Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's "Preacher." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Based on the idea that when Deblanc told the travel agent he was a serial killer he actually wasn't lying. Set post-season one, where Deblanc is in hell, and is being forced to relive his human memories because someone is hell is a class A+ asshole and found out how to hurt him the most. But it's okay because Fiore is going to save his stupid demon husband and literally haul his ass from hell because of true love. – Based on the popular fan theory where Fiore is an angel and Deblanc is a demon and they are the parents of Genesis.
Disclaimer:canon appropriate violence/blood/guts/gore, murder, stalking, references oc rape and recovery (not related to Deblanc), adult themes, adult language, religious imagery/definitions/symbolism/discussion, supernatural elements, so much stabby death, angst, loss, emotional trauma, hurt and comfort. But it is okay because Fiore is a determined little angelic shit and giving up his demon husband is just not going to happen.
Rise
The alleyway was dank. Coated with coal-dust and mildew as he turned his collar up against the chill. Exulting in the sensation of the fur-lined trench against his skin as his empty stomach churned acid that threatened to rise. He'd forgotten to eat again. He internalized the thought and put it away for later consideration. Breaths pluming - like the billowing of the great beasts of old - as he stalked his prey from the shadows.
His blade was quick. But, as always, their deaths were not. He made them last. Stretching out the exquisite agony so he could watch it all happen. From the unsteady dawn of realization. To rage. Desperation. And finally, acceptance. The last stage was rare, and therefore the most precious. Most never got past the rage. But then again, he selected his prey very carefully. Making sure that when he ended their life it was to the benefit of others.
That it was justice.
The townspeople called him the Reaper of Killers. The executioner of the damned. Some even believed him to be holy. Blessed by God himself. But they were wrong of course. He wasn't doing it for them. He was doing it for himself. Because he liked it. Because they'd taken something from him. Someone he'd held most dear. An innocent. The day he'd lost her had been the day he'd lost whatever redeemable part of him she'd saved from the gutters.
He watched with satisfaction as the man underneath him squirmed. Pinned like a butterfly by his matching opal-gilded blades. Filling the air with babbling pleads. Desperately tugging, even going so far as to tear his own flesh to get away from him as he flicked the buttons of his shirt - rich and finely stitched - open one by one.
He cut out the rapist's voice box first. Watching the gaping hole convulse and flutter through every silent, interrupted scream he coaxed free in the dusky hours that followed. It seemed fitting, after all, that he would suffer the same fate as his young victim. The one huddled in the corner of her narrow cot in Saint Mary's – eyes blank and half-dead. Too frightened to do more than whisper an address into his ear when he came to her in the dark after her nurse had gone. Succeeding where all others had failed to put a face to the crime as he stroked her hair and pressed a closed mouth kiss into the whisping auburn strands. He would never see her again, but she would have her justice. And he would have his.
He was halfway down the alley, close to the mid-night bustle of the inner city, when the piercing scream of a corner whore added another note to his masterpiece. Completing the cycle as he smiled into the upturned fur of his collar and stepped out into the street. Unnoticed and unchallenged.
Half a year later found him leaning on a stack of bundled newspaper, taking a sip of warmed brandy from his flask as a red-haired coachman murmured wordless praise into the neck of a spooked chestnut mare. Unhitching her from the line of horses as a rash of footmen loaded the carriage with trunks and hat boxes.
He looked down respectfully when the newly married lady of the house exited in a flurry of silks and brocaded muslin. Blonde hair swept up in a nest of magnificent curls with her red velvet hat perched jauntily atop. A veritable vison of wealth, beauty and good breeding.
He didn't look up again until the carriage door closed and the red-haired coachman climbed up and clicked the reigns. Filling the air with the sound of metal and on metal and leather whips slapping firm across bare horseflesh.
But instead of following he paused. Noticing a single, curving white flower blossoming at his feet. Ivory petals unfurling - crisp and beckoningly new - as a strange surge of recognition piped through him.
He blinked, certain he was dreaming.
But the flower remained.
Stubborn.
Blossoming before his eyes in the very dead of the winter cold.
Impossible.
By the time he caught up with the party the coach has been overturned in the ditch and the she-beast already feasting on the coachman's blood. Beautiful features contorted as she hissed her defiance when he ripped the door off at its hinges. Baring her to an unforgiving sun as she held the coachman as close as a lover. Seeing a quiet plead for release in the man's gentle eyes as he pulled out his blades and crouched low - just in time for her to lunge at him.
He felt nothing when he ended both their lives. But the lapse in attention caused by the white flower plagued him for days. Unable to rid himself of the feeling that this moment – the one with coachman and the she-beast - was supposed to have had a far more favorable outcome.
He was eating at an inn-style tavern, waiting out a storm and resting his horses when it happened. He was alone at his table, eating by the flicker of an oil lamp as the kitchen maids hauled steaming to his rooms for washing, when a tall outline fell across the table.
It was only a split second between lightening strikes, but it was enough for him to drop the heel of bread back on his plate. Soaking up the well of gravy that sopped across the entirety of his plate. Almost upsetting his tankard as he went for his knives.
But that wasn't the worst part.
The worst part was jumping all over again when he realized that sometime in that split second someone had set a cup of tea across from him. Plain water innocently steaming but all the tea leaves in the accompanying bowl strangely missing.
Three months later he smiled as he caught the taste of a woman beater and murderer on his tongue in the confessional booth of a busy city church. Blades teasing the final artery into open air as the man under his hands sucked in his final breath and choked on it.
He closed the velvet curtain without flare when he exited the booth. Taking off his cap as he passed the lonely alter. Making the sign of the cross as he dipped his hand in the stoup and allowed the holy water to dribble down from his forehead.
It is only by chance that he looked up at the Virgin Mary as he left. Stilling into something that could have once been fear - or even horror - when fresh blood wept from her wooden eyes. Dripping like crimson wax in a growing puddle at her feet.
"Deblanc..."
It woke him from a dead sleep, flipping him up and out of the bed clothes with the very force of it. Landing hard on the splintering floorboards of the abandoned farm house. Knives already firm in his palms as he looked wildly around the room for the intruder.
No one called him that anymore.
Only she had.
That part of him was hers.
Only hers.
And it had died with her.
Who could know that name?
Who-
"Who's there," he rasped. Feeling the need to slice and tear come over him like a fever. Blinding him with rage and perhaps something else despite the fact that the woman's blood from earlier that day - a killer of children who'd remained unpunished despite the evidence - had not yet finished drying under the bitten down stumps of his nails.
The only answer he received was the howl of the wind and the mocking echoes of his own question slapping back at him in off-centre waves of sound and feeling. Watching the loneliness of his shadow shift and warp with the waxing moon. The worn drapes fluttering morosely under a thick layer of dried insect husks and shifting country dust.
He didn't set down his knives until the next day broke over the horizon.
And he didn't chance sleep for twice that long.
Things changed after that.
He didn't know how or why, but they did.
He still killed. He still travelled from city to city, town to town. Integrating. Watching. Invisible until he struck and just as unforgiving when the moment came. But soon enough even that ceased to be satisfying. More and more he realized the world was keeping something from him. Something hidden. Like there was some vast universal truth everyone seemed to know but he was not allowed to share. Cloaking him in muffled silence as his growing awareness of this disparity only grew and grew.
Something was wrong.
Missing.
Different.
Changed.
If anything he only grew more ferocious. Reaping such a high number that he had to flee the current city on horseback not a fortnight after his arrival. Leaving behind whispers and half-truths about a blood streaked mad-man that hurled harsh words into the darkness and danced perilously close to the first circle of hell itself. Fearless in his sin, yet righteous in the victims he chose take.
But still, the shadow followed him everywhere.
He was following his next kill when a tall shape separated itself from the leaking overhang in front of him. Blocking his path in the form of a thin man in a beige cloth cap. He took in every detail instantly. The freshly pressed white collared shirt, brown trousers, copper-plated suspenders and- yes- bare feet. A mess of visible veins and pale, uncalloused toes. Apparently unaffected by the same clinging, sewer-grime that sucked at the soles of his boots.
"Deblanc..."
It was the same voice he'd heard in the farmhouse.
The same tone.
Host to the same power and familiarity behind it.
His blades were spinning between his fingers before he'd even thought the action through. Glinting in the low light as the center square clock rung the hour like a warning.
"Who are you?" he demanded, feeling strangely off-centre at the tall man's easy demeanor. Like he knew he wouldn't actually strike as he looked down and realized the man's hands were still firmly planted in his pockets. Content to let the silence work on it's own as discomfort rose like nausea in his gullet.
Something wasn't right.
Something-
The man opened his mouth, expression shadowed by the darkness of the street the same moment his prey bolted. Apparently finally realizing the danger he was in as the portly man in the suspiciously expensive suit hopped over the exterior gate of a warehouse and disappeared from view. Feet beating a fading tempo across the dirty cobblestones.
The sound echoed like a mockery to his failure as his nails bit into the soft of his palms. Controlling the impulse to make the one at fault bleed out across the cobblestones before he could question him. Breathing hard until a sense of calm descended. A state of being just below the rash of a rolling barrage of thunder as the voice – her voice – coaxed him into a soft sort of quiet. Forgetting, if only for a moment, where he was and whom was courting his steps as the temptation to get lost in that sweetness rose thick and consuming in the back of his throat.
By the time his attention snapped back to the alley in front of him, the man in the cloth cap was gone.
The next time they crossed paths he had the upper-hand for the first time. Or maybe the man merely let him, the truth was unclear. Slamming him up against the wall of an all boys school as the blood of another killer - prolific and without boundaries - dripped like freshly cut ribbons off his blade. The body still warm and hazing steam in the gutter behind them.
"Who are you?" he demanded again, the difference in their heights stark from this angle as his free hand spread, wide and white-knuckled across the flat of the man's abdomen. Keeping him pressed against the sharp of the brick wall as grit oozed between the pale of the man's bare toes.
"Yours," the man answered, chin dipping down in a half-nod. Simple and blunt like the word needed no other explanation.
"Liar," he hissed. Pressing the blade to the man's throat with gritted, angry teeth as the city-chill threatened to sink into his joints. Fine clothes heavy and unfamiliar against his skin – a tailored suit and overcoat that'd helped him blend into the affluent crowd milling outside the opera house not an hour previous. "I have no one. And no one has me. Not anymore."
"I do," the man answered honestly. Almost gangling-lean as a suspicious, belaying strength corded the muscles under his hands. Giving him the impression that if he wanted to, the bastard could have their situation reversed in an instant.
His palm flicked and his second blade dug into the vulnerable strip of skin below the man's rib-cage. The soft underbelly that everyone instinctively jerked to protect. Only this time, he didn't. The man didn't even so much as flinch. But still, he refused to back down, pressing hard enough for red to start leeching through the man's layers. Only again the nameless man made no move to free himself.
"Deblanc..."
The man stared down at him, willing his attention as he watched him through the flare of his lashes without his consent. Breathing hard into the midnight condensation as his hand shook. Shuddering like palsy until his blades clattered one by one from his grip.
He couldn't do it.
He couldn't-
The world was breaking around him. Sharding off into something he could barely keep track of as the sky above seemed to swallow itself whole. Getting lost in an eerie blackness that spread like tendrils. Winding around and around as the lamplight from the nearest street extinguished itself with a spitting hiss.
"Please...there's no time, I can't hold on much-"
It was the way the words issued, careful and desperate, that caught his attention more than anything. Something that sunk in and grew roots - still parasitic and self-serving, to be sure - but genuinely troubled all the same time. It called to him. Spiking the tiny hairs on the back of his neck until his senses prickled. Disliking the idea that anything could make the man sound like that save for himself as he craned his neck and caught the man's gaze firmly in his own.
He looked up into those wide, impressionable eyes and saw and saw and-
He broke ground on the floor of a hotel room with an agonized scream. Clawing and struggling as Fiore dragged him out of the pit. Nose stinging with the tang of brimstone and decay. Skin sloughing off in over-burnt drafts until he was reborn and soot-streaked. Grasping the tacky edges of the carpet in his fists as they flared with hell-sparks.
The gaping hole in the floor wafted the wrench of agonized screams and angry cries up from below as Fiore yanked his foot free of the last demon trying to drag them back down. Wrenching himself away from the edge seconds before the portal slammed closed and nothing but unmarred carpet spanned out in front of them. Pristine and unaltered, like the hungry maw of splintered wood and darkness had never been there in the first place.
He crawled toward Fiore blindly. Forgetting about words in the favor of base sounds and something terribly close to a whimper. Chest heaving and naked as his hands reached out and-
And just like that, with barely a beat in between, Fiore was there. Covering him over and keeping him safe as he shuddered through it. Realizing he'd been reliving it. His past life. Who he'd been before hell had come and reaped him in turn. Hurting him in a way only hell really could as he experienced it all second-hand. Becoming what he was in increments. Long before he'd met Fiore. As the past and all the reasons why the slice of his blade turning a throat inside out was righteous faded like mist in the morning.
"I have you," the angel whispered, burying his nose into the crook where neck met shoulder as the ghost of wing-tips grazed his battered flesh. "I will always have you."
And somehow, just like they always were, his words were enough.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.