#the Dalek-y one is from Book Omens

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 14, Part 1

Warnings! Asphyxiation, child endangerment.

Link to next part at the end. (From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

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Chapter 14

Oh.

Shit.

Zadkiel grabbed Adam. His hands engulfed the boy’s shoulders. Had he always been this tiny? Focus, focus -

“Adam, reality will listen to you. You are in control. Anything that you believe will come true.” Desperation tried to worm into his voice. He held it at bay. “Listen to me. You can hear me talking, right? That means there’s air. You can breathe, you just have to believe there’s air. Come on now.”

Spacedog was hollering. Adam clutched the dog to his chest, painfully tight. His arms were as pale as death.

Zadkiel made a strangled noise. He pulled Adam into a bear hug and dived.

Proxima Centauri B rushed up to meet him. He was breaking most laws of physics right now. He punched through the atmosphere, and didn’t bother to slow his descent as they streaked to the ground, miles of hard earth and marbled mud coming in fast -

Zadkiel burned through the alien sky, flaming like a meteor, and pasted himself on the rocky landscape.

His one safety protocol was to make sure Adam landed on top of him.

With a small explosion, Crowley and Aziraphale were flung apart like rag dolls.

Spacedog wriggled free and tried to lick Adam’s face. The space helmet got in the way. Spacedog pushed it into Adam’s cheek and frantically licked the glass. He whined, a piteous, unbroken sound.

The sprawled bodies did not move.

Then Adam’s face gave a twitch.

“Stop that, you silly Spacedog.”

Spacedog yapped his head off and ran around in circles.

Adam flexed his fingers, experimentally. They still held the Book.

Crowley and Aziraphale realised they had escaped being discorporated. To their dismay, this meant they had to move. They managed to roll over and flop towards Adam and each other. Sitting up could wait.

“You alright, Adam?” Crowley said without moving his lips.

Adam got the gist, even with none of the consonants. “Yeah. Thanks. It’s cool that you did that without being in a rocket.”

“Hell yeah,” Crowley managed.

“I’m so sorry, my dear boy,” Aziraphale said to Adam, just slightly more coherently than Crowley. “Are you sure you’re alright?”

“He’s fine, children bounce,” Crowley said, his eyes closed.

Aziraphale tutted. “You’re incorrigible,” he said. Or tried to. It proved a little too difficult in his current state.

Crowley cracked an eye open. “Did you say I’m ineffable?”

“In. Corri. Gible.”

“Good. We don’t use that kind of language in front of the kid.”

Adam sat up, wincing. Spacedog leapt into his arms and tried once more to mash the fishbowl helmet into his face.

~*~

When they’d all recovered a bit, they took in their surroundings.

Crowley had been to the Grand Canyon. Proxima Centauri B was like that, but stranger. Its winding rock tunnels and quarries were an odd, half-melted brown. The sun was low in the sky, either setting or rising, no-one was sure. It was a shockingly pinkish-red, in a night sky tinged a deeper, richer purple than any twilight on Earth.

Crowley tried to appreciate it. It was home, now. And presumably, forever.

Perhaps he just wasn’t in the mood. They were all a bit on-edge. Aziraphale kept sneaking glances at Adam to check he was still breathing. The damn green dog seemed perfectly at home, but that just put Crowley in a worse mood.

He skulked at the back of the group, hands in his pockets. Aziraphale fell back and stood beside him.

“You changed back,” he said, nodding to Crowley’s outfit.

“Eh, yeah. White was never my colour.”

“I suspect it isn’t mine, either,” Aziraphale said, softly.

Crowley’s gaze slipped over the brown and blue and gold of him.

“No. You’ve a bit more character than that,” he said.

Aziraphale smiled up at him from under his lashes. There was a flicker of intent to that look. Heat crawled up Crowley’s neck.

Adam giggled nearby as Spacedog swam laps around his head. They turned to watch him.

“Do you think he’s still the Antichrist, out here?” Aziraphale said.

“Is that a, strand the King of Spain in outer space, is he still a King, kind of thing?”

“I suppose that’s an interesting question. Although I meant it more in a, does he still have his powers out here, kind of thing.”

Crowley’s eyes lingered on the frolicking dog. He sighed. “I think he probably does.”

Aziraphale looked grim. “Poor old Earth,” he murmured.

Crowley shook his head. “If we’d just got on the portal and not let him yammer on about the dog…”

“I didn’t think,” Aziraphale said, sadly.

“Me neither. And I’ve got no excuse. Beelzebub briefed us on that hellhound for an entire Thursday afternoon.”

They watched the boy and dog in silence.

“I suppose it is the Earth that will still - ahm. Be affected by his powers?”

“How do you mean?”

“There’s no chance he’s brought Armageddon with him?”

They stared at each other. They peered at the sky. No sudden rains of blood or other omens appeared.

“Nah, reckon it’s probably still going to happen on Earth.”

Aziraphale looked miserable.

Crowley put a hand on his arm. “Hey. All we could do was get out.”

“I know.”

“Don’t torture yourself.”

Aziraphale mustered a weak smile.

They watched Adam rooting around for a stick to throw for Spacedog. He found a sturdy one right at his feet that was the right size and hurled it across the marsh. Spacedog took off after it, yipping. It was unclear how, in the helmet, he was going to bring it back.

“There isn’t any wood on this planet,” Aziraphale said, carefully.

Crowley nodded glumly. “Guess that confirms it. Reality still bends to his will.” He thought for a moment. “Come to think of it, I doubt this planet has much of an atmosphere.”

“Mmm, yes. That should have been our first clue.”[1]

“I think a regular child would have frozen to death while he was floating in space.” And/or exploded. Crowley felt he’d seen something like that in a film once.

“...This wasn’t a very child-friendly plan, was it?”

“You’re just noticing this now? We kidnapped an eleven-year-old from his parents.”

“You talked me into it.”

“Of course I did. Demon.”

“A temptation worthy of a commendation,” Aziraphale said, with only a trace of a scolding.

Crowley turned and slipped his arms around Aziraphale’s neck.

“They’ll have to put it in a cannon and fire it into space. Hope it reaches me in a few thousand years.”

Aziraphale chuckled. It was a wonderfully warm, wry sound. It always sounded like he knew he was getting away with something. Crowley watched the tips of his hair stain pink in the alien sun.

Suddenly, Aziraphale’s face fell.

“Crowley, we don’t have to teach him maths, do we?”

~*~

Half an hour later, the euphoria wore off.

Adam trudged across the squishy, marshy ground, investigating his new territory. Spacedog trotted at his heels. Aziraphale and Crowley stood and kept an eye on him from a distance. It was nice, like an amiable family walk across a muddy field in late September.

And then, like an amiable family walk across a muddy field in late September, the mood soured. The mud that had been fun to tromp through sunk through the soles of the walking shoes that were supposed to be waterproof. The rustic landscape grew dreary. That cow had a mean look in its eye.

In other words, it dawned on Adam that he hadn’t eaten for hours, the alien planet all looked the same for miles around, there was a shocking dearth of cinemas, sweet shops or comic books in this area of the galaxy, he would never see his family again, and he had very recently almost died. Also, he forgot to bring snacks.

A suspicion had brewed at the back of his mind for a few hours now. It bubbled away, growing, gaining certainty. Now, grubby, cold and hungry, it was time to ask.

“Are you two actually aliens?”

Aziraphale and Crowley were having a murmured grown-up conversation behind him. They stopped. Their faces went blank in the way grown-up’s faces went when they were thinking how to lie to him.

“Perhaps it’s time to drop the pretence,” Aziraphale whispered.

Crowley frowned. “It’s not like the truth is any less weird.”

“I dislike lying, on general principle.”

“I’m in favour of lying, on general principle. Let’s compromise and say nothing.”

“You know full well that would be a lie of omission. Don’t think I’m going to start falling for tricks like that after six thousand years -”

“Would you both just stop talking?” Adam said loudly.

They shut up.

“You’re always talking rubbish and I don’t understand it.”

Adam frowned. He held the Book under one arm. For a moment, he heard its pages rustle.

“My whole life is just everyone talking rubbish at me, all the time. Nothing anyone’s ever told me made any sense. Like the stuff about how I was going to destroy the world. And then you two, with the alien stuff. I just believed it because everything was so weird, it’s not like aliens could be any weirder. The only person I’ve ever met who seemed like they properly knew what was going on was that woman back in the car. She’s the one who left me this.” He hefted the Book in his arms. “I’ve got more proper answers from this than I’ve got from anyone, ever.”

“What is that?”

Aziraphale took a step towards him.

Adam’s arms tightened around the Book. Spacedog leapt in front of him and growled.

Aziraphale blinked and halted. Crowley held out an arm.

A chill wind picked up.

“That woman was the only person who seemed like she wanted to help me and tell me what was really going on, and she said I shouldn’t leave. She said it was a mistake to leave. And I didn’t listen. And you zapped her away.” Adam pointed at Crowley.

Crowley inched backwards. “Hang on, I was under a lot of stress…”

“And you grew wings and flew around that bookshop. Aliens don’t do that. You didn’t look like an alien, back then, you looked more like…”

Adam stopped.

“I shouldn’t have come with you,” he muttered.

Aziraphale and Crowley stared at each other.

“You remember you forced us to bring you, right?” Crowley pointed out. “Just saying.”

Aziraphale frowned and nudged him.

The wind whipped at them. Adam was only in a t-shirt. He wasn’t cold.

“I want to go home,” he said.

It was not the lament of a lost child. The words resonated around the landscape. Aziraphale and Crowley felt them down to the bones.

A whirring pulse sounded from high above them, faintly. Nobody glanced up, but a prickle of warning ran up their necks.

“I don’t have to be here. You said reality will listen to me. She said the same thing. In this book.”

An emerald-green spotlight shone down on Adam. The wind became a roaring gale. It whipped Adam’s t-shirt. He stared down Aziraphale and Crowley through eyes that were suddenly dark under the livid green light.

Crowley squinted into the sky.

He said, “What.”

Aziraphale kept his eyes on Adam. Carefully, as though the boy were a skittish animal, he raised his hands towards him.

“Adam, we were not honest with you. I apologise. It is our fault you are in this mess. There are forces at work that it was too difficult to explain to you. You see -”

“Angel, you should take a look at this,” Crowley interrupted.

“Not now, Crowley!”

“Aziraphale, it’s a goddamned flying saucer.”

Aziraphale looked up.

A round, whirring alien spacecraft hovered in the sky above them.

“What,” he said.

Adam stood in the disco-glow of the green spotlight. Furious pulses of wind flapped down on him. He met Crowley’s eyes with a long, hard stare. Spacedog’s hackles rose.

Crowley blinked first. He edged back, one hand on Aziraphale’s arm.

The flying saucer whirred and spun. In a series of loops, it meandered down to the surface of Proxima Centauri B. It let out a gust of steam as it settled like a soggy cake.

A door opened in its side with a hiss.

A ramp descended, and three aliens got out. Two of them were green. The third was a small hump with wheels and an egg-whisker sticking out of it. It quickly got stuck in a marshy patch and made some angry distress noises that the other two ignored.

Adam stood like a king greeting foreign dignitaries as the remaining two aliens walked over to him.

“Hello,” he said.

The alien leader, who had a face like a duck,[2] approached first. “Adam Dowling?”

Adam squinted up at her. The spotlight was still blinding. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“All right, sir. I believe you called for a taxi service.” The alien looked slightly put out to be used as such, but she hid it well. “We’re here to take you back to Earth.”

“Erm,” Crowley said. “Hang on.”

Everyone ignored him, to his relief. He had no idea what he would have said next.

Adam followed the aliens back to their saucer. The slightly taller alien helped the pepper-pot alien back up from where it had tipped over in the mud.

“Wait - Adam -” Aziraphale called.

Crowley put an arm around him. Neither moved to follow. Without speaking, they conceded that this was going to happen whether or not they found it plausible.

The three aliens shuffled back up the gangplank. The round, beeping alien left a long streak of mud as it trundled inside the spaceship. Adam and Spacedog walked behind them.

A scrap of paper flapped loose from inside the Book. The wind carried it directly to Aziraphale. He caught it reflexively.

Adam reached the top of the gangplank and vanished without a backward glance. The spaceship door sealed shut.

The spaceship made a Whomm Whomm Whomm noise and floated into the air. It wobbled a bit, and then streaked into the stratosphere, leaving a green comet trail behind it.

The howling gale abruptly blew itself out. The planet’s surface was deafeningly quiet.

Nothing broke the calm but a tiny green speck in the sky, already winking out of sight.

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[1] When you only breathe out of habit, you stop thinking about things like oxygen.

[2] “Ducks,” Crowley almost blurted, as a Pavlovian response.

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