A/N: And of course, I eventually wanted to tie it all back together, so we eventually get an end to the prequel arc that brings us back to after "Like a Child." There are more places I want to explore in this verse, but this is most likely going to be all for this fic. Of course, I've said that before... None of it's mine, whether it's L-Space, the Dreaming and references to other kings of hell, obscure lost works, or She Who Shall Not Be Fic'ed on this site.
Pierce had been fighting a nagging sensation of deja vu ever since he had stepped into the penthouse elevator, but it would hardly be the first time. After nearly six thousand years, most events seemed like he'd done them before. That was why he was walking into the devil's den, eyes clear, hoping for, but not honestly expecting death. He was so tired of going through the motions with no goal, no endgame, no relief for the brand on his arm.
As the doors slid smoothly open, his gaze drifted across the empty piano bench to the mirrored bar taking up most of the far wall. He assumed that Lucifer would be at one or the other, with the club downstairs still deserted and no sign of him at the precinct, but the only sign of life in the apartment was a muffled twittering from the library nook that did not sound like the devil he knew.
"- Hypatia! Ooh, Warlock would love this; not too difficult to translate when it's mostly numbers, after all. Oh, and perhaps Pepper would like a copy. Wensleydale would probably insist on one for his British National Library, but they are getting a copy; this little beauty is staying with me. Too many library archivists who would pick at the scroll there, I say…"
That voice made him feel about six years old and two feet tall, all of Lopez's compliment box notes about his arms be damned.
"And the complete Homeric cycle? I haven't heard half of these in three thousand years! I see someone quite enjoyed the Hellenic experience - oh, Crowley darling, I'd know that handwriting anywhere; you wrote them all down and I'm halfway convinced that they were no more intended for this library than what is clearly my copy of Mother Shipton; it's certainly not signed to Samael you sneaky old whatsit and is that - that's Roquelaure. Well, we can't all have taste all the time, but it is a first edition…"
Somewhere behind a growing stack of books that should have depleted the shelves much more than it actually had was a specter from Eden, fussily casting judgment upon Lucifer's collection of ill-gotten preservations, but not the one Pierce was expecting. He could make out khaki-colored pressed slacks, the cuff of a light tweed jacket, and the bottom of a tartan waistcoat when the pile of literature rose over an inconvenient armchair.
He swallowed, uncertain of whether to interrupt. So much of his long life felt like a repeat. He shouldn't be surprised if a voice sounded familiar, if something reminded him of people that he'd thought long lost to him. But the guardian of the eastern gate rummaging through a modern LA penthouse for literary treasures was unexpected. "Lord Aziraphale?"
"King consort, if you must, - Crowley is the ruling heir; I'm simply here to provide moral support - but I suppose that is a bit of a mouthful," Aziraphale replied with absent condescension before noting the questioner as well as what was asked. "Ah, Cain, my dear boy." The stack was settled gently upon an end table, and Pierce could not put the voice down to a doppelganger. "Or do you prefer Marcus, now? Or perhaps Sinnerman?" The angel pronounced his darkest alias with the same diplomatic delicacy as Aziraphale had Pierce's chosen first name. "Lucifer tells me that you've been quite busy. Read everything in here, he says."
"Yeah, pretty much. Read everything. Seen everything. But I don't remember telling all that to Lucifer." Pierce crossed his arms, trying not to second-guess why Aziraphale would choose to focus on his reading habits, of all things. He might have read every book and scroll and user manual and folio he could get his hands on for years, but his godfather's enthusiasm for this mere ten feet of shelving made him suddenly doubt his claim. He had been busy at the station, these last few decades, and running deals on the side. He'd probably missed some new releases.
"Oh dear, of course you don't remember. Most of your hell loops don't give you specific memories, just the crushing weight of wasted time added subconsciously to a very lonely mortal existence." Aziraphale twiddled with a ring on his finger, torn between reaching out and giving Pierce space to process. "I blame myself for some of that. It took me much longer than I would like to admit, and more patience, trust, and love than I feel I deserved, to go against the mandates heaven set for me regarding with whom I could spend my time. At least the prospect of the end of the world does give one perspective."
"So I'm already dead," Pierce tested verbally. There was something about Aziraphale's phrasing - he sounded less concerned about the potential end of his own immortal life and more about the planet. He was an angel; he could survive past the end of earth. Losing it really shouldn't affect Aziraphale much more than losing the stolen Shipton, and if there was still a national library there in Britain to accept donations, the world was probably safe anyway. Pierce didn't know if he might have been able to keep going even in the airless depths of space, but he supposed that it was purely academic now. He was still curious about what had finally killed him. "How?" It seemed the done thing to ask.
"Crowley - you probably remember him as Crawly - is with your brother right now. He says that Abel needs a crash course in road safety, though I quite wish that he of all demons could rephrase that," Aziraphale said instead of answering. Pierce waited, and eventually the brusquely avuncular facade faded to something softer and more serious. "I wasn't there when it happened, of course, so I can't be sure of how much of it was exaggerated, but there was a gunfight, and you were hit… several times, in fact. Lucifer didn't like to discuss the details, but his wife corroborated the incident, as much as she remembers of it."
"I've been shot before, plenty of times. It hurts, but it never killed me." Lucifer Morningstar? Married? Perhaps it was that Candy girl that Lopez talked about sometimes. She was supposed to be a good ringer for Lopez's poker game, since Lopez herself was banned from Vegas.
"Yes, rather, I think it had to do with who was there with you." Aziraphale was still twitching at his ring, far more comfortable discussing books than deaths. "And, well, why you were trying to get close to Detective Morningstar."
"He's not a detective," Pierce corrected without thinking. Aziraphale might have taken to the rule of hell so naturally that his eldest godson accepted it unspoken, but some things were too unbelievable for Marcus Pierce to wrap his mind around.
"But of course. I'm being old-fashioned, when I of all beings ought to know better than to assume that she wouldn't keep her maiden name for work purposes," the angel demurred. "Dagon does complain about all the misfiled paperwork we go through, what with two ruling kings and one mostly abdicated… But my, I'm getting sidetracked, as I tend to do so easily; you don't need me wittering on, poor dear, you want to know how you… ended up down here, as it were." Aziraphale had tended to approach potentially upsetting topics with a firehose of far too many words, even when Cain had been a boy. If the angel couldn't douse any blaze of fury or hurt in awkward compassion before it lit, he was likely to smother it with frustrating condolences and well-meaning asides. He cared. Of course Aziraphale cared. But when he couldn't do anything about it, Pierce would rather have Crawly in his corner. The demon would break it to him succinctly.
"You found a way to break your seal rather by accident," Aziraphale continued, "not unlike how I stumbled away from heaven, really, and via similar methods. You, my poor brave, clever boy, were just far quicker to give your heart away and far unluckier in to whomst you gave it."
"What, someone broke my heart and I turned into a demon?" Pierce laughed rather than take in all that implied. He'd been in love before, or at least had let people close to him. He'd cared about the kids he had raised to be his proxies in the Sinnerman business. He'd missed his parents. He'd had plenty of partners over the years, even if it didn't usually last.
"You let someone other than yourself take priority in your heart, Cain," his godfather corrected him softly, "and it made you human. The timing may have been unfortunate, but there's no shame in breaking your seal. Chloe Decker just happened to have other people that she was focused on."
Pierce grunted, not sure himself if it were meant in acceptance or denial.
"Is unrequited attraction such a tragedy that it requires a villain? Perhaps, with a little more time, you could have learned to try again, to appreciate not only Chloe but others who cared about you as well. Love need not be mutually romantic to keep one going. There are times when it's better if it isn't."
"What would you know?" It was a childish retort.
"I have been dealing with the consequences of Lucifer's actions since before your parents' time." Pierce couldn't meet that earnest blue gaze. "Can you imagine how much harder it would have been for your family had they been encouraged to linger in their affairs?"
He hadn't seen his mother and father in so long, but he knew the unspoken words: Lilith. Gone to hell of her own will. Lucifer. He had had so much to prepare, not that he would openly state a purpose for his preparations, and the angels would've forced him away. Neither Adam nor Eve considered it a dealbreaker, but they had reached so hard for comfort and understanding that Cain had thought something was lost in the appeasement of one another's broken hearts.
"Don't see how it could've gone worse, really."
"Well, your family still loved you despite your choice, despite the impossibility of having you or your care returned." The king of hell straightened his bowtie, as if daring his godson to reveal the impact of his blow. "I should have taught you how to better cope with rejection, dear boy. You needn't have acted out either time."
He had taken the opposite course from his parents, one more like Lord Aziraphale himself.
"It's easy on the outside, isn't it?" That's why Pierce had kept himself under control for six thousand years.
Was it so awful that Aziraphale was the only reason that Pierce had thought he might succeed in stealing some form of happiness, even if it was only death? None of the adults that had raised him had had the favor of the Almighty, but the angel had never been cast out, never fallen from grace, even if he had never been high in God's esteem. Not before the branding, at least. Pierce had thought that like Aziraphale, he might have maneuvered around his curse, so long as he stayed out of sight.
Aziraphale never wavered. "You know the answer to that."
Lord Aziraphale had spent so long trying for heavenly approval without any sign of success that he'd come upon the Almighty's blessing from the complete opposite direction. The angel had chosen earth, had chosen hell, even if he insisted that he didn't belong there by nature. He had picked humanity over any power his own nature might grant him. He had been an outsider for so long that he had forced his way inside everywhere he wasn't intended to be. Maybe that was why God had granted Aziraphale the blade that could cut through heaven's gates.
"The positive side of hell is that you will get more chances to keep trying, if you're willing to change your ways. You've been stuck in them near as long as I have been in mine, but I found a change in routine offered quite the change in perspective. If you can find a fresh way to adapt, well…" Aziraphale tipped a copy of Slaughterhouse Five from the pile of books and scrolls. "The only difference between heaven in this and hell here is the life repeated."
It was a childish hope. It was the sort of innocently insensitive remark that ignored all the pain Pierce had suffered, all he'd inflicted, all those empty years he'd been alone and lashing out. He'd tried opening up before Chloe, hadn't he?
Aziraphale had gifted that blade in turn to Adam, who had in turn let his sons use it freely, until everything went wrong.
Pierce had half-assed it. His chosen role model was an angel who had never been honest with himself, let alone others. But if Aziraphale could reach out, then maybe Pierce could, too. He could try, at least, now that it couldn't get much worse. There wasn't that much difference from the original and the one made in the same image, after all.
"But now that you're here, I do have a task for you, if you aren't too busy.."
Between that great unknown or keep repeating the same pointless existence? "It would be my pleasure to serve, Lord Aziraphale."
The king of hell motioned to the shelves. "Mind recommending a favorite?"
"And that is why God wants a Celestial in charge of hell," Crowley whispered to the figure all but buried beneath black wings and slender arms. "They're just bastardly enough to make you pick a punishment that benefits them and thank them for inflicting it upon you."
"I thought you were Lucifer's hand-picked successor," Abel pointed out.
The demon monarch huffed away the (true) accusation, never releasing his constricting hold. "He knows how we are. If Sam wanted one of the fallen ruling hell, he could've picked Gabriel."
"Because of Beelzebub?" Abel hazarded.
"Gabe wishes," Crowley sneered. "Every member of the dark council thinks that they're secretly in charge, manipulating us like they did Satan. Beezy of all demons ought to know better. Gabriel would be easy; even Michael barely knows what he's doing, even with the 'back channel' nonsense, but my angel? The only authority I won't thank you for questioning is my subtle, brilliant bastard who keeps them all dancing to his tune as well as he does your brother there." After a moment of observing from the door, Crowley reconsidered his statement. "Actually, the angel seems to get a thrill from outdoing all expectations of him, so ask away. Just know that I for one welcome our new angelic overlord."
"I do as well." The half of a face visible from under Crowley's wings gave a sigh, ruffling the leading edge of jet feathers.
"You've been down here for over six thousand years, kid. Under Beelzebub and Mazikeen, that isn't likely to change. You definitely need to listen to Cain when it comes to crossing the street, but after all this time, we might need to take your opinion into account when it comes to handling souls in hell. Don't get me wrong, I love you and your brother, but part of the joy of being your ungodly parent is to get the two of you hyped up on sugar and existential curiosity and throw you at your mum and dad when they're too wrapped up in themselves. Can't do that if you're stuck in my territory for eternity."
There might have been some excited vibrations within the demon king's stranglehold. "So you're trying to foist everyone off on heaven or just us?"
"Abel, I tried to retire. I quit hell before Lucifer followed my bad example and dragged me back to take his job." He sighed as if the weight of hell fell heavily upon his ebon wings alone.
"You got bored without us," Abel translated.
"Hardly, hardly." Crowley still hadn't let go. "But human inventiveness requires a certain measure of chaos and dread to keep moving forward. Not many will make a choice if there's no difference in the outcome, no matter how minuscule that consequence might be." And choice, after all, was what his existence had to always come down to, from the stars to the fall to the garden to the Arrangement to Armageddon to here.
"So you're offering the long road to happiness, just for those who like to be miserable?"
"Some will never find it." There were some that would never deserve it. Nothing like returning to hell to be reminded of how much better the humans were at this job. "But it is there. Wanna go muck with some hell loops? Samael said there were a couple poisoners who escaped LAPD by coming here since he started with homicide. I figure we dump one in the other's loop; tell him that the grad student he left to die could've saved the unintended victim, see if there's any empathy left in him…"
Abel looked very young under Crowley's wings. "Maybe… but first, can we join Lord Aziraphale and Cain for storytime?"
He'd spoiled this boy. It had been Abel's downfall. But he seemed so brave, so unguarded, so eager to win his brother's affection even if he had to humble himself and face the figure that had been central to his own hell loop for millennia. "Eh, sure," Crowley said, relaxing his hold long enough for Abel to run out and snuggle under his brother's arm instead, Aziraphale's wings draped over them both. The black serpent wrapped around all of them, head nuzzled into his angel's chin where he could see the pictures.