(no subject)
Title: Game Over, Insert Coin
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: PG-13, I suppose.
Summary: The end of the world is quieter than you'd think.
Notes:575 words.
Disclaimer: Not mine, et cetera!
For paigehead, who read my original writing with great grace. Whee!
The world ended as it began; suddenly, and with a smile.
The few remaining occult--or ethereal, or some gray area between the two--powers remaining were left huddled together in confusion, staring at a vacuum. Labels like angel and demon had become obsolete in a matter of seconds, although perhaps it had been millennia; it was impossible to tell, and the only Being who knew wasn’t talking.
“Oh, God,” someone said, and everyone heard it despite a lack of anything for the sound to travel through.
The nothingness quickly found itself filling up, insofar as nothingness can be filled up, with--something--a cross between voiceless communication and what it remembered vaguely as thoughts.
It might be of interest to the reader that nothingness is not black. Black has too many human connotations; and anyway, black implies the absence of light. There is no room in nothingness for light, so there cannot be any concept so complex as the lack of it. There is, in fact, no word in any human language that can describe nothingness. Those who experienced it quickly disintegrated into sightless, soundless, paralyzed shadows of themselves, or died, restrained and screaming.
The closest word is, perhaps, colorless. Even that implies more than it should--it is not colorless; it is not anything.
Admittedly, that is sort of the point.
“God,” the someone repeated. The pain in the word cut through the soft susurration caused by anxiety and shuffling wings.
“Don’t,” said the someone next to him, very quietly, pulling on his arm.
“Dunt matter,” said the first someone, whose name was Crowley. He had, at one point, been a demon, but by now he couldn’t tell up from down.
“But maybe it does,” said Aziraphale. Crowley’s face looked very pale and very young; his eyes, still yellow (as far as Aziraphale could tell in their bizarre surroundings) and still slit-pupilled, were too big for his face. He looked naked without his sunglasses.
Crowley shrugged, rubbing at his collar bone with one hand and clenching the other into a fist to hide that they were shaking. Aziraphale’s own hand shot out, caught Crowley’s fingers as they were reaching his shoulder for the seventh time. “No,” he said, quietly. “Please.” And Crowley stilled, clutching Aziraphale’s hand to his heart.
They stood like that, separated from the rest of the crowd by something intangible but all the more concrete for its impalpability. It wasn’t peace--it couldn’t be--but it was close. It wasn’t love, at least not the pale imitation humans understood. It was deeper; it was, for lack of a better word, divine.
“See,” said God. “This is what it was meant to be.”
The collective mass took one, two, several steps back. She had appeared suddenly in their midst, and seemed far too cheerful--“Be not afraid,” the angel had said; but they were. Several of the shadowy figures shrunk into one another; arms that were never made to hold held each other anyway.
“This is what it was meant to be all about--and look what you all did.” She shook her head. “You. You. You messed it up, is what you did. You made it wrong when it was only ever supposed to be right.”
She shrugged, then, and waved a hand. They dissolved; they did not disappear so much as fade into their background.
“Game over, insert coin, I guess.”
And with a flash, that was it.
Pairing: Aziraphale/Crowley
Rating: PG-13, I suppose.
Summary: The end of the world is quieter than you'd think.
Notes:575 words.
Disclaimer: Not mine, et cetera!
For paigehead, who read my original writing with great grace. Whee!
The world ended as it began; suddenly, and with a smile.
The few remaining occult--or ethereal, or some gray area between the two--powers remaining were left huddled together in confusion, staring at a vacuum. Labels like angel and demon had become obsolete in a matter of seconds, although perhaps it had been millennia; it was impossible to tell, and the only Being who knew wasn’t talking.
“Oh, God,” someone said, and everyone heard it despite a lack of anything for the sound to travel through.
The nothingness quickly found itself filling up, insofar as nothingness can be filled up, with--something--a cross between voiceless communication and what it remembered vaguely as thoughts.
It might be of interest to the reader that nothingness is not black. Black has too many human connotations; and anyway, black implies the absence of light. There is no room in nothingness for light, so there cannot be any concept so complex as the lack of it. There is, in fact, no word in any human language that can describe nothingness. Those who experienced it quickly disintegrated into sightless, soundless, paralyzed shadows of themselves, or died, restrained and screaming.
The closest word is, perhaps, colorless. Even that implies more than it should--it is not colorless; it is not anything.
Admittedly, that is sort of the point.
“God,” the someone repeated. The pain in the word cut through the soft susurration caused by anxiety and shuffling wings.
“Don’t,” said the someone next to him, very quietly, pulling on his arm.
“Dunt matter,” said the first someone, whose name was Crowley. He had, at one point, been a demon, but by now he couldn’t tell up from down.
“But maybe it does,” said Aziraphale. Crowley’s face looked very pale and very young; his eyes, still yellow (as far as Aziraphale could tell in their bizarre surroundings) and still slit-pupilled, were too big for his face. He looked naked without his sunglasses.
Crowley shrugged, rubbing at his collar bone with one hand and clenching the other into a fist to hide that they were shaking. Aziraphale’s own hand shot out, caught Crowley’s fingers as they were reaching his shoulder for the seventh time. “No,” he said, quietly. “Please.” And Crowley stilled, clutching Aziraphale’s hand to his heart.
They stood like that, separated from the rest of the crowd by something intangible but all the more concrete for its impalpability. It wasn’t peace--it couldn’t be--but it was close. It wasn’t love, at least not the pale imitation humans understood. It was deeper; it was, for lack of a better word, divine.
“See,” said God. “This is what it was meant to be.”
The collective mass took one, two, several steps back. She had appeared suddenly in their midst, and seemed far too cheerful--“Be not afraid,” the angel had said; but they were. Several of the shadowy figures shrunk into one another; arms that were never made to hold held each other anyway.
“This is what it was meant to be all about--and look what you all did.” She shook her head. “You. You. You messed it up, is what you did. You made it wrong when it was only ever supposed to be right.”
She shrugged, then, and waved a hand. They dissolved; they did not disappear so much as fade into their background.
“Game over, insert coin, I guess.”
And with a flash, that was it.