[Meta] Don't You Ever Presume to Know What I Am: A Psych Profile
If you were to compare Gabriel to any animal in the world, it would be a cat- flippant, self-centered, fickle, arrogant, proud, and the kind of creature that would defend you in the same breath that it mocks you and, at the same time, will love you for the rest of its life if you happen to be someone it approves of. He breezes by, uninhibited, and does whatever the hell he wants, whenever he wants to do it. He doesn’t answer to anyone, anymore, and he doesn’t care.
In fact, flippancy is Gabriel's chief weapon, because everything he does requires that element of I don't care to it. Of course, he doesn't care about anything. Why would he have to? What reason does he have to care about anything? You're crazy if you think otherwise. He's a vicious monster, anyway, so clearly caring is beneath him. He's in it for himself and only himself and he'll do a remarkable job of convincing people of that fact- and the worst part of it is that it's mostly true. Gabriel does look out for himself over all, although not in the way that people expect. He wouldn't hesitate to defend his family if he had to and he doesn't run out of a fear of being killed or hurt- rather, he tends to look out for his own emotional well-being. Whatever will keep him happy and content and devoid of negativity, whatever will keep him living the life he chooses- that’s what he tries to preserve by being cowardly. Things he doesn't want to deal with, he simply doesn't deal with. They're pushed under the rug and avoided. He'd rather run that be confronted with the harsh realities and he'd rather have other people fight the hard battles for him. If he doesn’t care, then it means people won’t examine things about him too closely. If he doesn't care, then it means he won't have to deal with being hurt.
He tries not to take anything too seriously- even in dire situations, he keeps on making smarmy comments or cracking jokes. It's as much a defense mechanism as it is anything- if he's being nonchalant and snarky, then obviously he's okay and the situation isn't bothering him, even when it is. Despite that, he won’t sugarcoat anything for anyone and will openly tell you with a smile on his face how boned you are when it comes down to it. He understands how the world works- life isn’t a bowl of cherries, the heroes don’t always win, brothers kill each other, and sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, because the alternative is worse- and if he has to accept that, then everyone does. He just accepts it with sarcasm and a sense of humor that veers between vitriolic and good-natured, and maybe everyone else should too- never mind that when he does it, it’s an act. He’s capable of being serious when the situation calls for it, but he doesn’t hold it for very long- just long enough to get the point across. The more desperate a situation, the more he’s likely to remain serious, but he’ll flip-flop back and forth between the two, nevertheless.
His moods are fickle and he treats people roughly the same, no matter what his feelings are- he mentions having a fondness for the Winchesters almost instantly after meeting them, but wastes no time in making them miserable when they refuse to stand down. Later on, Dean questions the fact that he’s trying to save the two boys, when just two months previously he’d wanted them to submit and become Michael and Lucifer’s vessels, and Gabriel just brushes the question off. He doesn’t need to explain himself. He is what he is and if you have to question it, you’ll never know. He defaults to a belligerently cheerful state, always with lighthearted and occasionally vindictive sarcasm, and tends to stay there, unless provoked out of it. And it’s easy to provoke him out of it, but it’s also easy to have him immediately go back to cheerful teasing and playful banter- or, if the situation is more serious, a dark, almost wicked, sense of humor.
In atypical angel fashion, Gabriel is hedonistic to the core. He likes decadence (sweets, especially), human entertainment (in fact, he seems to be a walking pop culture encyclopedia), and has a libido the size of a small third world country. He abuses his abilities as an angel to live the lifestyle of a god and it's not just for show- he genuinely enjoys his lifestyle and has found it to be a comfortable hiding place. He's been in “witness protection” for so long, that this is his life now- not the halo and the Father's messages- but his messages and lessons. And yet, he can drop the act on a dime and pick up being an angel again with no amount of awkwardness- there's no change in his personality, just his presence. There's no way to say where Loki begins and Gabriel ends, but he has no trouble being both. They're both him and there's no illusion or act anymore- if there ever was one. He's likely convinced himself that despite his status as an archangel, that he's as much a god as any of the other pagans. The parts of him that are truly Gabriel, however, have been buried under layers of snark and self-delusion, because dealing with those aspects of himself, means confronting a lot of things he's tried to bury. The Messenger is a long distant memory- there’s just this amalgamation now of god and archangel.
Gabriel has an overwhelming amount of patience, and is relentless and stubborn to a fault to go with it- whatever he wants, he will do anything he can to get, and he won't give up until he knows it’s a hopeless case, and losing irks him to no end, when it comes to that. He kept Sam going for a hundred Tuesdays in a time loop to get him to realize that he couldn't save his brother, even going as far as to force him to live several months without Dean to show him how it would feel. He also kept Sam and Dean imprisoned in TV Land "for days" as Castiel put it to get them to realize that they had no choice but to submit to being Lucifer and Michael's vessels. He might be a showman, prone to histrionics and big elaborate pranks with short-term payoff, but he also knows that good drama takes time- start small and build- and that some lessons are harder to drill in. Despite the fact that he claims that his tricks are all fun and games, there's still a business aspect to it. He tells Sam that "this all stopped being fun months ago," when Sam begs him to bring Dean back during the Mystery Spot ordeal, proving that he could've stopped the game at any time if he was tired of it, but chose not to, because he still had a point to make. His lessons might look funny or eccentric (although often cruelly so), but he custom tailors every one to the person- it's important that these people either get their just desserts or learn something from him. He gets a lot of pleasure out of it, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not all about the fun- there's nuance to it. The Winchesters hunt monsters- well, so does Gabriel. His monsters just happen to be humans, and he won't let anyone tell him that the people he kills and otherwise fucks with don't deserve the fates he bestows on them.
As an archangel, Gabriel is naturally inclined towards dominance without even realizing he is- it’s the one thing about his status he’s never lost. When he walks into a room, he knows he's the most powerful creature in it and people will take heed of that. Take the scene in Hammer of the Gods where he crashes the god meeting, for example- to them, he's a minor deity, but he walks in and talks to everyone in the room like his is the biggest dick there and alpha males his way through the entire conversation. He doesn't need to show off or abuse his powers to prove to people what he can do, because he expects people to already know. When he brings down the pain on someone, that person will have deserved it in some way, either because they were a target or because they needed to be shown that he won't be toyed with. Gabriel doesn't expect to be taken seriously or even respected, but he does expect to be considered the dominant force in the room- the alpha, essentially- because the only thing higher than him are his two older brothers. He doesn't often flaunt his abilities, aside from providing himself with creature comforts- he merely does what's necessary to keep up his appearances as a Trickster and nothing more, although one could argue that his showmanship and his grandiose way of taking victims is flaunting. Gabriel just thinks it's a necessary part of his enjoyment of his job.
Respect isn't something that comes naturally to Gabriel, despite how much he seems to love. His flippant attitude towards Lucifer all but proves this, even though it's clear Lucifer is one of his favorite brothers. It's almost impossible to earn what he terms as "respect" (as in, someone he won't mock, talk down to, or generally torment). He treats everyone as equals and even if he's afraid of someone (again Lucifer), they get just as much of his snark and attitude as anyone else- he doesn't discriminate and he doesn't treat anyone differently just because they're a "special snowflake" who dareth not be offended- he even treats his friends with the same amount of smarm he uses on everyone else. His aggressively dominant, arrogant attitude generally means that he doesn't find it easy to show people respect anyway. Conversely, however, he also doesn't expect to be respected in turn- he expects people not to think their dick is bigger than his or presume things about him, but he doesn't give a damn about respect. It's atypical of an archangel, but most everything Gabriel does is. Note that it's only after Dean implies that he's "someone's bitch" that Gabriel officially snaps and attacks him. He had been coiled and ready to strike right before that, but that was the moment when he snapped- his authority and status had been challenged, as well as his relationship with his family and it broke something in him and destroyed his carefully cultivated nonchalant veneer, forcing him to take action- it wasn’t about the respect, it was about a mere human having the gall to think anything about him, an archangel. Presumptions upset him, especially coming from people who don't understand anything about him or his actions and why he takes them.
It bothers him immensely to not hold all the cards in a situation, even though he tries not to let it show. If anything, he tends to get cockier and more belligerent when he knows he's losing just to show that he hasn't completely lost it. Even when the Winchesters had him trapped, both in Mystery Spot and in Changing Channels, he retained his sense of cool and snarked at them up until the situation became dire and only then did he show some hint of strain and nervous anxiety towards the situation. Losing his power is one of the worst things that could happen to him- it would destroy a good portion of what he's made of himself. It's hard to be the belligerently cocky, controlled powderkeg when you have no gunpowder to speak of. Note the scene in Hammer of the Gods, when he's bloodspelled to Kali, he is extremely visibly uncomfortable any time he's not speaking. He knows he can't do anything- he's utterly powerless and it scares him. And while he does cover it up better than he might have had the situation not be an elaborate ruse, the fact that Kali still had him by the balls bothered him. When talking to Dean later, he acted like it didn't, although the fact that he was even asking Dean for help in getting his blood back showed his hand and how desperate he'd gotten- he just tries to cover his desperation up with nonchalance, in the hopes that Dean wouldn’t catch wise. He also doesn't like being bossed around by people below his station- as evidenced by his annoyance whenever Dean tries to order him around on multiple occasions.
As he told Dean in Tall Tales, "I don't wanna hurt you and you know that I can." That's Gabe's entire philosophy on dealing with people who challenge him and aren't typically the people he targets. He wants to hurt people who deserve it, but if you don't, then he has no business with you and you either move along or he shows you exactly why he's not a force to be reckoned with. Gabe depends on people knowing he can hurt them, more than just walking around and showing it. He's arrogant. He's an archangel. He doesn't have to show people how powerful he is, because he already expects them to know. It's like walking up to a bear. The bear doesn't have to say, "I WILL MAUL YOU" before you go, "Hey, guys, that bear might just maul us."
For someone who is naturally dominant, he doesn’t believe in outward aggression unless forced to show it. He would much rather be a manipulator, than an enforcer, and unless pushed to that point, he would prefer to work behind the scenes to get back at his enemies, rather than confront them directly. He avoids conflict to the point where he’ll pretend it doesn’t exist until it’s shoved so far in his face that he has to admit it and once it gets to that point, he’d rather run and hide, then actively deal with it, especially if he thinks he's going wind up on the losing end. Sometimes even when he knows there’s more than a likely chance that he’ll win, he’ll try to weasel his way out of a conflict- take his first appearance in Tall Tales, when he attempted to bribe Dean to let him go, so they didn’t have to fight. Even when he confronts Lucifer, he goes out of his way to avoid starting an actual physical altercation with him, beyond throwing him into the wall to get him away from Kali. It's possible that he's actually just not that good at combat and does everything he can to avoid fighting fairly.
With all his layers and conflicting parts, Gabriel is something of a contradiction. Despite his nature as a class-A jerk, he has a certain sense of charm and style that keeps him from being a bully. He can be a royal douche, but he doesn’t do anything without having a reason for it. He’s blunt and tactless, but that’s because he doesn’t sugarcoat things. He’s sympathetic to people, but his methods of showing sympathy are questionable at best and usually lacking. He will say exactly what he’s thinking and act like an arrogant prick, but he’ll do it in such a shameless way that it’s almost hard to take him seriously. He's generous, but only to people who deserve his generosity. He loves intensely, but that makes him afraid of being left behind or not loved as much, which cases him to run, himself. He’s confident, probably overly so, but it’s not without merit- he’s an archangel and naturally defaults to an alpha status, usually without realizing it, simply because he knows he’s the most powerful being in a room at any given time and when you’re that powerful, you can’t help but come off as something of a dominant presence, even if it’s unconscious. He’s complicated, a contradiction, a mystery. He likes it that way.
His sense of morality is skewed, but not completely absent. He believes firmly that every person he screws with deserves it and would never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it or didn’t have a lesson they needed to learn. The people he kills are people who couldn’t have changed their ways, no matter what he tried- the ones who survive his pranks are the ones that there’s still hope for. He would point out to anyone that the people he doesn’t kill greatly outweigh the ones he does- it’s just that no one pays attention until bodies start turning up. He firmly believes what he does is right and that he's perfectly in his rights to deal out this brand of justice- sorry, he's an angel. It's what they do. He's not a hero and he would never refer to himself as such, even if he does have an almost vigilante thing going on, if you take away the fact that he clearly enjoys giving people what's coming to them that paints him in a heavily negative light. He's not a bad person. He's not a good person. He doesn't pretend to be either. He's just Gabriel.
All of this, however, is part of his public persona, because it’s important that Gabriel keep his true feelings hidden and thus he does everything to avoid looking like he gives a damn until forced into the open. There's so much to him that it's almost impossible for one person to peel back the facades he puts up and that makes it hard for people to get close to him, due to the fact that he pretends to not care about anyone or anything and uses his sarcasm as a defense mechanism when people get too close to finding out the truth- Dean calls him on this in Hammer of the Gods, even noting it's something that they share (although, they have completely dissimilar reasons for sharing it- Gabriel uses his because he knows that if he doesn’t care, then he can’t be hurt). Getting past all of his defenses is something that just doesn't happen (except in rare cases), because anytime someone does, he slams the walls right back up again, although, by that time, he's probably already snapped and shown that he's affected and given himself away, anyway. He became a creature lower than his station, because that creature was what he needed to be- one who is actively involved in the lives of mortals, but one who delights in sheer amusement and little else. He drowns himself in distraction, dancing through life in a haze of mindless self-indulgence and meaningless pleasure. This is how he manages. This is how he deals with the fact that he turned tail and abandoned the people he cared about- by pretending he really doesn’t give a damn.
In a lot of ways, Gabriel is broken so deeply that he can become temperamental at the drop of a hat if you poke at his sore spots (and he has several). Say one triggering phrase and he’ll turn on you on a dime. Make one insinuation that gets to him and he’ll tear your throat out with his hands. Back him into a corner or trap him, and he becomes an emotional powder keg that flits between confidence and fear, but will always have a smartass remark to anything you say to him. Put him in a situation that he can’t win, and he starts to fall apart in subtle, little ways. Take him down a peg and he’ll claw the walls to get back on top or else get the heck away before the situation becomes untenable and if he can't get away, he'll do everything in his power to make sure he, at least, looks like he has some level of control. It’s very hard to crack him, because he’ll hide even the most painful of emotions, and every time he comes close to breaking, he swallows it down and covers it up with more cocky sarcasm. He’ll swallow down everything but anger- anger’s the only thing he’ll sustain and even then, he won’t sustain it for very long. He hates being seen at his weakest and will do anything not to give anyone the impression that he's cracking.
He's a coward in many ways. He ran from Heaven when he couldn't take it anymore, but didn't have the balls to actually Fall, so he took an alternative route and hid himself from his family. Rather than confronting Lucifer from the jump to protect his pagan god family, he tried to sneakily abduct Dean and Sam to keep Lucifer from ever needing to come and get them. He avoids confrontation and when he can't, he uses conjured proxies to fight his battles for him. He's horribly afraid of his family, both because he's afraid they'll kill him and because he's afraid that they'll see what he's become, look down on him in scorn, and just take him out, and he can't stand the thought of being looked down on and hated by the people he loves more than anything. He even tried to convince Kali to run away with him, as a way of avoiding the apocalypse, although he knew it wouldn’t really work. Despite his cowardice, he's not actually afraid of very many things, which has a lot to do with being an archangel and generally being more powerful than most things and even when frightened, he adamantly refuses to show terrified he is. You'd have to be stabbing him to death before he'll show his fear.
Gabriel's most obvious fatal flaw is own arrogance and overconfidence, while he can generally handle any threat, he has a tendency to miss the bigger picture and doesn't consider alternate means of attack, beyond the obvious, so when people get the jump on him, it's usually because they turned his tricks back on him and as soon as he thinks he has all the cards in a situation, the trap is already sprung. The Winchesters have pulled this tactic on him twice now and Kali pulls it on him later- the easiest way to lure Gabriel in is to make him think he's winning until the last second. He's not stupid. He's a product of an overinflated ego and a stubborn, pigheaded attitude that has him repeating mistakes, BECAUSE WHAT ARE THE CHANCES ANYONE'S GONNA PULL THAT AGAIN? REALLY?
His other fatal flaw is his love. Gabriel loves as intensely as Lucifer, and is completely driven by it. He Fell, because he couldn't watch his brothers killing each other, he would've manipulated two boys into destroying their lives and ending the world to end a war so he didn't have to deal with that pain anymore. He doesn't have the hatred or disdain that Lucifer has- just the love and the fear of rejection for not being capable of choosing one brother over the other and not being able to handle the constant infighting. Family is important to Gabriel and he needs one to function, although he acts like a lone wolf and is often seen on his own. His surrogate pagan family may have been just as bad about infighting and bickering as his real family, but they still provided him with the comfort he needed in a time of great upheaval. He's loyal, but his loyalty doesn't permanently choose sides. He furiously defends Lucifer and Michael and the rest of his family when Dean and Sam insult them and then defends humans and the gods to Lucifer later. He defends whoever needs to be defended in the moment. He's protective and defensive of the people he cares about- hurting or insulting them or anything of the sort is a surefire way to make him angry. Gabriel's love is unconditional. No matter what he says otherwise, he loves strongly and intensely to the point where the people he loves can hurt him, but they can't do anything to make him hate them, even if they wind up bickering, even if they wind up betraying each other, he's not capable of truly hating someone he once loved. While he treats people the same, he is still capable of immense compassion and sympathy and when it comes down to the wire, he'll desperately try to protect someone he loves- for example, the way he tried to convince Kali not to fight Lucifer, knowing that she’d end up dead. Even the fact that came out of hiding to protect the gods at all was a show of his compassion. He might try to take a cowardly way out to protect people, but he'll still protect them.
To an extent, he's started to see humans as an extension of his family, although it took him a long time to get to the point where he could outwardly admit it. They, like his brothers, were his Father's children and even though he, too, saw the same flaws that made Lucifer despise them and even punished them for those flaws, he embraced their good qualities, as well. He spent a great deal of time treating them like playthings, but when it counted, he eventually realized that there was so much good in them- so much that he didn't find in his brothers anymore. Humans had become, in his eyes, the ideals that he'd longed to see in his siblings again. That capacity for forgiveness, for undying love, even in the face of unspeakable betrayal- things he wasn't getting from his own family. Choosing humanity over his brothers couldn't feel like a betrayal, because, in a way, they were part of his family- even referring to them as "the new baby" to Lucifer.
Despite his need to defend whoever needs it at the time, Gabriel's not capable of actually killing his brothers, although he has no problem killing humans who deserve it. He could have easily killed Castiel to avoid having him expose him, but didn't. He would have probably let him go on his own, and his snide Oh am I? at Dean's demand that he release him was just him being annoyed that Dean was bossing him around. He may have threatened to shiv Michael and acted like he planned on doing the same to Lucifer if his older brother didn't back down (and this may have been all part of the game he was playing, another sad I don't care lie), but if he had any intentions of doing it, he wouldn't have made his attempt so obvious or would've taken Lucifer out when he had him down. He knows Lucifer- knows that Lucifer knows him. He likely chose the tactic he confronted Lucifer with, because it was the only way to get out without killing his brother- he would rather die, himself, or test the limits of Lucifer's mercy than stoop that low. In some ways it was a test to see if Lucifer was even capable of that much forgiveness- the same that Gabriel had found in humans- or if he would simply continue to fester under his own hatred. He chose to kill his own brother- a choice Gabriel would never have made were their roles reversed, but he likely felt that Lucifer deserved the chance to make the right choice. This is how Gabriel holds himself to a higher standard than the rest of his family. Yes, he's lower than dirt, because he slums it up and acts like a heathen, but he doesn't kill his family. He doesn't engage in apocalyptic hissy fits whenever he disagrees with something. He may be lower than a dog in their eyes, but he's better than that and he expects them to be too. More than anything, he wants them to look at themselves and see that they're all being idiots about everything. However, up until that moment with Lucifer, he was too scared to do so. As much of a cynic he is, as much as he knows that everything will never be the way it was before, he still has some hope that his family will get the fuck over themselves and actually try to make themselves better.
In the same vein, however, Gabriel is permitted to insult, threaten, or otherwise (non-fatally) harm any one of his siblings (or anyone he considers part of his family), but does not extend that right to anyone else. Doing so pisses him off- he gets annoyed at Dean for calling Michael and Lucifer “heavenly douchenozzles,” but later refers to his family to Kali as “winged assmonkeys” and calls Lucifer “a great big bag of dicks” to his face. They’re his family- he can do what he wants to with them, but no one else can. That’s his right and his alone as a brother. Gabriel doesn’t have the same archangel biases that Michael and Lucifer have- all the angels are his family- but while he might play the irritating older brother to lesser angels, it’s Michael and Lucifer he’s closest to- Lucifer, especially. It’s for that reason that Lucifer is the brother he’s the most afraid of and the one he probably loves most, although he’d never say as much. He was Lucifer’s protégé, everything he knows, he learned from him, even if he put his own spin on things. A knife through the heart, a choice that Lucifer never would’ve agreed with, and having to look in the eyes of his own brother as he twisted the knife into his chest can’t change the fact that he owes so much of himself to his older brother and that nothing will ever make him stop loving him. In fact, he spends his last moments clinging to his brother for dear life, even through the utter betrayal and devastation in his eyes. Despite the fact that Gabriel would never stop loving Lucifer after the fact, that doesn’t mean he isn’t upset that it ended like that- knowing it would happen and feeling it happen are two different things. He’s furious about it, but he’s furious about a lot of things his family does- they’re all idiots and he’s the only sane one, but he still loves them. He picked up unconditional love from his Daddy, but, as he’d put it, he actually practices it.
In fact, flippancy is Gabriel's chief weapon, because everything he does requires that element of I don't care to it. Of course, he doesn't care about anything. Why would he have to? What reason does he have to care about anything? You're crazy if you think otherwise. He's a vicious monster, anyway, so clearly caring is beneath him. He's in it for himself and only himself and he'll do a remarkable job of convincing people of that fact- and the worst part of it is that it's mostly true. Gabriel does look out for himself over all, although not in the way that people expect. He wouldn't hesitate to defend his family if he had to and he doesn't run out of a fear of being killed or hurt- rather, he tends to look out for his own emotional well-being. Whatever will keep him happy and content and devoid of negativity, whatever will keep him living the life he chooses- that’s what he tries to preserve by being cowardly. Things he doesn't want to deal with, he simply doesn't deal with. They're pushed under the rug and avoided. He'd rather run that be confronted with the harsh realities and he'd rather have other people fight the hard battles for him. If he doesn’t care, then it means people won’t examine things about him too closely. If he doesn't care, then it means he won't have to deal with being hurt.
He tries not to take anything too seriously- even in dire situations, he keeps on making smarmy comments or cracking jokes. It's as much a defense mechanism as it is anything- if he's being nonchalant and snarky, then obviously he's okay and the situation isn't bothering him, even when it is. Despite that, he won’t sugarcoat anything for anyone and will openly tell you with a smile on his face how boned you are when it comes down to it. He understands how the world works- life isn’t a bowl of cherries, the heroes don’t always win, brothers kill each other, and sometimes you have to do things you don’t want to do, because the alternative is worse- and if he has to accept that, then everyone does. He just accepts it with sarcasm and a sense of humor that veers between vitriolic and good-natured, and maybe everyone else should too- never mind that when he does it, it’s an act. He’s capable of being serious when the situation calls for it, but he doesn’t hold it for very long- just long enough to get the point across. The more desperate a situation, the more he’s likely to remain serious, but he’ll flip-flop back and forth between the two, nevertheless.
His moods are fickle and he treats people roughly the same, no matter what his feelings are- he mentions having a fondness for the Winchesters almost instantly after meeting them, but wastes no time in making them miserable when they refuse to stand down. Later on, Dean questions the fact that he’s trying to save the two boys, when just two months previously he’d wanted them to submit and become Michael and Lucifer’s vessels, and Gabriel just brushes the question off. He doesn’t need to explain himself. He is what he is and if you have to question it, you’ll never know. He defaults to a belligerently cheerful state, always with lighthearted and occasionally vindictive sarcasm, and tends to stay there, unless provoked out of it. And it’s easy to provoke him out of it, but it’s also easy to have him immediately go back to cheerful teasing and playful banter- or, if the situation is more serious, a dark, almost wicked, sense of humor.
In atypical angel fashion, Gabriel is hedonistic to the core. He likes decadence (sweets, especially), human entertainment (in fact, he seems to be a walking pop culture encyclopedia), and has a libido the size of a small third world country. He abuses his abilities as an angel to live the lifestyle of a god and it's not just for show- he genuinely enjoys his lifestyle and has found it to be a comfortable hiding place. He's been in “witness protection” for so long, that this is his life now- not the halo and the Father's messages- but his messages and lessons. And yet, he can drop the act on a dime and pick up being an angel again with no amount of awkwardness- there's no change in his personality, just his presence. There's no way to say where Loki begins and Gabriel ends, but he has no trouble being both. They're both him and there's no illusion or act anymore- if there ever was one. He's likely convinced himself that despite his status as an archangel, that he's as much a god as any of the other pagans. The parts of him that are truly Gabriel, however, have been buried under layers of snark and self-delusion, because dealing with those aspects of himself, means confronting a lot of things he's tried to bury. The Messenger is a long distant memory- there’s just this amalgamation now of god and archangel.
Gabriel has an overwhelming amount of patience, and is relentless and stubborn to a fault to go with it- whatever he wants, he will do anything he can to get, and he won't give up until he knows it’s a hopeless case, and losing irks him to no end, when it comes to that. He kept Sam going for a hundred Tuesdays in a time loop to get him to realize that he couldn't save his brother, even going as far as to force him to live several months without Dean to show him how it would feel. He also kept Sam and Dean imprisoned in TV Land "for days" as Castiel put it to get them to realize that they had no choice but to submit to being Lucifer and Michael's vessels. He might be a showman, prone to histrionics and big elaborate pranks with short-term payoff, but he also knows that good drama takes time- start small and build- and that some lessons are harder to drill in. Despite the fact that he claims that his tricks are all fun and games, there's still a business aspect to it. He tells Sam that "this all stopped being fun months ago," when Sam begs him to bring Dean back during the Mystery Spot ordeal, proving that he could've stopped the game at any time if he was tired of it, but chose not to, because he still had a point to make. His lessons might look funny or eccentric (although often cruelly so), but he custom tailors every one to the person- it's important that these people either get their just desserts or learn something from him. He gets a lot of pleasure out of it, but it doesn't change the fact that it's not all about the fun- there's nuance to it. The Winchesters hunt monsters- well, so does Gabriel. His monsters just happen to be humans, and he won't let anyone tell him that the people he kills and otherwise fucks with don't deserve the fates he bestows on them.
As an archangel, Gabriel is naturally inclined towards dominance without even realizing he is- it’s the one thing about his status he’s never lost. When he walks into a room, he knows he's the most powerful creature in it and people will take heed of that. Take the scene in Hammer of the Gods where he crashes the god meeting, for example- to them, he's a minor deity, but he walks in and talks to everyone in the room like his is the biggest dick there and alpha males his way through the entire conversation. He doesn't need to show off or abuse his powers to prove to people what he can do, because he expects people to already know. When he brings down the pain on someone, that person will have deserved it in some way, either because they were a target or because they needed to be shown that he won't be toyed with. Gabriel doesn't expect to be taken seriously or even respected, but he does expect to be considered the dominant force in the room- the alpha, essentially- because the only thing higher than him are his two older brothers. He doesn't often flaunt his abilities, aside from providing himself with creature comforts- he merely does what's necessary to keep up his appearances as a Trickster and nothing more, although one could argue that his showmanship and his grandiose way of taking victims is flaunting. Gabriel just thinks it's a necessary part of his enjoyment of his job.
Respect isn't something that comes naturally to Gabriel, despite how much he seems to love. His flippant attitude towards Lucifer all but proves this, even though it's clear Lucifer is one of his favorite brothers. It's almost impossible to earn what he terms as "respect" (as in, someone he won't mock, talk down to, or generally torment). He treats everyone as equals and even if he's afraid of someone (again Lucifer), they get just as much of his snark and attitude as anyone else- he doesn't discriminate and he doesn't treat anyone differently just because they're a "special snowflake" who dareth not be offended- he even treats his friends with the same amount of smarm he uses on everyone else. His aggressively dominant, arrogant attitude generally means that he doesn't find it easy to show people respect anyway. Conversely, however, he also doesn't expect to be respected in turn- he expects people not to think their dick is bigger than his or presume things about him, but he doesn't give a damn about respect. It's atypical of an archangel, but most everything Gabriel does is. Note that it's only after Dean implies that he's "someone's bitch" that Gabriel officially snaps and attacks him. He had been coiled and ready to strike right before that, but that was the moment when he snapped- his authority and status had been challenged, as well as his relationship with his family and it broke something in him and destroyed his carefully cultivated nonchalant veneer, forcing him to take action- it wasn’t about the respect, it was about a mere human having the gall to think anything about him, an archangel. Presumptions upset him, especially coming from people who don't understand anything about him or his actions and why he takes them.
It bothers him immensely to not hold all the cards in a situation, even though he tries not to let it show. If anything, he tends to get cockier and more belligerent when he knows he's losing just to show that he hasn't completely lost it. Even when the Winchesters had him trapped, both in Mystery Spot and in Changing Channels, he retained his sense of cool and snarked at them up until the situation became dire and only then did he show some hint of strain and nervous anxiety towards the situation. Losing his power is one of the worst things that could happen to him- it would destroy a good portion of what he's made of himself. It's hard to be the belligerently cocky, controlled powderkeg when you have no gunpowder to speak of. Note the scene in Hammer of the Gods, when he's bloodspelled to Kali, he is extremely visibly uncomfortable any time he's not speaking. He knows he can't do anything- he's utterly powerless and it scares him. And while he does cover it up better than he might have had the situation not be an elaborate ruse, the fact that Kali still had him by the balls bothered him. When talking to Dean later, he acted like it didn't, although the fact that he was even asking Dean for help in getting his blood back showed his hand and how desperate he'd gotten- he just tries to cover his desperation up with nonchalance, in the hopes that Dean wouldn’t catch wise. He also doesn't like being bossed around by people below his station- as evidenced by his annoyance whenever Dean tries to order him around on multiple occasions.
As he told Dean in Tall Tales, "I don't wanna hurt you and you know that I can." That's Gabe's entire philosophy on dealing with people who challenge him and aren't typically the people he targets. He wants to hurt people who deserve it, but if you don't, then he has no business with you and you either move along or he shows you exactly why he's not a force to be reckoned with. Gabe depends on people knowing he can hurt them, more than just walking around and showing it. He's arrogant. He's an archangel. He doesn't have to show people how powerful he is, because he already expects them to know. It's like walking up to a bear. The bear doesn't have to say, "I WILL MAUL YOU" before you go, "Hey, guys, that bear might just maul us."
For someone who is naturally dominant, he doesn’t believe in outward aggression unless forced to show it. He would much rather be a manipulator, than an enforcer, and unless pushed to that point, he would prefer to work behind the scenes to get back at his enemies, rather than confront them directly. He avoids conflict to the point where he’ll pretend it doesn’t exist until it’s shoved so far in his face that he has to admit it and once it gets to that point, he’d rather run and hide, then actively deal with it, especially if he thinks he's going wind up on the losing end. Sometimes even when he knows there’s more than a likely chance that he’ll win, he’ll try to weasel his way out of a conflict- take his first appearance in Tall Tales, when he attempted to bribe Dean to let him go, so they didn’t have to fight. Even when he confronts Lucifer, he goes out of his way to avoid starting an actual physical altercation with him, beyond throwing him into the wall to get him away from Kali. It's possible that he's actually just not that good at combat and does everything he can to avoid fighting fairly.
With all his layers and conflicting parts, Gabriel is something of a contradiction. Despite his nature as a class-A jerk, he has a certain sense of charm and style that keeps him from being a bully. He can be a royal douche, but he doesn’t do anything without having a reason for it. He’s blunt and tactless, but that’s because he doesn’t sugarcoat things. He’s sympathetic to people, but his methods of showing sympathy are questionable at best and usually lacking. He will say exactly what he’s thinking and act like an arrogant prick, but he’ll do it in such a shameless way that it’s almost hard to take him seriously. He's generous, but only to people who deserve his generosity. He loves intensely, but that makes him afraid of being left behind or not loved as much, which cases him to run, himself. He’s confident, probably overly so, but it’s not without merit- he’s an archangel and naturally defaults to an alpha status, usually without realizing it, simply because he knows he’s the most powerful being in a room at any given time and when you’re that powerful, you can’t help but come off as something of a dominant presence, even if it’s unconscious. He’s complicated, a contradiction, a mystery. He likes it that way.
His sense of morality is skewed, but not completely absent. He believes firmly that every person he screws with deserves it and would never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it or didn’t have a lesson they needed to learn. The people he kills are people who couldn’t have changed their ways, no matter what he tried- the ones who survive his pranks are the ones that there’s still hope for. He would point out to anyone that the people he doesn’t kill greatly outweigh the ones he does- it’s just that no one pays attention until bodies start turning up. He firmly believes what he does is right and that he's perfectly in his rights to deal out this brand of justice- sorry, he's an angel. It's what they do. He's not a hero and he would never refer to himself as such, even if he does have an almost vigilante thing going on, if you take away the fact that he clearly enjoys giving people what's coming to them that paints him in a heavily negative light. He's not a bad person. He's not a good person. He doesn't pretend to be either. He's just Gabriel.
All of this, however, is part of his public persona, because it’s important that Gabriel keep his true feelings hidden and thus he does everything to avoid looking like he gives a damn until forced into the open. There's so much to him that it's almost impossible for one person to peel back the facades he puts up and that makes it hard for people to get close to him, due to the fact that he pretends to not care about anyone or anything and uses his sarcasm as a defense mechanism when people get too close to finding out the truth- Dean calls him on this in Hammer of the Gods, even noting it's something that they share (although, they have completely dissimilar reasons for sharing it- Gabriel uses his because he knows that if he doesn’t care, then he can’t be hurt). Getting past all of his defenses is something that just doesn't happen (except in rare cases), because anytime someone does, he slams the walls right back up again, although, by that time, he's probably already snapped and shown that he's affected and given himself away, anyway. He became a creature lower than his station, because that creature was what he needed to be- one who is actively involved in the lives of mortals, but one who delights in sheer amusement and little else. He drowns himself in distraction, dancing through life in a haze of mindless self-indulgence and meaningless pleasure. This is how he manages. This is how he deals with the fact that he turned tail and abandoned the people he cared about- by pretending he really doesn’t give a damn.
In a lot of ways, Gabriel is broken so deeply that he can become temperamental at the drop of a hat if you poke at his sore spots (and he has several). Say one triggering phrase and he’ll turn on you on a dime. Make one insinuation that gets to him and he’ll tear your throat out with his hands. Back him into a corner or trap him, and he becomes an emotional powder keg that flits between confidence and fear, but will always have a smartass remark to anything you say to him. Put him in a situation that he can’t win, and he starts to fall apart in subtle, little ways. Take him down a peg and he’ll claw the walls to get back on top or else get the heck away before the situation becomes untenable and if he can't get away, he'll do everything in his power to make sure he, at least, looks like he has some level of control. It’s very hard to crack him, because he’ll hide even the most painful of emotions, and every time he comes close to breaking, he swallows it down and covers it up with more cocky sarcasm. He’ll swallow down everything but anger- anger’s the only thing he’ll sustain and even then, he won’t sustain it for very long. He hates being seen at his weakest and will do anything not to give anyone the impression that he's cracking.
He's a coward in many ways. He ran from Heaven when he couldn't take it anymore, but didn't have the balls to actually Fall, so he took an alternative route and hid himself from his family. Rather than confronting Lucifer from the jump to protect his pagan god family, he tried to sneakily abduct Dean and Sam to keep Lucifer from ever needing to come and get them. He avoids confrontation and when he can't, he uses conjured proxies to fight his battles for him. He's horribly afraid of his family, both because he's afraid they'll kill him and because he's afraid that they'll see what he's become, look down on him in scorn, and just take him out, and he can't stand the thought of being looked down on and hated by the people he loves more than anything. He even tried to convince Kali to run away with him, as a way of avoiding the apocalypse, although he knew it wouldn’t really work. Despite his cowardice, he's not actually afraid of very many things, which has a lot to do with being an archangel and generally being more powerful than most things and even when frightened, he adamantly refuses to show terrified he is. You'd have to be stabbing him to death before he'll show his fear.
Gabriel's most obvious fatal flaw is own arrogance and overconfidence, while he can generally handle any threat, he has a tendency to miss the bigger picture and doesn't consider alternate means of attack, beyond the obvious, so when people get the jump on him, it's usually because they turned his tricks back on him and as soon as he thinks he has all the cards in a situation, the trap is already sprung. The Winchesters have pulled this tactic on him twice now and Kali pulls it on him later- the easiest way to lure Gabriel in is to make him think he's winning until the last second. He's not stupid. He's a product of an overinflated ego and a stubborn, pigheaded attitude that has him repeating mistakes, BECAUSE WHAT ARE THE CHANCES ANYONE'S GONNA PULL THAT AGAIN? REALLY?
His other fatal flaw is his love. Gabriel loves as intensely as Lucifer, and is completely driven by it. He Fell, because he couldn't watch his brothers killing each other, he would've manipulated two boys into destroying their lives and ending the world to end a war so he didn't have to deal with that pain anymore. He doesn't have the hatred or disdain that Lucifer has- just the love and the fear of rejection for not being capable of choosing one brother over the other and not being able to handle the constant infighting. Family is important to Gabriel and he needs one to function, although he acts like a lone wolf and is often seen on his own. His surrogate pagan family may have been just as bad about infighting and bickering as his real family, but they still provided him with the comfort he needed in a time of great upheaval. He's loyal, but his loyalty doesn't permanently choose sides. He furiously defends Lucifer and Michael and the rest of his family when Dean and Sam insult them and then defends humans and the gods to Lucifer later. He defends whoever needs to be defended in the moment. He's protective and defensive of the people he cares about- hurting or insulting them or anything of the sort is a surefire way to make him angry. Gabriel's love is unconditional. No matter what he says otherwise, he loves strongly and intensely to the point where the people he loves can hurt him, but they can't do anything to make him hate them, even if they wind up bickering, even if they wind up betraying each other, he's not capable of truly hating someone he once loved. While he treats people the same, he is still capable of immense compassion and sympathy and when it comes down to the wire, he'll desperately try to protect someone he loves- for example, the way he tried to convince Kali not to fight Lucifer, knowing that she’d end up dead. Even the fact that came out of hiding to protect the gods at all was a show of his compassion. He might try to take a cowardly way out to protect people, but he'll still protect them.
To an extent, he's started to see humans as an extension of his family, although it took him a long time to get to the point where he could outwardly admit it. They, like his brothers, were his Father's children and even though he, too, saw the same flaws that made Lucifer despise them and even punished them for those flaws, he embraced their good qualities, as well. He spent a great deal of time treating them like playthings, but when it counted, he eventually realized that there was so much good in them- so much that he didn't find in his brothers anymore. Humans had become, in his eyes, the ideals that he'd longed to see in his siblings again. That capacity for forgiveness, for undying love, even in the face of unspeakable betrayal- things he wasn't getting from his own family. Choosing humanity over his brothers couldn't feel like a betrayal, because, in a way, they were part of his family- even referring to them as "the new baby" to Lucifer.
Despite his need to defend whoever needs it at the time, Gabriel's not capable of actually killing his brothers, although he has no problem killing humans who deserve it. He could have easily killed Castiel to avoid having him expose him, but didn't. He would have probably let him go on his own, and his snide Oh am I? at Dean's demand that he release him was just him being annoyed that Dean was bossing him around. He may have threatened to shiv Michael and acted like he planned on doing the same to Lucifer if his older brother didn't back down (and this may have been all part of the game he was playing, another sad I don't care lie), but if he had any intentions of doing it, he wouldn't have made his attempt so obvious or would've taken Lucifer out when he had him down. He knows Lucifer- knows that Lucifer knows him. He likely chose the tactic he confronted Lucifer with, because it was the only way to get out without killing his brother- he would rather die, himself, or test the limits of Lucifer's mercy than stoop that low. In some ways it was a test to see if Lucifer was even capable of that much forgiveness- the same that Gabriel had found in humans- or if he would simply continue to fester under his own hatred. He chose to kill his own brother- a choice Gabriel would never have made were their roles reversed, but he likely felt that Lucifer deserved the chance to make the right choice. This is how Gabriel holds himself to a higher standard than the rest of his family. Yes, he's lower than dirt, because he slums it up and acts like a heathen, but he doesn't kill his family. He doesn't engage in apocalyptic hissy fits whenever he disagrees with something. He may be lower than a dog in their eyes, but he's better than that and he expects them to be too. More than anything, he wants them to look at themselves and see that they're all being idiots about everything. However, up until that moment with Lucifer, he was too scared to do so. As much of a cynic he is, as much as he knows that everything will never be the way it was before, he still has some hope that his family will get the fuck over themselves and actually try to make themselves better.
In the same vein, however, Gabriel is permitted to insult, threaten, or otherwise (non-fatally) harm any one of his siblings (or anyone he considers part of his family), but does not extend that right to anyone else. Doing so pisses him off- he gets annoyed at Dean for calling Michael and Lucifer “heavenly douchenozzles,” but later refers to his family to Kali as “winged assmonkeys” and calls Lucifer “a great big bag of dicks” to his face. They’re his family- he can do what he wants to with them, but no one else can. That’s his right and his alone as a brother. Gabriel doesn’t have the same archangel biases that Michael and Lucifer have- all the angels are his family- but while he might play the irritating older brother to lesser angels, it’s Michael and Lucifer he’s closest to- Lucifer, especially. It’s for that reason that Lucifer is the brother he’s the most afraid of and the one he probably loves most, although he’d never say as much. He was Lucifer’s protégé, everything he knows, he learned from him, even if he put his own spin on things. A knife through the heart, a choice that Lucifer never would’ve agreed with, and having to look in the eyes of his own brother as he twisted the knife into his chest can’t change the fact that he owes so much of himself to his older brother and that nothing will ever make him stop loving him. In fact, he spends his last moments clinging to his brother for dear life, even through the utter betrayal and devastation in his eyes. Despite the fact that Gabriel would never stop loving Lucifer after the fact, that doesn’t mean he isn’t upset that it ended like that- knowing it would happen and feeling it happen are two different things. He’s furious about it, but he’s furious about a lot of things his family does- they’re all idiots and he’s the only sane one, but he still loves them. He picked up unconditional love from his Daddy, but, as he’d put it, he actually practices it.