Warnings - nope. Oh, one, Australian spelling - beware!!!!
Summery - The meaning of Easter can vary. What does it mean for one earth bound angel and his demon?
Comments - Not as biblically dicey as you may think.
Disclaimer: All characters belong to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, the wonderful writing team that created them. Good Omen's is the property of Corgi Books. All rights reserved. No infringement of copyright is intended. No money changed hands.
Easter
By Fire Frog.
"Did he make it off alright then?"
"What? Oh, yes - yes he did, poor thing. I went to make sure - rolled the stone off his sepulchre - that sort of thing.
"Hnuh." Crowley grunted, fingering the small mallet and iron spike in the satchel by his side. Good thing he'd been late then. Not that it would have been big as whiles go, spiking the risen again Christ's burial stone shut, but anything to cause a bit of inconvenience was worth a try.
However, Aziraphale would have known it was him and thwarted like thunder. It certainly would have put a damper on today's little get together, anyway. "Heavenly chorus there, I suppose?"
"Hmm? Oh, yes - yes. Everyone who could make it was hovering, I should imagine." The angel absently miracled away a smudge of dirt from the side of his hand that he had just noticed. Those burial stones were 'heavy'.
They sat in silence for awhile, the general friendly banter of the public house they were meeting in covering the noise of the market outside.
"You think they had that level of…'pain' in mind when God - er, what did He do? Ask for volunteers?"
"No, Jesus suggested it. The suffering of God's mortal children just got to Him in a bad way. But you know God, no leniency without sacrifice, He said. And He agreed to do it." Aziraphale sighed, running a finger round the lip of his earthenware bowl. It held a weak sort of beer, nothing like the old stuff you used to get which you had to dig out with a spoon. This stuff was practicably drinkable.
"Huh. He gets a capital letter now? Lucky son of a God. Want an egg?" Crowley asked, holding out the satchel to show the four boiled chicken eggs tucked in a pocket.
"Don't mind if I do." Aziraphale answered, taking out a brown one with speckles on it. They cracked their eggs in silence, remembering the recent horror.
"Say, angel. You wouldn't do that, would you?" Crowley licked his lips and glanced nervously at his companion. "Wouldn't, you know - volunteer…."
"To be crucified? No. I would have liked to have been allowed to take a little of His pain the other day, but was forbidden. I stayed away on another hill, sitting on my hands so I couldn't be tempted. But I do know what you mean, 'would I agreed to become human and sacrifice my self for the good of all'. My dear, they'd never ask a lowly principality like me to do something like that - and I'm rather glad they wouldn't."
"Amen." Crowley muttered into his beer, then his eyes narrowed and a sly smile stole over his face "Principality?" he mouthed. Aziraphale didn't notice.
"The poor love, I really don't think He knew what He was getting into. That's the problem of having only the one angel permanently on earth - none of the others really appreciate what a chore living is."
"Let alone dying," Crowley added. Aziraphale gave him a withering look and the corner of Crowley's black tunic began to smoulder.
"Another beer?" Crowley asked brightly and Aziraphale's gaze dropped back to his hands. He began to brood.
Crowley got the next round of drinks and hurried back. His companion hadn't moved and looked somewhat disgruntled still.
"I just meant," the angel began, "that we'd have less plagues of boils if up there knew what boils looked like. And smelt like, when they burst and the flesh goes all unpleasant underneath." He wrinkled his nose in distaste.
"Sheep," said Crowley. Aziraphale looked at him in mild bewilderment. "If my lot knew how easy the buggers are to catch and kill they'd demand sacrifices of…I don't know…mountain lions. What goods a sheep? Anybody can kill a sheep…."
"Lamb," Aziraphale said sadly, mind wandering back to it's original topic. "He was born to be the Lamb of God and take everyone's sins away. It's just so awful. So much pain, and the little lamb…." The weak beer had more of a punch to it than they'd realised.
Tears threatened. Crowley looked quickly round the room, no one was watching them, and with a hiss of his tongue nobody would. Now was not the century for overly emotional displays. Stonings were on the rise, and not in a good way.
The demon was nervous about being seen with Aziraphale; he looked so cute with his soft waves of long blond hair, perfect skin, lovely even teeth and big blue eyes and Crowley kept getting tempted into doing good when he was around. Protecting angels was a good deed, and the demon had already had to send two centurions off today clutching their stomachs as they searched for the nearest latrine.
The angel had been kind of pissed at him the first time he'd run some would-be-rapists off by setting them on fire. Crowley had appeased the angel's squeamishness by simply giving later troublemakers diarrhoea. And what the angel didn't know about 'bloody flux' wouldn't hurt him. Crowley felt well rewarded for taking the time to share some lamb on a stick and a bowl of vino with Pestilence in Benong last decade.
Still, it wouldn't look good if word of this got back down below. Aziraphale had at least obliged him by toning down his angelic looks and planned on doing more. While Crowley had been relieved by the results he still felt the angel needed to do something additional. Something to make him blend in.
The sort of predator drawn to the wide-eyed blond wasn't necessarily in it for his looks. They mistook his open love of, well, 'everything', as vulnerability. And vulnerability was what called the human hunter. An easy target was the best target.
Aziraphale wasn't vulnerable, he just looked that way sometimes. Crowley had done his best to smooth the edges off, but until his exposure to humanity taught Aziraphale to mask his innocents Crowley would feel obliged to keep an eye on him.
Really, Aziraphale was doing much better than the demon had thought he would, here on earth. He himself had been feeling sort of adrift and abandoned until he'd realised it wasn't a coincidence that the angel of the eastern gate kept running into him. Aziraphale was stuck here too, and coping as best he could.
Good old Aziraphale, what he needed, what he really needed to get over this nailing people to bits of wood thing, was another beer. Crowley staggered up and went and got one.
'sniffle' "What's that?" Aziraphale asked suspiciously, looking at the plate the demon had brought back with him. It held cheese and some unidentifiable objects that rolled squishily. He hoped they weren't olives. He was getting tired of olives.
"It's little onions." Crowley announced happily. "Little onions that've been pickled. Great idea! Seen 'em before in jars, had bits of stuff floating round with 'em, didn't look healthy to me, tasted like vole puke. But they've fixed whatever was wrong and now they're damn tasty. Here, try one."
Unsure if he wanted anything to do with something that might taste like vole puke Aziraphale picked up a soggy onion and gave it a lick. "Hmm," he said, then popped the whole thing into his mouth. "You know what, my dear," he said after some chewing and crunching.
"What?"
"Bet you could do something similar with an egg."
o0o
Easter arrived again and all around them people were swapping chocolates and wearing silly rabbit ears on their heads. Aziraphale and Crowley met in a dingy little pub that the demon claimed had 'atmosphere' and the angel knew had half price beer on holidays. They each lifted a glass topped with a generous froth and clinked them together.
"Wen Lie." Said Crowley.
"Yasas." Said Aziraphale, and they drank. Then with the moves of ritual Aziraphale brought forth and unscrewed the glass jar.
All around them people celebrated the sacrifice, pain and promise of life eternal with pagan religious rites twisted to suite the occasion. The demon and the angel lent in together and celebrated the coming together of ideas and the fruits of said idea's labours. They each reached in and grabbed a pickled egg.
Ye Ende.