A Prayer For Penn & Todd
A Good Omens and Fallen fanfiction
Prologue:
Savannah, Georgia
May 1, 2008
"Really, Crowley," sighed Aziraphale, tsking downward and wringing his hands; "two teenagers – at our age."
The classroom was dark – all the overhead lights were blown out and two windows were shattered – illuminated only by the unnaturally strong silver moonbeam shining in from outside with a brilliance which made it look as if it were cast from some manner of celestial lighthouse. Two tables were pushed together in the centre of the classroom, and upon the worktops were sprawled two youths – a boy and a girl – in pitiful condition.
The boy was covered in burns from head to toe, so charred as to look almost unrecognisable as a human being; the girl, in contrast, looked a little better – you could at least tell she was in fact a human girl – but her face was dreadfully pale and across her neck was a neat, nasty red slash.
Her throat had been cut.
Crowley, whose cheeks were blackened and clothes were singed, looked down at the pair of children with a bafflement equal to Aziraphale's. "They can't really expect us to–"
"Well, to be fair," said Aziraphale, haltingly, "we have technically done it before – Warlock, you know. And you did look after all those Nephilim babies prior to the flood."
"You're forgetting, Aziraphale, I took a job I despised, under Hastur, just to get out of looking after those damn babies."
"I'm sure human teenagers will be much less trouble," said Aziraphale, though he didn't look as if he meant it; his kind – but very tired – eyes were too wary in their expression.
"Oh, yeah, right" – he removed his sunglasses, presumably just so Aziraphale could see him roll his snaky eyes (though, given the lenses were missing, blown out just like the bulbs and windows after the recent hubbub, he would have seen anyway) – "because teaching here at Sword & Cross has been a walk in St. James' Park."
"To be frank, my dear boy, I'm not altogether certain how many of our students are actually human teenagers." The angel motioned with his chin. "For all we know, those two poor creatures on the tables there were the only humans in this school."
Crowley murmured something guttural and unintelligible.
"I know, I know – I feel much the same," sighed Aziraphale. "But one cannot just pass by on the other side."
The demon muttered, more intelligibly, that even if Aziraphale's one couldn't, his one very well might.
The classroom door opened, then, and a petite blonde girl in a short Jean skirt and fur-lined, lavender-coloured ski vest came in, striding authoritatively.
"Nice legs, Gabriel!" said Crowley.
The girl's eyes – which had been bluish a moment ago – flashed dark purple. "Shut up, Crowley. You're lucky to even be at this school."
Crowley sniffed and folded his arms across his chest. "You know, Gabbe, I really do fail to see it that way."
Aziraphale prepared to step between them if need be – he'd had to be something of a (rather ineffective, all things considered) buffer between the demon and archangel ever since they'd been forced to put their differences aside and come to Sword & Cross.
Crowley (like Aziraphale himself) no longer properly having a side, with Heaven or with Hell, after the whole messy business with Armageddon getting postponed until further notice, meant the infernal authorities that be down below couldn't assign him into the role of a student for this and give him a new body – Gabriel, temporarily outranked by Michael, hadn't been so fortunate with the bureaucracy in Heaven. So while Crowley retained his favourite shape and looked the same as he always had, Gabriel's recent appearance was that of a notably dainty sixteen year old girl. The archangel still had all of his former strength, of course – he'd beaten the crap out of Cam, a rather smart-mouthed demon he'd never gotten on with even when they were both angels in Heaven, who was also temporarily posing as a student, just two days ago. Still, Crowley being permitted to pose as a teacher, with a semblance of authority over Gabriel, had gotten to his head a bit, and there was this constant underlying war going on between them.
Aziraphale had – after one, in his opinion, particularly childish, confrontation between the pair of them – commented on it privately to Crowley, asking if he really, truly needed to provoke Gabriel so often, and was surprised when his demon friend simply granted him one of his rare blinks and said, very quietly, "Yeah, angel, I do – why d'you think he's left you alone this whole time?"
After that, Aziraphale – while always prepared to interfere when he could, particularly if the odds of being unscathed seemed out of the demon's favour – generally tried to act like he simply didn't hear Crowley's tone when he smugly referred to Gabriel as "Miss Givens" or worse "Gabrielle" (Crowley always put heavy emphasis and popped his mouth on the elle).
It was obvious to Gabriel the demon knew exactly what he was doing.
Gabbe leaned over the tables, reaching to touch the girl's neck. Despite having long arms, in the new, more feminine body, the archangel didn't quite reach without bouncing up into the balls of the feet a bit.
Arching an eyebrow, Crowley kicked a – slightly warped but still mostly whole – stool in Gabbe's direction. It stopped an inch away from the archangel's ankle.
"Or, if you like, Aziraphale could just give you a boost," he added. "Lift you by the armpits."
"Crowley!" hissed Aziraphale, from the corner of his mouth.
Gabbe appeared about ready to have an aneurysm.
Aziraphale wasn't personally too fond of Cam, given the shameless miscreant had a malignant fondness for marking up the books in the school library with crudely-drawn dirty cartoons scribbled within the margins, but remembering what Gabriel had done to that demon made him worry for Crowley. How long would the archangel's misguided belief that Crowley was immune to holy water – and presumably had other hidden powers as well – keep him from trying to painfully discorporate him?
It didn't bear thinking of.
Luckily, Gabbe was focused on the task at hand – healing the children; first the girl, whose slit throat closed and healed, until there was only a thin scar left behind, and then the boy who, after Gabbe's fingertips grazed what was left of his hair, looked no worse than Crowley did at the moment, the burns replaced with a filmy black ash which would certainly wash off.
The boy's neck, once the burns were all gone, was revealed to be jutted at an odd angle – presumably it had been broken by something falling on it in the fire – and, after Gabbe touched him again, it straightened miraculously.
The door, left open by Gabbe, was suddenly flown past by a slim, black-haired figure in jeans and a hoodie. "Penn!" she cried, bringing her hands to her mouth in anguish as she ran. "Penn!"
Behind her, lunging and grasping at her elbows and struggling to pull her away, a shining angelic being with blonde hair and chiselled features cried, "Luce, I'm sorry, but we've got to go – now!"
"I can't – I can't leave Penn!" she sobbed, wrenching one elbow free, trying to get to the girl on the table.
Aziraphale was astonished by the look on Gabbe's face – it was a look he'd only ever seen directed towards Sandalphon on rare occasions. "Crowley or Aziraphale will take Penn with them, Lucinda, I promise you she'll be safe – go."
Lucinda's ink-black eyes – the same shade as her hair – flashed an almost painfully vibrant shade of orange.
The angel pulling her away mouthed "Thank you," to Gabbe, and Aziraphale could have sworn he'd seen tears shining, if only a for a fleeting moment, in the archangel's still partially violet eyes.
"But surely Daniel has nothing to worry about," said Aziraphale, brow knit, just as the angel in the doorway succeeded in pulling Lucinda – who was reassured but still rather hysterical – out of the classroom. "If Sophia–"
Gabbe glanced over the shoulder at Aziraphale, mouth pursed. "She got away."
"How could you lot be stupid enough–" began Crowley, but Aziraphale elbowed him in the abdomen hard enough to make him cough and then stop. If he'd been human and actually needed to breathe, the angel's blow to the gut would have winded him.
"So – which one of you wants what kid?"
"One of us?" repeated Crowley, voice rising. "I thought this would be like before – Aziraphale teaches them to be good, I teach them not to listen to him. You know, no-score draw, what."
But it was thrumming in his ears, even as he spoke; he couldn't unhear it once the coin had dropped: Crowley or Aziraphale will take Penn with them.
Not Crowley and Aziraphale.
"The situation is different now," said Gabbe, with clear impatience. "You're not doing this for your respective sides. None of us cares if they're good or bad – that's not going to bring about the end of the world. You already ruined that, remember?"
"So," began Aziraphale, a trifle shakily, "what you mean to say is–"
"All that matters is they never see one another." Gabbe's eyes scanned the length of the two tables. "They won't remember any of this when they wake – and if they do, if it comes back to them because being around one another triggered memories of life here at Sword & Cross, it could put Daniel in danger – so you each get one. For all that's holy, just keep them out quietly of sight!"
"Crowley, for pity's sake, are you mouthing eeny, meeny, miny, moe?" demanded Aziraphale, whirling and planting his hands on his hips. "Stop that." Then, "Oh, why did Lucinda and Daniel have to find each other again? Everything was just tickety boo before–"
"Lucinda was his second in Heaven." Crowley shook his head. "It's hardly surprising they keep meeting up and conspiring – it's what they were created for."
"Well, it's most inconvenient for the rest of us," grumbled Aziraphale, twisting the ring on his little finger anxiously.
"I wouldn't expect either of you to understand." Gabbe's eyes cut sharply, full of a sparky, almost electric disdain – somewhere between purple and blue, and as piercing as a guillotine blade being lowered. "Neither of you ever had a second. Especially not you, Crowley – you always did covet your own work."
"I'll take Todd," Aziraphale blurted in hopes of holding off the inevitable quarrel, given how Crowley looked as if Gabriel had just slapped him across the face and if he retaliated with some crotchety – although, to be fair, certainly not entirely uncalled for – remark about Gabriel's second, Sandalphon, the end result was sure to be ugly.
"I wanted Todd," whined Crowley, automatically. Then, his yellow eyes darting uncertainly between the boy and girl, both still breathless and unmoving on the worktops, "Er... Which one's Todd again?"
"Hastur and Ligur – why are they always together?"
"Well, you know how demons used to be angels?"
"Yes, go on."
"Angels usually have a working partner – someone they're closer to than any of the other angels, their personal second."
"Like a best friend?"
"You could call it that, I suppose. Anyway, some of the demons – despite natural demonic distrust of each other – have clung to their seconds even after the fall. Ligur was Hastur's second. They're used to working and conspiring together, so they just kept doing so – convenience, you see."
– The Book of Bithiah