TITLE: my revenge is but a tool to carve out your eulogy
SUMMARY: An angel is murdered in Soho, but it's Heaven that burns.
🗡️🐍
A fix-it fic for halcyon1796's SPN AU / MCD fanart (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, post/187747070828).
AO3 TAGS: Canon Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, POV Crowley (Good Omens), POV Adam Young (Good Omens), Murder, Character Death, Angst, POV Quartermaster Angel (Good Omens), Demon True Forms, Revenge, Blood and Violence, POV Michael (Good Omens), POV Adam Young, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Temporary Character Death, First Kiss, Surprise Kissing, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, Kissing, shy Aziraphale, implied PTSD, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Death Fix, does that apply when the death is from a fanart, Alternate Universe - Supernatural (TV) Fusion, only in regards to how angels work, only regarding the angels, Inspired by Art, I think I got all the tags
AN: I wanted to post this on the full moon Friday the 13th but, of course, since I had an arbitrary deadline, I missed it entirely. I was also going to give this a normal, non-FOB-title title, but all the standard-sized ones refused to fit.
Muses are both a blessing and a curse because, despite my best intentions, my simple viewing of halcyon1796's gorgeous art turned into fic. 🍎🍵 ~
CHAPTER ONE - Obliteration of the Soul, Obliteration of the Heart
Even as Crowley pulled up to the kerb, he knew something was wrong. Aziraphale's bookshop had a life of its own, like the Bentley did, and it had never felt… 'dead'. Not even when it Aziraphale had first moved in - it had just smelled of potential not… not death. He wasn't even sure he was the one to put the car into park before he was stepping into the street, and the front door slammed open when he set foot on the first step.
"Aziraphale!" he shouted, a strange, unwelcome and unfamiliar sense of panic crawling up his throat. "Azir-!" He turned the corner and felt his words die in his throat.
There was a gate ward on the floor, still lingering the faint scent of Heaven, but it wasn't as important as the figure splayed half inside of it. The figure backed by shadowy wings like soot, burned into the floor, up the walls and onto the ceiling. A figure dressed in pale beiges and blues, stained with a deep red and sparkling with pale gold around the silver angel blade stuck through his chest.
"Aziraphale?"
Crowley staggered forward on numb feet, clawing his sunglasses from his face with nails that tore and stung. The cuts healed instantly, but there was a hole opening in his chest that wasn't healing at all. In fact, the closer he got, the wider it opened. And when he tripped, knees hitting the wood so hard that it jarred his teeth and hands hitting a chest still warm and wet, a void yawned behind his ribcage. He pulled his hands back and a trail of golden grace clung to his skin, making the blood on his palms glow. His brain stuttered.
"Angel?" he croaked, shaking fingers dancing around the angel blade. Was he supposed to pull it out? Was he supposed to leave it in? What was- What was he- "Angel, I don't know what to do. I need you to wake up." He shook Aziraphale, softly at first, and then harder when there was no response. "Angel, wake up!" he shouted, shaking so hard that Aziraphale's body-
The thought cut him so hard and quick that he let go, and the soft thunk of Aziraphale's head was like Crowley'd gotten stabbed in the heart himself. "I'm sorry," he gasped, and it sounded like he was begging, and… he was. He just needed Aziraphale to open his eyes, to prove that this wasn't real. He stroked a hand over the top and down the back of the angel's head, soothing the hurt. "I'm sorry, Aziraphale, I'm sorry. Please, please just wake up and I'll make it up to you. Please."
But the blasphemously-black wings on the ground didn't evaporate, the blood and grace on his hands didn't disappear, and Aziraphale didn't- he didn't wake up.
"This… this isn't real," Crowley choked out, fisting those stupid wool lapels. He didn't even realize he was starting to lose control of his human form until the fabric tore under the black points of his claws and he had to forcibly retract them.
"It's not-" A sound clogged his throat, an ugly sound that he'd never made before in his immortal life, and he slapped a hand over his mouth to keep another one of those sounds from escaping. Something wet dripped down his cheeks and he dashed his free hand across it, but more kept coming. Every attempt to clear his eyes just left more wet smeared across his face until all he could smell was- was Aziraphale's blood. His angel's fading grace.
"It's not true." The stupid tears wouldn't stop falling, wouldn't stop dripping down onto linen that had never been less than pristine since its creation, white linen now stained red and tear-lightened to pink. He jammed the heels of his palms into his eyes, trying to get it stop. Maybe if he could just get the tears to stop, then this entire nightmare would stop. Maybe it would have never-
"It never happened," he told himself, digging his claws into his scalp until blood dripped down his fingers to mingle with his tears. "It never happened," he Willed, demanding an undoing of the world. But no amount of demonic power in the universe could bring back an angel from obliteration.
Crowley crumpled over Aziraphale, burying his head in his angel's chest, and screamed his grief for the world to hear.
And only when it was spent, only when the void in his chest had been emptied of his sorrow and refilled with his rage, did he throw his head back and roar until the universe shook.
TBC
Fear not the Incomplete status, the fic IS actually all written, I'm just posting a chapter a day.
Like the thing? Kudo, Comment, and Reblog the thing (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, post/187748771953)! Also, don't forget to reblog halcyon's original art (themadkatter13fanfiction tumblr, post/187747070828)! Tschüss!