Just thought I'd emphasize it again: Slash. You know, guy/guy
stuff. Or, in this case, a guy lusting over another guy. Don't
like it, don't read it. But if you do anyway, go ahead and flame me.
I could use the laugh.
Also: This fic borrows an idea from Katherine F's "Night Shift." The
idea is, essentially, that God sent Bartleby and Loki, in human form, to
watch over Bethany during (and possibly after) her pregnancy. You need
to know that if this is going to make any sense whatsoever, so all the people
who skip over headers are just screwing themselves now. *snerk*
Loki and Bartleby were sitting out on the front porch in mutual quiet when
the sudden wail of a child rent the (relatively) still air. They looked up
as one to see an unfamiliar little girl sitting at the edge of the street
in front of Bethany's yard, wailing. Without a word, Bartleby got up and
headed inside. He emerged a moment later, holding various first aid implements,
and made a beeline for the girl just as Bethany's car pulled into the driveway.
Bethany got out of her car, pausing to watch for a moment as Bartleby knelt
next to the girl and began talking to her gently. Having ascertained to her
satisfaction that he had the situation under control, she walked up to the
porch.
"What happened?" she asked Loki.
He shrugged. "She was playing or something and I guess she tripped. You know,"
he said, abruptly changing the subject as he eyed Bethany's softly curved
stomach, "you should start thinkin' about lettin' one of us get a job already.
You're startin' to show, it's not good for the kid. We're supposed to take
care of you, and if that means one of us has to go all fifties sitcom father
on you and chain you to the house while we bring home the bacon or whatever,
then so be it."
Bethany ignored him with the air of one who has ignored the same speech many
times before. She was watching Bartleby take care of the little girl. The
girl had stopped crying, and was even giggling a little as Bartleby dabbed
at her knee with a cotton ball.
"I've never seen a kid smile during hydrogen peroxide before," she remarked,
continuing to ignore Loki as he saved her the trouble of answering him:
"'But you two need to be where I can find you at a moment's notice, and there's
no job that carries that guarantee' - huh?" Loki stopped imitating Bethany
and glanced out at the scene that she was watching. "Oh, yeah. Bartleby's
always liked kids. I don't know how many times I've listened to him go on
about humanity in its purest form."
"Yeah?" Bethany prompted, turning her attention to Loki.
It had been nearly five months since God had sent protection to her in the
forms of the newly mortal, and highly penitent, Bartleby and Loki. To allay
Bethany's doubts, Metatron had visited her. Being as Bethany and her child
were the two most important beings on the planet, he had explained, they
would need protection. Jay and Silent Bob had their own lives to resume in
New Jersey, and God wanted to offer Bartleby and Loki a chance at redemption.
Besides that, they were simply the logical choice, being, as they were, former
angels with a strong motivation to protect Bethany with everything they had
- namely, the chance to return to heaven. Bethany was a little fuzzy on the
logic, but apparently it was okay for God Herself to change Her decrees.
It didn't count as proving Herself fallible; it was merely changing Her mind.
However it worked, Bethany had come to trust her guardians - how could she
not, when they had God backing them up?
In those five months, Bethany had gotten to know the decidedly loquacious
Loki pretty well; while he was quite respectful toward her, he was also open
and liked to talk about whatever struck him at any given moment. Bethany
encouraged it, for the most part, valuing the insights into Loki that his
ramblings gave her. Bartleby, on the other hand, was quiet, sombre, and
withdrawn; Bethany considered herself lucky if she got twenty words each
day out of him that were more than just polite greetings. And he was
polite, and respectful, and had been damned helpful when Bethany was battling
morning sickness, but he offered very little of himself. What Bethany did
know about him she had learned from Loki, so whenever he started talking
about Bartleby, she shut up and listened.
"Yeah, well, all Grigoris like people," Loki said. "Comes with the
whole Watcher gig. But most of 'em like humanity the way people like dumb
animals. In both senses of the word," he added. "But Bartleby . . . Bartleby's
always had this tendency to feel things more strongly. He has a
passion for humanity. Even the bad ones. Angels have their own
personalities, but they were also created for the jobs they were given. We
- they don't just happen to fit the specs. Combine Bartleby's self with what
he was made to do, and you get the ideal Grigori. Y'know, love and compassion
for humanity and all that shit. And that's exactly the problem. See, back
when God was hot-tempered and easily annoyed, He used to send me out smiting
left and right. Bartleby watched me do it for I don't know how long. I guess
till he just couldn't take it anymore. He jumped on in, and, man, he worked
me for decades. I kept telling him to lay off at first, but he just
refused to let go of it. And in the end . . ." Loki shrugged. "Well, you
know the story."
Bethany nodded. "He didn't give up," she said. "You did."
Loki shot her an irritated look, then relaxed when he saw the expression
on her face. "You've gotta be the only person on the planet who could turn
that into a compliment," he remarked. "I bet it's in the blood." He fell
silent for a moment, and Bethany could hear Bartleby and the girl holding
a serious discussion on the merits of strip bandages versus round ones.
"Anyway," Loki said briskly. "Enough about you. You wanna hear about Bartleby,
don't you?" Bethany blinked, caught off-guard as she always was when Loki
had a perceptive moment. He was so good at playing clueless that she often
forgot how much he really noticed.
"Yes," she said candidly. "I do."
Loki nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. He's never exactly been a chatterbox, but
he used to actually talk about stuff, to me at least. But, y'know, now -
that little kid's gettin' more outta him than he's given to either of us
since we came back. But. You don't spend thousands of years at a stretch
with someone without getting to know 'em. After the first few centuries,
it got so we didn't even have to talk to tell each other stuff. I
got so used to that, I . . . kinda stopped listening to him," Loki confessed.
"So to speak. I guess I just got too caught up in fuckin' - whatever to notice
that he was fuckin' losin' his mind." Loki paused and shook his head. "Not
that it matters. I couldn't a' done anything. The only One who could
do anything with Bartleby was God, and He was off playing fuckin' skeeball
or whatever." A slight shiver passed through Loki, as it always did whenever
he caught himself making snide remarks about God. "Uh . . . yeah. Anyway.
Bartleby thinks I'm still not listening, but I learned my lesson. I know
stuff about him and how he feels that he thinks he's keeping to himself."
He looked up at Bethany earnestly. "He's hurtin' hard over what he did, Bethany.
Look, most of the people we killed were sinners. I'm not going to apologize
for that. It's how I was made. Just because an angel gets cast out doesn't
mean he can stop doing his job. But . . . not all of them were bad people.
And them? They died just because they caught Bartleby's eye. He killed a
lot of innocents that day, and it's eating him up. It's on his mind all the
time." He pointed at Bartleby, who was applying a round bandage to the girl's
knee with exaggerated care. "I bet you that right now, while he's taking
care of her, he's thinking about the kids that won't be born because of what
he did. That passion of his, it makes him a easy target for pain. He feels
it quicker, stronger, and longer than anyone I know." He gave Bethany a
significant look. "And I know a lot of fuckin' people."
Bethany nodded and remained silent, not daring to so much as reprimand him
for his language around her baby, for fear that it would throw him off track
and lose her the first opportunity she'd had to really learn about
Bartleby.
"I think that's why he lost it," Loki resumed. "Angels . . . Angels
need God. Being away from Him, being totally cut off - it hurts. It's
pain that no human being could possibly conceive of. Take the worst pain
that any human has ever suffered. It's nothing, really, but take it. Imagine
feeling it, nonstop, no break, for centuries. You hafta get used to it if
you're gonna survive. I did. After a while, it became a part of me, and after
a long time, I couldn't remember not feeling it. I always just kinda assumed
it was the same for Bartleby. I mean, he kept changin', y'know, but so did
I. Adaptation is part of life. I'd do the occasional slaughter of the wicked,
y'know, when they were really begging for it, 'cause like I said, I couldn't
just stop doing it, and after a while, he stopped objecting. Toward the end
there, he even helped. If anything was gonna set off an alarm somewhere in
my head, that shoulda been it. But I just figured that he was evolving to
fit his life. Like me. But that pain . . . it didn't become him, it - it
took him. Kept breaking him, wearing him down. Turning his love for
humanity against him. By the time you guys met on the train, he was really
fuckin' fragile. Still don't know what you guys talked about, but somethin'
you said, I guess it was just that last grain of sand he needed to just .
. . to just fuckin' - break."
Loki paused with a sigh. Bethany, enthralled, waited to see if he would continue.
Whether he had any more to say, though, she would never know, because at
that moment a panicked voice distracted them both.
"Betsey! Betsey!"
They looked up to see a man racing up the street toward the girl.
"Daddy!" Betsey called out happily as the man reached her and knelt next
to her. "This is Bartleby," she continued cheerfully, "and I hurt my knee
and he was nice and he fixed it."
The man gathered Betsey into his arms and stood, relief rolling from him
in near-tangible waves.
"Thank you," he said to Bartleby. "I'm Mike Fraser. We're moving in down
the street. I just turned my back for a minute, and bam, off she went. Just
couldn't wait to explore." As he talked, he looked at Bartleby thoughtfully,
seemingly trying to reach some sort of mysterious conclusion. Bartleby pretended
not to notice, saying,
"Well, I'm just glad I could help."
Mike nodded. Clearly, he'd reached a conclusion that satisfied him, because
he said,
"I guess we picked the right neighborhood, huh, Bets?", accompanying the
remark with a distinctly flirtatious look in Bartleby's general direction.
Bartleby shifted his weight uncomfortably and muttered something about good
people.
Bethany stifled a giggle, remembering her own initial impression of Bartleby,
and glanced at Loki. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing when she
saw that he was giving Mike a distinctly dark look, eyes narrowed grimly.
She settled instead for an obnoxiously knowing smirk, which was, of course,
completely wasted.
Loki got up off the porch and headed across the lawn to the trio with studied
casualness. Bethany leaned against the post and watched.
"Hi," he said to Mike. "I'm Loki and that's Bethany," gesturing to her over
his shoulder. "You guys need any help moving your stuff?"
To anyone who had merely been paying attention to the words, this would have
seen like a perfectly polite greeting and generous offer. However, as Loki
spoke, he placed a hand lightly on Bartleby's shoulder and gave Mike an
understated but pointed Look. Mike nodded slightly, graciously indicating
understanding and acceptance of Loki's claim even as he offered a similarly
polite response:
"Thanks, but we're just about finished. I'd like to get the rest done before
dark, so I'd better get going. It was nice meeting you all, and thanks for
helping Betsey."
"It was no problem," answered Bartleby. "Hope the new place works out for
you."
"Byyyye!" Betsey called, waving enthusiastically over her father's shoulder
as he started walking back to his house. Bartleby waved back.
Once Mike was beyond hearing range, Bartleby shrugged away Loki's hand.
"Thanks for the save," he said to his friend, "but did you have to be quite
so flaming?"
"Flaming!" Loki exclaimed. "I'm flaming? Everyone thinks you're
gay and I'm the flamer?"
Bartleby offered him a wry half-smile and turned away, starting up to the
house, thus ensuring that Bethany was the only one who saw the shadow of
pain that crossed Loki's face.
"Hi, Bethany."
"Hey, Bartleby. Nice job with that little girl. Can't wait to see you in
action with this one," Bethany smiled, placing a hand over her stomach. Bartleby
smiled back and headed inside. Bethany stared after him, wondering how it
was that she'd always managed to miss the anguish that lurked just behind
his eyes.
Loki came up the stairs just after him, looking tired and disspirited.
Impulsively, Bethany reached out and touched his arm.
"Hey. You're not the only one who stopped listening, you know. He'll come
around."
Loki gave her a wan smile. "Thanks, but no he won't. I know him," he answered,
and headed inside.
Bethany's eyes narrowed slightly in sudden determination. "Oh, yes, he will,"
she muttered before following Loki inside.
