#strictly speaking in SU canon that should have killed him outright

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 17 Part 1

So. What’s everyone else been up to?

Link to next part at the end.

(From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

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Chapter 17

Saturday

Armageddon dawned, with minimal fuss, in the village of Tadfield, England. Things wouldn’t properly kick off for a few hours still, so there was time for a lie-in.

Warlock Young, son of Deirdre and Arthur Young, was in his bedroom. He sat, bleary-eyed, in the morning light coming through the window. He normally refused to achieve consciousness before noon on Saturdays, but he had woken up early[1] thanks to the piping voices of other children in the street, so he had dragged himself up to glare at them.

Warlock was not Warlock’s actual name. It was certainly not what his parents called him. They called him young man - pun not intended. Mr. Young had never intended a pun in his life.

Tadfield had been, at one point, a wonderful place for a child to grow up, but that was before Warlock’s time. In the late aughts, a dual carriageway had barrelled into town like a runaway lawnmower through an outdoor chess garden. It had bisected the bucolic village, taking out the village green and the historic church. The shell-shocked remains now huddled for warmth by the side of the road. Motorists usually mistook them for a rest stop junction.

Warlock didn’t care about any of this. The only effect it had on him was that his dad wouldn’t stop banging on about air quality, of which he took daily measurements with a little metre thing that clipped onto the fridge.

Warlock hated Tadfield. Warlock hated most things. He especially hated the kids who had woken him up, ambling by outside his bedroom window. They were chattering, like always. A girl in a stripy top with red wellington boots, a boy covered in dirt, and a small bespectacled boy who looked like dirt wouldn’t dare to come anywhere near him.

They were in his class, and they thought they were a gang. Not a proper gang like the ones that smoked and threw bricks at each other. A stupid kid gang. Except, after they all sat through that earnest school assembly about knife crime, they started lowering their voices whenever they mentioned the word gang. Which was stupid, because no-one in their right mind would have thought of them as a real gang to begin with. All they did was hang out and eat ice cream and pretend to play with swords and cloaks and lightsabers. It was dumb, and Warlock did not want to be friends with them.

They were probably heading to the local park. If you could call it a park. It had nothing in it like grass or trees or equipment that wasn’t broken. Warlock’s mum always told him not to go there in case there were needles lying around. He rolled his eyes whenever she said that. He wouldn’t go there anyway, because Warlock didn’t like to go outside.

The girl stopped by the Youngs’ front garden wall to retie her ponytail. Warlock ducked to the side of the window in case she looked up and saw him.

“Come on, Pepper,” the boy with the grimy face said. What was he always so cheerful about?

She followed the other two past Warlock’s window and out of sight. Warlock watched them go with narrowed eyes.

He went downstairs. Maybe he’d visit the park. For unrelated reasons.

His mum had the news on. The newsreader was saying something boring Warlock didn’t listen to. His mum looked worried, though.

His dad was sticking his head through the kitchen window. “Funny weather outside, Deirdre,” he called back in.

Where else would the weather be? Warlock had the most embarrassing dad in the world. Although the light outside was a bit weird. He had paid little attention before, but the sky out of his window had been full of strange, metallic-coloured clouds.

Warlock snuck his faux leather jacket from the coat hook on his way out of the front. His mum called out something to him, but he shut the front door before he could take in what it was.

The wind tore into him like a knife. He almost forgot about the park and fled back indoors. Then he thought of the three kids and Pepper’s red wellington boots and glared. He shrugged into his jacket, wrapped his arms around his torso and stomped up the road, teeth chattering.

Everything looked a weird colour. He’d been right about the sky. There was a sort of swirling pattern on the ground, too, from the clouds.

Maybe Greasy would know what was up with the weather. He watched nature documentaries sometimes. Greasy Johnson was Warlock’s sort of friend. They bonded over liking to sit in their rooms looking up stuff on the internet that their parents wouldn’t approve of and hating all the other kids in their class. Greasy had prize-winning tropical fish. When he first went over to Greasy’s house for tea, aged six, Warlock almost made fun of the tropical fish, but decided not to, as even back then Greasy was already four times Warlock’s size and could definitely put him in a headlock. Warlock was glad now that he hadn’t said anything, because he thought the fish were pretty cool.

Warlock was called Warlock because he’d once played a warlock in the game he and Greasy had made up together that was not Dungeons and Dragons, it was way cooler, although it did feature heavily both dungeons and dragons. Warlock felt a bit bad that they hadn’t come up with a cool nickname for Greasy that would actually stick. Greasy had been Greasy since nursery, and there was no shifting it now.

The three kids in the park - the Them - and Greasy were kind-of rivals, which was another reason Warlock was happy to agree they were rubbish. Greasy, technically, started it by being, technically, a bully. Warlock didn’t hold this against him. He didn’t bully Warlock, and Warlock would probably turn to bullying himself if it didn’t require him to interact with other children.

He had arrived. The wind moaned in his face. He hoped it wasn’t messing his hair up too badly. He was growing it long, but he suspected some of it was already sticking up weirdly. He self-consciously tried to pat it flat.

The three Them were sitting in the broken cage thing. All children’s playgrounds had one of these. A climbing frame shaped like an egg, part-buried in the ground. It looked like a cage with a little door in the front. The Them were huddled inside it, faces screwed up against the cold. Warlock felt satisfaction at the knowledge that someone else was concluding they would have been better off staying home.

He skulked round the edge of the park. He kept the three Them in the corner of his eye.

Pepper looked over her shoulder when he wandered round the back of the egg-cage-thing. His heartbeat picked up for a second. She frowned, suspicious, and turned back.

Warlock casually, in a series of loops and doubling-back, sauntered towards the cage.

He stepped onto a rung one step off the ground and gripped with his hands near the top. Slightly elevated, he looked down on the backs of the heads of the Them.

Pepper and the boy with the dirty face glared up at him. The small boy glanced up, turned red and looked away.

“What?” said Pepper.

Warlock gave a shrug. “Nothing.”

He might have practised the careworn shrug and the bored ‘nothing’ in his bedroom mirror a few times. Ennui was a difficult thing to convey.

Pepper narrowed her eyes. Warlock tried not to be nervous. Pepper talked a lot in class about feminism and anti-war stuff and someone called Maya Angelou. Warlock didn’t take all of it in, but it was pretty impressive -

No. Scary -

Wait. Uh.

“What are you looking at, stupid?”

Oh no. He didn’t say that, did he?

No. Pepper just said it to him. Warlock blinked a few times, trying his hardest not to blush. This was spinning out of control. He was going to have to insult someone.

“Your dungarees make you look like Pippi Longstocking,” he sneered.

Pepper stared at him with contempt. Warlock cringed. That had been deeply, wincingly unfortunate.

“Who’s Pippin Longbottom?” the grimy kid asked.

“I think she’s Swedish?” the un-grimy kid said.

Pepper rolled her eyes. “She’s a literary heroine, and she’s got super strength and she can fly. So that’s not actually much of an insult. Not that I’ve read those books.” She turned slightly red herself. “It was on TV once. It was ok. My little sister liked it.”

The sneer in her voice hit home. This was going terribly. All the practicing Warlock did in front of the mirror wasn’t helping at all.

He rallied. “Well. Did you know you’re not a real gang?”

“’Course. Real gangs aren’t allowed. Because of the knives,” the small boy said, promptly.

Pepper gave Warlock a weary sort of look. “Why don’t you hang out with Greasy Johnson? Speaking of a gang. If you can call two people a gang.”

“I don’t just hang out with Greasy all the time. I know lots of people.” Warlock was aware this was largely a lie.

Pepper crossed her arms. “Oh yeah? What are our names?”

The other two looked up.

Warlock almost rolled his eyes. Of course he knew their names. They were in his class. He just enjoyed thinking of them as nameless because they were annoying.

He pointed at the two boys. “Billy-bob. Red Leicester.” He pointed at Pepper and grinned. “And Pippin Galadriel Moonchild -”

She was almost upon him before he could get to the end. He sprinted towards the gate and made it three steps before a whirlwind of eleven-year-old fury tackled him from behind and brought him crashing to the ground.

Warlock coughed and squirmed under Pepper’s knees wedged into his back. He hoped he wasn’t lying on any needles.

“Say that again -”

Warlock tried to throw her off and came up comically short. Pepper punched him in the back of the shoulder. He tried not to cry.

Pepper sat back up. He could hear the grim smile in her voice.

“Oh, look. Super strength, and I can fly.”

Something splatted on the ground nearby. Warlock hardly noticed.

The polite voice of the dirt-repellent boy drifted to them across the playground. “Er. Pepper?”

A couple more splats sounded. Pepper didn’t comment on them, so nor did Warlock.

“You’re ruining my jacket,” he said.

“Say sorry, then. Maybe I’ll let you up.”

Splat. Splat.

“Oh, wow, that’s weird,” the dirt-attracting boy said.

Pepper’s weight on top of Warlock suddenly went slack. Warlock still couldn’t push her off, but it was as if she’d got distracted from trying to wrestle him down. He wriggled for all he was worth. Eventually he got lucky, or she lost interest, and he tipped her off and scrambled up again, nursing a scraped elbow.

Warlock took in the slimy things lying all around the playground. They were piling up, everywhere. More of them were falling, landing in squishy heaps.

The other three stared into the sky, agog. Warlock joined them.

It was raining fish…

~*~

A fish landed on Crowley’s head as he rounded a corner on Regent’s Park. He tossed it aside. Nothing that disgusting would normally dare land on him, which confirmed the fish rain was the doing of the Antichrist, as if that had been in any doubt.

The cultural attaché’s residence came into view. Crowley felt like he hadn’t been back there in decades, while also feeling like he was slinking back into work in the same clothes after a dirty weekend. Which was about accurate, come to think of it.

The sky flickered and churned overhead. He was getting a bit sick of the Hollywood special effects. That’s what happened when you let Americans raise the Antichrist. He reached the gates. He looked round upon hearing the sounds of a motorbike and a woman screaming.

A pink scooter flew down the street. Two humans were upon it, both wearing day-glo cycle helmets. Both of their mouths were stretched in rictus gurns of terror. Only one of them was actually screaming. The man(?) at the back appeared so disturbed, despite the contortions his face was making, that his throat produced no noise. The woman driving was giving it a full-throated yell. Despite being eight feet off the ground and zooming towards Crowley at seventy miles per hour, the scooter was otherwise studiously obeying the laws of traffic. That was Crowley’s first clue that Aziraphale was involved. He looked closer at the woman and saw something he recognised in her.

The scooter slowed in mid-air and touched down with a degree of consideration for its passengers.

The man stayed where he was, clutching his heart and also a giant, lethal, trumpety-looking thing. The woman looked green.

She looked up, and something shifted in her face. In a familiar, beloved voice, she said, “Crowley!”

She unhooked the day-glo helmet and clambered off the scooter. She tripped towards him, moving as if slightly uncertain how to walk in heels.

Crowley sauntered to meet her in the middle.[2] “Hi, Aziraphale. Nice dress. Suits you.”

The woman Aziraphale had possessed had red hair, even though it was clearly from a bottle. Crowley decided to feel like he’d been given a compliment.

Concern gripped him. If Aziraphale had had to possess a human, that meant -

“Angel, where’s your gem?”

Aziraphale’s unhappiness shone out of a stranger’s face. “In Heaven, I’m afraid.”

Crowley hissed in a breath. His mind supplied him with images of Aziraphale’s gem passing through Gabriel’s large, indifferent hands. Being thrown in a vault or bubbled.

“They had hellfire. They were going to use it on me.”

Crowley swore. There had been a few times in his long life when reality had thrown him a curve-ball even worse than whatever he had already been thinking.

“They wouldn’t melt your gem?”

“Michael was interrogating me before I escaped. I imagine she already has.”

Crowley stared at the small, middle-aged woman in jewel tones and bold makeup, staring up at him with Aziraphale’s expression. He tried to process that this was the form the love of his life was stuck in, potentially forever.

A different person bubbled up and overlaid Aziraphale. She coughed.

“Don’t mean to disturb you gents when you’re having a catch-up, but if you don’t mind, can I just help the Sergeant down off the scooter?”

Crowley looked at the man with the big trumpet. He was clinging to the back of the moped like a seasickness victim too scared to disembark down the plank. When the woman threatened to help him, he glowered and inched sideways off the scooter until he was almost at a ninety-degree angle to the ground. He staggered off in a series of hops, hefted the trumpet, and barked:

“Ay, Mister Crowley. It’s been a while. Ay didnae know you were involved in this Antichrist job. Glad tae be of service.” He gave a nasty cough. “P’rhaps we can sort out payment later? The lads… ye ken how it is…”

Crowley stared blankly. It had been years since he’d spoken to his contact in the Witchfinder Army, but his mind supplied an angry, nicotine-coloured Scotsman. The years had already been unkind to him when they’d last met, and they appeared to have ganged up on him a few more times since then.

“Oh, yeah… hi there.” His eyes drifted to the trumpet. Its purpose still eluded him.

“Sergeant Shadwell is providing us with ammunition,” Aziraphale volunteered. “As you can see, he is armed.”

“Oh.” Crowley’s face cleared. He was still a bit lost, but the trumpet being a weapon of some kind made a bit of sense. It was smart of Aziraphale to think to bring it. Satan knew they were under-equipped. Crowley had tried to sneak a hellhound out with him, but almost lost an arm.

“And I’m Madame Tracy. Medium,” the woman said, brightly.

Shadwell gave a cough that sounded like “Hoor of Babylon”.

All right, then. This was the team Crowley was facing down the apocalypse with. He gave a grim nod.

“Er. Madame Tracy, was it?”

“Yes, dearie?”

This was going to be awkward. Crowley tried not to show it. “Sorry to ask, but - permission to hug Aziraphale?”

Her eyes went huge. She giggled and blushed.

“All right, just this once. You two!”

Her face shifted, and Aziraphale moved back to the surface. There was still a trace of the blush on his face.

He stepped into Crowley’s arms and buried his face in his jacket. Crowley held the smaller, perfumed, colourful frame that contained Aziraphale. Behind him, Shadwell’s glower grew more pronounced.

This wasn’t permanent. The angels could do whatever they wanted to Aziraphale’s gem. Today, either everything ended, or everything would be saved, the two of them included.

“Right then,” he said with grim determination. “Let’s go speak to the boy who controls reality.”

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[1] 11:42.

[2] Moving as if uncertain how to walk, full stop.

(Link to next part)