"Oh, no!" Gabriel shuddered theatrically. "No, you're right, the fashions those centuries were the worst. Less discriminatory," he added, thinking of the layers upon layers of powder and rouge even the men had worn, "but awful. I never was able to get it confirmed, but I always suspected one of Lucifer's lackeys were responsible for all that. It'd explain everything. Those wigs alone ..."

He made a face. "Did you ever wear one? Can you imagine how heavy and uncomfortable and hot they must get? The things people endure for the sake of 'fashion' has always amazed me, but those wigs. Give me a cowboy hat any day."

And then there was the make-up, and the fact that it was, quite literally, lethal. Yes, almost certainly the fault of someone in Hell.

~~~

"If he's good he's good," Dad said tranquilly. "Never got this idea people seem to have, that broken can't be good. Knocked around, stained, maybe, but that's what experience is. Nothin' wrong with a few scars, a few trip-ups. Everyone has 'em. Some get 'em worse than others. Some people can't even tell they'd got 'em. Those're the ones you've gotta pity."

He shrugged as he drank, a rolling shrug which wasn't so much graceful as loose. Not uncaring, but unworried by the idea of messing up. "Reckon people put too much stock in what's happened past. Gotta learn from mistakes, but not so much you forget that the future's the excitin' part."

His grey eyes gleamed. "Anything can happen, in the future. Anything."