[Millenniumverse AU] Background
Jul. 26th, 2007 11:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
watchmakers_son[to be refined/edited further as time goes on and I get more feedback, but for now...]
Gabriel Gray is twenty-four years old and has been on the run for the past three.
The Millennium Group found him when he was sixteen, two years away from graduating high school and planning, in lieu of college (though planning isn't quite the right word; coerced, in his mind, would be better), to apprentice himself to his father at the family watchmaking shop. Peter Watts was the first to show him what he really was, what his talent -- his gift, Watts insisted -- could do. "Men have killed each other for the chance to know how the world works," he said, "but you, Gabriel -- you can see it all around you without even trying."
Gabriel left Queens with him a week later. Within the safety of the Group, one collection of tutors helped him finish his high school education. Another honed his less conventional strengths.
He was shown the sick and the dying, taught to recognize human maladies on sound alone. He saw the other people like him that the Group would contact, train, and utilize; he learned to see each of their talents and know those powers better, oftentimes, than they knew them themselves. (And if there was jealousy there, in seeing men who could fly or turn invisible with a thought -- and there was -- he learned to squash it quickly. Men would kill for his ability. No matter what they could do, what he could do was useful, important, and unique among all of theirs. The Group needed him, Peter said. They needed what he could do.) He recognized the patterns and worked to piece them together.
One of those patterns was an art gallery.
Sometimes, the people the Group would find were too old, too young, or simply more useful as guinea pigs. One in particular wasn't much older than Gabriel; they'd figured out how to make his ability manifest almost a full decade ahead of schedule. Gabriel saw that, too, when he walked into the room for the first time to see him slopping paint onto a canvas: the way the parts fit easily but had been pushed to their limits like an overclocked engine.
Every single painting was bright red with fire.
And Gabriel was good at putting the pieces together. When he looked away, back toward the people hovering in a silent cluster behind him, he could see how there were some in the Group who wanted this to happen, who believed it was the only way and would see it brought about at any cost. (In the Bible, they say, the angel Gabriel is the one who heralds the apocalypse. You are important, Watts had told him. We need you.)
So he kept silent and lied if need be, saying he just needed a little more time to figure out the last nuances of the paintings' meaning -- up until the moment the Roosters seized complete control and began to root out the ones who opposed them.
That was when Gabriel started running.
Eventually, the Group fell apart. The millennium came and went without incident. But they say the one cannot know the hour or day of the end's arrival; sometimes, not even the year.
It's 2002 now. Members of the Group are beginning to reassemble themselves.
And once again, they're looking toward the paintings of an exploding man and a fireball over the New York City skyline, quietly making plans to guide the world into a brighter future.
Gabriel Gray is twenty-four years old and has been on the run for the past three.
The Millennium Group found him when he was sixteen, two years away from graduating high school and planning, in lieu of college (though planning isn't quite the right word; coerced, in his mind, would be better), to apprentice himself to his father at the family watchmaking shop. Peter Watts was the first to show him what he really was, what his talent -- his gift, Watts insisted -- could do. "Men have killed each other for the chance to know how the world works," he said, "but you, Gabriel -- you can see it all around you without even trying."
Gabriel left Queens with him a week later. Within the safety of the Group, one collection of tutors helped him finish his high school education. Another honed his less conventional strengths.
He was shown the sick and the dying, taught to recognize human maladies on sound alone. He saw the other people like him that the Group would contact, train, and utilize; he learned to see each of their talents and know those powers better, oftentimes, than they knew them themselves. (And if there was jealousy there, in seeing men who could fly or turn invisible with a thought -- and there was -- he learned to squash it quickly. Men would kill for his ability. No matter what they could do, what he could do was useful, important, and unique among all of theirs. The Group needed him, Peter said. They needed what he could do.) He recognized the patterns and worked to piece them together.
One of those patterns was an art gallery.
Sometimes, the people the Group would find were too old, too young, or simply more useful as guinea pigs. One in particular wasn't much older than Gabriel; they'd figured out how to make his ability manifest almost a full decade ahead of schedule. Gabriel saw that, too, when he walked into the room for the first time to see him slopping paint onto a canvas: the way the parts fit easily but had been pushed to their limits like an overclocked engine.
Every single painting was bright red with fire.
And Gabriel was good at putting the pieces together. When he looked away, back toward the people hovering in a silent cluster behind him, he could see how there were some in the Group who wanted this to happen, who believed it was the only way and would see it brought about at any cost. (In the Bible, they say, the angel Gabriel is the one who heralds the apocalypse. You are important, Watts had told him. We need you.)
So he kept silent and lied if need be, saying he just needed a little more time to figure out the last nuances of the paintings' meaning -- up until the moment the Roosters seized complete control and began to root out the ones who opposed them.
That was when Gabriel started running.
Eventually, the Group fell apart. The millennium came and went without incident. But they say the one cannot know the hour or day of the end's arrival; sometimes, not even the year.
It's 2002 now. Members of the Group are beginning to reassemble themselves.
And once again, they're looking toward the paintings of an exploding man and a fireball over the New York City skyline, quietly making plans to guide the world into a brighter future.
