feels a rush of relief. "Because we don't screw with people the way you do. And for the record? This isn't about some prize fight between your brothers or some destiny that can't be stopped. This is about you being too afraid to stand up to your family."

Gabriel can't help flinching as the shot hits home, far too deeply.

He'd like to say something – he doesn't even know what he wants, but right now there are two members of his family he thinks he might respect right now – even of one of them is a stranger – whose own respect and affection he craves deep down in the desperate lonely core of his Grace, and both of them are walking away from him like he's the scum of the Earth.

Gabriel just stands there alone.

He's there for several minutes, trying to regain some of his composure, when all of a sudden Remiel is back, and staring at him.

"I thought you were with the Winchesters?" Gabriel asks tetchily.

"I am," Remiel says simply, with a hint of a smile.

Right, time travel, and if Gabriel wasn't so shaken-up he would have worked that out immediately.

Remile's eyes are sad and deep as she looks at him, and Gabriel had thought that the look she gave Castiel earlier was complex, but the expression in her eyes right now is so far beyond complicated – wistful, sorrowful, glad, pained, bittersweet, as though just being able to talk to him like this is more than she ever expected, and yet something vital is missing – that Gabriel cannot find the words to describe it.

"You really don't know me, do you?" Remiel asks, with such an unhappy smile that something in Gabriel twists, because he's felt that particular unhappiness more times than he can count.

"There's a big Remiel-shaped hole in my life," he agrees flippantly.

Part of him wants to say 'screw this' and leave, because it's not like he knows her – if she weren't an archangel she'd hold absolutely no interest for him.

But he is far too familiar with how it feels to know that no one in your family cares about you any more, and so the very fact that he doesn't know her is what holds him in place.

Well, that, and the fact that he wants to know her.

"So," Gabriel says, "you're planning on helping those muttonheads, huh?"

His voice is dripping with scepticism, because he knows his family, and it seems pretty dumb for someone who's purportedly part of it to think that they can do something to stop the others.

But she looks at him, her gaze calm and clear.

"I am," she says, with unruffled certainty, "and I will stop this apocalypse, and nothing and no one can stop me."

There's no bravado or anger or any kind of doubt in her voice, like she knows that the outcome she wants is just an application of will, and she has all the strength and faith she needs to do anything.

Gabriel just stares at her. It's been millennia, at the least, since every other angel in existence has turned to doubt or anger or the blind execution of orders, and yet here is this stranger, a pillar of righteousness and everything else that angels used to be.

If this is who Remiel is – just and untainted, and pure unsullied strength unmarred by doubt or aimlessness – then he can see how, just maybe, he himself might not have become so bitter and lost when she was around to bolster him.

It's been so long since Gabriel has seen any angels with those qualities, and he can't bear the thought of losing the hope she gives him.

"Okay," he says, before he can back out. "I'm in."

Remiel's smile is blinding in its warmth.