Chapter: One
Rating: G
Couplings: Newt/Anathema at the moment Adam/Pepper later, because I CAN AND I WANT TO. I am such a trendsetter. ^^;
Notes: Arrrr. Arrrrrr, mateys! Welcome to the first chapter of the first Themfic in existance. W00t.
Oh, yeah. I've only been to England once. Forgive me if
I insult anyone.
XD;;;;
~Tomo
www.amberstone.net
knivesnomiko.pitas.com
~~~~
~~~~
Crowley was having an exceptionally good day. London was cool, lazy and permeated with a satisfied feeling of contentment that only early-morning fall days could maintain - which made his job all the more easy. Wandering through town he made sure to leave a wide trail of annoyance and frustration behind, in the form of traffic tickets, spilled drinks, missing wallets and more.
Sauntering by a school, he peered through the gates and considered for a long moment before passing by. Eight year olds, he admitted to himself, were not a personal favorite target of his. Besides, they were no fun to tempt - as they didn't have the brains to say no in the first place.
Tempting was a skill that required a suitable target, one with morals to be corrupted, or else it wasn't tempting at all. Besides, the worst an eight year old could do was throw rocks at the girl that always ignored him.....
Yes, the demon reflected, shoving his hands in the pockets of his tight black jeans, London (at least in this century) was a nice place to live, even if the natives were a bit backwards about a few things - like fish and chips, for example. They were not all that good (and rather expensive) but were more English than many things foreigners ever heard of. They had the tea right, of course, he mused. Tea was a great thing, even if it was one of Aziraphale's creations.
The guard was changing at the palace, Crowley noticed, pausing to watch amongst schools of field-tripping students (honestly, tourists made such easy targets!). One of the Americans was considering shouting - and with a deft mental nudge, he convinced her to do so, and went so far as to prompt a be-tassled band member to wave back, stumbling slightly in his distraction. When they began marching, he loosed a shoelace here and a button there, listening to sounds of chaos as he wandered away from the wrought iron gates and bubbling fountains that surrounded Buckingham.
Ah, thought Crowley, London in the fall.
It was still early, and his day did not end there. Whistling cheerfully, Crowley picked out a spot in a nearby park and counted bicycle crashes, which seemed to occur frequently around him. When he was at twenty-three and a half, Aziraphale appeared at the gates of the park, dressed in slacks and a modest looking tweed coat. The angel wandered over to his counterpart and sat down in the grass, saying nothing for a long moment as he repaired the bicycle of Crowley's most recent victim.
"Aziraphale," Crowley mumbled, a bit annoyed at being found so easily. If the angel was here, he'd be chewed out (Aziraphale was very good at disapproving looks) for the bike crashes, and that took all the fun out of laughing as people hit the concrete. "what a coincidence. What brings you out here?"
"I wanted to talk to you," the angel said, not meeting his eyes. That meant one of two things - either he wanted something, or was as angry as an angel can be. Crowley suspected the former.
"Oh?" A scream resounded in the background. Twenty-four and a half, Crowley smiled. "About what?"
"I got a call from Anathema, you see. She's in trouble."
It took Crowley a moment to recognize the name, and when he did, he blinked. Peering through tinted lenses, he watched Aziraphale squirm for a moment before answering thoughtfully. "The witch? I thought she was rather well adjusted, as far as occultists go. What's wrong?"
"She called me and had the strangest story - she'd written herself a letter, reminding herself of a problem..." the angel coughed into a slightly chubby fist, "She thinks Adam is warping the fabric of space-time to keep Tadfield from changing at all."
"...space-time fabric?" Crowley looked up, spotted an airplane, and mentally removed every last packet of complimentary peanuts from their stocks. Aziraphale noticed, but said nothing. "You've been reading those sci-fi books again, haven't you?"
"No!" The angel blushed faintly, looking away. Crowley noticed that he was wearing glasses - lens-less glasses, but there none the less. The empty frames made him look older. "Well, yes, but that's not it."
"So..."
Aziraphale flashed him an annoyed look, lips pursing in frustration. "Haven't you felt the tenseness hovering in the air, Crowley? Something's being stretched that shouldn't be. Adam does have the ability...he did it before, remember?"
Angels always had a better sense of the world than demons did, as far as noticing problems or holes went. Aziraphale maintained it was because demons hit the ground so hard when they fell, it knocked the ability out of them - Crowley argued that it had been a rather soft landing. The falling was what really did it. "Did *what* before?"
"Changed things!" Aziraphale threw his hands up. "Or rather, kept them from being changed. Crowley, he practically rest the world after all that Armageddon business! Doesn't it makes sense to you?" he met the demon's eyes. "Try to sense it."
Crowley sighed gustily as he humored the angel and closed his slanted eyes, resting his elbow on his knee and cupping his chin with long-nailed fingers. Spreading out his consciousness, he really expected to find nothing -
But the angel was right, he realized as he concentrated. Something did feel...different. Unstable, almost... 'stretched' was a good way of putting it, as if someone had taken the ends of 'time' and pulled them in every direction at once. Surprised, the demon rose higher, peering about with his 'sight', trying to find the source of the distention - far away, but not *that* far. Nowhere near London. Tadfield, then?
Crowley came back to himself and spoke with a hushed, surprised voice. "I see what you mean."
Aziraphale nodded and laced his fingers together. Crowley noticed that he bit his fingernails, and smiled weakly. "That's a bad habit."
"Oh. Oh, yes. I know."
A pause. "So you think it's Adam?"
"Well, Anathema tested herself... When she called, she told me that she spoke with Adam, told him she wanted to leave Tadfield for good. The next day she didn't even remember the experiment, only knew what she'd done after reading a letter she'd written to herself."
"She could have been hallucinating. Or burning a bit of incense, if you know what I mean..." Aziraphale shook his head and the demon sighed. "I believe her."
"You believe everyone!"
"Not you..."
"Things *have* been awfully nice since the world almost ended," Crowley frowned, groping about for puzzle pieces. "But why would Adam use his powers, after what almost happened the last time?"
"I don't know," Aziraphale said sincerely. "It's been seven years. He would be eighteen, if things in Tadfield are still progressing normally."
"So you're saying he may have flushed years down the drain," Crowley stared at the angel before running a hand through his hair. It fell back perfectly in place, greased and dark. "That's.... unheard of."
"Obviously." Aziraphale's tone was droll.
"What are you planning on doing about it?"
The angel looked pleased that he'd asked, and that gave Crowley a bad, bad feeling - generally he avoided things that Aziraphale found particularly amusing. "We need to talk to Adam, of course. Figure out what it is he's trying to avoid and convince him to let time resume its normal course.... This has never been done before - how much can things be 'pulled' before something snaps?"
"Oh. Oh, great, good plan, right. I suppose you're going to tell me that you'd like to be the one knocking sense into the Antichrist..." Crowley shook his head and glared.
"Actually, yes," the angel smiled weakly, "but seeing as I can't, I want you to do it."
"What?! Me?"
Oh, oh no. There was no way. There were currently two places on Crowley's 'Locations To Avoid Like The Plague' list - and Tadfield was second. Hell naturally was first, as the demon was still in the literal and figurative doghouse, and would be for another few centuries if he was lucky. Tadfield? "I'm not going to march in there and tell the Antichrist exactly what he doesn't want to hear, angel. Sorry."
Aziraphale turned on him, eyes round behind his thin-rimmed glasses. He looked worried, and rather like a puppy that had been kicked around once too often. Angels, Crowley thought grimly, should not be so good at looking adorable. That was an unfair advantage. "Crowley, I can't. I don't know what your people are doing, but I'm being *watched*. I have been, for the last few years - contacting Adam would be the most glaringly suspicious thing I could possibly do!"
"Isn't Heaven supposed to be all forgiving?" the demon asked dryly.
"They'd call me a traitor," blue eyes flickered up to meet Crowley's own. "And you know how Heaven works."
Crowley did know. The mechanics of it were not that different from Hell's bureaucracy - you did what you were told, you fulfilled your nature, and you were rewarded for it. There was little in the way of exceptions or loopholes... that was just the way it was.
"There. Is. No. Way."
"Please!"
"No!"
"You still owe me," Aziraphale coughed delicately, and Crowley looked surprised. The angel was not one to call in favors. "From that time. You know. In Salem."
"........" Crowley ground his teeth (fangs had spouted and gone unnoticed in his anger), but it was true. Even a demon has that much honor."So you want me to do the dirty work?!"
"Just go in and investigate! Your people put Adam up here, it wouldn't seem so suspicious of you to go and talk with him... they might assume you were trying to convince him to use his powers again, for your side. Wouldn't that be a demonic thing to do?" The angel sounded desperate, and Crowley stared at Aziraphale in disbelief over the rims of his sunglasses. The two of them had kept a tenuous friendship at best since the averted Armageddon, but this was asking a bit much...!
It was dangerous, he decided, feeling out the potential tear with his mind one more time. In his experience things that stretched generally snapped as well... and that could never bode well. Like a rubber band - it would snap back and bite the hand that held it. If the swell at Tadfield broke open, it made sense that the time that had been stalled would either rush in all at once to fill the void or would sweep outwards, away from the rupture...
A hole in time. Crowley shivered - because whatever that meant, it couldn't be good. "What do you want me to do?"
Aziraphale smiled warmly with relief. "Babysit."
~~~~
~~~~
He had already arranged it with Anathema, apparently, dropping Crowley's name into the pool of potential candidates for the job at hand. The demon felt a bit disgruntled by the fact that Aziraphale had simply assumed he would say yes, but had to admit that the plan was likely to work, despite his protests - "why me? Why me?!". Anathema had reported to the angel that Pepper's (who, Crowley had asked?) parents were going on a business trip, and needed someone to watch the girl and her little sister. She was close friends with Adam, and that was the connection they needed - the perfect opportunity.
This meant several things. One - Pepper and her sister were still young enough to need watching. Two, Crowley would be babysitting.
That in itself was horribly alarming. After all, a demonic denizen of Hell is generally not going to get along well with obnoxious young children... and Crowley, demon or not, was generally one of the last people any healthy parent would ever ask to babysit their kids. However, Anathema had told them he was a long-time friend of hers - "Oh," she'd promised, "he's been around forever."
Crowley twisted the key, firing up the Bentley with a dark, angry glare into the rear view mirror. Aziraphale stood on the curb, waving delicately with one plump hand and cupping a cup of tea in the other. Crowley swore. "Damn it, angel."There was nothing for it. He drove on.
~~~~
~~~~
Adam had never really meant to change Tadfield like he did. Not really. It was one of those things that just started happening all around him - at first he hadn't noticed, at first his desire and his power had worked together in secrecy, never informing him of what they intended to do. It was only when school neglected to start up again that he really began noticing that summer was stretching on and on, forever... and realized that he was the only one who could notice.
He'd realized it when Wensleydale's birthday failed to roll around, and by then the damage was already being done. Oh, Adam knew important things (I.E. the world and time) were stretching to accommodate him, but if he didn't want things to change, they wouldn't.
After all, weren't the powers given to him to be used? He could have changed everything if he felt like it, but all he really wanted was a little chunk of the world.
Tadfield.
And he never wanted summer to end.
~~~~
~~~~
Crowley rolled into Tadfield on the wings of an evening storm, as appropriate as that was. Lightening flashed all around his Bentley, lit across the sky howling behind him, filled with crackling electricity. In the prenatural darkness the sleek black car pulled alongside the road, just in front of the Jasmine Cottage, parked itself, and waited in silence for a moment.
The demon within stared morosely out the tinted windows at the fluttering waves of vine writhing against the side of the cottage, and sighed.
The angel owed him big time for this one. He would figure out later how many chores, favors and dinners were in order.
Fat drops of rain began pelting the windows and he popped the door open, locked it with a thought, then progressed to the cabin's porch, which was wet and creaking vocally in the heavy wind. It whistled through dark, oily hair and past long fingers as Crowley reached up to remove his sunglasses, then pocketed them.
His eyes were slanted and golden.
The demon raised his hand to knock on the door, and nodded with satisfaction when Anathema called out before he'd made a sound. "Come in!"
She's still got it, Crowley thought with a small amount of satisfaction, and let himself inside.
It didn't look at all like what the inside of a proper English cottage should look like, indoors. The entire first room held stacks of books and a few scraps of clothing, coats and umbrellas, a broken vase, cut out magazine articles. Crowley walked past, peering at himself for a moment in the hallway mirror before passing through another low door, nearly bumping his head on the wooden crossbeams.
The second room held a table, several candles, a map with plenty of criss-crossing loops and lines, as well as three cups of warm tea. There was a wide window, which was trembling under the onslaught of the sudden downpoor, and through it Crowley watched the trees thrash and shake in the wind. "Right on time," Anathema said softly, setting down her cup. "Newt's making dinner. Why don't you sit down?"
He did so, slipping his black leather coat over one shoulder and slinging it over the back of his chair. Lifting the tea, he took a cautious sip and nodded again, marking up mental points for the young woman. Just how he liked it - no sugar, no milk. Anathema smiled.
"Thank you for coming," she said very softly. "I was afraid Aziraphale wouldn't be able to convince you. I'm not sure if Newt and I could have done anything on our own."
Prediction was not an exact art, Crowley remembered as he glanced across the table, scattered with doilies and candlesticks. A person was just as likely to make one choice as another in the long run, and only when the choice was made could a prediction be considered accurate - unless a person had an insane amount of skill. Agnes Nutter had, but fortunately enough, Anathema Device did not.
Crowley fixed slitted pupils and luminescent eyes on the woman across the table from him. "Explain to me why I'm here?"
"Pepper is eleven, she's Adam's closest friend. Sam is her little sister, age six. Her mother is going on a buisness trip this week..."
"Isn't that a change in Tadfield? Do they go on buisness trips every week?"
"Adam is excited. Pepper likes it when her parents leave for bits at a time, usually I watch them. This time I told him I had a lot of work to do and couldn't, but had a good, nice friend that would come by. He seemed interested."
"So the trick to not getting your thoughts changed is that you just have to do something he agrees with?"
"Yes," Anathema nodded, soft curls bouncing. In the candlelight she looked very pretty, though Crowley couldn't quite put his finger on why or how. "He must want Pepper's parents gone for a bit - or maybe he wants it because Pepper does, and she's one of Them. He must want to meet one of my friends, or else I wouldn't be able to remember you were even coming."
"Them?"
"That's what they call themselves, the group he's friends with. Adam is their leader... surely you remember. They were all there at the Apocalypse."
Crowley had a vague memory of dirt-encrusted jeans and rickety bicycles. "Ah," he said, tone noncommittal. "Will Adam remember me?"
"I think he will when he sees you. I'm not sure what he'll do."
Okay, that left several options open... one, he could be interested in what Crowley had to say, and would listen. Two? He could always annihilate the demon if he didn't like what his presence...
Newt came in at that moment, swallowing nervously at the sight of Crowley's eyes, which were glowing a bit in his irritation. The demon nodded a greeting to the skinny man, who pressed his glasses back up to the bridge of his nose and looked helplessly over at his lover.
"You cook?" Crowley asked boredly, stabbing at the ice slowly forming in the room.
"Sometimes," Newt smiled weakly and coughed once. "Anathema tells me whether or not I'll make a good dinner, even before I start."
Anathema grinned smugly into the palm of her hand. "Just telling you how many antacids to take beforehand... Saves a lot of trouble."
"She's never off by much," the gangly man looked a bit rueful as he set down a pot and returned again with plates and silverware. Crowley watched him with feigned interest, only looking away when the young man began to sweat. "Tonight is a good night, I hear."
"Ah," said Crowley, and stabbed at his plate. He was trying very hard not to think of what he would have to do in the morning - it scared the proverbial shit out of him. "That's quite a relief."
The storm raged on.
~~~~
~~~~