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mekachu04Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Disposable Demon (Good Omens), Satan | Lucifer (Good Omens), Beelzebub (Good Omens), Adam Young (Good Omens), Wensleydale (Good Omens), Brian (Good Omens), Pepper (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: No beta we fall like Crowley, is it still 'headcanon' if you're discussing religion?, feature author's own personal outlook on religion, specifically Hell and God's relationship to it, Minor Character Death, Paul Adeyefa's character is named Legion in here, discussion of past mutilations, Aziraphale was a cherubim, Aziraphale was a warrior, Discussion of the Fall, Imprisonment, Abduction, mentions of torture, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Post-Apocalypse, Nope'geddeon, Post-Canon, Time Manipulation, Wing Injury, hurt!Aziraphale, Hurt!Crowley, discussions of Pre-Canon, Crowley didn't fall - he was pushed, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Happy Ending, Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), lucifer is reasonable, aziraphale is not himself today, smite-y aziraphale, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), lucifer is not luci (tv) but heavily influenced by him, possible self-harm, unintentional suicidal actions, Burns, Crowley's True Form (Good Omens)
Series: Part 1 of Every Step
Aziraphale worked very hard at being soft. He's been working very hard for more than 6000 years to be soft, and one demon is trying his patience on the matter, leading him on a smiting spree in hell.
aka - exploring my personal headcanon's of our fav duo's pasts, set sometime after the series ends. Tags will be expanded reflecting each new chapter to minimize spoilers. i'm not very nice to either of of our beloveds in this, but it all works out in the end.
title from 'I Will Always Love You' by Whitney Houston
Chapter titles are based on the prompt used for that day
I am not the first, nor the last, to ponder Aziraphale being a principality, instead of a cherubim, which scriptures say are the ones who guarded the gates of Eden. Given the line from the book: “Technically Aziraphale was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days” and my tendency to make every thing hurt, I took this as our angel being demoted.
Adam doesn't actually know where his Uncle Anthony lives. But he doesn't let that bother him, and the four teenagers get on the first bus they spot, and when the driver asks where they're headed, he tells the man, "To my Uncle's flat."
The driver gives him a queer look, but Adam truly believes that this will work - it has to work, because he doesn't know what else to do - and so it does. Without knowing why, the driver ends up off route a bit, but he nor the other passengers seem to notice. The Them have no idea what the route actually is, so they don't know they should be noticing anything to begin with. The ride barely takes ten minutes, and the driver pulls over just before an intersection. There is no actual bus stop, and the driver is looking around confused, like he's not sure why he's stopped.
"I think this is us," Brian murmurs, and the four of them disembark. As they do, Adam makes sure to thank the driver and wishes him a safe and speedy trek back to his assigned route.
The Them shift uneasy next to him on the sidewalk; he's never heard the voices clearly with his friends at his side, and even when he's alone, they've never been as demanding as they were that first few days after his eleventh birthday. But he can feel the voices now, like an electric charge in the air that sets his teeth on edge, and a dull ache starts up behind his eyes. The Them don't want to go toward the voices, even if they can't hear them, turning instead away from it without realizing, and Adam knows that his friends can't come with him for this part. They don't want to leave him, but he knows that this time, he needs to follow the voices, and he needs his friends to be safe while he does so.
Across the street, where the building the voices are becoming him too strong, there's a little park. It shines bright in the early afternoon sun; warm and welcoming. Once across the street, Pepper leads Brian and Wensleydale along the path, promising to stay close should he need them, as Adam walks in through the building's front door.
The siren's chorus are drowned out with a sole solitary voice, One that sucks the air from the room, and Adam fights a compulsion to fall to a knee under its boom. He doesn't understand the words, but the meaning behind them is crystal clear.
GO AWAY
The voices that lead him here quake under the new sound, and the whispers that have haunted his quiet moments, telling him to take, to do, to twist things for himself, are stumbling over themselves now to warn him to heed this new command. They call for him to turn back, beseeches him to turn away, for his own safety. Its a call that many of the humans around him seems to be heeding, even if they don't know why. The closer he gets to the voices the more his heart aches, and he feels overcome with dread and despair.
STOP
It's not hard to find the right doors to get him closer; he's also certain that if he wasn't so intent on not doing what the voices were telling him too, it probably would never taken ages to have found this place, even if, thinking back on it, only the top floor would have made sense to search. It is Uncle Anthony he's looking for after all.
The door in question, complete with a snake figure over the door buzzer, seems to agree with the voices. There's a compulsion not unlike the wards around Uncle Ezra's bookshop. Its meant to deflect attention away, making it feel like Adam doesn't actually want to be there.
DO NOT COME CLOSER
The words become clearer in his head as he approaches, and with an uneasy feeling, he can almost hear his Uncle in the words. No. Not Ezra. This isn't even Aziraphale, who wielded the flaming sword at an airbase in Tadfield. This is something...else.
He knocks anyway, asking the door to let him in, even as the voices push him to turn away. The lock turns when he asks, but the door remains shut.
DO NOT LOOK, PRINCE OF DARKNESS The voice warns him, the warmth he's used to being addressed with absent. RETURN HOME TO YOUR SANCTUARY
"Uncle Ezra?"
The door groans, opening a sliver, and the hall is flooded with bright harsh light. Adam has to close his eyes against it, but he can see the brightness even with his eyes closed. It's hot, not burning, but much warmer than even remotely comfortable, and he's sweating as he pushes the door open farther, feeling flash fried.
"Uncle Ezra, is Uncle Anthony with you?" he asks, taking an unsteady step into the flat, hand blindly reaching out to try and navigate a place he's never seen.
It takes too long, but the voice does answer, no inflection in its words, and with out the door to buffer, it rattles painfully in Adam's ears.
EDAN'S SERPENT IS HERE
"Uncle Anthony?" Adam calls, because he can't feel the demon anywhere, and his uncle doesn't respond back. "Uncle Ezra, is Uncle Anthony alright?"
THE CAST AWAY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO LOOK UPON HER GLORY, FOR THEY AND THE FALLEN HAVE BEEN FORSAKEN
The Holy Voice cracks at forsaken, and the heat in the room rushes out. The Light still burns behind his eyelids, but Adam, holding a hand over his face in protection, carefully blinks, squinting around tears. It hurts to try and look at Aziraphale, but it's the hurt you get from trying to look into the sun, as opposed to looking into the Wrath of God.
Hand still up to shield from the Light, Adam is able to look around the room better, even as chimerical colors linger across his vision. The column of Light that must be Aziraphale hasn't made it any farther than the home's entry, and seems to be hunkered down on the ground, resting against one of the walls. Next to him is what looks like every blanket his Uncle Anthony owns; wrapped around what he assumes to be his Uncle Anthony, if the singed and burnt red hair peeking out of the pile indicate anything. If it is his Uncle Anthony, the demon isn't moving, and is likely the source of the burned flesh smell that wafts in the air.
Adam's eyes have begun to adjust to the light; that and it seems like his angelic uncle's light is cooling. Dimming. The teen lowers his hand away from his face as the details of his Uncle Ezra start to return into focus; it's not too unlike the entity he first met sharing a body with Auntie Tracey. Not quite human, but starting to solidify from wavelengths and light to an almost knowable form.
He's relaxing now, Aziraphale's posture change cluing Adam into the fact he'd been mantling over Uncle Anthony. Part of him, a wing or hand, Adam isn't sure yet, stroking the soft blankets near Uncle Anthony's head, but careful not to touch him directly.
The face isn't quite human yet, it feels like too many eyes, but none of them are looking at Adam, or the demon. Instead, Aziraphale seems to be staring at something past the ceiling.
"Uncle Ezra, are you alright?"
It's not his uncle still, not yet, but Aziraphale does seems like he's trying to find his way back. Adam can see thick scars across the celestial form, and can feel the confusion and hurt bleeding off the entity. Aziraphale's voice seems to have been lost along with the Holy Light, and the eyes finally turn to him, desperate. Crying.
"Uncle Ezra, what happen to your body? Shouldn't you go back to heaven to get a new one?" Adam is careful not to touch the ethereal core; Even if he's human now, he knows his past origin is what allows him to sit next to his Uncle right now, to be able to look at him at all with any ability to understand. The Them wouldn't be able to comprehend it. Anathema, even, probably would not be able to look at Aziraphale and not go mad. But what allows him to see is also the opposite of what Aziraphale is and touching might destroy both of them. "I can stay with Uncle Anthony until you get back. I can keep him safe."
"I Know You Can." Aziraphale coos, voice no longer threatening to shatter his head, but still booming in the room even as he clearly whispers it, "But Heaven Won't Hear My Prayers."
Admittedly, Adam doesn't really know much about Heaven's politics, only that the Archangel that approaching him in Tadfield did't seem to like him very much once they had started talking, and they were definitely not a fan of Aziraphale five years ago.
"Heaven Has Locked The Doors To Me," Aziraphale continued, looking crestfallen, "I Can Not Walk Through The Gates Any Longer."
Adam latched onto 'walk' and looked at the angel in confusion, "Can't you just fly over the gates?"
"I Can Not Fly."
"You have wings," Adam reminded him gently. Uncle Anthony had even taken him flying once - and only once. It was their secret, and Adam was sworn to never mention it to any one, even Uncle Ezra.
Aziraphale stretched open his wings; they looked smaller than Adam remembered as a child, seeming to sprout more at what would of been the angel's hips or waist if he was remotely human shaped - which he was not.
"I Have Not Been Able To Fly In Six Thousand Years," Aziraphale admitted; he and Adam both looking at his wings, "Not Since I Was Regulated To Principality."
