Disclaimer: Aziraphale, Crowley, and Good Omens are created and copyrighted by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This is a fanfic, intended only in the spirit of fun. Tons of love and thanks is owed to the amazing and wonderful Daegaer, who provided tons of feedback for the first half of the fic, and then ended upsomehow volunteering herself as a beta-reader and a proofreader, and who helped me correct many of my Americanisms with proper British English. And thanks to y'all for reading!

Ordinary Miracles

by Nenena

Chapter 09

Brooks, Terry. 1997. Running With the Demon. Ballantine Books, New York. PS3552.R6596 R86

Theo struggled against the enormous hands pushing him against the brick wall. Every hair on the back of his neck was standing on end, and somewhere in the back of his brain, his newly-acquired sixth sense was screaming at him, Demon! Demon! Demon! You are in the presence of a demon!

Thanks, brain, Theo thought darkly. I think I figured that out already.

Theo felt the enormous hands turning him over again, and now he was still pinned against the wall, but facing his adversary for the first time. Theo gulped, trying to narrow in the focus of his eyesight, trying to concentrate on one thing at a time, trying to ignore the feeling of warm blood dribbling from his nose and congealing on his face and freezing to his upper lip. First he got a good look at the hands holding him down - enormous, far larger than any human being's hands had ever been, but oddly colored, slightly reddish, and tipped with sharp, black, claw-like fingernails. Theo's gaze followed the length of the arms attached to those hands. His assailant was wearing a thick black winter coat that Theo recognized from a recent L.L. Bean catalog (he was, after all, a Minnesotan). This surreal detail did nothing to ally Theo's fear as his gaze slipped up into the stranger's face. It was a handsome, beautiful, unreal face - like a masque of a face - twisted into a hideous expression of bottomless rage. Red eyes glowed at him with all the heat of the fires of Hell burning behind the irises. The stranger breathed in and out, deeply, angrily, and little puffs of flame burst from his nostrils. His teeth, bared in a snarl, were all very, very sharp - and there were multiple rows of them, like shark's teeth. His wild red hair fell in long, unruly clumps all across his forehead and down behind his pointed ears. His whole body, not just his hands, was enormous. He was a giant. He was so monstrous and so tall that he blotted out whatever thin winter sunlight was managing to penetrate the dark alleyway with his black, heavy shadow.

His head was huge, his mouth was huge, he was certainly large enough to swallow Theo whole, he was certainly about to swallow Theo whole, he was--

"Sir," said a second voice, a calm, cold female voice, from somewhere behind him. "Sir, the boy is bleeding."

"Oh dear." And just like that, the enormous stranger suddenly wasn't so enormous anymore. In fact, he was quite an average-sized man, with average-shaped ears and an average number of (sharp) little teeth in his mouth, a suddenly somewhat concerned man wearing a black L.L. Bean coat. There had been no sense of change, no sense of deflation or shrinking; one moment he had simply been a terrible red and black giant blotting out the sun, and the next, he was just a man wiping Theo's bloody lip with a handkerchief that appeared out of nowhere. "Oh dear, oh my, er, terribly sorry about that. I didn't mean to draw blood."

"Remember, sir, we mustn't harm him," said the second voice again. "At least not until he signs the deposition papers, of course."

"Thank you, Pauline." The man put away his handkerchief. Theo tried to bolt, but the man's one hand left still pinning him to the wall was so strong that he could hardly move. "Now, then, where was I? Oh yes. Yelling at you." His eyes began to glow red again. "YOU!" he repeated, his voice dropping several octaves and suddenly loud enough to shake the foundations of the buildings that they were sandwiched between with its reverberating rumbles. "YOU CONNIVING, SNIVELING LITTLE BASTARD OF HEAVENSPAWN! DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!"

Theo's ears were ringing, and his thoughts were swimming in a haze of pain. "Er, uh... No... What? Who are you people?"

The red-eyed man was so taken aback by this question that all of a sudden, the glow in his eyes vanished. "I beg your pardon?"

"I said," Theo began again, taking a deep breath and feeling the first twinges of anger starting to bring back his courage, "Who ARE you people?! What's the big idea, slamming me around and yelling at me until my eardrums pop? HUH?!"

The red-haired man, who now had only very black, black eyes, squinted at him curiously. "Astounding. They really don't teach you anything Up There at all anymore, do they?" He sighed. "Do not you know who I am?!"

"No." Theo glowered at him. "I bet you're some sort of kidnapper or child molester or something, though."

"Only on occasion." The red-haired man was smiling a terrible, terrible smile. "Very well, then. Allow me to introduce myself. I am Satan. Also known as Abbadon, the Adversary, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit, the Father of Lies, the Great Red Dragon, the Tempter, and the Wicked One. Known in some circles as the Morningstar. My friends call me Lucifer." He gestured to his side. "And this is my lawyer, Pauline."

Pauline stepped forward so that Theo could see her. She was a tall, sharp, severe woman wearing an open fur coat and a gray Donna Karen suit underneath. Her frizzy blond hair was pulled back into a tight bun on top of her head, exposing her curled, pointed ears - almost horn-like - and the black pearl earrings that she wore, perfectly matching the string of black pearls around her neck. Her eyes were large and deep black, and pupil-less, like the Devil's eyes, only beautifully shaped, and much prettier. She was wearing a gold-rimmed pair of glasses, and when she pulled back her red lips and smiled, Theo saw that her teeth would have been normal if not for the prominent canine fangs. She nodded slightly to Theo and said, "How do you do." Theo noticed that she was carrying a thick leather briefcase.

Theo tore his gaze away from Pauline and stared up at the face of the Adversary. "Um... Are you really the Devil? You're not joking?"

"This is absolutely not a joke."

"Oh," said Theo softly. Then an utter and complete panic finally seized him, and his heart stopped.

The Devil stared at him a moment, tapping his foot impatiently. Then he sighed and said, "Quit playing dead. Your heart doesn't need to be beating, you know."

Theo stared up and him and said slowly, "Oh. I forgot."

"I don't know how an idiot like you ever managed to..." His voice trailed off, and he tsked at himself. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean the insult."

Theo blinked at him. "Wait a minute. What do you mean, you didn't mean to insult me?"

"Er... "

"Aren't you supposed to be evil incarnate?"

"Normally, yes." Again, that sigh. "And therein lies the problem. Pauline, would you be so kind as to show our young friend Exhibit A?"

"Of course, sir." Pauline set her briefcase down in the snow, and Theo peered closely at it, realizing that there was no opening - no zipper or clasps or locks or anything. It was just a block of solid leather. Then Pauline slipped her hand down near the top, and a mouth opened up in the leather, a horrible, red-rimmed mouth lined with dozens of stubby, rotting, yellow teeth. Pauline slid her hand right into the maw of that mouth and pulled it out a moment later, holding a glass mason jar full of jiggly, glittering goo. The mouth on her briefcase vanished. "This," she said, "is Exhibit A, from what is soon to become Hell vs. Theo-Who-Does-Not-Yet-Have-a-Decent-Angelic-Name. It is a small sample of the harmless portion of your illegal miracle that you turned loose in the Five Hundred and Twenty-Ninth Circle yesterday evening. It is only harmless in the sense that it has no numbers floating in it; hence, no ability to produce changes in anything it touches." She held the jar closer for Theo's inspection. "You recognize this gelatinous substance, do you not?"

"Yeah," he said, "That's miracle-slime. So what?"

The Devil stared at him, positively aghast. "What do you mean, 'so what'?! Do you have any idea--"

"My angel told me," Theo tried to explain, calmly, reasonably, "that even though the miracle did slip down into Hell - and it did that on its own, it was a total accident, I had nothing to do with that in the first place - even if it did slip down into Hell, it wouldn't last more than a few minutes. Don't you demons have, I dunno, defenses or something that could destroy an invader like that?"

Pauline blinked with surprise, then turned to the Devil. "He's telling the truth, sir. He really has no idea. Still, that doesn't change anything. We'll just re-file the papers. Instead of a Class A Infernal Felony, we can hit him for Unholy Negligence."

"That's disappointing. There's no way the punishments in the Negligence category can even begin to compensate for the catastrophic--"

"Catastrophic?!" Theo squeaked. He glanced from one demon to the other and finally asked, in a slightly shaky voice, "Um, I'm terribly sorry, but... What exactly did the miracle DO Down There?"

And then, the Devil began trembling. "It changed everything. Everything!!"

"Sir, get a hold of yourself--"

"No!" Satan finally let go of Theo's shoulder and began pulling at his wild red hair with both of his hands, an expression of terrible, bottomless grief twisting his beautiful face. "We tried to stop it - we tried everything to stop it! But it kept going, it kept coming, it was so fast, it plowed through all the circles, it swallowed all my demons, and it changed, oh it changed, it changed everything and everyone that it touched--" He slumped to his knees in the snow, now dangerously close to sobbing. "It reached the Bottom hours ago and by then even I couldn't stop it, it tried to take me in but Pauline pulled me out at the last minute, but it was still too late, it was too late by then, it had been all over me and it took my favorite pitchfork and I--" He hitched back a sob. "Because of the time-delay effect I didn't start feeling the changes until just a little bit ago, but by then, Pauline was the only demon I had left, and we had to escape, we escaped while we still could, and we ran all the way Up here, and we--" He finally lost it, breaking down into weeping sobs and covering his face with one arm. "It's ruined, ruined! My beautiful kingdom and all of my demons are RUINED!!"

"There, there, sir," Pauline said gently, lying one slender, clawed hand on his shoulder. "There's still hope, remember? The time-delay effect means that we can still reverse the changes, since we still have forty-eight hours before they become permanent."

Theo stared at them both, completely flabbergasted. Here he was, stuck back in a dark alleyway on a snowy London street in the middle of broad daylight, watching the Adversary himself, the great Fallen angel, Lucifer Morningstar, breaking down into a puddle of sobbing, hysterical demonic goo. The Devil was displaying a show of histrionics, the likes of which Theo thought only actually happened in soap operas on television. Theo licked his lips, cleared his throat, and asked nervously, "Um... What kind of changes, exactly, are you talking about?"

The Devil managed to quiet down his sobbing, drop his arm, stare up at Theo, and say, with tears still running down his face, "At first we weren't sure. The miracle touched nearly every demon in the upper Four- and Five-Hundred circles before it started its real descent. By then, everybody down below was too preoccupied with trying to organize defenses to hear anything about what was happening to the survivors up above. And it took time, of course, for the changes to be noticeable - because of the time-delay effect. Sometimes it would take hours to affect a particular individual, but... The end was always the same. First, the demons in the Five-Hundred circles sent me a mass declaration that they were tired of torturing the souls of the damned for all eternity, and they thought it would be nice to give all those souls a break, you know, take them out for a week at Disneyland or something. I couldn't believe it. A break! They wanted to give the eternally damned a fucking - excuse me, an effing break!! Then I got word of how the Four-Hundred circles were being redecorated by the demons there. They said that red and black were 'out' colors, and that they were sick of all the fire, it was too hot and uncomfortable for the damned human souls. By the time I heard about the bright sunshine and fields of daisies and fluffy white clouds they were installing all over the place, I knew that something was wrong. The demons in the Three-Hundred circles actually had the gall to send me a collective two-week's notice before they formed a club to campaign for Peace on Earth and held hands and joined in a circle and started singing Kum-Bay-Yah. Some of my field agents that had been on vacation in the upper circles signed a resolution that instead of returning to Earth to tempt people to do evil, they would return to Earth to tempt people to donate to charities and be kind to one another and promote world peace instead. By that time, I was trying to send out my higher-ranking servants to join the front lines of the resistance, to try to keep the miracle from coming any further Down than it already was. But that turned out to be a mistake - the miracle kept plowing right through them, and nothing that I or anybody else did seemed able to stop it. Shortly thereafter, three of my High Council members told me that they were off to Tibet to become monks and seek Buddha's path of enlightenment; a fourth decided to quit because he felt that his time and energy would be better spent helping starving children in Africa; a fifth was trying to tell me that we should spend more time being friendly to all the damned souls and listening to their problems, instead of just torturing them over and over again for all eternity. I bit his head off, but that didn't make me feel any better. I was losing demons left and right. Beelzebub finally sent me a bouquet of roses and a box of chocolates and a long, handwritten, heart-felt letter about how I had been the best boss ever for the past six thousand years and how he was really, really grateful to have had the opportunity to work with me for so long, but that didn't I feel that our world-domination vision was slightly outdated and that my incomparable genius could be better used if we all plotted to work for world peace instead? I had a chance to see him once, towards the end, before it was all over, and he was wearing flowers on his horns and peace signs sewn all over his clothing. And Beelzebub has NEVER worn clothing before, not once in all the thousands of years that I've ever known him!! I tried stabbing at him with my pitchfork, trying to knock some sense back into him, but he kept dodging around and laughing it off and saying 'Ha ha, good one sir, you know I'll always love you!' When I saw the miracle finally coming for me, when I was waiting for it at the Bottom and I knew that I had no other demons left, I thought that was the end of it, for me. And it nearly was - like I said, it swallowed most of me up before Pauline swooped in and grabbed my wrist and pulled me out. She was the only one who had avoided touching it, so far - because she was a good runner and a good hider, you understand. Spineless lawyers always are. So we escaped - it broke my heart, but we had to leave Hell behind - and now here we are. And I-- I--" He took a deep, hitching breath, yet again. "I know I was changed, just like all the others were. At first I was so angry at Pauline, I was so furious, I blamed her for not coming in quickly enough, for not saving me fast enough. So I grabbed her and held her down and tried to rip her open with my claws, but all of a sudden, at the last minute, I couldn't... I couldn't... I couldn't bring myself to do it! And I-- I ended up hugging her and giving her a kiss and apologizing instead!!"

"He did," affirmed Pauline, nodding somberly. "Kissed me right on my cheek."

"Don't you see what happened?!" the Devil wailed miserably, turning his tear-streaked face up toward Theo. "Your miracle - your horrible, awful, illegal mutant miracle - took in all of my demons, and turned them all GOOD!"

Theo couldn't believe his ears. "It... It did what?"

"I TRY to be evil!" the Devil sobbed again, ignoring Theo completely. "I try and try and try, but it never works anymore! Ever since we escaped Down There late last night, I haven't been able to do anything but good! This whole morning has been a miserable string of good deeds, no matter how many times I try to do something bad. I tried to push a little old lady into the street, and I ended up taking her arm and helping her cross instead! I tried to tempt a priest to satisfy his lust with a young boy, and I ended up giving him tips on how to fundraise more effectively for charities instead! And every time - every time - e-e-every time I think about all that's happened so far, I start c-c-c-crying l-l-like a l-l-little g-g-g-g-girl--" He broke off, wailing again.

Pauline patted his shoulder again. "There, there, sir," she repeated, although her voice sounded somewhere between bored and insincere. Then she shot an icy glare at Theo and said, "We came here to make a bargain with you, boy. Because of the time-delay effect you built into your miracle, we have approximately forty-eight hours before any changes effected by your miracle become permanent. The only way to undo what has been done is to find the miracle and destroy it before that deadline. We feel, very strongly, that since it was you who created and turned that monster loose in the first place, it should be YOU who takes responsibility for finding it and destroying it."

Theo felt his legs wobble underneath him. "So, um," he asked faintly, "So what's your bargain?"

"Do it. Before forty-eight hours has passed. If you succeed, we might consider NOT taking revenge upon you. But if you fail..." Pauline smiled prettily, showing off her long, sharp fangs. "If you fail, I will personally skin you alive, chop you up into little pieces, stuff you inside the skins of your own innards, and serve you as a tasty sausage treat to the kindergartners at a Catholic parish school of your choice. And then I will sue you."

"Can you sue me, er, post-humously?"

"Little boy," she said, still smiling that terrible smile, "You're already dead. There is no such thing as post-humously anymore."

Theo gulped. "Um, um, I dunno. I dunno if I can do that by myself. I mean, uh... I don't even know where to start looking."

"We don't know where the miracle is, either," the Devil said morosely, having finally managed to stop himself from weeping again. "Last we saw it, it was at the Bottom, but... It surely must have moved on by now. There are no untouched targets left for it Down There. And the only direction it could possibly go is up." He sighed. "We assume that it will eventually make its way back here again, but... There's a chance, and a good chance, that a smart, powerful miracle like that one might not just stop at Earth. If it already took Hell, it might try going farther Up next time. Get my drift?"

"Er, no."

"Heaven, you idiot," Pauline snapped testily. "We think your miracle might try to make its way up to Heaven. It has to stop by this planet on its way first, though. WE need to make sure that we can catch it and kill it when it does."

Theo stared at them both. "What's so bad about it going up to Heaven?"

"Listen," said the Devil, seriously, "If your miracle turns demons good, what do you think that it would do to a bunch of angels?"

"Maybe... Make them more good?"

The Devil slapped his forehead. "No, of course not!"

"It would make good angels go bad," Pauline explained, stabbing her finger accusingly at Theo. "From what we've been able to analyze from leftover samples of the miracle's mass, the foundational coding of the change-producing matrix is something along the lines of--"

" 'Make things different'?" Theo supplied helpfully.

She raised one eyebrow at him. "Yes, exactly. It makes things different than they normally are."

"But it wouldn't affect angels that way," Theo said quickly. "I would know. My angel - er, my teacher - he was touched by the miracle yesterday afternoon. Swallowed him whole, in fact. But he seemed just fine, just like always."

"Listen, we've been telling you, there's a time-delay effect--"

"But you said that it wouldn't take too long, right? I was with my angel all last night and I even talked to him again this morning. He was perfectly nice and perfectly good, just like usual. He seemed perfectly normal."

"Oh," said the Devil sarcastically, "He SEEMED perfectly normal. Oh, okay, sure. Ted Bundy and Hannibal Lecter SEEMED like perfectly nice and normal gentlemen too, and the thing is, they really were, unless you started asking questions about their leisure-time hobbies. I hate to break this to you, kid, but your angel is probably a serial killer by now. How do you know that he wasn't out murdering someone while you were sleeping last night? How do you know that he isn't taking an axe or a chainsaw to his next-door neighbor right now? He didn't happen to offer you anything unusual to eat for breakfast this morning, did he? Did you notice any bloody clothes or rusty pieces of farm equipment stowed away in any dark corners? Did he--"

"No, no, no, no, no, no, no!" Theo covered his ears and shook his head furiously. "There wasn't any of that! He's still good! I know he's still good! Well, er, that is, as good as he normally is, which, really, personally, I've never thought was all THAT good, but still... Aziraphale would never hurt anybody! And I think he'd be squeamish about blood, anyway."

"Ah," said Pauline. "He'll use arsenic, then."

"Would you stop?!"

"It's your fault," she continued. "Your miracle made him that way."

"Shut up!"

"Remember, though, you can still save him," the Devil added, soothingly. "Provided that you get to work RIGHT NOW."

Theo shook his head again. "I can't. Not by myself. I'm not even an angel yet - I don't have any useful powers! I need--"

"We'll help you," the Devil said.

Pauline gasped in surprise. "Sir!"

"Well, we have to!" The Devil gestured helplessly with his hands. "Well, look at him! Look at that cute, pathetic little face. I'd feel bad if we just left him--"

"Sir, that's not you talking, that's the miracle goo talking."

"That, and the fact that I don't trust this little idiot to do it right without the aid of some experienced professional supernatural beings at his side," said Devil quickly.

Pauline nodded approvingly. "That's more like it, sir."

"I may not be able to be very evil anymore," the Devil proclaimed, "But, by golly, I'm still ME, and I can turn this world upside down if that's what it takes to find our miracle!"

" 'By golly', sir?"

"Pauline, please slap me if I ever say that again. Or if I look like I'm starting to cry."

"Can do, sir."

Theo glanced from Pauline to the Devil and back again. "Um," he said hesitantly, "Um, I don't know if I'm allowed to accept help from you people. I mean, I am on the other side, you know."

The Devil glowered at Theo, and for a moment, Lucifer looked at least like a shadow of the dark and terrible thing he had once been. "Think about it, kid, and think carefully. The only way you have of getting OUT of the trouble you're ALREADY in with Heaven is to find and destroy the miracle before someone else has to take the responsibility to clean up your mess. The only way you have a chance in Hell, pardon my French, of doing anything of the sort, is if you have us helping you out." He pointed at Pauline. "She may be the only decent demon I have left, but Pauline is far better than nothing, and trust us, we demons are experts at, er, well, killing things. Or at least tearing them into little itty-bitty pieces and making them bleed a lot."

Theo gulped. "Um, she may not be the only demon you have left."

"What's that now?"

"There's a field agent of yours... In this city... But he was touched by the miracle yesterday, too, although I was talking to him right afterwards and he seemed just as awful as usual--"

"There's another demon?!" The Devil grabbed Theo and shook him roughly by the shoulders. "Here? In this city?! Why didn't you tell me before?!"

"I said, he was hit by the miracle yesterday--"

The Devil's face fell. "Drat. He's probably turned into some sort of peacenik vegan by now. Or run off to Tibet to live with Buddhist monks."

"But maybe not," Theo said hopefully. "I know this demon - he's completely terrible! He's the most awful, evil, horrible being I've ever met. It would take much more than even a miracle to get him to become a nice person."

The Devil raised one eyebrow at Theo, a nearly picture-perfect imitation of Pauline's earlier expression. "Hey. This miracle screwed ME up, remember? And you said you talked to him right after the incident, but that doesn't mean anything. Time-delay effect, remember? Any changes that occurred would probably have happened hours after his encounter with the miracle's mass."

"But Crowley is--"

"Crowley? Did you say his name was Crowley?"

"Alias Crawly, sir," Pauline supplied helpfully. "You left him in charge of bringing up your son, remember?"

"Ah, yes. Crawly." The Devil smiled nostalgically. Then his face fell again. "Er, um, you don't think he'll be, er, mad about our little, ah, falling-out last year?"

"Sir, you did try to kill him. And then you placed a bounty on his head and sent field-agents out to hunt for him so that you could drag him back down to the Fifth Circle and have some fun with him and a barbecue spit. Then you let him off early to do something about the Chorus this year. Which, by the way, he didn't. In fact, you were telling me just last week how you'd like to call Crawly back down right away to finish off the rest of his sentence--"

"I know, I know," the Devil moaned wretchedly. "And now I feel just terrible about all of it - the attempted murder, the barbecuing, all the nasty things I yelled at him... Come to think of it, we haven't really been on good terms since the Spanish Inquisition." And then in a small, hurt little voice, the Devil opined, "I don't think he likes me very much." He sniffled.

Pauline reached over and slapped him across the face.

"Thank you, Pauline," he said gratefully. He turned his attention back to Theo, whose shoulders he was still holding. "Take me to this Crowley, boy. If your ridiculous idea that the miracle hasn't changed him is correct, then we will have one more demon on our side. If not, then I should probably have a little heart-to-heart with him anyway. I feel I owe him some apologies. For all the years of abuse and torture, you know."

"I don't think you owe him anything," Pauline pointed out coolly.

"It's worth a shot, regardless," the Devil said, finally taking his hands off Theo's shoulders and shrugging. "Well, come on then, boy! We must hurry - we don't have much time!"

Theo brushed off the shoulders of his coat, making a face. "My name is Theo, you know."

"Fine then, Theo. Let's be friends. You can call me Lucifer."

"I think I remember the way," Theo said, mentally recalling his first day back on Earth, when Aziraphale had taken him over to Crowley's flat to rescue his houseplants. "Okay, it's a long walk, but we can make it before noon. Let's go."

They set off, leaving the alley behind them, trudging on down the slushy sidewalks.

Continued.