Fic: Homo Homini Lupus Est -- Epilogue

[neotoma]

"Daddy!" Jocheved yelled, and threw herself into his arms at the train station. Sakuntala toddled away from Maia, blessed, kind Maia, who had brought the children to meet their train, and pressed herself against his leg, smiling up at him gummily.

"Hello, sweetheart," he said.

"I was so worried! Did Mommy find you? Are you all right?"

"Yes, I am."

"Jo," Kali said, "Your father has something to tell you."

Jocheved looked up at him with worried eyes, another question already on her lips.

"I left my family, and changed my name."

"You left..? But we're your family, me and Mommy and 'Tala." Jocheved complained.

"My old family. My brothers and sisters," He explained. "I had to go up and say I wasn't being part of their family anymore, so that I could be with you and Tala and Mommy."

"Okay..."

"And I had to change my name."

Jocheved gave him a suspicious look. "You won't be 'Daddy' anymore?"

Kali snorted, and waved him off when he glared at her.

"No, I'll still be your Daddy. But I had a name of my own, you know."

"Daddy," Jocheved said in tones of aggrieved patience, "that is your name."

"No. My name was Gabriel," he said.

"Oh. You and Mommy have names? Like real people?"

"Yes," Kali said, suppressing laughter. "We do."

"What's your name, Mommy?"

"Kali Mahayana."

"Like me! You're Mahayana, like me, Mommy!"

"Yes, dear, I know." Kali said smiling.

"And Daddy?"

"Call me..." he looked up at Kali, who nodded, "Loki."

Previous

Comments

[mistalagan]

It's up, congrats! The added scene was great (certainly made Sam more sympathetic), and on rereading I still can't get over the depth of your worldbuilding. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to beta for you!

[neotoma]

Thanks. That scene I came up with at just about the last minute, but I needed it to tie the epilogue up and make it obvious that Gabriel was free from his family. I'm glad it worked, and I really appreciate your last minute betaing.

homo est lupus, usually

[auroramama]

It was jarring to have Castiel be such a dick, with no apparent disapproval from Dean. It really brought home how unpleasant a family that was.

The whole thing was terrific fun to read, and Gabriel's more elective lovers were wonderful. Jocheved can meet her father Jo now, yes? Such an interesting family, with so many potential directions to link in. Extended is an understatement.

I'm still not entirely clear on the possible genders. Alpha is a male human with a male wolf... mHmW. Delta, fHfW. Beta, mHfW. If it's all right to be a Beta, what the heck is wrong with being a Zeta, fHmW? Urgh. It's a sexist thing, isn't it. Dandy. Now we've run out of human-wolf combinations, so Gammas and Epsilons are wolfless males and females respectively? Or is there a dimension I'm missing?

Re: homo est lupus, usually

[neotoma]

Castiel is often a dick, especially early on when he's still obeying Heaven, so I tried to translate that into the AU. In canon, he and Dean sometimes feed each other's dickishness, mainly because they make assumptions and don't actually talk to each other. I was trying to make them come across as a married couple who are completely devoted to each other -- sometimes to the detriment of people around them.

Jocheved might decided to meet her father when she's older. She's only 7 now, and Gabriel wouldn't take her north. When she's grown, she can decide if she wants to risk it herself.

It is a sexist thing -- based a little bit on the Ancient Greek idea that the best friend/life partner for a man is another man, and isn't it a pity that we have to have women to have children... and a bit off the Roman idea that a woman who acted as a man was a monster.

Gammas and Epsilons are male and female non-werewolves, right.

[wyntereyez]

I've been reading through the Gabriel Big Bang fics, and just finished this one. It was an excellent read, if not always a comfortable one. I found it to be fascinating, and rather horrifying (which is meant as a complement, because you really made Gabriel's family unsympathetic!) You did quite a bit of world-building, giving it a depth most AU's lack. You dropped a lot of tantalizing hints about backstory that made me wish I knew more. Also, your rank/gender system for the werewolves was particularly intriguing; I don't think I've seen anything like it before.

I was a bit shock by how... revolting some of my favorite characters were. Good job; it takes a lot to make me actually loathe characters I normally adore. Cas in particular left me feeling a bit ill. If he'd been as crazy as Lucifer when he'd done what he'd done, I wouldn't have minded, but he seemed so rational and didn't see anything wrong in his treatment of Gabriel... *shudders* (Apologies that this is a bit of a backhanded complement, but it is meant as praise!)

Anyway, if your other stories are as well written as this, I'll definitely have to give them a read!

[neotoma]

A lot of this fic came out of "sometimes, running away from your family is the only sane thing to do."

Worldbuilding is a hobby of mine. Someday I might actually write original fic so that I can really indulge myself. The rank/gender system came out of my looking at all the MPreg out there and going "if there are men who can get pregnant, there should be women who can impregnant them!" and stealing some of the Ancient Greek and Roman attitudes about gender roles.

The thing about Cas is that he doesn't have a strong internal sense of ethics in canon -- or at least not a human-relateable one. He wasn't happy about the idea of destroying an entire town to stop Samhain, but he was going to do it, he worked with Crowely even knowing that the boys would have disapproved -- he's got *goals*, but not limits, if you know what I mean?

I hope you like the other stories. They're all up at AO3, and most of them are on my journal as well.

[wyntereyez]

You'd definitely do well with an original fic. I'm currently in the middle of "Birds of Passage" and I'm really impressed with the detail and the research you must have done for it! Plus Norse mythology and culture is a hobby of mine, so I'm really enjoying the extra effort.

Anyway... yes, the concept of the Zeta was brilliant! It doesn't make sense that there'd be the male-dominant hermaphrodite, and not a female-dominant as well. When I realized what Jo was, I was delighted.

Yes, I know what you mean about Cas; it's probably part of what makes him fascinating to me. I hate it when fics humanize him too much since he's just NOT human and he's not going to think like one. I think the only reason you made me uncomfortable is that you took this and drew the logical conclusion that he'd regard sex and breeding the same way. I'm fine with a favorite character being portrayed as a mass murderer, but apparently making him a rapist makes me squirm.

I'm really enjoying your other fics, which I'm currently reading here since I'm still waiting for my AO3 invite code and I didn't want to leave anonymous reviews. Hope you don't mind; some people are rather private about their journals and would prefer random strangers comment somewhere more public.

[neotoma]

Well, BIRDS original idea was that Gabriel's Vessel was a 10th century Icelandic hay-farmer, but I couldn't make the timeline work out. That's why Hrafn is an Iron-Age Norseman instead of a Viking-Age Norseman. I did read all of Byock's "Viking Age Iceland" though, which is very interesting and full of concepts that would work great for world-building SF and fantasy stories.

Zetas was just me being grumpy and subverting a trope. I do that a lot. And I really wanted to have Jo in a story -- I hadn't written her before, but she definitely doesn't get enough love in fandom.

Writing Cas is actually quite hard. He's very not-human in his thinking. And I completely understand about being squicked about making characters rapists -- it's a very particular mindset, and it's not fun to imagine favorite characters having it.

Actually, I find feedback on DW to be more conducive to actually having a conversation than on AO3, so if you want to keep commenting here, that's fine by me.