More Angel AU.
Title: Too Much
Cast: Bill Laimbeer and the Detroit Shock.
Notes: Short piece set around 2004, more like ground work than anything else. [ETA: If it were somehow unclear, this is an AU where UConn and Geno have made a pact with Satan and Notre Dame's Irish are on the side of the Lord. Kicking ass for Jesus.]
Bill Laimbeer is an angel. He's an honest to God fucking angel, with white feathers and all that shit, even if no one would believe it. He looks in the mirror in the morning to see his wings drooping down past the curve of his own beer belly and thinks, "this can't be real."
But he remembers a time when it did feel real, and that this wasn't only something he was, but someone more he could become. More than possibility, he once had a destiny. He was the righteous fury of the Lord given form in imperfect flesh and he could strike down sinners at his pleasure. And he did take pleasure in it.
Bill tells his players they are the blunt instruments of his will. "You are the knife I'm going to carve through mountains," he says to Deanna, and she nods as if with complete understanding. Bill never knows how to stop witnessing to the unconverted, chiselling away every imperfection until they are made whole.
Somewhere along the way -- maybe in the middle of his career, between the first and second championships -- all the promise began to feel more like something he was owed. The Great Plan, ineffable and eternal, was nothing but a set-up. Training camp for those still immune to the truth. Most of them, even the other angels, aren't ready for the truth.
It can't be said that Bill is fallen, not really. But if the Lord were to ever call on him, it's very likely that he would pretend to have lost His number.
Maybe it's all his time spent associating directly with his enemy. Riley watches him sometimes, her eyes sad and mournful like his own Goddamn weeping Mary. Bill can count each of his own sins in the tight lines around the corners of her mouth.
It was in 2003 when she started calling him Bill when they were alone in private. Just "Bill" with a quiet familiarity he would never allow at practice.
"Bill," she says, "it's too much." And she means Swin. She means the trust and the leadership of the team being given so easily. She means everything he asks of her. It's too much.
"There's no limit to glory," he grunts without looking up from his paperwork. This is how it always goes. These are the things that have always been, the distrust and prickling anger. The point where the young ones, what's left of the ragged army of God, see the disillusioned fully stripped bare. The disappointment that always follows after truth.
These are the things that are. Like this war, the animosity, they are eternal.
Cast: Bill Laimbeer and the Detroit Shock.
Notes: Short piece set around 2004, more like ground work than anything else. [ETA: If it were somehow unclear, this is an AU where UConn and Geno have made a pact with Satan and Notre Dame's Irish are on the side of the Lord. Kicking ass for Jesus.]
Bill Laimbeer is an angel. He's an honest to God fucking angel, with white feathers and all that shit, even if no one would believe it. He looks in the mirror in the morning to see his wings drooping down past the curve of his own beer belly and thinks, "this can't be real."
But he remembers a time when it did feel real, and that this wasn't only something he was, but someone more he could become. More than possibility, he once had a destiny. He was the righteous fury of the Lord given form in imperfect flesh and he could strike down sinners at his pleasure. And he did take pleasure in it.
Bill tells his players they are the blunt instruments of his will. "You are the knife I'm going to carve through mountains," he says to Deanna, and she nods as if with complete understanding. Bill never knows how to stop witnessing to the unconverted, chiselling away every imperfection until they are made whole.
Somewhere along the way -- maybe in the middle of his career, between the first and second championships -- all the promise began to feel more like something he was owed. The Great Plan, ineffable and eternal, was nothing but a set-up. Training camp for those still immune to the truth. Most of them, even the other angels, aren't ready for the truth.
It can't be said that Bill is fallen, not really. But if the Lord were to ever call on him, it's very likely that he would pretend to have lost His number.
Maybe it's all his time spent associating directly with his enemy. Riley watches him sometimes, her eyes sad and mournful like his own Goddamn weeping Mary. Bill can count each of his own sins in the tight lines around the corners of her mouth.
It was in 2003 when she started calling him Bill when they were alone in private. Just "Bill" with a quiet familiarity he would never allow at practice.
"Bill," she says, "it's too much." And she means Swin. She means the trust and the leadership of the team being given so easily. She means everything he asks of her. It's too much.
"There's no limit to glory," he grunts without looking up from his paperwork. This is how it always goes. These are the things that have always been, the distrust and prickling anger. The point where the young ones, what's left of the ragged army of God, see the disillusioned fully stripped bare. The disappointment that always follows after truth.
These are the things that are. Like this war, the animosity, they are eternal.