Elysian Fields (2/?)
Title: Elysian Fields (2/?): ueniet quae misceat omnis hora duces
Author: clodia_metelli.
Rating: K+
Characters: Aziraphale, Crowley, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar (in this chapter).
Summary: The thing about Elysium these days is, well, it's kind of crowded... Crossover with Virgil's Aeneid, Book 6, and also history.
Disclaimer: I do not own Good Omens and I make nothing from this except my own entertainment.
A/N: This was inspired by vulgarweed's prompt over at go_exchange; my apologies once again to the organisers for not signing up for the exchange itself.
Word Count: 1479
ego somno solutus sum |
~ ueniet quae misceat omnis hora duces ~
(Lucan, pharsalia, 6.806-7)
“Elysium?” said Crowley blankly. “Isn’t that meant to be where the souls of dead heroes go?”
Aziraphale nodded.
“But that’s just a story.” And then, seeing the look on Aziraphale’s face, he added, “Oh come on, you know where most of them ended up. I was really pleased with Agamemnon, thought I did a really good job there -”
“Agamemnon aside,” said Aziraphale, speaking quickly because he knew exactly how pleased the demon had been with the outcome of that particular Troadic conflict and had no wish whatsoever to hear about it all over again, “if you have any better ideas, I should be delighted to hear them. Meanwhile, I’m pretty sure I can see Aeneas and his father over by that chariot, and the man in the olive crown next to them must be Romulus - and aren’t those the Brothers Gracchi having a good singsong down by the river? Anyway, we would appear to have company.”
The individual blurs in the distance had become a small, blurry crowd and it was heading towards them. Crowley, whose mischief-making amid the turbulence of recent Roman politics had conditioned him to react in certain specific ways to oncoming mobs, had to concentrate to keep himself from shinning it up the nearest tree. It didn’t help that Aziraphale was radiating angelic vibes in a manner that normally only happened when someone was getting a full dose of divine ecstasy, and it was making Crowley’s teeth itch. Under his breath, Crowley hissed, “Tone it down, would you?”
“What?” said the angel. “You’re the one dripping venom everywhere.”
They both glanced sideways at each other.
Wherever they might be, it was occurring to both of them, perhaps a shade belatedly, Aziraphale was still an angel and Crowley was still a demon. And even if they happened to be an angel and a demon who had been, well, call it acquainted, for a not inconsiderable length of time, there were still certain formal issues, not to mention a number of minor biographical incidents, standing in the way of full cooperation. A sword between the ribs and a dagger in the back being only the latest of these.
“My superiors,” said Aziraphale carefully, “aren’t going to be happy about this...”
“Yeah?” said Crowley. “Nor mine.”
He essayed a discreet sidle. There were some other things Below wasn’t going to be happy to hear about, like him losing his second body in five years, and this was no time to add consorting with Angelic Principalities to the list. Let alone in some Roman fairytale that wasn’t even meant to exist.
“Maybe we should go our separate ways -” he was just starting to say, when the shades of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus and Gaius Julius Caesar came striding through the scented grove, resplendent in matched armour, and slapped him heartily on the back. Following them came a whole gaggle of recently deceased Romans, not a few of whom bore a painful resemblance to persons whose painful deaths Crowley had personally witnessed. For some reason, they seemed to be cheering.
“Er, gentlemen,” said Aziraphale, edging carefully back into the undergrowth. “This isn’t Cicero...”
The cheering stopped. Crowley now found himself surrounded by an array of affronted expressions, many attached to visibly sharp edges.
“You’re right,” said Julius Caesar. “It isn’t.”
Pompey the Great scratched the top of his head with his little finger. “It ought to be,” he said, looking confused. “I was looking forward to seeing that whiny, pompous git of a politician again. I had a couple of things to say to him.”
“Yeah,” said Julius Caesar. “Me too.”
Under his shining armour, Crowley saw, he wore a tunic rent by gaping tears. Brownish splotches and jagged marks could just about be seen. And there was a white seam around Pompey’s neck that looked rather as though someone had marked out the appropriate sword-stroke for a neat decapitation on some sandy Egyptian beach...
“Who,” said Pompey, “are you?”
For someone who had somehow managed to worm his way right to the back of the crowd, Aziraphale could really project his voice. “Don’t you remember?” he said brightly. “He was one of Cornelius Sulla’s freedmen for a while, he went by Chrysogonus then, I’m sure you must have met him -”
The crowd hissed. Crowley winced.
“- and then he hung around with Catilina calling himself Marcus Porcius Laeca -” burbled Aziraphale, from whose receding person Crowley’s glare fell harmlessly away “- and I know you’ll remember Bibulus’s friend, Caesar, the one who got everyone calling you the Queen of Bithynia when you were first consul -”
Now Julius Caesar was bristling. Somehow, the angel’s voice lingered even while the angel himself was disappearing down the hill. Crowley discovered he would have preferred it the other way round.
“- young Sextus Clodius, one of Clodius Pulcher’s chums, who said such nasty things about Pompeius -”
Crowley gulped. “Er,” he said, eloquently, and looked around desperately for an escape route.
There wasn’t one. He was completely hemmed in by an increasingly hostile crowd. And that blasted angel, who was almost out of sight now, was still reeling off Crowley’s various assumed personae. And since he was about to get to -
“- advisor Potinus, when Pompeius was applying to young Ptolemy for sanctuary -”
At this point, Crowley’s instincts recognised that the situation was lost and kicked into action, happily for Crowley himself, who was still frozen by shock and also by the hefty presence of an angry Pompeius Magnus and a soon to be very angry Julius Caesar. “Nice meeting you all,” he said, “again,” and collapsed himself into a serpent.
Which, much to his subsequent relief, turned out to be an option even in this imaginary underworld.
It wasn’t the solution to all his problems, of course. To begin with, Crowley was now surrounded by a mob of heavy, confused giants and ran a serious risk of being trampled ’neath their sandalled feet. He undulated frantically between the hairy columns, while their owners blundered about and demanded to know where he had gone and said a great many other exceedingly uncomplimentary things that made Crowley venomously sorry they were all dead and therefore presumably beyond temptation. Breaking out into the green freedom of the hillside with only a couple of minor scrapes and bruises came as a considerable relief. He put his head down and slithered at breakneck speed through the perfumed grass and gleaming white lilies that covered the Elysian Plains. So fast was he slithering, in fact, that he would certainly have slithered right into the river, if someone hadn’t caught his tail just as the ground disappeared beneath him.
Startled, he found himself swaying free with his tongue flickering a fraction of an inch over the murky water. “Don’t drink it!” said Aziraphale’s voice urgently. “Don’t drink from the river!”
So the angel was still hanging around. Crowley hissed and imitated an infinity symbol in a valiant attempt to bite him. This resulted in being thrown down onto the grassy riverbank, which rather hurt. He decided he might as well be human-shaped again, and was.
“You,” he said, and couldn’t think of anything bad enough, so said again only, “You -”
“Yes?” said Aziraphale, oozing innocence.
“You left me there! They were about to tear me apart!”
“I was confident in your ability to make a swift getaway,” said Aziraphale smoothly. “Anyway, you are a demon. I really don’t think I should be helping you escape the wrath of the righteous -”
“Righteous!” snarled Crowley. “They’re a bunch of squabbling warlords! Butchers with armies and warmongering lunatics so obsessed with their own self-importance that they’ll start civil wars to defend it! You dropped me right in it!”
“Well, yes,” Aziraphale admitted, backing away a bit, “but it all worked out for the best, didn’t it? Now really, dear boy, I do think you’re overreacting. After all, I stopped you falling in the river just now, didn’t I?”
Rather sullenly, Crowley subsided.
“So?” he said. “I can swim, you know.”
“Not in the River Lethe,” said Aziraphale, and then looked mildly horrified when Crowley continued to look unimpressed. “The souls of the dead come here to drink and forget everything before being reborn! Er, so the story goes...”
Crowley snorted. “Hah, stories. What do humans know?”
“You can take the first drink, then,” said Aziraphale. “Go on. See what happens.”
His eyes glinted. Crowley edged closer to the river, hesitated and then shook his head. “Nah,” he said, “I’m not thirsty. So this is where Cicero thought he was going to end up, is it? river, dead heroes and all?”
“That’s what he wrote,” said Aziraphale. “And here we are in his place. Maybe he’s gone to Heaven instead.”
“Maybe he’s gone to Hell,” said Crowley, cheering up a bit. “So, er, these stories...”
The angel smiled with supreme benignity.
“My dear fellow,” he said, “I thought you’d never ask.”
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