Young Shadwell Versus The Forces of Hell
A Good Omens fanfiction
Part 1 of 2
Lance Corporal Shadwell never dreamed when he was a boy.
For little bitty Shadwell, sleep was a yawning black oblivion which he welcomed with restrained jubilation at the end of the long day, and he didn't bother day-dreaming, since he didn't know what there was in the world to day-dream about.
The boy who would be Shadwell didn't know there were fine things, same as he didn't know there were ugly things.
Not yet, at any rate.
He knew the vaguely northern farm he grew up on; also, he knew his grumpy father's hacking cough and spit and the noises he'd make before he'd curse everyone from Shadwell's late mother – God rest her soul, even though his father evidently didn't want the Almighty to do any such thing – to their nearest neighbours several miles up the winding country lane.
He'd once beaten Shadwell black and blue for graciously accepting a couple tins of condensed milk as a friendly loan from them.
After that, Shadwell didn't speak to them any more. Not worth it.
Besides, his father seemed to think they were up to no good, and he didn't want to fraternize with any folk who was up to no good.
They had a big ginger cat with tawny eyes they called Tuffy. When he died, indigestion or run over or something, they got them another, a skinny black one as named Mr. Whiskers.
In retrospect, as an adult, Shadwell thought that very suspicious. Talk about your funny names!
Probably, they were witches. They did the ghost-raising, at any rate. Or at least, one of the older aunts in that family read tea leaves. Everybody knew the next step from tea leaves was ghost-raising. You couldn't start one and not eventually do the other, Shadwell was fairly certain. That's the way he'd heard it; tea leaves were the gateway to ghost-raising and table-a-rappings, ask anyone you like and they'd tell you the same.
Shadwell's father wasn't a witch. And Shadwell told everyone he was a brave man – he didn't say good – when asked.
For obvious reasons, Shadwell didn't like his father much. When he wasn't shouting or hitting, which wasn't very often, Shadwell's father – it's been rumoured – tried to call him John (or maybe it was Jim), but it didn't stick.
Shadwell got the hint too early in life to be saddled through much of it with such a useless thing as a first name.
After he learned about witches – and how the church wasn't doing any good in the fight against them, rather the opposite, really – he wouldn't have bothered referring to it as a christian name.
Shadwell did not consider himself christian. The night he met Anthony J. Crowley was the first time he'd been willing to step over a church's threshold since he left the farm behind.
There was good money to be made as an underhanded locksmith and witchfinding didn't pay like it should.
And if Witchfinder Captain Ffolkes – who'd taught Shadwell all he knew, after he explained to his surprised cellmate that he wasn't the bad sort of arsonist, only in prison because the fire was lit the wrong day – was off some where in the afterlife, moved onto his reward, Shadwell saw no reason not to cash in himself.
Too bad about Ffolkes, though. Shadwell had rather liked him. He was the only person who willingly believed Shadwell didn't belong in prison.
"Ye don't belong here, laddie," he'd say, with a companionable sigh, as they settled down in their bunks for the night and the guards flicked the lights off. "Naw more th'n I do. That's how I knew ye was worthy to learn of the great cause."
Shadwell also liked his cellmate's accent, which he was pretty sure was Scottish. It sounded very northern, anyway, which was good. Shadwell preferred north to south by general principal, for reasons only understood by himself.
The boy Shadwell who never dreamed didn't have the accent the man Shadwell tried – though it wandered and wavered unknowingly in his valiant attempts – to implement after Ffolkes was gone.
It made him feel like a different person. A new man. And what else should one feel like after being set free?
Was only good sense, really.
The funny thing was, after a few weeks on the outside, Shadwell didn't realise somehow that his accent was fake. He'd genuinely forgotten he was only pretending somewhere along the way.
His old voice was gone, just like his old life.
Comes of not dreaming when you're young enough to work out what's real and what isn't – you fall out of practice, and it makes you a little mad.
1967:
It was a dark and stormy night.
Of course, it wasn't supposed to be. The chipper news broadcaster Aziraphale had seen grinning out of a television set in a shop window earlier had promised clear, starry skies all evening.
It appeared, however, that the dear lady was sorely mistaken.
Instead of sitting down on a nice breezy hill atop a tartan picnic blanket for a clandestine evening picnic with Crowley, the angel was sitting in the passenger seat of the parked Bentley, looking out at sheets of pelting rain as they pounded the windshield, while Crowley – slouched in the driver's seat with a peeved, edgy look on his face – drummed his fingernails on the steering wheel.
The rainfall had let up exactly once during the last four hours. Exactly long enough for a leggy working girl to – having spied Crowley through the window – sashay over and tap on the glass.
He'd wound the window down. "Yes?"
"Wondering if you were up for a good time, love."
Aziraphale had been crawling around in the back at that time, trying to locate an unopened bottle of wine that had rolled under the seat. He chose that moment to pop up, looking flustered. "Ah. Hello."
Their visitor then had made three instantaneous assumptions – two of which were wrong. "Oh." She took a couple steps back. "Sorry, love, didn't realise you already had company."
"Good Heavens," cried Aziraphale, squinting out at the young woman. "Why aren't you wearing a coat? It's freezing." He made an assumption of his own: that she had come up to the car to beg for money (which was not entirely wrong, of course, she just didn't expect to get it for nothing). "Wait a moment, young lady." The angel reached for his wallet. "Let me give you some money so you can buy a nice warm jumper." She looked so cold, poor thing! "A tenner or two should be enough."
Crowley, his face gone as red as a cherry tomato, had had to reach over and grab Aziraphale's wrist. "No, angel."
"Why ever not, dear boy?" He'd been genuinely perplexed.
"Because I don't fancy getting arrested." Crowley made a quick shooing motion at the gawking woman, reaching to wind up the window. "Do you mind? We're in the middle of something."
"Yes," Aziraphale had sulked. "In the middle of a spoiled picnic. What we're meant to do with sixteen miniature ham sandwiches now, I–"
"Oi, give one here." Crowley reached into the hamper between them, snagged a little sandwich, and promptly stuffed it into Aziraphale's open mouth. "There." Hmmf! "Much better."
Aziraphale had then tried to say something scathing, but needed to chew and swallow first, ultimately deciding – by the time he was done – it wasn't worth the effort.
The rain had started up again after the sex worker left them alone.
Sharing the wine – once Aziraphale succeeded in dragging the bottle out from under the seat – they'd fallen into a brooding silence for a while. And then promptly begun one of their longest-running arguments regarding humanity.
Crowley, as always, insisted that this whole free will thing was bollocks if you didn't start everyone off exactly the same, and Aziraphale, as always, was vehement that the demon had it wrong.
The angel must have come across as more self-righteous than usual, because Crowley got fed up, glared at him sidelong, burped, and said, "D'you know the real difference between me and you, angel? D'you know the actual difference? Your only actual difference?"
Aziraphale blinked stupidly and took another swig from the wine bottle. "What'do you mean?"
"There's this man," Crowley began.
"What man?" Aziraphale squinted suspiciously.
"This man I'm talking about." He pushed on, leaning his cheek against the seat's upholstery and staring intently at his friend from behind his sunglasses. "And he burns books."
Aziraphale was aghast. "Horrible man."
"Be quiet for a moment and listen. He burns rare books."
"Even worse!" Aziraphale looked like he was going to have an aneurysm.
"And this man," Crowley continued; "imagine he's going to walk into your book shop tomorrow, grab an armload of rare editions – some of them the only copy in existence far as you know – and chuck the lot of 'em on a bonfire he's got blazing outside."
Aziraphale opened his mouth to ask how the man got a fire going in the middle of Soho without anyone noticing.
Crowley, reaching over and stuffing another little sandwich into the angel's open mouth, ignored his muffled noises of protest and charged ever forward with his startling speech. "You can stop him, before he burns a single one, but there's a catch."
He swallowed and smacked his lips. "Eh? What's that?"
"You've got to kill him – just make him drop down dead, rescue the books."
The angel was nonplussed. "But that's awful."
"Well, he burns rare books," Crowley pointed out. "He's a bloody arsonist. Maybe a fanatic of some kind. You want this man walking around free? Just kill him – I won't tell. Our little secret."
"I'd never." Aziraphale's cheeks flush. "I don't think I could."
Crowley reached up and moved part of his red fringe from over his eyes, then took off his sunglasses. "Going to let him burn up your entire collection of Bibles, are you?"
"This isn't real, Crowley."
"First book dropping from this lunatic's arms onto the bonfire is your beloved Unrighteous Bible. Ah. D'you know what? I'm going to rather miss that one myself."
A look of pain was camping on the angel's face. "Stop it."
"Then goes the Bugger All This Bible – whoosh! Up in flames. Isn't that the only book in the world with a record of what God said to you in Eden, about the flaming sword? Going to let that go, too, eh?"
"Crowley, you know I don't like this. You're upsetting me."
"And ooh, hmm, what's next? Is that your scroll in the handwriting of Saint I-Love-Me-Some-Damn-Good-Mushrooms from Patmos? I do believe it is!"
"I had that in a locked climate-controlled cabinet! How did he get it?"
"He stole the key – stay on topic. Picture it, your beloved scroll nothing but a pile of so much ash."
"Oh, Crowley!"
"Don't 'oh Crowley' me, Aziraphale; you can stop it any moment you like – just kill the hypothetical bastard."
"No!"
"Aziraphale, are you telling me – are you seriously telling me, to my face – you think some random, miserable human life, some book-burning wanker you clearly would despise if you met even on the best of days, is more important than what you treasure most in this world? You think – just because you're an angel – I don't know you're lying?"
Aziraphale swallowed back a lump in his throat. He was near tears. "I'm not lying."
"Yeah, you are," Crowley insisted darkly. "You'd do it; you'd kill him. But you're too ashamed to admit it. I'd do it, Aziraphale, and I don't even like books. But I know what's worth while. I'd kill him, even over something that didn't matter to me personally. And if it did matter, if he wanted to burn the Bentley, I'd add his sorry corpse to the pile of those of the door-to-door salesmen I paved the road to Hell with eons ago."
Aziraphale choked out, voice tinged with disgust, "May you be forgiven."
The demon snorted. "See, that's the difference between us – that's my point. We'd both bloody do it, but you can't admit it and live with yourself. I can. That's it. There's your beautiful bottom line, angel. Everything else about us is the damn same under your coating of celestial goodness."
Giving him a hard, cool look, Aziraphale reached for the door handle. The wine he'd drunk was miraculously back in the bottle, his eyes no longer glassy or tearful.
"See, Crowley, this is exactly how I knew you'd be."
"What'doya mean?" he slurred.
"You're never slow with me, never gentle – you always have to win – have to speed up until I can't take it any more."
In the swamp of his mind, Crowley recalled Aziraphale – the last time he'd seen him before tonight, after the angel had unexpectedly given him the tartan thermos of Holy Water he'd been setting up a caper to obtain – getting out of the Bentley.
You go too fast for me.
And maybe he was right – maybe he did go too fast.
"Angel. Come on. Don't be like this."
"You're wrong, Crowley. About everything."
"Now hang on a minute..."
"You think that if everyone started out the same, that's the only way people could choose to do good? Think about this, Crowley – we started out the same. Both of us. Angels. You're fallen, and I'm not. How do you explain that?"
"That's a low blow, you smug bastard," Crowley hissed, his snaky eyes going a shade darker with fury.
"I'm taking the hamper and the umbrella, you can keep the wine, and I'm leaving. Walking home – back to the shop – by myself," Aziraphale declared pertly, snatching up his things and leaning on the door as he tugged the handle. "Don't telephone me tomorrow."
"Don't want to," sneered Crowley.
The Next Day:
"Crowley." Aziraphale sighed heavily into the receiver, the exquisitely manicured fingers on his other hand lightly and irritably stroking the side of the rotary. "I thought I told you not to telephone me."
"Yeah, I know." It sounded like he was hissing through gnashed teeth. "Something's happened."
"What?" Tensing, Aziraphale let his idling hand drop to his side, the other tightening its grasp on the receiver.
"Hell thinks I did something wrong – they suspect me of double dealing, and they've sent an old friend up here to collect me. If you don't hear from me again in twenty-four hours, I need you to go the place I've been staying – the address is in the glove compartment of the Bentley, which is parked near St. James's. I need you to take back the thermos of Holy Water. I can't get to it from where I'm at, and if Hell finds out I had that stashed away they're not going to be very happy."
"Crowley–"
"While you're there take anything that might suggest you and I have ever had a conversation – I don't think they know about you yet. As far as Hell or Heaven is concerned, I never even spotted you down here, haven't seen you since Eden. Got that?"
Aziraphale felt as if the floor of the bookshop had suddenly, treasonously opened up and was attempting to swallow him whole. "Tell me where you are, Crowley. I'll come to you."
"M'sorry, angel, that's not going to happen."
"But my dear fellow..."
"Don't come looking for me." Click.
Aziraphale dropped the receiver, not bothering to set it back in place properly, just letting it dangle where it fell, and made a beeline for the coat rack. He snatched his coat off it so hastily the sleeve caught and he nearly took the whole rack out the door with him.
Because he was going to go looking for the demon.
Disobeying wasn't in Aziraphale's nature, of course, but neither was leaving a friend in trouble.
Shadwell was walking along the neon-lit street, lighting a cigarette, when he spotted none other than Anthony J. Crowley practically falling out of a public telephone box, clutching his side.
Before he could rush over there and ask if he was in need of some assistance, make it abundantly clear he was always ready to help a wealthy gentleman in need, a very strange-looking fellow in a grey trench-coat with a matching hat over his pale hair accosted Mr. Crowley, who was screaming, "Hastur, I told you, I didn't do it! It wasn't me."
"I don't care, Craw-lee."
"Well, if you keep this up, you're going to have to explain the discorporated body." Mr. Crowley peeled his hand off his side; it was slick with blood. "Good luck with that."
Dead bodies and blood and wild threats? Shadwell shuddered inwardly. He should have known Crowley was a criminal; anyone who wore sunglasses when they weren't on an actual beach generally was.
And talking about dispatched bodies while blood oozed from his side?
He was in deep, that Mr. Crowley.
Shadwell tisked and tossed his cigarette away.
Because Crowley wouldn't stop fighting him, refused go quietly to wherever this creepy blighter was meaning to drag him off to, he (the one called Hastur) said, rather loudly, "What's one more body between us, Crowley? Satan and Beelzebub will just have to pardon it – I'm hardly out of their favour, after all," and flung poor Mr. Crowley into the street as a vehicle came speeding along.
Shadwell's blood was a-pumping like anything as he ran into the street, grabbed Crowley by the waist, and dragged him out of the vehicle's path.
Hastur swore and, disappearing, materialized right in front of them on the far side.
"Who the Heaven are you?" He glowered at Shadwell.
There was something about that glower – so darkly evil, so utterly unreasonable – which brought Shadwell's mind subconsciously back to that northern farm where a little boy never dreamed and set him to – at least on some level – remembering a certain man's stinging leather belt and drunken blows.
He snarled. "Ye leave yon good gentleman alwone, ya witch... Appearing and disappearing every which way like ye had any right to! And don't think I didn't hear ye calling on the devil himself! I heard it with me own two ears. Ye thick with Lucifer, ye spawn of Satan, dawn't deny it! What's more, there is a toad on yer head!" (His hat had not materialized across the street with him.)
"I'm going to enjoy killing you," growled Hastur, who was not expecting any human to be stupid enough – or unfrightened enough of his now fiendishly glowing red eyes – to actually do something as idiotic as attempt to defend themselves.
Which was why he was shocked when a bullet hit him directly in the chest and Shadwell, still crouched beside Crowley (who wasn't moving or opening his eyes), was holding a smoking pistol he'd drawn – so fast the demon hadn't properly seen him do it – from his coat pocket.
Clutching his chest, from the centre of which a dark stain was flowering out, Hastur began to hobble for the nearest alleyway to avoid a vivid discorporation in front of a human.
He'd be back for Crowley very, very soon.
Shadwell barely reacted. It wasn't the first time he'd seen a mean glower wiped off a face like Hastur's after being shot at. There was a reason he'd been in prison in order to meet Ffolkes and learn about the witchfinder army – the fight against the darkness – in the first place. Course, he'd missed that time, or else he'd still be in that cell now. They'd never have let him out if he'd succeeded the first time. But then, his father wasn't a witch – made this a completely different thing. Wasn't like successfully managing to shoot a proper person.
"Are ye dead, Mr. Crowley?" Shadwell prodded him lightly with the barrel of the pistol. He hoped he wasn't, very much so, but was more or less prepared to search his pockets for loose change if he answered in the negative.
"No, Lance Corporal Shadwell," murmured Crowley, eyes remaining clinched shut. "It would appear I've simply fallen unconscious."
"Aye, that's good. Showed that witch-man with the toad on his head a thing or two, no mistake. You were very brave." With that, Shadwell scooped him up and began to walk again with a slightly limp Crowley dangling from his arms. "Don't ye worry – get ye some place safe."
"My glasses," whispered Crowley.
"Nighttime," Shadwell said, gently but in a tone laced with judgement. "Ye don't wear sunglasses at night. Sun en't out."
"Need them. My eyes," Crowley insisted.
"Right then. If yer gonna fuss about it, don't suppose it would do any harm ta go back and get 'em." Quickly glancing backwards, Shadwell spotted a pair of sunglasses flashing red and black reflectively under the neon lights. They were dangling precariously off the pavement's edge.
Crowley's head lolled to one side.
"We're bendin' over now," Shadwell warned. "Don't take sick or nothin'." He squatted and scooped them up by the bridge with his little finger.
Crowley was hesitant to open his eyes as long as Shadwell carried him. One look at them, and Shadwell might drop him in the gutter and leave him to discorporate. Shadwell had retrieved his sunglasses, but hadn't given them to him yet, as they still dangled from the witchfinder's crooked little finger.
Crowley did sneak a peek to try and work out where they were when Shadwell slowed and started fumbling for a key. They appeared to be at the side door of some rundown hotel; it smelled like cigarettes and had some very inconsiderately loud rats squeaking insults at one another in the walls.
"Got a room just up here," Shadwell said, finally locating his key. "Safe enough. Yon devil-worshippers en't likely to look for you here."
They were, and Crowley was a little sorry for it – Shadwell didn't deserve to be caught in the middle – but he was still bleeding, and there wasn't much he could do on his own right then. He wondered vaguely if Hastur's body had expired yet. And, more importantly, how long it would take one irate Duke of Hell to get a new body and return with backup.
Perhaps he could send Shadwell on an errand to get the Holy Water? He might not even have to lie about what it was! Shadwell would be keen on anything that destroyed demons. And if Aziraphale was following his instructions, he wouldn't be retrieving it for another twenty-three hours at least. There should be time. Except, there were certain things he had, stashed away, that would turn Shadwell against him as quickly as a glimpse of his snaky eyes might. He didn't trust Shadwell not to get curious and snoop. Probably too risky, then. Damn.
The demon felt himself being deposited on a bed that was so hard it could double as a desk. The scratchy comforter smelled like dog excrement.
Something light landed on the bed beside him.
His sunglasses! Crowley snatched them up and shoved them onto his face so he could safely open his eyes.
Shadwell was flicking on a lamp and rummaging in a dingy-looking pack for something. "Got some first aid in here somewhere. Ye just sit tight, Mr. Crowley."
A box of firelighters flew across the room, as they'd apparently gotten in the way of Shadwell's frantic search. Crowley did not find this very reassuring. His head was swimming. He knew he must have lost a lot of blood by now. Luckily, the knife Hastur had stabbed him with before he made it to the telephone box to call Aziraphale hadn't gone in all the way. There was a good chance it hadn't pierced anything too important.
Aziraphale flew through the air, landing on his stomach outside a tavern he'd met Crowley at once before. "Oof." The fallen angel rose slowly, aching all over, and began to shake the dust and road-side debris off his arms and the front of his coat. "Honestly! A simple 'no, he hasn't been in here to use the phone tonight' would have sufficed! There was no need to throw me!"
"Glad to see ye only got two nipples." Shadwell produced a very dirty-looking bandage.
"Not clean," groaned Crowley, shirtless and shivering in the small lavatory across the hall Shadwell had dragged him to after locating the first aid kit. "Covered in...not clean stuff..." He sniffed, then shifted on the lip of the chipped porcelain tub he'd been balancing against.
"Pah! Dirt's good for ye, dawn't be a pansy." Shadwell gave him a no-nonsense frown and produced, somewhat to Crowley's mild relief, a whiskey flask which he set beside the bandage. "Put up yer arms."
"Guess it's better than nothing," Crowley muttered, lifting his arms in exhausted compliance.
When he'd completed his – honestly, not very good – slosh some whiskey and patch-up and wrap-around job, Shadwell nodded sombrely, as if well pleased with his own efforts. "Always remember ye got yer scar fightin' the good fight – it's what Witchfinder Captain Ffolkes liked to say about his. Covered in scars, he was. Proud of 'em even when he was on his last breath."
Someone banged at the lavatory door, shaking the lock. Its chain rattled wildly against the wood. "Oi! My turn! Been waiting for twenty minutes!"
"Hold yer horses, ye great pillock!" Shadwell shouted, giving the door a sharp kick from their side, making the chain rattle even more wildly. "Got a good man bleeding tah death in here after fightin' the forces of darkness. Show some bloody respect!"
Aziraphale tapped his index finger tentatively against a dark windowpane. The establishment was closed, but he knew Crowley hung around here sometimes.
He used a miracle to unlock the window and lifted it enough to stick his head in. "Crowley?"
"Crowley?" Another voice, which was too dark for any angel to mistake for an echo, called back from inside. "Croh-lee! You flash bastard!"
The lights came on and Aziraphale caught a glimpse of a very peeved looking demon couple kicking chairs out of the way and blessing profusely before he ducked and pressed his back to the side of the building, heart hammering and chest heaving.
"He's not here," growled one of the pair.
"I thought I saw someone at the window. It's open. Could've been him."
"Nah, was an owl. Had white feathers."
Footsteps came a little nearer, and Aziraphale managed a weak, "Er...hoot, hoot..."
Luckily no one had ever told these demons (Hastur and Ligur) that owls do not ordinarily say "Hoot, hoot," as opposed to actually making the noise, and that, furthermore, they do not have British accents.
Aziraphale crawled away, unfollowed, on his hands and knees.
He mulled over what he'd learned there.
On the one hand, if the demons were looking for him, that meant Crowley wasn't in Hell or discorporated yet...
He was still alive.
What a relief.
On the other, where in blazes was he?
A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed. I'll try to get the next (and final) part up soon.