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go_exchangeRecipient: ImprobableDreams900
Title: Marked in Clay
Rating: M
Summary: “We’ll be reassigning you to Soul Intake for the duration, since they’re going to be a bit overloaded down there.”
“I thought it was only the angels and the humans who they’ve ah….”
“Lain with,” Dagon shudders. “Disgusting. No, word is God’s going to make a show of it. Really teach them all a lesson. Doubt there will be many of them left at all, after.”
“I see, Lord.”
“Cheer up, Crawly,” Dagon says. “This is a victory for our side.”
“I’m very pleased, Lord. Be there with bells on.”
.
Crawly and Aziraphale run into each other in the first city on Earth. It might be a nice time, if it weren’t for all the blessed Watchers running around ruining everything.
Tags: mild body horror, injury, blood, burns, references to the Fall, disassociation, historical setting, ancient sumer, sumerian language, akkadian language, Corporate Heaven and Hell, Crowley was not a Starmaker but he did make one (1) star, predominantly book omens but please forgive my sins if something show slips in i tried my best, major character injury, holy water, demonic true forms, he/him pronouns for Dagon, references to the Flood
Note on the language(s) used: For the majority of non-English words, I have used Sumerian, which was spoken between about 3000 and 1900 BCE (after which it was used as a ‘classical language’ in the same way Latin is used today). However, while robust, our record of Sumerian is not complete and there were times when I struggled to find the words/concepts I needed. At these times, I either simply used English, or I chose to use Akkadian. Akkadian, spoken between 2500 and 600 BCE, was the language that Sumerian speaking peoples would eventually begin speaking. I have tried, to the best of my ability, to use Akkadian words in places where they make sense with respect to patterns of linguistic change. For example, Crawly is called šar ānatim by a group of apprentices, this is an Akkadian phrase based upon the title for a King. The originating phrase (šar kiššatim) would not be used for kings for 1000 years after the time of this fic, and the root of the phrase is ‘cultivator or gardener’, so I have hypothesized a semantic drift from a more informal use as ‘gardener’ to ‘groundskeeper’ to ‘master of the lands’ to ‘lord’ to ‘king’. Crawly happens to be living in the very earliest stages of this linguistic shift.
(to any scholars of Akkadian or Sumerian, please forgive me my grammatical sins. amen.)
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
Sᴜᴘᴇʀɴᴀᴛᴜʀᴀʟ Bᴇɪɴɢs
God (That Fucker, respectful)
Aziraphale (An angel, and cuneiform enthusiast; Principality)
Utu, nee Shemeshal (An angel, and human enthusiast; Principality Watcher)
Two Unnamed Angels (Angels)
Crawly, nee [Redacted] (A Fallen Angel who still has some concerns he’d like to speak to management about)
Aka Manah, nee [Redacted] (A Fallen Angel)
Dagon, nee [Redacted] (A Fallen Angel and Lord of Hell)
Tirry (An imp; Hell’s Front Desk Receptionist)
Hᴜᴍᴀɴs (ᴀɴᴅ ᴏᴛʜᴇʀ ʜᴜᴍᴀɴ-ᴀᴅᴊᴀᴄᴇɴᴛ ʙᴇɪɴɢs)
Meshkiangasher (A King, the son of Utu)
The King-mum (A consort of Utu)
Emmerkar (A prince, the son of Meshkiangasher)
Namkuzu (An astronomer’s apprentice)
Zuqaqip (An astronomer’s apprentice)
Puabi (An astronomer’s apprentice)
102 minutes ago
His feathers are burning.
Ash fills his mouth and he’s coughing, but he can’t seem to clear it away. It sticks to his tongue, to his teeth, to his throat and his lungs and his-
Something touches his shoulders, lifting him and turning him onto his side. The ash flows from his mouth in a wave of copper-taste and he realizes it wasn’t ash at all, but he can’t quite manage to wrangle his thoughts into anything that makes sense. The touch on his shoulders slides away, down one arm and to his hand.
It lingers there, barely more than a brush of sensation, but with each passing moment, it burns more and Crawly cannot help the pained noise that escapes him.
The touch vanishes and Crawly is left floating. The fire has reached his scales now. He can hear them popping, tearing, rending themselves from the rest of him.
When he begins to cry, the tears burn like acid.
147 days ago
The stars are brightest at the very top of the ziggurat, but the astronomers were only allowed up there when the King called for them. Naturally, Crawly spends most of his nights atop the white temple, a clay tablet on his knee, stylus in hand, marking out the positions of the stars as they march across the sky.
He likes it up here. The stone of the temple below him radiates heat collected from the blazing sun during the day and the bustle of the crowds is too far away to snag his attention. Cities are new. Very new. Uruk is the first in all the world and Crawly is of two minds about the whole idea; on one hand, tempting became a lot easier when people were concentrated into little groups[1], but on the other hand he’s noticed a disturbing tendency towards people organizing themselves into little religious knots as the city grows.
Little religious knots are all well and good[2], but they do make Crawly’s job quite a bit more difficult.
Crawly stretches out a bit further on the warm stones of the roof, shifting his woolen cloak back a bit so his bare shoulders touch the rough stone. With one hand he sweeps his long hair over one shoulder onto his chest, dark as the night. He wonders if there’s a way to capture a few of the stars and weave them into the plait. Top tier temptation material right there.
“Why are we up here, šar ānatim?”
Crawly groans.
“We are not meant to be up here. I am here because it is my job to map the stars for the honored King Meshkiangasher,” he is lucky the humans haven’t discovered sarcasm yet, because he’s never quite been able to clear it from his voice entirely. “I told you lot to stay in the workshop and keep at, er, whatever it is you do.”
A quiet shuffling noise from the edge of the roof.
Young voices murmuring to each other, clearly trying to stay unobtrusive.
Crawly throws his arm across his face.
“Fine,” he snaps. “Get up here.”
“Thank you, šar ānatim!”
“Yeah! Thank you!”
When he uncovers his eyes, three of the youngest royal astronomers are gathered in a little clump just outside of arm’s reach. Their ringleader, a tousle-headed mop of a teen by the name of Namkuzu, stares at him with wide eyes. He’s still got the sharp bruise on his chin from the heavy hand of the last master of the astronomers.
Something dark and unpleasant uncurls in Crawly’s chest when he sees it.
The last master had left the city in a hurry.
“Well?” he asks the trio when it becomes clear their plans extend only to staring at him.
The one on the left nudges Namkuzu. Their hair is strangely light for the denizens of Uruk, not unlike the King’s favored wife, though Crawly knows she is barren, as far as the official record shows. Namkuzu visibly steels himself, catching Crawly’s eyes and swallowing hard before he speaks.
“You know so much, šar ānatim, we wish to know the things you do.”
Crawly doesn’t speak. He’s found that humans dislike long silences and will often rush to fill them[3].
The fair-haired one nudges Namkuzu again.
“Please,” he says. “It’s just that none of us are- are- well, anyone at all. The King is good and he is kind to us, but he is the son of Utu and we are nothing at all compared to his Light.” Another nudge, this time a bit more frantic. “Which is, of course, as it should be. But, we cannot serve him if we do not know things and we want to serve him well, as he deserves.”
Crawly sighs. It’s always the same story. Humans want other humans to notice them or not notice them or remember them forever without ever meeting them or whatever it might be. It’s exhausting, if he’s being honest[4].
“You really want the king to notice you?” he asks.
All three nod. Crawly shudders. It’s not that he has an issue with Kings as a concept[5], it’s this one in particular.
The humans aren’t mistaken when they say that Meshkiangasher is the son of Utu[6]. It’s just that nothing good ever comes to humans who’ve caught Heaven or Hell’s attention, Crawly thinks, and he’d really prefer not to be caught in the crossfire.
Unfortunately, Meshkiangasher has taken a keen interest in the stars and often calls on the royal astronomer. Crawly spends hours at a time in attendance, sketching and wiping away diagrams in soft clay, eyes fixed on the materials to avoid the way divinity spills from Meshkiangasher like honey from overladen comb. He traces arcs across the heavens with his hands, talking about the constellations the people of the valley have named and how they align with the seasons and the crops[7]. His fingers are caked in dry reddish powder and his eyes ache with the strain of staring into the dark of the night by the time the sun begins to rise and Crawly is released from his duty for a few blissful hours.
The point to all this being that Crawly can’t quite wrap his head around wanting to be valuable to a king, but he does know enough about humans to expect it from them.
“Why?” he asks the gathered apprentices.
They exchange looks and Crawly expects that Namkuzu will be the one to speak again, but this time it’s the fair-haired one—Crawly thinks their name is Zuqaqip—who steps forward.
“I want to tell stories,” they say. Their eyes shine in the dim light of the stars that wheel above them. “I want to learn the stories of the Gods and I want to understand those that have yet to be told. They’re all up there and I want to be…. To be the one to understand[8].”
Silence falls around them, even the constant kree-krik of the river insects fading away to nothing.
“And you two?” Crawly manages to croak out after a moment.
Namkuzu shrugs. “I’m nobody,” he says, “I don’t want to be nobody forever and the King’s favor can change that.”
The final one, a dark slip of a girl named Puabi, shrugs without meeting Crawly’s eyes. “I like the stars,” she mutters.
Something in Crawly’s chest lurches.
“Yeah,” he says. “Me too.” Puabi’s eyes dart up to him, snagging on his own momentarily before she looks away again.
Crawly gestures for them to get settled and they select pillows from his stash, setting them up in a little semicircle around his own. When they’re all seated, Crawly leans forward, tapping his fingertips on his chin.
“So,” he says, “tell me what you know of anmul[9].”
90 minutes ago
Someone is talking to him, but he can’t understand, can’t hear through the water in his ears.
He tries to smell them, flicking his tongue out weakly in hopes of catching a clue about what was happening to him.
Copper.
Ash.
His tongue sticks to his teeth, too dry to peel itself free. He can’t taste, can’t smell, can’t can’t can’t
Something jostles him, just slightly, and the voice returns, sharper this time.
“Leave him,” it says.
No no nononononono. Crawly doesn’t want to be left. He tries to tell them this, tries to beg for them to stay at his side because he hurts and he’s weak and he knows, with every hardscrabble instinct baked into the crumbling clay at his core, that if he’s left alone he will be nothing more than dust.
He wants to beg. Wants to plead. But he hadn’t begged when the firmament fell out from under him and he hadn’t begged as the sulfur closed over his head and he hadn’t begged when-
“What?” Another voice. “Why? It’s just a-“
“Leave. Him.”
A rush of air (ohohitburnspleasepleasemakeitstopohSatan) and Crawly realizes the second person has shifted closer.
“Don’t see what’s so wrong with having a look, I am the king, after all. I can look if I want.”
Skin on his, touching, pressing, rending.
Crawly screams.
100 years ago
Crawly had told Hell that the reason he encouraged the human fascination with the stars was that they couldn’t seem to look up for longer than a few moments without thinking of stories. They tell each other about the gods and the roads to the afterlife and the way the bright stripe of stars across the sky is a river and the waters of birth and the gods’ smile and the celestial herd and so many other things. It’s wholesale blasphemy and if he encourages it each of those souls has his name after a little asterisk next to their sins.
Hell loves him for it.
But that’s not the real reason.
Crawly watches in frozen horror as every single piece of pottery depicting the headman is smashed. He stands by as they chisel his visage from the walls and as angry blows tear his face from the statues. His stomach churns and his eyes burn and he doesn’t understand why.
A child joins with the rest, their tiny fingers wrapped around the too-large handle of their father’s knife. They giggle as they stab out, leaving shallow gouges in the face of the headman.
Crawly hadn’t liked the headman, that’s not what this horror is about. He’d been a bombastic man with delusions of godhood that made him annoying to be around on the best of days and actively infuriating on the worst. He asked too much of his people and he provoked their neighbors into skirmishes. He’d made Hell very happy and for that Crawly was grateful, but if it hadn’t been him, it would have been some other human. Crawly doesn’t mourn their loss, not when they have such quicksilver lives[10].
So, he’s not sad the headman died and he doesn’t care how the humans choose to decorate their home. It doesn’t matter that he will be forgotten because all humans are, in the end.
And yet.
He feels so nauseous he’s dizzy, each blow of the chisels striking through to the deep and protected core of him. He staggers away from the town square, bare feet filthy with the dust of a shattered legacy.
He sleeps.
65 days ago
“They tell me you’re a learned man,” the king says. He watches Aziraphale with a shrewd expression as the serving girl pours them both a drink. “A scribe, they say.”
Aziraphale nods. That is, after all, why he’s here. The scribes of Uruk were gaining a reputation all around the region for their strange practices. Most were dismissive, rolling their eyes and muttering about ‘kids these days’ and how, in their day, everyone memorized things and they were happy with it. What need was there for ‘writing things down’?
Aziraphale can admit to himself that he’s rather excited about the whole idea. He’s not sure why, but something about it gives him a buzzing sort of pleased feeling.
“Yes, I am,” he says when it becomes clear the king is waiting for more.
The king stares at him, mouth pressed in a thin line, for long enough that Aziraphale begins to wonder if perhaps he should have submitted a request for an increased miracle allotment to help smooth the way. Meshkiangasher is a well liked king, spoken of highly by every traveller with whom Aziraphale had call to trade stories on the road to Uruk[11]. But even well-liked kings are still kings and Aziraphale has never been terribly good at kowtowing or dissembling[12].
Then, Meshkiangasher’s face breaks into a broad smile. “Welcome then,” he says, standing to clap Aziraphale on the shoulder. “My scholars are always hard at work and my honored father has gifted us with many things unknown to the rest of the world, but you have travelled far and you are a learned man. I am eager to see what you have to teach us.”
At first Aziraphale is unable to respond. He’s caught up in the realization that he’s been a fool. My honored father. God-born. Utu comes around more these days.
Aziraphale had known that some of his order were on Earth, living among humans in ways that made their superiors wince in disgust. But, he’d never thought it was his palace to judge, not with his own fondness for bread and oil and long nights leaned back in a pile of pillows, watching musicians and poets.
He’d not properly realized exactly how far they’d intermingled with humanity.
But it’s impossible to ignore the truth when Meshkiangasher touches him; the king of Uruk is one of the Nephilim.
Aziraphale’s first instinct is to pull away, to turn on his heel and report directly back to Heaven, because this is…. Wrong. Wrong in all the ways he’d been taught to believe things could be wrong.
Meshkiangasher smiles at him.
“Apologies,” he says, “I’m afraid I can come on a bit strong and you must be tired.” He steers Aziraphale towards the entrance to his reception hall. “Come, we will find you quarters and I will send my master of the scribes to meet with you tomorrow. You can attend me after you’ve settled.”
Aziraphale smiles back.
He does not report Meshkiangasher to Heaven[13]. In fact, entirely without meaning to, Aziraphale begins to meet with the king on a weekly basis. Their conversations are long and ranging; Meshkiangasher is an educated man himself and he enjoys teasing facts from Aziraphale about far flung lands[14].
The third week a reedy teen with a cracking voice appears halfway through the meeting. He stares at Aziraphale in awed silence until Meshkingasher sighs and gestures him forward.
“Aziraphale, my friend, I’m pleased to introduce my heir, Emmerkar. Emmerkar, Aziraphale is one of our scribes.”
“Pleased to meet you,” Emmerkar says and Aziraphale carefully does not smile when his voice cracks halfway through[15].
“And I you, ensi Emmerkar,” he murmurs, inclining his head.
Meshkiangasher’s ever-present smile broadens just a bit in amusement. “Perhaps,” he says, in a tone of voice teenaged children the world over fear from their parents, “You might accompany Aziraphale in his duties, my son. It would do you good to learn of the scribes’ work.”
Emmerkar sputters, but Aziraphale was sent to Uruk to ensure the ruling family’s souls were secured for Heaven and so he nods his assent and acquires an apprentice.
50 years ago
There’s a curious sensation to many places on Earth, a tension comprised of wound-up potentiality, of the time and place and the individual people…. Crawly likes working in those places, likes the way his temptations and wiles seem to spread further and faster, netting more souls for Hell for the same effort he was putting in all along[16].
So, when Crawly wakes he staggers out of the cave he’d hidden himself away in, pops by Head Office to let them know he’s back from leave[17], and makes his way towards the largest tangle of potential he can feel.
Utu is bustling, packed full of more people than Crawly has ever seen in one place. There are stalls with bright signs advertising dough filled with meat and pomegranate seeds and he immediately uses one of his allotted “corporation maintenance” miracles to procure a small bag with a never ending supply of fine silver rings[18] and purchases one of the sweet ones. He eats it as he wanders the city, feeling more alive than he has in decades.
Utu is easy to love. Crawly finds employment as an apprentice astronomer, a position that grants him access to the majority of the city. He rises in the early evenings to work on smaller temptations. The employees of the city’s brothels soon know him on sight, greeting him with little laughs and flirtatious offerings when he approaches. He never partakes, he’s never wanted to make the effort for that sort of thing, but the lack of inhibition that rolls off the humans in these places buzzes across skin pleasantly. Their lust and gluttony, concentrated so tightly, make him feel almost tipsy.
He spends a few hours doing the sort of work Dagon likes to see from him, tempting single souls away from the light and towards a life of fun (before the inevitable sudden collector’s call). Then, he goes to the house of the astronomers and he encourages them to use their imaginations, to make up stories about the gods and the stars and what it all means for humans[19].
And then, one night a decade or so after he arrives in Uruk, Crawly walks outside with the other apprentice astronomers and looks up and the world falls away around him.
It’s gone.
Gone.
The other apprentices look back at him curiously, but he doesn’t want to be seen just then, and so their eyes slide away.
He hadn’t really been anybody at all in Heaven. He doesn’t properly remember what his actual assignment was, to say nothing of his name or his rank, only that he was part of the Host as all angels are part of the Host.
He remembers how he’d liked to listen to Lucifer talk, how charming and clever he’d been, how he listened when Crawly asked questions and how he answered some of them. More than that, Crawly remembers how Lucifer didn’t answer some of his questions. He’d never met anyone before who was willing to say ‘you know, I’m not sure, let’s find out!’ and Lucifer had earned Crawly’s respect easily.
He doesn’t remember his actual job, but he does remember the time Lucifer came to him and said he seemed bored, wouldn’t he like to come see the stars being hung? And Crawly had wanted that desperately. He’d dropped his work onto the firmament and scrambled after God’s Favored Son as quickly as he could.
It was a wonderful time. Lucifer took him to see the nebulae and the edge of Creation and, just before Crawly had to return to his set tasks, Lucifer had leaned down and smiled at him and asked;
“Would you like to help me make one?”
And Crawly had, more than anything. Lucifer guided his hands and answered his questions about how it all worked and in the end, Crawly had breathed life into a little main sequence star, laughing delightedly as it sputtered to life.
Lucifer had clapped him on the back and invited him to a meeting of friends and, dazed by the glory of Creation, Crawly hadn’t hesitated to agree.
And now, it’s gone.
How dare He?
Crawly’s lips twist into a snarl. He remembers the way the humans had destroyed every single scrap of the Headman’s legacy, unwriting his memory from the world.
How dare God treat the Fallen as if they were nothing more than names on a wall, to be chiseled away when you got around to it?
Crawly doesn’t really mind being a demon, he’d never gotten on with the choirs and Dagon knows his instrumental ability is less than nothing, but he was still proud of that little star and now it’s gone.
Up ahead the other apprentices laugh, pushing at each other as they make their way out of the city to the low hill with the best view of the rising moon.
A slow smile spreads across Crawly’s face.
His star might be gone, but Lucifer had been the chief among the starmakers, Crawly would bet his wings that most of them Fell along with him.
God might have tried to erase Crawly from memory, but Crawly will be damned again if He manages to erase anyone else.
35 days ago
The troublesome astronomer sprawls exactly where King Meshkiangasher said he would, which is to say, precisely nine feet[20] past the carved line that denoted the area as reserved for the use of the king and his family.
Aziraphale pauses at the top of the last staircase, peering upward and trying to decide why he’s surprised to see his demonic counterpart.
He hasn’t noticed Aziraphale yet and there’s something almost… sad about the way he stares out at the stars. It’s a new moon and the light from the stars themselves is just barely bright enough to shine off his raven-dark hair, deeping the shadows around his eyes.
Crawly’s knees are just as knobbly as the last time Aziraphale saw them. They poke out from beneath the wooden platform resting on his thighs, startlingly pale in the dim light. As Aziraphale watches, Crawly reaches one arm up and traces a broad arc across the dome of stars, once, twice, a third time. Then, he glances down at his lap and uses a thin stylus to trace the same arc into a damp clay tablet.
Aziraphale can’t remember the last time he saw Crawly sit so still, if ever. The demon seems constantly driven to motion when they meet, prone to tense pacing and circling and wild gesticulation.
“You know,” Aziraphale says as he crosses the last few steps between them and sits at Crawly’s side, “King Meshkingasher might be a benevolent man, but even his vast patience can only be pushed so far.”
Crawly makes another small notation on the tablet. The ease that had lain across his shoulders has fled and Aziraphale finds himself sorry to see it go.
“The king should know enough to listen to me, then,” he mutters. “M’not lying to him.”
Aziraphale sighs. “No, you don’t often do that, do you? Despite what you are.”
Crawly makes a low hissing noise through his teeth.
“Bloody naphil[21] can listen to me or not,” he snaps out, “Just didn’t want to be caught in the crossfire. Happen to like this corporation, thank you.”
Aziraphale blinks.
“Crossfire?” Meshkiangasher had only told him that one of his astronomers was causing a fuss by continually predicting a great cataclysm and it was beginning to become a problem with the court. “Are your people planning something?”
Crawly snorts. “No need, not with yours playing the game. I can sit back and you’ll do my work for me.”
Aziraphale feels as if he’s missed something entirely, but Crawly is still speaking.
“Doesn’t make any bloody sense if you ask me. Seems to me that if you’re all knowing, all seeing and all that rot, it’s unfair to let your favored sprog pop down for a quickie and you’re alright with that, but then there’s a kid? Nope. Sorry. Time to get smitey on everyone. Boom. Bloody brilliant upper command, you’ve got, angel.”
Crawly stands, sending his writing platform clattering heavily to the ground, the stylus rolling across the roof into the dark.
“What about the kid, huh?” he asks, “You gonna kill the king and all his kids, too? They’re divine enough to set my teeth on edge, surely that’s enough for the Big Guy to want them dead. I really should have expected this, I suppose, given His reaction to-”
Aziraphale steps into Crawly’s path, holding up his hands in a placating gesture.
“My dear, I have no earthly clue what you’re talking about.”
“Yeah,” Crawly says glumly, anger draining away. “I’m getting that.”
He leaves the roof and Aziraphale without another word.
83 minutes ago
“He’s gone.” The voice says. It sounds stressed.
Crawly can relate.
He’s stressed.
Stressed.
Something bends and bends and bends him, and then he cracks, fractures, shatters, and The Something seeps into the broken places, burning.
“Crawly? Oh dear.” A shuffling noise and then something (not The Something) touches his face.
(He still has a face, that’s fun.)
“You need to hold on, Crawly.” The touch goes away and a broken sort of whine crackles from Crawly. “I- I have a plan. Er. I have most of a plan, all the important parts are there anyhow.”
Crawly’s memories are swiss cheese[22], but he recognizes that voice. He knows he does. It’s just….
“Whhhhh,” he manages a semi-agentive exhalation.
“Oh, you are doing quite poorly aren’t you[23]? It’s Aziraphale. You know, we met in Eden? You said some rather alarming things about Him.”
That hadn’t been Crawly’s question at all. He tries to shake his head, but The Something has found his nerves and is singing along his corporation is delightfully horrible resonance with the vast floodplains it’s left in his trueself and he can’t quite move anything.
He tries to speak again. “Whhhhhy?”
“Oh.”
Silence, save for the faint, otherworldly hiss of Crawly’s feathers melting one by one.
“It, well, it doesn’t really seem sporting to leave you to die like this. After all, you did come back to warn me.” Another long pause, silence stretching until it almost feels like a solid force digging into Crawly’s damaged eardrums. “And, to be honest, I- I think I might miss thwarting you. You ’re awfully clever and one does get bored without proper opposition.”
The briefest brush of skin against Crawly’s calf. He whines.
“I wish to demonstrate the Glory of Heaven against a worthy opponent.”
“Sssssstbd,” Crawly manages. “Thhhnk.” He doesn’t understand, can’t even remember what happened, but he knows that the speaker is being quite spectacularly stupid.
“Yes, I think you’re probably right.”
They move, the heat of their body moves closer pulling a whine deep from Crawly’s throat. They’re Holy and The Something calls out to them, like to like.
Oh, Satan, Crawly is going to die, isn’t he?
He doesn’t want to die.
He doesn’t
doesn’t
They reach out, trailing burning fingers through Crawly’s hair once, and then they’re gone and Crawly is alone.
5 days ago
Having encountered each other once, the universe seems to conspire to set Crawly and Aziraphale in each other’s path with alarming regularity. Crawly wants to believe that Aziraphale is as benign as he pretends to be, but then the King has been entertaining his father more and more often and Utu is often accompanied by others of his kind.
Crawly adds another few verses to the report he is preparing for Hell each time he sees them descend from on High[24]. Utu and his retinue have permission to be on Earth, Aziraphale tells Crawly one day when they run into each other outside a market, though he looks just as displeased about it as Crawly.
It is that displeasure that eases a bit of Crawly’s natural wariness around the angel. Sure, they’d gotten on well in Eden, but it’s been centuries since then; it’s only logical that the angel might’ve realized they were meant to be on opposite sides in that time. So, he is surprised each time Aziraphale spots him and the corners of his eyes crinkle in pleasure. Sometimes when they pass each other on the street, Aziraphale even pauses in his journey and asks where Crawly is going, if he might accompany him for a time.
They speak of the new things humans are inventing, of restaurants[25] and the clever ways the scribes and astronomers are devising to store their work and the new games they’ve each seen the children playing. Crawly likes to talk about the more sinful things the humans are getting up to, he likes to see the way Aziraphale blushes high on his cheeks and tries to hide his smile.
It is all startlingly civil, some might even say pleasant.
Of course, there are days when Crawly feels the ambient holiness of the city spike and he retreats to the suite of rooms Meshkiangasher has granted him. Utu is visiting his son more frequently, it seems, and Crawly dreads running into him[26]. Sometimes Utu brings his retinue and those are bad days. Utu himself stays in the ziggurat, speaking with his son and the king-mum[27], but his right and left hands go out into the city. Crawly can feel the oil-slick of misery that rises in their wake and he hates them.
It is on one of those days, when the bitter tang of suffering begins to suffuse the city after a spare half-morning has passed since Utu and company’s arrival, that Crawly decides popping down to Hell to give his quarterly report is the best idea he’s had all century.
He makes his way out of the city and to the large cave where he can slip into the largest crack between the stones and down into Hell’s reception hall.
“Crawly.” The imp at the front desk bobs in the sort of nod-like motion with which those without necks (or torsos or really anything but heads and the approximation of limbs) must make do.
“Tirry.” Crawly nods back as he passes. Tirry’s a good sort, if a bit prone to watercooler gossip. Though…. He turns back and pastes on his most appeasing smile. “Any rumors squelching about I should be aware of[28]?”
“Nah,” Tirry says, “Few more details of that whole hullabaloo with the human-fuckers, seems Heaven still isn’t happy with them. Something something killing them all blah blah.”
Crawly blinks. That is not what he expected to hear. The rumors usually got excited about things like “Lord Dagon is feeling a bit peckish today, avoid looking like a snack” and “Asphalogardel, you know, Asphalogardel? Well, He’s gotten into ligament macrame recently and he’s really happy with his work, and Squand keeps telling him they like it, but they don’t.”
Heaven is usually not in play.
“Huh,” Crawly says. “Thanks, I’ll keep an ear open.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
Crawly starts to walk away. “Oh!” Tirry calls. “Did you-?”
“Oh right! Nearly forgot.” Crawly pulls out a date tart from the aether. “It’s not much, I’ll bring more next time.”
Tirry falls upon the tart like a lion on an antelope. Crawly grimaces and slips away, knowing Tirry will be busy for a while.
He makes his way down to the cavernous waiting room outside of Dagon’s office. The walls are lined with stone benches, occupied in scattered clumps by demons waiting for their turn to report. Crawly finds a mostly grime free spot and settles in to wait. He can’t sleep, not down here, but he does tilt his head back and allow himself to drift[29].
He’s just wondering if it’s worth swinging by to see Ashtoreth to catch up and if they’ve finally fixed the trick step between the third and fourth circles fixed yet, when someone speaks to him.
“Hmm?”
“I asked if you’ve seen them.” Aka Manah perches on the bench just across from Crawly, leaning forward. Their eyes are wide and very blue.
“Who?”
“The Watchers! Word is Heaven is moving things up, guess the Bastard got tired of them not listening to Him. Can’t say I understand why it took this long.”
Crawly has wondered about that as well. He’d barely gotten his first true question out before he was beginning to slide Down. But the Watchers have been fucking around Earth for decades now[30]
“Yeah,” he mutters. “Heard about that a few weeks back. Thought it was all rumors though.” Aziraphale hadn’t known what he was talking about when confronted, Crawly was sure of it. Surely if something of the scale that the rumors hinted at was going to happen, Aziraphale would have been told?
“Apparently not,” Aka Manah says. “I heard that it’s gonna be a whole to-do. Fire brimstone, real classic shit. Wouldn’t want to be an angel on earth when it happens, let me tell you. Once was enough.”
“Just angels?” Crawly asks. That was roughly what he’d heard before, maybe a bit more merciful even. If it was just the Watchers…. Well, Crawly doesn’t like them, doesn’t like the miasma of hurt that spreads from the places they go. That’s no great los-
“Them and anyone associated with them. Their little half-breeds and all.”
Crawly nods, feeling as if the waiting room is suddenly very far away.
Meshkiangasher is holy, Crawly knows it. Being around him when he’s happy is nearly painful. But he’s also funny and kind and he loves the stars and is determined that his people should live good and happy lives.
And he is Utu’s son.
On the far end of the room, the door to Dagon’s office opens and an imp hops out calling Aka Manah’s name.
“Anyway,” they say as they stand, “Just be on the lookout. They’ve already recalled me. This is my last report from Earth. Fucking annoying.”
“Thanks,” Crawly says distantly.
He’s not sure how he makes it through his own report, he’s sure his cadence was all wrong. But Dagon seems just as distracted and doesn’t demand he redo any part of it. Just before he is dismissed, he catches Crawly’s gaze.
“I’m sure you’ve heard what’s in the works,” he says.
“Yes, Lord.”
“About time, if you ask me.” Dagon leans back in his chair, looking pleased. “Great for numbers really. Been an age since we got any new demonic blood and Hastur’s more than a little excited to test things out on the little bastards.”
The detached feeling blooms into fury.
“Yes, Lord,” Crawly says again, biting his tongue hard to stop himself from saying anything else.
“We’ll be reassigning you to Soul Intake for the duration, since they’re going to be a bit overloaded down there.”
“I thought it was only the angels and the humans who they’ve ah….”
“Lain with,” Dagon shudders. “Disgusting. No, word is God’s going to make a show of it. Really teach them all a lesson. Doubt there will be many of them left at all, after.”
“I see, Lord.”
“Cheer up, Crawly,” Dagon says. “This is a victory for our side.”
“I’m very pleased, Lord. Be there with bells on.” He thinks again of the way Meshkiangasher had dismissed the warnings Crawly tried to give him before, when these were all still nebulous rumors. “I’ve just got to finish up a few longer term temptations. Shame to put in all that work only for them to end up on the other guy’s books because things popped off before I was done.”
Dagon stares at him, evaluating. “All right,” he says finally. “Don’t take long though, you know I hate training people.”
“You’re all heart, Lord.”
Dagon dismisses him and Crawly flees.
35 minutes ago
Sensation is nothing more than a distant memory.
Crawly can’t bring himself to be upset about that, not when that memory is a blazing wall of agony that he shies away from even looking at for too long.
Except, well. It probably is a bad thing.
Feeling stuff was one of the biggest parts of being alive[31].
He’d always thought that if he died it would be after a second fall or something similar. It seems silly to live through something like that only to die like… Like….
Crawly can’t remember what happened.
He tries, gathering what few threads of thought remain to him, but everything aside from a narrow sliver of scales and light at the very core of him is just gone.
He feels very alone and very afraid.
Another few scales flake away, crumbling to dust and then to nothing.
2 hours ago
Crawly arrives back on Earth and stops, struck by the strange dissonance of knowing how soon all of this will be gone. The city is peaceful this time of night; late enough that the humans have all found the rest and the guard is long since changed. Nothing moves save the stars as they slowly work their way across the sky. He glances up at them and grimaces.
The terrible blank spot in the sky where his star had once burned draws his eye.
It’s his job to tempt humanity to greater and greater heights of sin, and he’s genuinely proud of the work he does. What is the point of anything if God can decide that no, some of the angels are having too much fun and the humans are actually using their free will, time to destroy it all and start over? It is nothing more than a child, angry that they were losing, picking up the board and tossing it in a river[32].
What is the point of anything if they are all doomed to be erased just like that?
Far across the city, on the low hill leading up to the ziggurat, Crawly spots the flicker of a fat lamp.
If Hell knows about this, he thinks, suddenly feeling wretched, surely Aziraphale had been informed by Heaven.
All the things he’d not been able to say in Hell for fear of Dagon’s wrath bubble up within him. He wants to fight. He wants to yell. He wants to march right up to God’s golden bloody throne and demand that He put down the dice and fucking look at His Creation.
He crosses the city at a trot[33] and it feels like he barely blinks before he’s approaching Aziraphale’s door.
“Awfully casual way to sssspend it,” he hisses from the doorway. Aziraphale is at his desk, hunched over a large clay tablet. He looks up and, bless him, he smiles. Crawly feels his lip curl into a snarl. “Ssstill going to tell me you don’t know?”
“Good evening,” Aziraphale says. “What am I meant to know?”
“Heaven really doesn’t tell you anything, do they?”
Aziraphale sets down his stylus. He turns to fully face Crawly and Crawly hates that the sight of the angel’s smile fading twists something in his chest. He wants to be angry, wants to hear someone, anyone, acknowledge how horrible this all is.
“Bloody fucking typical.”
“That is out of line, Crawly,” Aziraphale says. “Just because I’ve no idea what you’re-”
“Of course you don’t,” the words spill from Crawly almost against his will. “They’d have to respect you to tell you anything.”
He watches as the insult lands, as Aziraphale’s shoulders bow inwards ever-so-slightly.
The rage fizzles as quickly as it had come.
“Anyway,” Crawly mutters, “You should leave.”
“What? You’re not making any sense, you can’t just come here and say such things and then tell me to leave and expect that I’ll-”
“Heaven is finally going to do something about Utu and all them,” Crawly breaks in, “It’s not, not going to be precise. Any angel-”
“Aziraphale, what’s this?”
Crawly turns, sees Utu standing just behind him and has time to think Well, this might as well happen before it all goes to Heaven.
Aziraphale watches, as if through honey, as Utu raises both hands and snaps, dragging them downward in a great arc. The little room floods first with His Glory and then with water, sweeping through the entire space without regard for Aziraphale’s delicate clay tablets or bedding or-
Crawly begins to scream.
Even as Aziraphale whips around to stare at him, the demon’s shrieks increase in volume. Unlike the rest of the space, where the water is already draining away, it seems to cling to Crawly as if drawn to him.
“What did you do?” Aziraphale snaps through his horror. Crawly’s skin is beginning to smoke.
Utu shrugs. “Took care of that little demon problem you’ve been ignoring. We’ve all felt it skulking around the city.”
“All?” Aziraphale forces himself to remain calm. He can’t help Crawly if he panics[34].
“The other Principalities, of course.” Utu smiles at him and Aziraphale returns it, though he knows his own is weaker. “You never come to the mixers, but you’re still one of us, Aziraphale. We look out for our own.”
He feels ill.
Crawly has collapsed to the floor now, his shrieks fading to little more than half-choked sobs. As Aziraphale watches, one hand reaches out, clawing at the floor. A thin slick of iridescent black scales stay behind when he convulses and the hand is withdrawn.
“What did you do?” he asks again.
Utu shrugs. “Smote it. It’s a new thing the boffins in R&D have been working on. See, we’ve all got Grace right? All we have to do is learn how to-” He reaches up again and snaps. This time Aziraphale feels the way the Grace that spills into the room snags on Utu’s fingers, twisting around them and gathering strength until it is a terrible, violent ball of His Love.
“I see,” Aziraphale says. He is proud of how steady his voice manages to be. “And did you have to do it here? I was given this task by the Metatron himself, you know.”
For the first time Utu looks around and seems to realize the extent of the damage the water had wrought. A faint trickle of remorse crosses his face, quickly followed by the sort of self-assured confidence that Aziraphale has never quite mastered but which all his colleagues exude.
Aziraphale keeps talking, suddenly sure that if he lets Utu speak again, he’ll never be rid of him. “It’s fine,” he says, with a heavy sigh. “I’ll take care of disposing of it. You have killed it, right? I’m not going to have to finish your work?”
Utu’s congenial expression fades to nothing.
“Of course,” he snaps. “Unlike some, I get the job done.”
Aziraphale thinks about Emmerkar and Meshkiangasher and the way sometimes it seems as if the sun itself is shining from the king’s eyes.
“And then some,” he mutters.
“What was that?”
But Aziraphale is already taking his elbow and guiding him towards the door. He etches a bland sort of smile onto his face. “I said I’ll take care of cleaning up your mess, since you so kindly took care of my, ah, problem.”
Behind them, Crawly’s sobs are nothing more than a periodic, broken keen.
The world has faded to nothing but pain and his fun, new up close and personal view of Azirphale’s floor. He thinks he’s probably making a sound of some sort, but the roar in his ears makes it hard to tell.
Everything feels…. Holy. He hasn’t felt anything like that in so long.
“Crawly!”
He blinks his eyes open[35] to find Aziraphale looking down at him, face pinched.
“‘Zziraphale?” he slurs. “Wh’happn?”
It comes back in a rush. Holy water. The blessed fucking Watcher had used holy water on him. He’d half-listened to the informational messenger Hell sent a few years back when word came through the grapevine about Heaven’s new little murder weapon, but he’d thought it was all overreaction.
He regrets ignoring the messenger now.
The water has begun to seep into him, slowly trickling across the floor as if drawn to his very being.
“-realize he was here, you see.” It dawns on Crawly that Aziraphale has been speaking. “He normally visits the king-mum first so I have a bit of warning before-” he fades out again as Crawly’s left leg seizes. He whines.
When he comes back to himself, Aziraphale is staring at him and biting his lower lip.
“You were warning me,” he says, very quietly. “I- I know it is the will of Heaven that you die, that you’re the Enemy and I should be glad that you will be gone, but-”
“S’fine,” Crawly says because he’s just remembered the one thing the messenger had said could fix this and well, that’s just not an option.
“It is not fine!” Aziraphale begins to pace, wringing his hands. “Utu is, he’s…. I do not believe he is acting as Heaven would want him to act. Not, not if what you say is true. And, if that’s the case, maybe,” he pauses and when he speaks again, it’s in a hopeful sort of rush, “Maybe I can fix it. Maybe I can help you.”
“Can’t.”
“Now, don’t be a negative Nurma,” Aziraphale scolds.
Crawly’s toes begin to melt and the pain makes him a bit dizzy, but he still giggles bc blessit, the angel is ridiculous.
“Not neg’tive,” he manages, “Need hellfire, you… angel. Can’t get that. So, m’gonna die.” He tries to shrug, but it feels as if the motion has dislocated several ribs, so he stops halfway through.
Aziraphale stops pacing and begins to spin in a slow vertical circle around the room. Crawly watches him for a moment before it becomes too dizzying to follow the way the angel slips into and out of reality. His eyes burn.
“Crawly….”
“Like I sssaid, s’fine.” Another aborted shrug. He really needs to learn not to repeat things that hurt the first time[36]. It occurs to Crawly that he never actually finished telling Aziraphale about what was going to happen.
“Where might one find hellfire?” Aziraphale asks.
“Rlly, I don’ mind it,” Crawly keeps talking. “Woulda liket’a seen things but what can y’do….”
“Please, Crawly.”
“They’re gonna drn’vryone,” Crawly says, trying to get back on topic. It’s hard because he’s pretty sure one of his wings just started trying to pull itself free from his body in self-defense. Aziraphale is still spinning, but Crawly thinks that might be just him and not the angel, he’s awfully dizzy.
There’s a noise, further away from Aziraphale. Another voice. He knows it, knows it shouldn’t be here, that it will be bad if they’re seen together by that voice. But he can’t… can’t….
“Crawly, you must-”
Crawly never did well with orders.
The world falls away from him.
Now
And then, as if it never existed at all, The Something is gone. Blazing heat boils through him and the hardened, painful shards pinning him down sublimate to mist and then to nothing but memory.
His entire being writhes, the sudden absence of pain nearly agonizing in and of itself.
He opens his eyes and sees the last licks of Hellfire as it sinks into his corporation.
“You’ve got until I finish this tart.”
Crawly looks up to see Tirry peering down at him from the edge of a large boulder.
“What?”
He’d… He’d been dying. He’s sure of it.
“The tart in my hand,” Tirry holds it out for Crawly to see. It’s half gone. “After I finish it, I need to go back to my desk and I like you, Crawly, but I’m not letting you stay in my room without me. Sorry.”
“Your room?”
Tirry rolls his eyes. “Yes, keep up. You’re in my room. You were dying. I dunked you in Hellfire. Now you’re not dying.”
“But how did I get here?” The last Crawly remembers he’d been writhing on the floor of Aziraphale’s scriptorium. He’d expected to end up as a vaguely annoying sludgey stain that Aziraphale had to buy a rug to cover.
“Well the angel brought you down here, didn’t he?” Tirry takes another huge bite of the tart, blissfully enjoying his treat as if he’d not just shaken Crawly’s entire world.
“What?” Crawly wobbles his way to his feet, using the wall for support. He aches, but nothing feels out of place or permanently injured.
Tirry shrugs. “Showed up holding you, complaining about you dying in his territory and him not wanting to deal with cleaning up that mess. Course I asked why the fuck he didn’t just dump you in the desert or the sea or whatever.”
“And?” Something huge and warm is filling Crawly’s chest.
“And not much else. He said he hadn’t thought of it, mentioned that you were all right for a demon, something about you helping him? I don’t fucking know. Anyway, he said if I helped you, he’d reward me.” He holds up the tart triumphantly. “All the tarts I can eat! Forever!”
The warm feel bursts through him and Crawly doubles over, laughing.
Fucking tarts.
He’s alive because Tirry is a little glutton.
“What?!” Tirry sounds almost offended, so Crawly waves his hands.
“Not you,” he gasps through his laughter. “The angel! Satan, I can’t believe him.”
Tirry takes another bite of the tart.
“Well, I like him,” he sniffs.
Crawly wipes his eyes, unable to stop smiling. “Yeah,” he says. “I do, too.”
Footnotes
1. He’d noticed it first as Adam and Eve’s little family grew. They were so much easier to rile when there were more people to blame for anything that went wrong. He hadn’t meant for things to get as out of hand as they had, but really, how was he to know? Jealousy hadn’t been invented yet, after all (despite these defensive thoughts, Crawly actually did regret how things had gone with Cain and Abel. The boys weren’t perfect, but they also weren’t bad, and they hadn’t deserved their fates).↩
2. Literally, in many cases.↩
3. He likes this feature of their design for a few reasons, chief among them that in their rush to avoid awkwardness they will often reveal things they might otherwise have kept hidden. Less important to his job performance, is the fact that it means he is less obligated to find things of his own to say. Words are hard.↩
4. Note: Hellish policy dictates that Crawly is never to be honest, but Crawly thinks well-placed honesty is often more effective than woven lies and so he ignores that bit of policy along with all the others.↩
5. They’re a brilliant invention really, amazing for his numbers down below↩
6. For those rare few among you not currently worshiping the Sumerian pantheon, Utu is the god of the sun. He will later be called Shamash, though the closest human tongues can manage to his True Name is actually ‘Shemeshal’. He is the Principality of the Valley, and like all Principalities, he’s more than a little odd at the best of times. But something about Shemeshal in particular has always made Crawly’s mouth taste like venom, has always set him on edge in ways unlike other Principalities he’s run into over the last few hundred years.↩
7. Always careful to never say anything a human hasn’t said first, of course.↩
8. In about 5000 years, Crowley will pick up a book about Sumerian kings from a teetering pile in Aziraphale’s shop. He’ll flip through it, not really paying attention, until he sees the chapter entitled ‘Zuqaqip: King, Queen, or Sumerian Fairy Tale?’. He’ll read every scrap of information about the supposedly fictional ruler, about how all humanity knows about them is fragments of a legend that says they were the one to first record the stories of the Gods, that some people consider them to be the first fantasy novelist for the fanciful takes that appear only in their versions of mythology. Crowley will hold the book close and think of the way the teen’s fist had clenched and he’ll smile.↩
9. Sumerian for ‘the starry sky’.↩
10. This is a lie. It would be more accurate to say that Crawly tries very hard not to mourn the loss of individual humans. He fails. It’s not especially demonic of him, he knows, the humans are just so damn likable and Crawly cannot help but be fascinated with them.↩
11. Which is to say, even the slaves he met at shrines and waypoints along the way shrugged and said things like ‘he’s all right, for god-born. Hasn’t raised the tithe in a few years, even though Utu comes around more these days.’ and ‘I wouldn’t want to break bread with him, but he’s an okay sort.”.↩
12. He’s two parts overly blunt, one part over-anxious rambling, one part eager sharing of knowledge, and one part bit of an ass.↩
13. For one, Heaven is very taken with this new ‘writing’ lark and while Aziraphale agrees it has great potential, he’s not quite got his logographs looking presentable, and he’s sure a report of this magnitude would be sent all the way to the Top. It does not do to submit an error-ridden report to Himself.↩
14. Most other cultures are little more than scattered villages dotted across the hills. Though Aziraphale had enjoyed his time in the mountains far to the East of Uruk immensely.↩
15. In a few hundred years, Emmerkar will lead his people through the Flood. He will sooth them and tell the orphaned children silly stories and he will protect the satchel of clay tablets on his back with his life. And when the waters recede, he will establish cities and his people will thrive. He’ll tell the new scribes stories of those in Uruk-that-was-lost and they will remember. His people will thrive. But that’s later. Right now, Emmerkar is thirteen years old and he’s just met the most beautiful man he’s ever seen and possibly forgotten his own name.↩
16. That is; not very much at all.↩
17. He’d been rewarded with rather a lot of leave time after the Eden affair. Mostly he doesn’t see the point in using it since it’s hardly like he’s working all the time as it stands. But sometimes a demon just needs to hide a way for a few decades and not worry about being woken by one’s superiors in a snit about one missing bicentennial reports.↩
18. Before coins came into common usage in ~2500 BC silver rings were used as currency. However, the vast majority of transactions would have been simple trades of goods or labor. Crowley is aware of this fact, he simply refuses to do anything that might be construed as labor.↩
19. He’s curious about the effects of these more subtle sorts of temptations, they don’t show up on souls quite so immediately, but he’s sure that given time they’ll pan out.↩
20. Apologies to Sumerian readers, the astronomer was actually laying a single reed across the boundary line. Modern audiences are woefully misinformed about the length of their local regent’s arms and thus measurement concessions have been made.↩
21. The singular of nephilim.↩
22. He’s a bit too disconnected from reality to realize just how far afield this comparison was spawned.↩
23. The concept of being British will not be invented for another few thousand years, but Aziraphale is already well-versed in the art of obscene understatement.↩
24. He’s heard rumors that Heaven has begun accepting reports on cuneiform tablets, but a proper report in Hell still requires a passing familiarity with metrical theory and lithophone accompaniment. They go in big for oral tradition, down there.↩
25. They’re both fans, though Crawly eats sparingly as it makes him sleepy and the idea of sleeping with so many angels about the city is uncomfortable.↩
26. He happens to like living, thank you very much.↩
27. Meshkiangasher, on one of the rare occasions Crawly had gathered the courage to ask about his parents, told him that his father was a god and loved his mother very much, for all that she was a human.↩
28. This phrasing might seem odd until one knows this: Rumors are a class of under-imp, spawned down in the Ninth each time humans gossips in bad faith. They’re terrifically useful little… things, oozing about Hell and gathering information from every circle. Though Crawly prefers to get their information second-hand; they stink.↩
29. There is an unspoken truce among the demons waiting to give their reports. Most are frantically trying to find the perfect rhyme or couplet and cannot be bothered with molesting their compatriots as they usually might.↩
30. Sometimes literally. See: Meshkiangasher.↩
31. The other major parts are; having a people of some sort, being creative sometimes, and soup. Crawly will one day be partial to minestrone.↩
32. And then finding the board’s family and tossing them in the river too, and their pets, and their dinner, and their-↩
33. In later centuries, Crowley will decide that running, or indeed any mode of ambulation faster than a good slink, is deeply uncool. He will refrain from anything of the sort from the year 1347 all the way up until he sees a bookshop in Soho burning and a slink just won’t do.↩
34. It only occurs to him as he has this thought that he’s already decided to help Crawly.↩
35. When had they closed? How long had they been closed? What is happening to him?↩
36. Editor’s Note: Crawly will never learn this lesson.↩
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-15 12:35 am (UTC)I got strong book!verse vibes right from the beginning, and that carried all the way through to Hell and the demons. I laughed at Crowley bribing Tirry, or perhaps just giving him tarts out of genuine kindness, and then laughed again when Aziraphale used the same tactic later to save Crowley! And Tirry of course doesn’t even bat an eye at an angel wanting to save a demon, because there are free endless tarts in it for him! Quality mood. Oh, and the rumor imps were such a creative idea!
I loved the setting as well. I made a halfhearted effort to learn Sumerian once upon a time, so I fully appreciate trying to pry words out of dictionaries and all that. And I was also delighted when Utu turned out to be Shamash, since I'm actually familiar with him from the Hammurabi stele! Good times in ancient art history class. :D
Crowley’s singular-starmaker backstory was really interesting as well. If you hadn’t specified his star was main sequence, I would have hoped it was missing only because it had exploded into a beautiful nebulae! But, alas, it appears Heaven was just mean about it. :(
The Nephilim angle was fun, and holy water being a new invention was a good way to explain why this particular batch wasn't as immediately effective as it would later become. The Nephilim also do such a good job of illustrating Heaven’s hypocrisy—they turn their noses up at fraternizing with humans, but stand back and do nothing before deciding to punish everyone who's gotten involved in the meantime. And then poor Crowley is so rightfully upset at the injustice of it all, because Crowley isn’t trying to win like God is—he’s just enjoying playing the game.
And then of course there’s Crowley and Aziraphale, so newly met but already partial to each other. I liked how Crowley got a little distant at first when he realized that Heaven’s smiting was going to have a lot of collateral damage, and then that turned into anger at thought of what might happen to Aziraphale. And then for him to get smote himself and flat-out tell Aziraphale that it’s fine! And then Aziraphale justifying helping Crowley because Utu has been condemned by Heaven and therefore his actions must categorically be bad, lol. Just very on-brand, all of it. :D
Last but not least was the intriguing way you cut the timelines together. In the opening section, for instance, you describe the effect of the holy water using rather fiery language, which was sufficiently confusing to throw me off the scent for a little while and keep things mysterious until the true sequence of events was revealed.
And of course the lovely footnotes! Love me some footnotes. :D
Thanks again for this exciting adventure! You made quite a lot out of my (very sparse) prompt! <3
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-15 10:10 am (UTC)I think I know which prompt this was? It's a super creative take on it and it was a fun read. I especially enjoyed the demonic water cooler discussions and the revelation that demons can be healed with hellfire.
One of my favorite bits of this story are the little details about how evil works. Crawly fell in with the wrong people because they listened to him. The note about how sometimes using a bit of well placed truth can be more powerful than a lie. These are minor details (one's even in a footnote!) but they are so achingly spot on and I loved seeing them in here.
Very curious reader wants to know why 1347 is the year Crowley stops running. It's an interesting choice and I would love to know more about that story. AKA - your footnotes are fascinating. (From Ri)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-18 03:16 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-20 04:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2022-01-18 03:23 am (UTC)Words ARE hard
The footnote on Zuqaqip is so interesting!
“Crawly had told Hell that the reason he encouraged the human fascination with the stars was that they couldn’t seem to look up for longer than a few moments without thinking of stories. They tell each other about the gods and the roads to the afterlife and the way the bright stripe of stars across the sky is a river and the waters of birth and the gods’ smile and the celestial herd and so many other things. “ LOVE this
Footnote 12 XD
His star is gone :(
AND FOOTNOTE 22!
Footnote 33. Made me laugh AND cry :O
Friggin John Mulaney XD
Tirry my beloved
This was so cool, such a mix of history and comedy and pain and joy! I loved it!