A/N: My dear reviewers. Well, you guys were very insistent. So I decided to humor you. I'm in college now. That's why I have next to no time to write anymore. But. ...Well, read and review! Would you guys like me to update Black Scorpion next? hm?

Chapter 9

When Gabriel woke up the next morning, he found that his head still hurt as if a warren of rats had tunneled inside his head and proceeded to eat it up. It was that bad. He groaned and clutched a hand to his head, keeping his eyes closed as his free hand fumbled blindly at the bedside drawer for his bottle of painkiller pills. God, where was it? Gabriel gave a sigh of relief when he found it and took out four, swallowing them dry as fast as he could.

And then, he just simply laid there and waited for them to take effect. It wasn't like he could get out of bed and perform his daily functions. In fact, Gabriel was quite sure that if he were to try, he was sure that he would only end up in a boneless pile on the floor.

To his misfortune, about fifteen minutes after he had woken up, the sound of his doorbell started to ring. Gabriel whimpered and scrunched his eyes up even tighter.

"Please go away," Gabriel croaked. "I would like to die in peace."

The sound of the doorbell abruptly stopped and another sound was heard, this time within his bedroom. A slight pop of a foreign object. Gabriel squinted his eyes open and saw Silver staring at him in amusement.

"What have you done to yourself?" Silver asked, clearly fighting not to laugh.

"I took you suggestion to heart," Gabriel said hoarsely, "and I found an unbreakable wall that I tried unsuccessfully to enter. That's the reason for this insanely torturous headache."

Silver went and sat down gently on the bed beside Gabriel's prone body. His hands came up to frame his head and Gabriel felt a tingling sensation throughout his mind.

"What are you doing?" Gabriel asked in wonder. Already, he felt much better than he had before.

"I'm healing your mind of the damage that you've done on yourself," Silver said in a preoccupied tone. "You shouldn't have tried to hammer it down. You don't have the mind training for this kind of thing. I told you to find any blocks. I didn't tell you to try and kill yourself."

"I want that block gone," Gabriel said stubbornly. "The fact that someone or something can do that to me without me knowing it is strangely frightening. I would like to have some semblance of control over my own actions."

"How do you know it was not to help keep you safe?" Silver asked, staring into Gabriel's blue eyes in question.

"If it helps unblock my gift to help people, it will be well worth it," Gabriel said seriously. "I don't care if I get hurt."

"Why don't you care?" Silver asked eyebrows rising in disbelief. "Have you no one that will care if you disappear?"

"The friends I have are superficial," Gabriel told him in a neutral voice. "If I leave, I'm sure that they would not."

There was a long moment of silence in the room. And then Silver spoke.

"I would."

Gabriel smiled softly. "I'm glad then."

There was shared moment of companionship that both felt. To them, the silence was comfortable; they had no need to break it. It was a golden moment. After a while, Silver spoke again.

"Your mind," Silver told him quietly. "Would you let me try my hand at breaking this wall you have in it?"

Gabriel nodded, sitting up in the bed and crossing his legs, preparing to meditate and enter his mind. Silver took that as an invitation to fully sit on the bed and cross his legs as well, having their knees touch each other.

"There must be contact for me to enter your mind like this," Silver said in an instructor's voice. "And you must not fight me. I will not hurt you unnecessarily. Do you trust me?"

"Yes," Gabriel said, nodding.

"Good," Silver nodded as well. "Let us start."

They both closed their eyes and went into a trance. When Silver felt that Gabriel was reading, he mentally had his spectral self enter Gabriel's mind. He met Gabriel's specter at the entrance and he was led along many memory passageways towards a wall.

Silver could see why Gabriel could not have broken it. A Sha'ni had constructed this wall. And not just any Sha'ni. The symbol on the wall clearly stated that Gabriel's mind had been blocked off by his God, Hilel. It would be hard, but not improbable. This was not an unbreakable wall. It meant that the god had predicted its fall sometime in the future.

The Protector put both his hands on the wall and closed his eyes, concentrating on the molecules within the wall, sending his energy out into the tiny little cracks that he found in the wall. When he felt that he had a good number of them, he focused on pulling his energy as it snagged on the molecules of the wall. A loud groaning voice could be heard.

"You're doing it!" Gabriel's voice whispered in his mind. "A little more!"

Silver increased his forceful mental pulling. With a great big groan, the wall crumbled and dissolved within Gabriel's mind. Quickly, Silver pulled out and opened his eyes, once again back on the physical plane.

He watched as Gabriel's face scrunched up in pain and the man screamed. Fast as lightning, Silver summoned a bucket of ice cold water to drop on top of Gabriel. The water was cold and Gabriel gasped, screams suddenly cut off by the biting cold he felt in his bones, opening his eyes.

Their eyes met. And for one moment, in that instant of time, Silver saw something in there that gave him an involuntary shiver.

"Silver," Gabriel managed to say before his eyes rolled behind his head and he passed out on the bed.

Silver could only stare at the prone figure on the bed, his fingers convulsively clenching and unclenching.