#anyways! i hope to be updating my carrd as well when i get a chance

[insurged]

i'm sorry for being incredibly slow and just not present here. i have a lot of things going on but i will write when i can ! just know that it's not that i'm uninterested in writing with anyone. i appreciate all the asks / starters / replies that have been sent/replied to by those who want to write with me and just know that i am working on them at my own pace. <3 it's not you, it's me.

[holycatsandrabbits]

Love’s Endless Light: A Good Omens serial romance

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Chapter 2: Fear Dispelling

57 BC, El Mirador, Mesoamérica

It was oddly easy to forget that Aziraphale was an angel. Especially because Aziraphale never missed an opportunity to remind Crawly of that. But while Aziraphale tended to act in an angelic manner: kind, caring, generous, he was also sort of unassuming, meek and mild, gentle. Which was why it always nearly gave Crawly a heart attack to see Aziraphale suddenly transform into a Soldier of Heaven.

They’d been standing in the marketplace. Aziraphale was prattling on about something, and Crawly wasn’t really listening, because he’d been distracted. Crawly wasn’t sure why, but sometimes odd things about the angel would catch his attention: the way the the white hair on his arms seemed to sparkle in the sunlight, the lively noise his hands made when he clapped them free of dust, the way his voice occasionally dropped low and sounded almost— tempting.

So while Crawly had been gazing curiously at Aziraphale’s sandals, noting with inexplicable interest that the angel’s second toes were longer than his big toes, some humans started a fight, and Aziraphale apparently felt the situation called for the Powers of Heaven. Suddenly Crawly was standing next to an angel in glory, feet planted apart, wings arching out, glowing golden, with his hands curled around the hilt of a flaming sword.

Soldier was such a strange look on Aziraphale. He was always clever, but now he looked calculating. He was strong, but now he looked powerful. Crawly backed up as far as he could go without actually running away. Aziraphale didn’t spare him a glance, all of his attention on a group of humans who’d apparently been menacing some other group of humans. Now some of the attackers were cowering, but others had armed themselves with whatever they could lay hands on— stone and obsidian knives, broken pottery, even a spear.

They didn’t stand a chance against an angel who had clearly been trained in close-hand combat. The sharp, pointed way Aziraphale moved now was so alien to his usual quiet walk and gentle habits that it gave Crawly a shiver. It reminded him so clearly of the War in Heaven between angels and Fallen angels. Crawly remembered the brilliant light, the screaming, the pain and heartbreak of friend pitted against friend.

Crawly hadn’t known Aziraphale then. He wasn’t even sure Aziraphale had been in the War. Either way, Aziraphale clearly knew how to fight. Except for one thing: none of the humans were being injured. Aziraphale fought only to disarm them. Eventually, the whole group of them were forced to admit defeat, and they fled.

Crawly expected the other humans to be grateful to their defender. Apparently Aziraphale expected it as well, because he reached out toward a child who had fallen.

The child buried her face in her mother’s leg, sobbing. Her mother picked her up and ran.

Aziraphale’s glow doused itself in an instant, as if someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over him. The sword and wings vanished, too, leaving Aziraphale as just a man standing by himself in an empty marketplace. He kept his face turned away from Crawly, but Crawly could see the tension in his shoulders, like his wings were still weighing on him.

Crawly wasn’t sure what to do. He didn’t want to get closer to Aziraphale right now, but neither could he bear to leave him alone. “There’s your good deed for the day,” Crawly called.

Aziraphale didn’t answer. His gaze was trained onto the ground, where stone knives lay in a haphazard pile, gray with dirt and dust, but not a speck of blood. The lack of all sound ate at Crawly, the quiet of what should have been a busy marketplace, of what should have been a chattering angel.

“Kind of you,” Crawly offered, uncertainly. “You’re always protecting them, even from themselves.”

“Kindness is in the eye of the beholder, apparently,” Aziraphale said.

Crawly was so unnerved by the heartbreak in Aziraphale’s voice that he said the next thing that popped into his mind, although, historically, that had never failed to be a bad idea. “Did you learn those moves in the War in Heaven?”

Aziraphale’s head snapped up, and he gazed at Crawly with shocked blue eyes. “That— that was a long time ago,” he said, his cheeks flushing a feverish red.

Crawly was very much regretting angering what he somehow seemed to keep forgetting was an very dangerous angel. “Um— I just meant—”

“Why?” Aziraphale demanded, stalking closer to Crawly. “Do you think I want to fight you?”

Aziraphale hadn’t reignited his glow or brought out his wings, but he stood in front of Crawly with his hand tilted up, like he was expecting to momentarily be holding a sword. He was an angel facing down a demon, but not like Crawly had ever seen before. This angel looked not murderous and violent but sick and in pain.

“No,” Crawly said. “I know you don’t.”

Aziraphale’s gaze played over Crawly’s face, as if he was unsure whether to believe him. As if Aziraphale had an awful lot riding on that answer.

“I don’t want to fight you either,” Crawly said.

Aziraphale’s sword hand lowered. “I know. I was stupid enough to pass out drunk with you in Egypt a couple of hundred years ago. You could have—”

Crawly made an uncertain noise. “I mean, I was drunk too. So, you know. Not at my best.”

Aziraphale was looking at the ground again. “Were you in the War?” he asked softly.

“Yeah. Well, kind of. I hid.” Crawly wasn’t sure how he expected Aziraphale to react to that, but it definitely wasn’t a half-second of clear relief followed by his usual more tempered expression.

“You weren’t supposed to do that,” Aziraphale chided, but his voice had gentled again, disapproving rather than dangerous. “Hell would have punished you if they’d found out.”

“Eh, well—” Crawly said, “you see, the thing about rebelling is they can’t just expect you to stop, right? I mean, I rebelled against Heaven.” Crawly’s voice broke a bit. “In— in my own way. Sort of happened into it. But anyways, I Fell, and then they suddenly expect me to follow new orders? Doesn’t work that way.”

“Once a rebel, always a rebel?” Aziraphale asked.

“Hardly going to stop now,” Crawly said. And then, in an act that he would later realize marked the beginning of a very, very distressing and ultimately unshakable habit, he took it upon himself to fight away Aziraphale’s sadness. “Might even,” he said, “have dinner with an angel. If he’s amenable.”

Aziraphale raised his eyebrows a little, looking soft and strangely hopeful.

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My previous Good Omens serial: Mr. Fell’s Bookshop

My Carrd

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Image text: Love’s Endless Light by Dannye Chase (HolyCatsAndRabbits) Chapter 2

As Aziraphale and Crowley slowly fall in love over the millennia, Crowley discovers that Aziraphale is keeping a very dangerous secret.