Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's "Preacher." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Post season one where Fiore waits for Deblanc – possibly forever because he is kind of like a dog camping out on your porch. Once he decides he loves you, you are genuinely fucked. Vaguely references the theory that Fiore is an angel and Deblanc is a demon and are actually the parents Genesis.
Disclaimer:angst, drama, weepy things, emotional hurt/comfort, inappropriate use of an airport, rude cab drivers, canon appropriate violence/language/blood/death/gore, religious imagery/definitions/symbolism/discussion.
Monachopsis
He wandered for days, weeks, months. Eventually finding his way to an airport. It was named after the city it bordered the outskirts of, but he'd never bothered to learn the name. None of that mattered now. Nothing mattered. Because Deblanc was gone. Lost. And now, for the first time in perhaps ever, he was alone.
The airport had seemed right when he'd heard it on the cab driver's tongue sometime after he'd returned from hell alone. Soot stained and ears ringing. He didn't remember what had happened in between. How he'd gotten from that lonely stretch of highway to a burgeoning metropolis wearing only his dress shirt, slacks and patented leather shoes. Listening to the stout, unpleasant man that smelled like burnt tobacco and cheap leather curse and grunt as he wrestled the trunk into the back seat, had been like breaking the surface. Like finally coming up for air. Like waking up after-
"It's a fifty buck flat fee to the airport from here, pal. So if we get stuck in traffic, it's your dime on the extra. Understand? Take it or leave it but everyone around here will tell 'yah the same."
He smoothed the lines of his suit pants as he folded himself into the passenger seat. Nodding stiffly. Tie long gone. A testament to his mood considering he'd died at least once since then and hadn't bothered to replace it.
"Big talker. Must be my lucky day," the cab driver snorted. Shaking his head and mopping at a blight of sweat creeping down from his temples before throwing the vehicle into gear and stomping down on the accelerator.
By the time they made it to the airport his teeth were bared under the thin of his lips in a tightly gritted line. Hearing the screams of the damned in every screech of brakes and squeal of tires. Able to smell the sulfuric-tang of the hell pits as a petrol rig leaked quietly on the side of the road. Seeing double as the fumes of a passing garbage truck became the still, fetid pools lined with skeleton-boned carcasses that still moved and stared. Filling the air with the musk of ancient rot until it felt like it was lining his throat and sinuses. Suffocating him from the inside out as he gripped the vinyl hand-hold on the cab door so hard his nails splintered into painful shards.
Deblanc had been right.
They never should have gone.
He should have thought of something.
Something better.
Anything.
Maybe then Deblanc would still be alive.
Maybe.
His tongue peeked out, wetting across his lower lip. Making him shiver as a sudden wind chuffed across it. Freezing him with the sensation before he set his mouth back into a grim, immovable line.
He had a feeling the world was going to drown him in what ifs and maybes.
And right now, he wasn't convinced not to simply let it.
The airport was loud and teeming. Making him long for the comfortable quiet of their motel room from the moment he'd paid the driver and wheeled the trunk through the automatic doors.
Still, it seemed appropriate.
After all, what better place to wait than a virtual hub of departures, arrivals, reunions and farewells? It made sense. More sense then waiting any longer at the lonely bus stop. More sense then sitting alone in the motel room or the empty church. More sense then going back to the travel agent and-
It made more sense than a lot of things.
Because he was waiting.
He would wait for as long as it took.
Deblanc was going to be looking for him.
He would find him.
Just like he always did.
He just had to wait.
So, instead of joining the queuing lines, he wheeled his trunk over to the waiting area. Choosing a seat in the far corner by the window as he settled in. Watching the planes come and go. Eventually able to recognize the same people passing in flight uniforms and janitorial coveralls. Days passed this way. Buying and selling gravity in his mind. Constructing and deconstructing a thousand buildings. Designing hundred thousand heavenly structures in the only place he could still feel the warmth of Deblanc's ghost against his skin.
He got lost.
Most of the time on purpose.
Lingering in the backwash of better memories until the air shifted.
Forcing him to crawl and claw his way back to the present as an announcement blared.
Only to slowly haze off and get lost all over again.
At one point a Seraphim appeared on the other side of the terminal. Powerful and almost shining through his brand new lawyer's skin as the newcomer tilted his chin and stared directly at him. Blue eyes fixed and vacant as the Seraphim's bright green ones slanted. Avenging and sure. Dropping his expensive, gold threaded briefcase on the ground beside him like an overture.
He accepted without thinking.
Ignoring the edging hum of caution that whispered.
Building in the back of his head like a growing crescendo.
Sounding so much like Deblanc he nearly faltered.
And he could have.
It would have been so easy to let himself fall back into his seat – demure and accepting.
To let whatever was going to happen, happen.
Only, he didn't.
Instead, the shroud of mourning and growing rust cracked around him like a shell as he rose to his feet. Human joints creaking - displeased at the disuse. Leaving the trunk behind as he walked directly towards it. Advancing, step by step, seized up in a strange fit of blind rage. Numb and completely without fear. Realizing in an offhand way that live or die, he was practically buzzing with the need to do something. Anything. To break his fist into calcified ivory over and over. To scream. Howl. Sing. To remind himself what his own red tasted like. To-
The Seraphim stopped dead barely halfway across the black-streaked linoleum. Impassive expression suddenly rippling. Uncertain. But he kept coming. Coveting the exchanged silence as the humans criss-crossed between them, unaware of the danger they were in. Tasting the leading echoes of disaster on the air as he cracked the small bones in his neck with a readying shrug. The sole source of an invisible whirlwind of burnt ozone and singed pine sap. Forcing the air to thin as he stalked forward like the season's first squall. As powerful as a thunderclap and just as cleansing.
Then something happened that had never happened before.
The Seraphimbalked.
Taking a step back for every step he took towards him.
Back and back and back-
He took the last few steps at a lunge when the Seraphim twisted around the corner.
But it didn't matter. By the time he got there, the Seraphim was gone.
Vanished.
And he didn't know why.
All he did know was that he was angry.
Rageful, even.
He'd wanted to ruin something with his fists only-
He deflated in inches. Ignoring the human's curious stares as he slowly made his way back to his seat. Using the brim of his hat as a blinder as his chin tried its best to disappear into his chest. Wondering without curiosity if the Seraphim would return. If he would bring others. Or if somehow they knew that without Deblanc he had no reason not to hold back anymore. That he was part of a conjoined soul – now freshly broken – just going through the motions.
He didn't move for three days.
Dust motes started to settle.
So he closed his eyes and slept.
The next thing he was aware of was the unhappy burble of an infant.
His head slowly tipped back up to scan the seats around him. Searching out the source as his body slowly came back to life. Everything in him aching and putting up a fuss as he slowly unfurled – stretching. All the while instinctively following that singular sound every parent knows by heart. Something that was felt rather than heard. Eyes darting back and forth through the milling crowds until finally, he found it.
Salt-tracks trickled down from his lashes as he watched a mother and child rock together in the line of seats opposite him. Remembering the first time he'd held Genesis firmly in his grace. Protecting him from the harsh, condemning gazes of angels and demons alike. Feeling the solid, steady pressure of Deblanc at his side as they stood tall and faced their censure. Defiant and oh so strong in their love that they dared to risk everything just to stand where they were. Together to the end if that was his father's wish.
The mother looked up sometime later, when the child had mumbled itself off to sleep. Smiling tiredly at him as parental recognition passed easily between them. Seeing something in his face that signaled a kindred spirit as she tucked a glossy sheath of long black hair behind her ear. Quietly proud as they gazed down at the child. A messy of chubby cheeks and the same dark hair. Soul untainted and pure with God's love. Beautiful in her complicated simplicity. Still unaware that the world held darker shades than fleeting discomfort and the occasional pang of passive hunger.
"She's only just started sleeping through the night," the woman opened, smoothing the edges of the blanket in the carrier the child had been placed in. Rocking it gently with the toe of her shoe as the intercom chimed with a page – Mrs. Somerson to Gate three, please. Mrs. Somerson to Gate Three.
He inclined his head in reply before something made him speak. Voice gravely and rough, reminding him painfully of the first time he'd heard Deblanc speak in his true form all those centuries ago.
"That's a hard stage to get past, but when it's over, things get easier."
It took him back. Remembering the age that had slipped past where Genesis would not be soothed unless the two of them stood close at his crib. Eternally discontented whenever they settled him in for a decade long nap. Putting it off for as long as possible, like the stubborn thing he was. Growing sleepy and malleable as Deblanc sang the lullaby and tangled their fingers together in pleasant accomplishment as slowly - ever so slowly - Genesis drifted off to sleep.
He didn't realize she'd started talking again until he pulled himself out of his thoughts and caught the tail end of some sort of explanation he wasn't sure how to interpret other than literally.
"-but hopefully she will grow up to be more like her father."
No.
Not her father.
She was her mother's daughter.
He closed his eyes, pausing the world around him. Watching a singular roll of film flare into a distant future. Watching - faster than any eye save for his own could catch – as a mother aged and withered through the eyes of a daughter. Watching the years pass and the child grow into a woman. Watching her march in rallies. Holding signs and yelling into an ill-faced crowd. He watched her smile and kiss another woman with a matching gold band on her ring finger. He watched her working long into the night as the hour hand on the clock blurred through the hours and tired looking men and women hurried in and out with steaming cups of coffee. He watched her speak on a podium as patriotic flags waved and a massive crowd cheered. He watched as she added the final signature to a draft she'd passed through the government. Something momentous and life changing. Something fair and just and steeped in love. Love for people she'd never met. Love for people she had. Love for people who had passed and love for those that would come in the future.
Time was still a difficult thing for him to untangle.
In Heaven it wasn't linear or even fixed.
At least not the way human's understood it.
It didn't have the same rules as it did on Earth.
Which of course made answering difficult.
In the end he said nothing and the woman eventually left.
Disconcerted by his silence.
He found he could hardly blame her.
A week later a group of FBI agents cornered him in the same obscure corner of the airport that'd slowly become his own. Cuffing his hands behind his back and pressing his cheek into the musty carpet. Patting him down and demanding things with their mouths. Asking him if he was a spy. Asking him why he was here. Who he was waiting for. If he had plans to harm anyone - the airport – the government – himself.
He stopped paying attention after a while.
Staying silent as they dragged him out of the building and into the burning sun.
He went along with the change of pace until their dark-tinted vans took him too far away from the airport for comfort. He gave them warning before he broke out of their thin metal cuffs with barely a lisp of effort. Telling them to return to him to the airport as the agents either ignored him or laughed boldly in his face. Mouths down-turned with egotistical cruelty.
It was all very tiresome.
He eventually forced them to shoot him clean through the temple when he stood up abruptly in the back of the van and snapped the metal chain of the handcuffs in two. Reappearing back in the airport with barely a hitch, whole and unharmed. Back in the same corner. In the same seat. His trunk safely stowed in short term storage. No worse for wear.
Strangely enough, no one bothered him after that.
"Hello, darling."
He was unsure how much time had passed when familiar hands fell on his shoulders from behind. Words lilting out in that way he would always be able to recognize. No matter how long or what form their maker might take.
But instead of turning. Instead of seizing him up in a way he hadn't realized he'd been thinking about until a half dozen options bullied for the chance to express themselves at once. He just closed his eyes and let his head fall back into the cradle of Deblanc's chest. Gratitude salt-stained and heady as he breathed in his familiar smell. Reacquainting himself with the firm of the muscles and the bones that existed underneath. Rebuilding him completely from memory as he pressed a chaste kiss into the blond of his temple.
It was the first breath that mattered in a long, long time.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – This story is now complete.
Reference:
*Monachopsis: "The subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place."