#So um I'm sure you've noticed but God in the Old Testament is kind of a massive dick

[sparkkeyper]

Whumptober Day 11: Defiance

Aka "Crowley is furious at God". Whoops, it's sad. I've had this in my head for a while now, and well...

Warnings: child death, animal death, Old Testament-typical mass death (it's the Plagues of Egypt, folks, it's not pretty)

***

An angel and a demon stood on top of a rocky outcrop as the wailing and the screams rose up from the city. The angel's expression was very carefully blank. The demon's was most definitely not.

"Proud of yourssself, are you?" Crawly's voice dripped with disgust, his mouth twisted with horror and rage. Yellow filled his eyes to their edges and his nails dug into his palms until they drew blood.

Aziraphale flinched. "I told you before, nobody consults me on things like this." He was trying so very hard to set his face into a look of determination but the wringing of his hands betrayed him. "I didn't have a hand in any of it, not this time. All of this came directly from the Almighty."

Crawly's gaze roamed over the ravaged streets. Animal carcasses lay scattered, attracting flies by the thousands. Locusts flitted about, mingling with the occasional frog. Grief-stricken parents sobbed and clung to each other, ironically in every doorway where the blood wasn't.

"She promised she wouldn't do it again," he hissed. "She promised."

"She promised not to send another flood."

"But every other kind of extinction is fair game, is it? Sounds exactly like the sort of fine print She'd employ."

"Now, it's...it's hardly extinction..."

Crawly turned his anger onto the shrinking angel beside him. "They have no harvest! No livestock! What are they to eat next season?"

"Pharaoh had every chance to make the right choice..." Aziraphale's mumble trailed off weakly but the demon rounded on him anyway.

"They have no future! No children!"

"I didn't call down any plagues, Crawly!" The angel stumbled backwards, hands up in surrender. "All I was told was that this was punishment for Pharaoh-"

"Then punish Pharaoh!" Crawly screamed, sweeping his arm wide across the city. "Not the children! They didn't do anything! She was five!" He stabbed a finger at a house below them, then at another. "He was three! Just because he had the bad luck to be born first, that makes him the scapegoat for the Almighty's games?!"

"I didn't choose this!" A horn blew off to the east, where a great crowd of people were beginning to move at the city's edge. Aziraphale bit his lip hard. "Look, I've got to leave-"

"Not even going to stick around for the aftermath? Not going to help bury the dead or heal the sick or try to revive the ruined crops? How good of you."

"I have my orders, Crawly! I'm to go with the Hebrews, Michael was very clear on that point."

"Where will they go?"

"Nobody knows really. The general consensus is anywhere is better than here. They're taking it on faith."

"Faith!" Crawly spat on the ground at his feet. "Faith that the Almighty won't kill them after watching Her rain every kind of destruction down on innocents here? They'll starve, Aziraphale. There's no harvest left for anyone anywhere, no game. You'll watch them die out in the desert."

The horn sounded again and Aziraphale turned to leave, glancing back for a moment like he wanted to say more, but ultimately finding no words.

Crawly seethed, watching him turn his back on the destruction of the city. But it wasn't Aziraphale's fault - it was Hers. She who claimed to love Her creations and then set fire and death and pain upon them if they didn't bow to Her every changing whim, if they interpreted Her signs wrong, if they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time! She coddled one blameless child and struck down another all according to Her fucking ineffable mood and it made his blood boil like the sulfur pools. Why should Her game be allowed to play out the way She wanted it to? Why should all of Egypt have to roll over and cede the world to Her special pets?

Crawly was running through the streets with fire in his eyes. Every dead animal he passed, every vagrant covered in sores, every weeping mother only made it burn hotter. It took him no time at all to reach the palace grounds and no one stopped him as he burst into the inner chambers with the force of thunder.

"Pharaoh!"

Ramses was knelt over the body of his son, so similar to all the other fathers in the streets. Guards turned to the newcomer but Crawly had no patience for them. A demonic miracle held them in place as he stormed up to the king, grabbing onto all the threads of grief and pain that spilled from the human and twisting them into hatred.

"Your brother has turned on you and you'll let him get away with no consequence?" The demon slammed his hands down on the marble bier that held the dead prince. "Avenge your child! The God of the Hebrews has cursed your land, your people, to devastation, and you're just going to take it? Get up, Pharaoh, and show them that they can't bring such horror here and escape unscathed! Remind them who is lord of this kingdom! Make the rivers run red yourself with their blood this time!"

Ramses surged to his feet and Crawly knew he had him. Revenge pulsed through the human's soul, and through the demon's as well. The hold on the guards released as their pharaoh began bellowing orders and within moments the whole of the palace was in a frenzy, marshaling what soldiers remained into a force bent on slaughter.

Crawly rode with them, commandeering the biggest, blackest stallion from the royal stables despite his usual hatred of the animals. He hated a lot of things today, and horses were now down at the bottom of his list. Death and bloodlust were not part of his traditional repertoire but She had pushed him too far with this and he was not going to let Her get away with it, he was not!

By the time the remnants of the pharaoh's army had mustered and given chase, the Hebrews had reached the shore of the sea. As Crawly watched, the distant water split in half and the Almighty's pets began to cross the dry riverbed. He snarled out loud, knowing such a miracle was far too great for one angel. This was God Herself, of course it was. He gripped the reigns of his stallion harder. Aziraphale would be fine in the chaos, he had miracles on hand to make sure of that. But he couldn't say the same for the rest of the throng.

Four hundred foot soldiers, riders, and charioteers surged onto the seabed as the Hebrews climbed out on the opposite back. Only a few minutes more and the army would be upon them.

A horrible roar echoed from behind them and Crawly looked back just in time to see a wall of water as tall as the palace itself crumbling inward towards him. Screams assaulted his ears but he didn't even have time to open his mouth before the wall struck him with the force of an avalanche, tearing him from his horse and smashing him into the ground.

There was a terrible stretch of time where Crawly couldn't make sense of anything. He was pummeled from all sides by water, stone, bodies, armour. All air was forced out of his lungs and seawater took its place. He had no idea which way was up, and after the roar subsidied a deep oppressive silence filled his ears.

If Crawly had been human, he would be dead. But he was a demon, and the broken bones and crushed sternum could be reversed with a series of miracles. His chest rebelled against the water that filled it, but he didn't truly need to breathe so he could bear the ache.

Eventually the churning ocean around him settled down enough for him to realize he was pinned to the sea floor by a chariot wheel. It took some wriggling - during which a normal human would have certainly drowned three times over - but he managed to free himself. The water around him was full of debris and bodies as he swam for the light above.

Crawly burst to the surface with a gasp that lost itself in gurgling. He dragged himself half onto a nearby rock and doubled over, choking up seawater and trying to clear his lungs enough to breathe.

On the opposite bank, the last of the Hebrews were disappearing over the hill.

He screamed the moment he had the breath for it, a sound of betrayal and failure and impotent rage, directed solely at the heavens. Dead men and dead horses filled the water around him. Dead crops and dead children filled the kingdom behind. Death and pain were always the clearest signs of Her interference. And now She waltzed away from him like always, leaving him powerless. Caring nothing for the ruin in her wake.

He wouldn't face any punishment from Downstairs, he knew. Four hundred souls dead while steeped in the throes of Wrath was quite a consolation prize. More than enough to keep Hell happy and off his back.

But it was no consolation to Crawly.

He screamed until his throat was sore, then collapsed alone on the rock in the sea and wept with Egypt.