Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's "Preacher." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.
Authors Note #1: Based on the popular fan theory that Fiore and Deblanc are actually Genesis parents. I wanted to examine their backstory a bit and ended up getting ahead of myself, so-
Disclaimer:canon appropriate violence, blood, gore, injury, death, religious imagery/definitions/symbolism/discussion.
Temenos
Chapter Five
"How did you gain entry to our fortress? What foul deeds did you commit on holy soil? Our concentrated ground has been sullied by your presence. The echoes permeate - they will linger for centuries. This fortress has stood since the beginning; it has never been taken. Do you understand? Who are you to sully it? How did you make it past the western gates? Speak, demon! I will have your words if I have to rip them from your throat myself."
He supposed it was only fair that the angels would get even. But honestly he was surprised at the level of retaliation. Despite being the only demon to have successfully scaled the great gates – a reality he was avoiding if he was being completely honest, becoming intimate with the sinking feeling in his gut - he still hadn't quite expected it when a high-ranking Seraphim snatched him in mid-battle the following day. Snaring him by the ankles as they flew up and up and up - further than he'd been. Further than any demon quite likely. Taking him all the way up to Heights Rock. So high he could almost feel the warmth of the human's sun before realization ushered in.
It peeled past the dulling layers of apathy and struck at the rotten heart of him.
The fall back down to hell from this height would take decades.
Years of nothing but the howl of the wind and the chill of fracturing air.
And it... it frightened him.
This was retribution.
A warning to all others that might attempt the same.
Even though - somehow - he knew none of them could.
Just him.
Only him.
The Seraphim held him there, suspended above the crux between worlds, for an ageless moment. Waiting for what, he didn't know. He didn't have the answers. Not to these questions. Not even to the ones he should have. Everything was muddled and yawning. Just like the empty nothingness reaching up from the darkness below, eager to swallow him whole. He was-
He fell.
And fell.
And fell.
And-
He felt something in him give way. Splintering when a flurry of ivory and brown-speckled wings grazed down his sides like a lover's touch. Holding him in strong arms for a brief time - somehow managing to be both wholesome and disturbing - before flinging him away again with enough force that when he slammed into the side of the great mountain, the impact killed him instantly.
It was perhaps the nicest thing anyone had ever done for him.
"Why did you do it?" he asked conversationally, after he'd disemboweled the angel with one backwards stroke. Cleaning his steel against the stark white of the angel's uniform. Trying not to let on that he'd waited days to ask him exactly that. Hunching his shoulders as the phantom itch of the angel's hands on his hide refused to fade. Watching with interest as the angel's eyes never left his face. Looking at him like he was searching for something, just like him. Something that would make everything that'd happened to this point make sense, only it was alluding him as well.
He was pretty sure the angel died just to avoid answering the question.
"You've done something to me," he accused the next time. Forcing it out as he was run though cleanly - fairly - with the angel's broadsword. Because he had. There was no other explanation. It hadn't been like this before. It hadn't felt like this. Never like this. Something had changed since the first time he'd seen the angel fighting all those centuries ago.
The angel had done something.
Done something to him!
His head lulled, weak, enjoying the edging nothingness that never lasted as long as he wanted it to. A suspicious trickle of moisture - not blood but not quite tears either - trickling down his chin to patter-pat across his bare chest. Marring the hilt of the angel's blade that bloomed like an unfinished work of art between his ribs.
"There's a spark," he hissed, desperate. Reaching out for reasons he didn't understand as the angel's wings arched high. Shying away from the wicked sharp of his nails like he could have touched him somehow. Throat bobbing once, then twice as the creature opened his mouth, wordless, before closing it again.
"I don't want it. Take it back. Take it-"
His breathing hitched, interrupted. Feeling nothing but mild surprise when he realized a second blade had joined the first.
He looked up, watching the other until his eyes went dark.
Unsure what to do with the expression he found there.
Because the angel looked more like he'd run him through instead.
Like he regretted it and nothing in his long, ageless life had ever prepared him for it.
He looked stricken.
"You know, we should probably talk about this at some point," he remarked pleasantly, half a year later as they grappled with each other. Fighting on a jutted outcropping at the base of a billowing volcano. Filling the air with the acidic poison of new land about to form. Of birth and death and everything in between as the ground rumbled and belched beneath their feet.
"Why?" the angel gritted. Delighting him with the first answer since the fight in crater pit that had catapulted them both into legend and song.
"Seems like the right thing to do," he answered, ducking the whistling swipe of one the angel's swords before parrying the other above his head before it could fall. Kicking out with one leg when the angel tried to mess with his balance. Both of them straining to gain the upper hand as the under-earth gravity held them there.
He enjoyed the closeness before the moment broke and found them whirling away from each other again. His steel missing the angel's right arm by a millimeter – maybe less – when he danced up the south ridge and dropped down on the angel from above.
"You are a demon. What do you know of right?" the angel snarled, winding him with the flat of his sword, catching him with the blunt edge. Sounding surprising angry about it, like he'd offended him somehow.
If he'd had the breath to spare he would have laughed at that. Because in the end, all it did was prickle his hackles and make him that much more determined to get his way.
"And you're an angel and know nothing of wrong. Even though it is said you must know one to truly know the other," he pointed out. Rolling out of range before scuttling to his feet, horns aching from the impact.
The angel's wings puffed in affront. Deliciously indignant in a way that made him laugh aloud this time. Raw and baser but notably without cruelty as the angel whirled on him. Wings stretching to their full, impressive width. Blocking out the weak flares of distant eruptions and spreading hellfire.
"I also know that this isn't going away," he added after a moment, softer this time. Like he was just as lost in all this. Viciously ignoring the low stirring in his gut that told him that once – ever so long ago – this body remembered feeling like this before.
The silence that followed seemed like an answer in of itself.
A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – More to come, stay tuned.