Happy Holidays, Petimetrek!

[goe_mod]

Professional Ascendants

PAIRING/PLOT BUNNY/RATING CHOICE THREE: Anathema finally meets Sarah Young (Adam's old sister) it could go like this: -S: Hello, I'm Sarah, nice to meet you. -A: Hi Sarah, I'm gay

Summary: The Apocalypse has been averted. Anathema Device has burned the Further Nice and Accurate Prophecies. Sarah Young barely noticed the whole thing.

Neither of them are satisfied to leave it at that.

—

Tags: Anathema Device/Sarah Young (Good Omens), Anathema Device & Newt Pulsifer, Sarah Young & Adam Young, Anathema Device, Sarah Young, Adam Young, Newt Pulsifer, Crowley (good omens), Agnes Nutter, post-book, aftermath, getting together, relationship negotiation, bisexual character, questioning character, queer awakening, coming out, witchcraft, art, prophecy, self-discovery, Lower Tadfield, road trip

—

A/N So I was excited to write about Sarah and, well, the fic took on significantly more plot than intended. I hope you enjoy it, petimetrek.

Note: the Mods have split this into two posts.




The second most important fire in Anathema Device’s life took place on the day after the world failed to end.* Newt held her hand and she thought good riddance as an entire unread book of prophecies went up in smoke. She was free of responsibility now, free of ancestors watching over her shoulder, free to do whatever she wanted.

[*The first was, of course, the fire that killed her greatest ancestor, Agnes Nutter, and blew up a small town.]

Not once did she look at the horizon.

At the time it had seemed appropriate, like a slightly anticlimactic but ultimately relieving ending to a story that could have ended in apocalypse. But real life, unfortunately, tends to scoff at narrative conventions, and people’s lives keep going even after it seems all should have been neatly tied up and finished with an epilogue.

And so it was with Anathema. Life continued. The next morning, she woke up and made breakfast and tried to ignore the thump of delivered newspapers occurring sporadically from six-o-clock onward, with the heaviest flow between seven and seven forty-five. Whatever happened at the airfield, and whether she remembered it or not, there were no prophecies to decipher. No signs to look for. No reason to spend all morning pouring through papers.

Newt ate breakfast and visibly jumped at every paper. If he’s not going to bring them in, I’m not either, Anathema told herself, and returned to her toast.

And fhe who faw the ende of the ende muft reade the reft of the ftory fhe began, said a voice in her mind that sounded suspiciously like Agnes Nutter, or at least what Anathema had always imagined Agnes Nutter to sound like. Sometimes this voice had recited relevant prophecies at the appropriate moment. Other times it just provided strange interpretations of current events. Anathema sometimes fancied it was Agnes, speaking from beyond the grave. She was certainly judgmental enough.

She and Newt cracked at the same time. “We ought to at least bring them inside,” she blurted, just as Newt exclaimed, “Well they’re no good on the step, are they?”

Anathema smiled. Newt smiled back.

They ran for the door.

It takes a single person approximately three hours and ten minutes to sift through an entire day's worth of newspapers for unexplained phenomena. Two people going through a day's worth of newspapers together takes about two hours, and includes frequent pauses to remark things like: “Oh, this is strange!” or “Does that look like an extra nipple to you?” or “I’ve never seen such horrible hair!”

After a week of this, they’d got their time down to an hour and a half.

The problem was, neither she nor Newt had much to look for. "Signs of witchcraft," Newt said, but Anathema gestured to herself and the cottage to say here we are, now what are you going to do about it?, and after that, his determination was somewhat shaken. Anathema, for her part, had no obscure prophecies to check the phenomena against, and so they held little more significance than an opportunity to say, "huh, that's weird," before moving on.

She almost cancelled half the subscriptions, but couldn’t quite bring herself to make the calls.

Anathema and Newt sat at the table of Jasmine Cottage and stared at each other, and at the pile of newspapers, and at the extra minutes left on the clock. The years seemed to stretch ahead, each one a complete mystery. Decades, maybe, that Anathema had never expected to live.

Newt was getting restless, and spoke of going back to London to check on Shadwell. He hadn’t taken to Lower Tadfield, even with the optimal microclimate. He’d been suggesting that Anathema should go with him, but when she suggested back, “No, I don’t think so,” he hadn’t pushed it. He was asking himself the same thing Anathema was: how do you move on from saving the world?

Anathema did a lot of crosswords, and read, and couldn’t find a point in either. Here she was, the last descendant of Agnes Nutter, with a theodolite and a lifetime spent deciphering and absolutely no idea what to do with it all. Even so, it took her almost a week before she discovered the source of the problem.

She’d taken a pile of useless papers to the bins out back of the cottage, which she’d eventually haul to a recycling plant. On the way back, her toe caught on a bit of charred stick and it hit her, all at once.

Well fhite, she thought, in Agnes's voice. Ye fouldn’t have burned that booke, Anathema.

—

Anathema was nothing if not resourceful, and immediately put her mind to the problem of getting the Further Prophecies back.

Someone had tried to wipe her memory of the almost-Apocalypse, and they'd nearly done it, too. Maybe they would have succeeded if Anathema had not been so very determined to remember. As it was, her memories of the day were like dragonflies. Present, beautiful, and very, very fast. If she grabbed for one at random, they would certainly dart out of her grasp. Luckily, Anathema had a good understanding of dragonflies and the materials— in the form of a deep understanding of the Nice and Accurate Prophecies— to build a net.

Then she recruited Newt to check her, and the two sat in the sun-filled room of Jasmine Cottage catching dragonflies.

They remembered that:

1. Agnes had gotten them into the airfield, with the help of Anathema and a thick stick.

2. Newt did not really work with computers, and had somehow managed to break all the airfield's technology just by thinking about fixing it. This had probably prevented nuclear war.

3. There had been some motorcyclists that might have been* the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, except one was woman-shaped.

[*There was minor controversy over the validity of this point.

"It would make sense if they were the horsemen," Anathema said. "Armageddon, you know."

"No it wouldn't," said Newt. "The physical embodiments of war and death and things like that don't make sense at all."]

4. Newt's employer, Sargent Shadwell, had been there, along with his neighbor, Madame Tracy. Newt wasn't sure why or how. He'd associated the two so much with the inside of their apartment building that their presence in Lower Tadfield made even less sense than the presence of genuine representatives from Heaven and Hell.

5. Which had also been there. Or at least a few of them. A supposed angel and demon had yelled at other, more powerful, supernatural beings. Anathema thought this was rather promising.

6. The world had not ended.

7. Someone had been at the center of it. The "he" Agnes had written about, the powerful entity that had played with their memories to begin with, the person who had begun and ended the end of the world. This person's identity was especially hard to pin down. But, Anathema reasoned, you didn't have to remember something to puzzle it out. If you had a list of phenomena and an idea of who'd been at the airfield that day, it was possible to make an educated guess.

By late afternoon, Anathema was certain the someone was Adam Young.

—

Sarah Young had done nothing whatsoever to cause or avert the Apocalypse. This was, in large part, because no one had told her the Apocalypse was happening.

Instead, she had spent most of the day in her room, listening to eco-goth bands on CD and painting a large canvas propped in the corner. If anyone had asked, she would have told them that she had felt an oppressive and persistent foreboding all through the afternoon and evening, and then a remarkable sense of relief that lasted until Adam was dragged home from whatever trouble he’d gotten in. Then she would have asked what sort of a question the interviewer thought that was.

The foreboding manifested in her painting, a dark blue sky with a moon that had come out looking significantly more like a skull than she’d intended. In the darkest corner of the night, yellow eyes peered out of the shadows, watching, waiting. Sarah had finished it over the past week, and it sat, uncomfortably ominous, at the foot of her bed.

Sarah’s room was her sanctuary. She didn’t get on with her family. Her father was always complaining about how things were better in the old days, before Sarah had been born. Her mother was a quiet woman who had adored Sarah's art the whole time she was a child, but now got a pinched look and sighed a lot when Sarah talked about painting, and kept suggesting Sarah look into something more practical. They both hated her short haircut, and neither of them knew, or would probably ever believe, that Sarah was pretty sure she liked girls just as much as she liked boys.

Both of her parents liked Adam better.

Adam had been born when Sarah was eight, and she had felt like a footnote ever since. Supposedly this was common among older siblings who suddenly had to contend with a baby unwittingly taking up all the parents' time and attention. The problem with Adam was that it felt entirely witting. There was something uncanny about him, and the way things always turned out in his favor. Sarah Young was eight years older than her younger brother and her parents had never taken her side on anything.

And Adam was a right terror, besides, always causing trouble with the Them (the dumbest name for a group) and getting into places he shouldn't. These days he'd been up in arms about the Spanish Inquisition of all things, and getting all the details dreadfully wrong.

Most younger siblings had to go through school in the shadow of their elders; Sarah had spent the last several years meeting teachers who knew her as "Adam Young's Older Sister.”

—

“I’ve got some questions,” Anathema said one evening, after a long day of not finding the Antichrist.

Newt looked up with the expression of someone sitting for a test he hadn’t studied for. She rolled her eyes. “First, why’d you make me burn that damn book?”

“I didn’t make you do anything,” Newt said. “At least, I don’t think I did. I didn’t think I was the sort who could make people do anything, let alone someone like you.”

He had a point. Some of the winds of righteous anger dropped out of Anathema’s sails. “Well it was your idea, wasn’t it?” she demanded. “What on earth possessed you to suggest it!?”

Newt looked almost offended. “You were this close to being able to live your life without thinking about what Agnes Nutter saw and didn’t see. You saved the world, there’s no sense you should live the rest of your life looking through every newspaper for phenomena, is there?”

Anathema huffed. That’s what she’d thought at the time. It had made sense. “But that’s the only life I know how to live,” she said. “I’m a descendant. I’m a Device.”

“You’re not, though. You’re a person.”

“That’s my last name, Newt.”

“Oh. Right.” Newt frowned. “The way I see it, Agnes spent her whole life looking towards the future. All your ancestors spent the lives in the past, looking backwards at what she’d written and trying to make sense of things that had already happened. You, Anathema, you’re the first one with a chance to live in the present.”

Anathema grimaced. “I don’t think I like it.”

Newt was about to suggest that maybe they could do something, possibly in the bedroom, that would make the present more enjoyable, but Anathema wasn't done.

“Listen.” She reached over to her radio and turned it on. Smooth jazz slipped like liquid out of the speakers and metaphorically puddled on the floor. It was very smooth jazz. She changed the station to the news, where a reporter spoke about an inexplicable power success all across London, where everyone’s electricity was working so well their lights wouldn’t turn off and their blenders began whirring on their own. “What do you make of this?” she demanded.*

[*This was the work of a certain demon known as Crowley who, during a moment of drunken panic, had decided that the opposite of a power failure was both a hilarious concept and proper demonic activity. It certainly had upset a lot of people who had been trying to sleep, but no one was seriously harmed.]

“I didn’t touch anything electronic today, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“No. I know that. Well, I don’t. Which is my point!” Her voice pitched wildly in desperation. “What if it’s important? What if there’s something we should be doing? Should we stay here? Evacuate? Does it even mean anything?”

Newt grabbed her hands. At some point they had begun shaking, and now he was holding them still. “Do you know what normal people do when things like this happen?” he asked.

Anathema shook her head.

“They listen to the news to find out what’s happening, and then they make their own choices,” Newt said. “Well, sometimes the newspeople say to do certain things, but even then it’s a choice whether to listen or not.”

“I used,” Anathema said, “to think I was good in a crisis. That might have all been Agnes.”

Newt had nothing to say to that.

—

The next day, in the mostly empty Young residence, there was a knock at the door.

Sarah didn't hear it, because she was upstairs, painting again. This new day felt hopeful, so she'd begun work on something lighter than the skull-moon. Right now it looked like a few criss-crossing lines and faint blotches, but she hoped it would become an aerial view of a town, any town.

The knock came again, louder, and then there was some rather frantic bell-ringing.

Sarah heard that. She waited another thirty seconds in case anyone else was home, but they weren't, and the person at the door didn't go away. So she sighed and dropped her paintbrush in a mug of dirty water and went downstairs to open the door.

There was a girl standing on the stoop. A few years older than Sarah, maybe, but a complete stranger. Her long dark hair had purple streaks dyed in, and sharp green eyes watched her out of brown skin. She was wearing a long green coat with deep pockets, and there were crystals and odd symbols around her neck, which Sarah didn’t think to take for witchcraft. As a semi-professional, Sarah approved of the color palette.

“Hullo,” she said. “Can I help you?” As a greeting, it seemed somehow lacking.

The girl’s mouth opened slightly. Her eyes flicked from Sarah’s face to the paint-stained shoulders of her smock, to something in the air just beside or behind Sarah’s head. “Ah,” she said. “Anathema Device.” She extended a hand.

“Sarah Young,” Sarah said, taking it. Anathema’s skin was warm, her hands ink-stained and rough. She was odd, Sarah thought. In the sort of way her father would hate.

Sarah liked her at once.

—

Anathema Device had spent her entire life learning witchcraft, deciphering prophecies, and preparing for the world to end with a sort of grim-jawed optimism that kept her from despair. Not one of those things had given her any indication that girls, and this girl in particular, could be so captivating.

Sarah Young, with her storm-grey eyes and her painter’s smock, tight around broad shoulders. With her cropped brown hair and the aura around her head, deep blue like the night sky, frayed at the edges but vast and quiet. Sarah Young was beautiful.

I wonder, Anathema thought, if this is what it’s like, being gay.

Ye Dumbe-aff, Agnes laughed in her head.

—

When it seemed clear Anathema was not about to explain anything, Sarah cleared her throat. “Are you new in town?”

Anathema drew her hand back quickly and shoved it in one of her coat pockets. “Sort of. I’ve been here a few weeks but I haven’t ventured out much. I’m the one renting Jasmine Cottage.”

“Oh, that’s you! I’ve heard people say you were an artist*.” Sarah’s chest felt light. Despite the scenery, Lower Tadfield was not what anyone would call a hotbed of artistic achievement. She’d love to have a friend with similar interests.

[*Sarah had actually heard both sets of rumors: that the woman in Jasmine Cottage was an artist, and that she was a witch. She dismissed the second out of a mixture of rationality and hope.]

“Er. That’s what I’ve been telling people, I suppose. I’m really more of an occultist.” Anathema bit her lip. “And I need a favor.”

Sarah found she was holding her breath.

“Do you know where I can find Adam?”

And there it went. The friend, the vague notions of artistic companionship, everything. Sarah could probably move to America and everyone would still know Adam first. “He’s not home,” she said.

“Oh, dear.” Anathema was back to staring at a point just over Sarah’s shoulder. Right past her.

“He’s hardly ever home, and no, I don’t know where he is. Look around the fields and such, I’m sure you’ll find him.”

“I’ve tried that—” Anathema began, but Sarah closed the door before she could finish.

—

Perhaps it was for the best. As soon as she’d mentioned Adam, Sarah’s aura had recoiled and shrunk into itself. Anathema supposed that might be the consequence of living in the same house as the boy who'd nearly destroyed the world, whether Sarah realized it or not.

Or perhaps it was for the worst, because now Anathema was thinking about how much she'd like Sarah to open that door and do... something. Offer to help track down Adam, perhaps. Confirm, somehow, that Anathema wasn't just imagining a gay awakening. Bisexual awakening? Queer awakening, certainly, as long as it was truly an awakening at all. It wasn't as though Anathema had been unaware of the variety of human sexuality before— she'd met quite a lot of witches, after all— she'd just never bothered to consider it for herself. Agnes had seen her sleeping with one man and that had been good enough for her.

Agnes probably confirmed the awakening in the second volume. That was the only way to be sure.

Anathema almost rapped at the door again, but no. She needed a plan. She needed the book, a long think, and perhaps a plate of biscuits, and then she could try her chances again with Sarah Young.

The rest of the day brought her no closer to finding Adam. None of her traditional witchcraft worked, probably because he was literally the Antichrist. Neither did hapless wandering through the areas he might be. Tired and sullen, she returned to Jasmine Cottage, only to find Newt shoving his few possessions into a cardboard box.

“You’re leaving?”

“Well,” Newt said. He shuffled awkwardly. “We had a fight. Means it’s over, doesn’t it?” He had always suspected he’d been living on borrowed time.

Anathema huffed. “I have no idea what it means. Either we’re over, or I tell you you’re being stupid and you fall in my arms. Both options were suitably dramatic for Anathema to have seen them in novels and movies. “But I’ve got no idea which one.”

“Okay.” Newt blinked at her. “I wouldn’t mind that second one. Are you really going to—?”

“I don’t know,” Anathema snapped. “I would’ve known if I had Agnes around to tell me.”

“She didn’t tell you everything, though, did she?” Newt made one last valiant attempt to swing her to his side. “Most of the decisions you were making on your own anyway, or you based on a prophecy you got wrong.”

“But I always had a direction! And I knew that none of it was going to matter, not after the world ended!”

“Fine, then.” Newt crossed his eyes. “Assuming the world was going to end in another three years, what would you want?”

Anathema was silent.

“Anathema.”

“I don’t know.”

Newt sighed. “I want to move past the Apocalypse,” he said. “At least for now, I can’t keep rehashing it all. I guess I’m leaving.” He picked up a box. The bottom fell out.

“Leave tomorrow,” she offered. “Let’s not end on bad terms, at least. Besides, those roads are dangerous. People drive without their lights on all the time.”

—

“Someone was looking for you,” Sarah said that evening, as she and Adam cleared plates off the table. Adam was rushing it as usual, and would have broken at least a glass if not for his unfathomable good luck.

“I was out with the Them all day,” Adam said. “Don’t ‘spect it was anything important.”

“Well I ‘spect she thought it was. Who was she?”

“She?” Adam wrinkled his nose. “What, the witch?”

“Don’t be cruel. She said she was an artist.”

“Nah, she’s a proper witch.” Adam slid a plate across the counter. It skittered along the edge and then dropped into the sink without so much as a clatter. “Has witch magazines an’ goes looking for ley-lines and such. Why’d she want me?”

Sarah bristled. It wasn’t even that those things sounded so terrible (though what a “witch magazine” entailed was beyond her), it was that Adam had known them first. “She said she wanted a favor,” she answered coldly. “I didn’t ask what. You can be your own secretary.”

To her surprise, Adam’s face grew dark. “I’m not doing favors,” he said. For a moment he looked grim and old and terrifying. Then she blinked and he was tossing spoons into glasses without missing one. “Don’t worry,” he said lightly. “She’ll have forgotten all about it by now, I’d imagine. Can you finish up? I’ve gotta go feed Dog.”

No, Sarah almost said, but the word got lost between her brain and her mouth, and she didn’t remember it until Adam had run out the door, Dog jumping at his heels.

—

“So what’s the plan for tomorrow, then?” Newt asked, that night. They were sleeping on opposite sides of Anathema’s bed, because there was only one bed. “Back to looking for Adam?”

Anathema blinked at her pink pillowcase and tried to think of any reason she should be searching for Adam. She had been, certainly, but it all seemed rather pointless now. “He can’t help me,” she said slowly. “I think I’ll try someone else.”

—

Sarah put her unfinished street map painting aside and fitted a new canvas onto her easel. Then she sat down with a sketchbook because, while she had been known to jump in with pencils and then paints and hope for the best, the idea she was working through was too vague and too important not to plan out. Her first sketch was a face, Anathema’s, as well as she could remember. But that was no good, because faces were impossible. Sarah avoided portraiture if she could possibly help it. Landscapes were more her speed. Landscapes didn’t care who you were related to, and they certainly didn’t require you to draw noses.

But Anathema, even the vague artistic notion of Anathema, was not a landscape. She was too precise for that. Besides, it felt a bit creepy painting someone she’d only spoken to once and then slammed the door on.

So Sarah decided to go even more precise. To zoom in until the meaning was there and the context wasn’t. Anathema had worn some type of crystal around her neck, hadn’t she? Deep green in a gold setting, with an irregular cut, as though it’d been made for magic, not jewelry.*

[*Actually it had been made as part of a jewelry line that had been designed to look magical but lacked any supernatural significance whatsoever. Except for the green quartz pendant, that is, which had done something right and taken off among actual witches. They found it especially useful for focusing divination spells and convincing strangers of their occult-ness. Anathema wore it for both reasons.]

After half a dozen frustrating sketches from different angles and three completely scribbled out attempts, Sarah wrote fifteen minutes of notes that went in circles about whether or not Anathema was an artist, a witch, both, or neither. Then she drew another three sketches from angles she liked even less than the first ones, and thought through three-quarters of an imaginary conversation with Adam where he explained how he knew Anathema and offered to introduce them properly. Then Sarah went to bed. That’s how the artistic process worked.

Before she fell asleep, she’d imagined seven-fifths of an imaginary conversation with Anathema, where she learned that Anathema was both witch and artist and had been using Adam as an excuse to meet Sarah. Then she imagined two-thirds of a different one where Anathema denied all that and chided Sarah for being unrealistic. For some reason, that Anathema sounded particularly like Mr. Young.

—

The next morning didn’t so much dawn as go from black to grey to slightly lighter grey. Rain fell steadily, a warm summer rain. The sort that made you want to step out and splash in puddles. It was not ideal for moving, but Newt said he’d better go anyway. It wasn’t as though Dick Turpin would be in any danger from the elements.

“I’ll probably be at Shadwell’s,” Newt said for the third time. “You know, in case you want to find me.” He was damp from running back and forth to the car an unnecessary number of times.

“I’ll probably be here,” Anathema replied. She was flipping through a book on divination, because her plans for the day consisted of heavy witchcraft. She wasn’t sure what she felt about Newt leaving. He seemed to think it was very final. For Anathema, as long as the world existed, nothing seemed very final.

“Well, I’m off then.”

Anathema gave him a narrow smile and listened as he started his car and drove off. The cottage was silent except for the whir of a small fan, the sound of rain on the roof, and Anathema scrawling notes and turning pages. It was something of a relief.

At least until she heard another engine rumble past the cottage.

—

If anyone asked, it was entirely a coincidence that Sarah Young drove by Jasmine Cottage on her way to work. She had a part-time job as a secretary in an office building the next town over, which was nowhere near the cottage. Her car, which she’d acquired at university, was a mustard yellow Volkswagen Beetle with a dented left bumper. Mr. Young disapproved of it, which was expected, but also made it better. Today it had been recruited only to arrive at work as usual, and it meant nothing that Sarah had taken the scenic route. It meant less that she was now slowing as she passed the cottage, peering out the rain-splattered windows in case Anathema was around.

It did not usually rain in Lower Tadfield at this time of year. In fact, the drought warnings had been getting more and more severe the last few weeks. Even Adam had started being concerned when Mr. Young had grumbled about it at dinner.

There was a light on inside the cottage, and a very new looking bicycle leaned against the wall, alarmingly exposed to the elements. Sarah could practically see rust forming on the frame.

The front door opened. Anathema peered out. “Hello?” she called. “Can I help you with something?”

Sarah nearly drove away on the spot. Instead she cracked open the window and called back, “It’s Sarah Young! I think you might want to pull your bicycle out of the rain!”

Anathema looked at Sarah, and then looked at the bike. “It’s alright!” she yelled. “ I don’t think it’s really my bike, and I’m running experiments to see how protected it is!”

“It doesn’t look very protected to me!”

“I mean it’s been touched by an angel,” Anathema explained. She leaned forward and water dripped in her eyes. “I’m not sure anything can hurt it!”

Sarah laughed. “I didn’t think occultists had much to do with angels!”

“Desperate times!” Anathema wiped water off her face. “What’re you doing here anyway? Do you want to come in?”

Sarah did, in fact, want to visit with Anathema, but the rain was getting stronger and she’d be late if she didn’t start driving again soon. Besides, Anathema would probably just ask about Adam again, and Sarah would spend the rest of the day disappointed. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ve got work.”

“Oh, alright.” Anathema waved. Sarah rolled up her window as Anathema said something else, and didn’t roll it down again to ask her to repeat. She drove off with a splatter of mud. A bike touched by an angel, she thought. That’s a new one.

—

Anathema spent the rest of the day working on her spell. Her hands were covered in ink and chalk and blood, and her knees ached from chalking complicated symbols on the floor. Her house was pungent with incense, which didn’t do anything mystical but smelled nice and helped her concentrate.

Just as the sun was disappearing below the horizon, a tiny piece of information slipped into her head, cold like it had come out of the rain. She turned it over in her mind. It was an address.

“Well fuck,” she said.

Next - Part 2!