Happy Holidays, _silverfox!
Title: VPON THY BELLY SHALT THOU GOE
Recipient: _silverfox
Author: tomato_greens
Rating: PG
Characters/Relationship: The Horsemen; Aziraphale/Crowley
Request: Anything with Crowley in snake form, and a conflict of interests among the horsepeople.
Author's Notes: This was a bit of a doozy to write for me, for all it ended up short! I hope you have a lovely holiday season.
Summary: For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
They met as they usually did, in the remains of the Garden--God’s once-green earth in ashen disarray. It had been hallowed ground, in the beginning of memory, but now the air was tart with sanctity long since rotted, and all the stumps were charred. The three figures converged in the very center, where the felled Tree still bled its constellatory secrets into the salt-sown soil.
“What’ll it be, boys?” War asked, her hair braided down her back and her lipstick as dark as a femme fatale. She flashed her deck at them, hands working like a magician’s: the Fool sucked his toes, a newly-blinded Justice clutched at her sword, six staves planted fruitlessly in rocky dirt. “Fancy a game?”
Famine shuffled his shoulders, irritable. “I don’t gamble,” he said punctiliously, “as you well know.”
“You’re such a square,” War sighed, rolling her eyes and tucking the cards into her sleeve with a practiced gesture. “Sometimes I can’t believe I still associate with you.”
“You needn’t, you know,” Famine pointed out coolly, which was unfair; War did her best work in Famine’s wake--oh! the elegant symmetry of human greed--and in what had become a useful habit, he’d boomerang in to reclaim what little she’d left unscathed. He smiled his thin lips at her. “Don’t you find your work fulfilling?”
War grinned back at him, the points of her teeth a sharp gleam in the Garden’s permanent hazy twilight. “Always,” she said, and twisted suddenly as the air shivered into bitterness; Pollution was crouched by the Tree, poking desultorily at the silvery residue its sap had left as it leaked gradually into the ground. “Watch your pet--he’s escaped.”
Famine snapped his fingers without looking around, and Pollution’s lithe shape unfolded itself from where he had been leaning against the Tree. “You shouldn’t play with that,” Famine admonished.
Pollution nodded, languid, his pale eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. “I’m not his pet,” he muttered in his greasy whisper, ignoring War’s extravagantly rolled eyes. “And I’m bored.” He kicked at the corner of a bone sticking out of the ground.
“Fancy a game?” War said again; her fingers slipped, oil slick, and the two of coins fluttered to the ground.
Pollution toed it towards himself. War could see the damp impressions left by his foot. “No thanks,” he said, picking up the card and folding it slightly between his fingers. “You’re too good a gambler. You always win.”
“Spoilsport,” War muttered. Pollution offered her the card back, but she waved him away--“I keep extras,” she explained.
“I must admit I was rather wishing he’d call today off,” Famine said, voice hollow. He was fiddling with his mobile, a sleek black thing that was totally useless, of course, in a land still tangentially belonging to a guy who thought stone tablets were the newest thing since his son’s face appearing in sliced bread. “I have a pressing epidemic in Somalia to get to.”
“You know Death,” Pollution said, languid as he nearly always was. “He never cancels.”
TOO TRUE, said Death, who had appeared suddenly behind Famine--Famine leapt away from him, nearly stumbling. MY APOLOGIES, Death said, sounding, as he usually did, overwhelmingly impervious.
“You’re always good for a wager,” said War, waggling her beautifully-shaped eyebrows at him.
NOT ALWAYS, Death said, and then held out a limply squirming burlap sack in his skeletal hand. BUT PERHAPS TODAY I AM SO INCLINED.
Pollution squinted at the bag and sort of oozed towards it it, looking interested when Death let the bag drop and a dark black-green creature slithered woozily out of it.
“What is that?” Famine asked delicately.
I THINK YOU’LL FIND THE WORD IS WHO, said Death.
The creature raised its head disjointedly and flicked its tongue, its clear yellow eyes looking startled, somehow, and War said, “Crowley,” between her teeth, hissing it like a curse. “What did you bring him here for?”
HE ASKED, Death said. IT SEEMED A SMALL ENOUGH REQUEST.
“I suppose we should show some respect,” said Famine dubiously. “Without him, I’m not entirely sure we would be here.”
WELL, I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THAT, Death said slowly, BUT--
“Please,” War said, holding up a hand in protest and wrinkling her nose in her usual exquisite revulsion. “It’s always too early for existential reflection.”
Crowley was now huddled into a protective coil, looking too small to be dangerous.
HE MADE ME AN OFFER I COULDN’T REFUSE, Death explained.
War snorted. “What was it? All-expenses vacation in Majorca? Did he promise you the honeymoon suite?”
YES, said Death, his grin as comfortably reassuring as it usually was. HOW EVER DID YOU GUESS?
“Does this mean we have to watch you play chess again?” Pollution asked. “That was the worst party I’ve ever been to.”
“I thought the knight was all right,” War acknowledged, “it was just the punch was awful. Spiked with all the wrong things.”
“Yes,” said Pollution said, looking into his cupped and empty hands. “Went down like kerosene.”
THAT SOUNDS UNPLEASANT, said Death.
“It was,” Pollution sighed. “I much prefer petrol.”
“Must it be chess?” War asked plaintively, reaching into the pocket inside of her suit jacket.
“Don’t show all your cards again,” Famine said to War. “You’re looking desperate. It’s so unbecoming.”
War bared her teeth. “Don’t try me,” she snapped.
HE DIDN’T WANT CHESS, Death said. HE ASKED FOR--ER--
“What, senet?” Famine asked.
“Go?” War tried.
“Checkers?” Pollution offered.
PICTIONARY, said Death.
Crowley looked around from where he had curled loosely around the fallen Tree, his scales streaked with the same iridescent sap. Hissss, he said, by which the Horsemen knew he meant (for they spoke all tongues of man and beast and every creeping thing which creeps upon the earth):
Come at me, motherfucker.
The game was easy enough to set up; Pollution had decided not to participate because every time he touched the pad of paper, it smeared beyond recognition. War refused Crowley as a partner because “He has no thumbs!” and Famine because he felt uncomfortable around anything that could swallow its food whole.
THAT’S RATHER PREJUDICED OF YOU, said Death, but agreed to the terms.
Death had an artist’s hand, and a fine attention to detail, and Crowley turned out to be a moderately talented portraitist, which left the other team at a distinct disadvantage.
“What is that?” War shrieked at Famine, her bright red nails particularly clawlike as she raised one furious finger into his sour face. “A nuclear warhead? A rapier? What?”
Famine begrudgingly added another crooked line.
“That doesn’t help!” War yelled. “Is it a mycotoxin cloud?”
Crowley made an elegant swoop with his tail, which he had dipped in the pot of ink Death had found somewhere in his robes.
TEACUP AND A BISCUIT, I THINK, said Death. LEMON CREAM, IF I’M NOT MISTAKEN.
Crowley flicked his tongue out in approval.
War grabbed the pen out of Famine’s hand and threw it out of the Garden, into the heathered ether that surrounded it. “What injustice,” she seethed.
SPEAK NOT OF INJUSTICE, YE, FOR WE HAVE CONQUERED, said Death, his layered, echoing voice oddly resonant even for someone whose entire body was hollow, and then Crowley was suddenly sitting sprawled at Death’s feet, breathing heavily into his fist, his wings wrapped awkwardly around him.
“Here again,” he said, bitterly, and stood to his full, gangly height. “I’ve never wanted to be here again.”
“It’s a lovely place, though,” said Pollution from where he was digging into the ground. “I’ve always wished I could stay uninvited.”
“Yes, well,” said Crowley, looking uncomfortable. “It went a bit pear-shaped last time I was here, didn’t it.”
I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT OF IT AS APPLES, MYSELF, Death said, smiling his wide, wide smile.
Crowley made an inarticulate noise in the back of his throat and rummaged inside his suit jacket for his sunglasses, which he immediately and gracelessly shoved onto his face. “Well, folks, it’s been real--”
WAIT, said Death, holding out a hand. MY PRIZE.
Crowley produced a colorful plastic folder from the same pocket his sunglasses had come from. There were several improbably pink palms on it. “Your flight itinerary,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” War said. She was sulking, moodily unbraiding her hair with ragged strokes of her hands. “Weren’t you supposed to be playing against him? I thought that’s what that chess nightmare was about, after all, wasn’t it?”
AND WHERE IS IT WRITTEN WE MUST PLAY OPPOSITE EACH OTHER? Death said. I ENJOY A HIGH-STAKES GAME ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE--LIVES ARE SO PEDESTRIAN.
“You’re impossible,” War groaned, and flung her hair over her shoulder in one shimmering copper-wire mass. “And I need to leave this place--the quiet is getting to me.”
LEAVE, THEN, said Death, and there were only two figures alone in the Garden.
“Thanks,” said Crowley. “I owe you one.”
YOU HAVE NO NEED, said Death, and handed him an apple, its skin a bloody, shocking red in the Garden of lost things. I DON’T MAKE DEALS WITH DEMONS.
“So, do you think I could go home now?” said Crowley.
WHICH? said Death, sounding genuinely curious.
“Well, I’d prefer not to be discorporated,” Crowley pointed out, “so Hell might be something to be avoided, then.”
OH, NO, said Death, YOU KNOW THAT WHERE I SHALL SEND YOU, THERE CAN BE NO RETURN.
Crowley made another inarticulate noise. “Great,” he said. “Fabulous. A permanent vacation is precisely what I need.”
I AM GLAD TO HEAR IT, said Death, AND SO LET IT BE:
and the Garden dissolved around them in a glittering sheen.
“Do wake up,” said Aziraphale plummily. “Come on, you know it isn’t good for you to lay-a-bed.”
“Angel?” said Crowley, muzzily--“but you were dead.”
“Nonsense,” said Aziraphale, setting down the cluttered tea tray with a surprising bang.
“You were dead,” Crowley insisted, “and so was I.”
Aziraphale set the teacup in Crowley’s hand. “Drink, my dear,” he said, “and be refreshed.”
Recipient: _silverfox
Author: tomato_greens
Rating: PG
Characters/Relationship: The Horsemen; Aziraphale/Crowley
Request: Anything with Crowley in snake form, and a conflict of interests among the horsepeople.
Author's Notes: This was a bit of a doozy to write for me, for all it ended up short! I hope you have a lovely holiday season.
Summary: For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters: and God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes.
They met as they usually did, in the remains of the Garden--God’s once-green earth in ashen disarray. It had been hallowed ground, in the beginning of memory, but now the air was tart with sanctity long since rotted, and all the stumps were charred. The three figures converged in the very center, where the felled Tree still bled its constellatory secrets into the salt-sown soil.
“What’ll it be, boys?” War asked, her hair braided down her back and her lipstick as dark as a femme fatale. She flashed her deck at them, hands working like a magician’s: the Fool sucked his toes, a newly-blinded Justice clutched at her sword, six staves planted fruitlessly in rocky dirt. “Fancy a game?”
Famine shuffled his shoulders, irritable. “I don’t gamble,” he said punctiliously, “as you well know.”
“You’re such a square,” War sighed, rolling her eyes and tucking the cards into her sleeve with a practiced gesture. “Sometimes I can’t believe I still associate with you.”
“You needn’t, you know,” Famine pointed out coolly, which was unfair; War did her best work in Famine’s wake--oh! the elegant symmetry of human greed--and in what had become a useful habit, he’d boomerang in to reclaim what little she’d left unscathed. He smiled his thin lips at her. “Don’t you find your work fulfilling?”
War grinned back at him, the points of her teeth a sharp gleam in the Garden’s permanent hazy twilight. “Always,” she said, and twisted suddenly as the air shivered into bitterness; Pollution was crouched by the Tree, poking desultorily at the silvery residue its sap had left as it leaked gradually into the ground. “Watch your pet--he’s escaped.”
Famine snapped his fingers without looking around, and Pollution’s lithe shape unfolded itself from where he had been leaning against the Tree. “You shouldn’t play with that,” Famine admonished.
Pollution nodded, languid, his pale eyelashes casting shadows on his cheeks. “I’m not his pet,” he muttered in his greasy whisper, ignoring War’s extravagantly rolled eyes. “And I’m bored.” He kicked at the corner of a bone sticking out of the ground.
“Fancy a game?” War said again; her fingers slipped, oil slick, and the two of coins fluttered to the ground.
Pollution toed it towards himself. War could see the damp impressions left by his foot. “No thanks,” he said, picking up the card and folding it slightly between his fingers. “You’re too good a gambler. You always win.”
“Spoilsport,” War muttered. Pollution offered her the card back, but she waved him away--“I keep extras,” she explained.
“I must admit I was rather wishing he’d call today off,” Famine said, voice hollow. He was fiddling with his mobile, a sleek black thing that was totally useless, of course, in a land still tangentially belonging to a guy who thought stone tablets were the newest thing since his son’s face appearing in sliced bread. “I have a pressing epidemic in Somalia to get to.”
“You know Death,” Pollution said, languid as he nearly always was. “He never cancels.”
TOO TRUE, said Death, who had appeared suddenly behind Famine--Famine leapt away from him, nearly stumbling. MY APOLOGIES, Death said, sounding, as he usually did, overwhelmingly impervious.
“You’re always good for a wager,” said War, waggling her beautifully-shaped eyebrows at him.
NOT ALWAYS, Death said, and then held out a limply squirming burlap sack in his skeletal hand. BUT PERHAPS TODAY I AM SO INCLINED.
Pollution squinted at the bag and sort of oozed towards it it, looking interested when Death let the bag drop and a dark black-green creature slithered woozily out of it.
“What is that?” Famine asked delicately.
I THINK YOU’LL FIND THE WORD IS WHO, said Death.
The creature raised its head disjointedly and flicked its tongue, its clear yellow eyes looking startled, somehow, and War said, “Crowley,” between her teeth, hissing it like a curse. “What did you bring him here for?”
HE ASKED, Death said. IT SEEMED A SMALL ENOUGH REQUEST.
“I suppose we should show some respect,” said Famine dubiously. “Without him, I’m not entirely sure we would be here.”
WELL, I DON’T KNOW ABOUT THAT, Death said slowly, BUT--
“Please,” War said, holding up a hand in protest and wrinkling her nose in her usual exquisite revulsion. “It’s always too early for existential reflection.”
Crowley was now huddled into a protective coil, looking too small to be dangerous.
HE MADE ME AN OFFER I COULDN’T REFUSE, Death explained.
War snorted. “What was it? All-expenses vacation in Majorca? Did he promise you the honeymoon suite?”
YES, said Death, his grin as comfortably reassuring as it usually was. HOW EVER DID YOU GUESS?
“Does this mean we have to watch you play chess again?” Pollution asked. “That was the worst party I’ve ever been to.”
“I thought the knight was all right,” War acknowledged, “it was just the punch was awful. Spiked with all the wrong things.”
“Yes,” said Pollution said, looking into his cupped and empty hands. “Went down like kerosene.”
THAT SOUNDS UNPLEASANT, said Death.
“It was,” Pollution sighed. “I much prefer petrol.”
“Must it be chess?” War asked plaintively, reaching into the pocket inside of her suit jacket.
“Don’t show all your cards again,” Famine said to War. “You’re looking desperate. It’s so unbecoming.”
War bared her teeth. “Don’t try me,” she snapped.
HE DIDN’T WANT CHESS, Death said. HE ASKED FOR--ER--
“What, senet?” Famine asked.
“Go?” War tried.
“Checkers?” Pollution offered.
PICTIONARY, said Death.
Crowley looked around from where he had curled loosely around the fallen Tree, his scales streaked with the same iridescent sap. Hissss, he said, by which the Horsemen knew he meant (for they spoke all tongues of man and beast and every creeping thing which creeps upon the earth):
Come at me, motherfucker.
The game was easy enough to set up; Pollution had decided not to participate because every time he touched the pad of paper, it smeared beyond recognition. War refused Crowley as a partner because “He has no thumbs!” and Famine because he felt uncomfortable around anything that could swallow its food whole.
THAT’S RATHER PREJUDICED OF YOU, said Death, but agreed to the terms.
Death had an artist’s hand, and a fine attention to detail, and Crowley turned out to be a moderately talented portraitist, which left the other team at a distinct disadvantage.
“What is that?” War shrieked at Famine, her bright red nails particularly clawlike as she raised one furious finger into his sour face. “A nuclear warhead? A rapier? What?”
Famine begrudgingly added another crooked line.
“That doesn’t help!” War yelled. “Is it a mycotoxin cloud?”
Crowley made an elegant swoop with his tail, which he had dipped in the pot of ink Death had found somewhere in his robes.
TEACUP AND A BISCUIT, I THINK, said Death. LEMON CREAM, IF I’M NOT MISTAKEN.
Crowley flicked his tongue out in approval.
War grabbed the pen out of Famine’s hand and threw it out of the Garden, into the heathered ether that surrounded it. “What injustice,” she seethed.
SPEAK NOT OF INJUSTICE, YE, FOR WE HAVE CONQUERED, said Death, his layered, echoing voice oddly resonant even for someone whose entire body was hollow, and then Crowley was suddenly sitting sprawled at Death’s feet, breathing heavily into his fist, his wings wrapped awkwardly around him.
“Here again,” he said, bitterly, and stood to his full, gangly height. “I’ve never wanted to be here again.”
“It’s a lovely place, though,” said Pollution from where he was digging into the ground. “I’ve always wished I could stay uninvited.”
“Yes, well,” said Crowley, looking uncomfortable. “It went a bit pear-shaped last time I was here, didn’t it.”
I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT OF IT AS APPLES, MYSELF, Death said, smiling his wide, wide smile.
Crowley made an inarticulate noise in the back of his throat and rummaged inside his suit jacket for his sunglasses, which he immediately and gracelessly shoved onto his face. “Well, folks, it’s been real--”
WAIT, said Death, holding out a hand. MY PRIZE.
Crowley produced a colorful plastic folder from the same pocket his sunglasses had come from. There were several improbably pink palms on it. “Your flight itinerary,” he said.
“I don’t understand,” War said. She was sulking, moodily unbraiding her hair with ragged strokes of her hands. “Weren’t you supposed to be playing against him? I thought that’s what that chess nightmare was about, after all, wasn’t it?”
AND WHERE IS IT WRITTEN WE MUST PLAY OPPOSITE EACH OTHER? Death said. I ENJOY A HIGH-STAKES GAME ONCE IN A GREAT WHILE--LIVES ARE SO PEDESTRIAN.
“You’re impossible,” War groaned, and flung her hair over her shoulder in one shimmering copper-wire mass. “And I need to leave this place--the quiet is getting to me.”
LEAVE, THEN, said Death, and there were only two figures alone in the Garden.
“Thanks,” said Crowley. “I owe you one.”
YOU HAVE NO NEED, said Death, and handed him an apple, its skin a bloody, shocking red in the Garden of lost things. I DON’T MAKE DEALS WITH DEMONS.
“So, do you think I could go home now?” said Crowley.
WHICH? said Death, sounding genuinely curious.
“Well, I’d prefer not to be discorporated,” Crowley pointed out, “so Hell might be something to be avoided, then.”
OH, NO, said Death, YOU KNOW THAT WHERE I SHALL SEND YOU, THERE CAN BE NO RETURN.
Crowley made another inarticulate noise. “Great,” he said. “Fabulous. A permanent vacation is precisely what I need.”
I AM GLAD TO HEAR IT, said Death, AND SO LET IT BE:
and the Garden dissolved around them in a glittering sheen.
“Do wake up,” said Aziraphale plummily. “Come on, you know it isn’t good for you to lay-a-bed.”
“Angel?” said Crowley, muzzily--“but you were dead.”
“Nonsense,” said Aziraphale, setting down the cluttered tea tray with a surprising bang.
“You were dead,” Crowley insisted, “and so was I.”
Aziraphale set the teacup in Crowley’s hand. “Drink, my dear,” he said, “and be refreshed.”