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aethelflaedladyofmercia · 2 years

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Custody Battle Part 2: Second Visitation

The Ritual of Propagation has succeeded. Aziraphale and Crowley are ready to welcome the newest member of Their Own Side. But the Archangels have other plans. No young angel has ever been raised outside their closely guided care, and they have no intention of changing that. How can Aziraphale and Crowley keep the newly created life entrusted to them safe from the most powerful angels in existence?

In this chapter, Crowley goes to sleep and Aziraphale gets some one-on-one time with their new angel... for better or worse...

(CW: Chapter contains flashbacks, nightmare, panic attack, references to r*pe, and non-consensual touching. See warnings for details.)

Read it on AO3!

Within minutes, Crowley was sound asleep, nestled in Aziraphale’s arms. Bit by bit, the tension melted away, and he seemed to sink against his husband, drawing as close as he could.

Aziraphale would have happily stayed there all night, just listening to those deep, steady breaths, feeling that heartbeat against his palm. It was as if they had spent the day wandering through a fog of stress and despair only to emerge into another world, a peaceful oasis where nothing could reach them so long as they stayed together. Even the fear of contacting the Archangels in a few hours seemed distant and secondary.

Perhaps that was why he had finally begun to feel… not quite hungry; unsurprisingly after the number of shocks he’d had, Aziraphale’s appetite still hadn’t returned. His stomach twisted at the very idea of eating anything substantial. But he felt empty in an oddly insistent way, and he couldn’t get the taste of ginger out of his head.

A bit of tea, then, just to help his stomach settle. And a quick walk around the cottage to refresh himself and pick up a notebook. Then straight back to bed to watch over his Crowley until morning.

As soon as he pulled his wing away, Kokabiel started to stir. Their usual energy had subsided down to a sort of gentle buzz at the back of his mind, what Aziraphale was coming to think of as a little nap, but now they perked up again, curious and a bit distressed.

“Shhh. Don’t worry, little star. We’ll be back before you know it. You just rest.” He reached out with his mind, hoping for a better sense of what had upset them, but once again their connection had gotten fuzzy. Even after Aziraphale’s own nap, and what he’d thought a very pleasant evening bonding session in the new room. Should he be worried yet?

He pressed his fingers down through his feathers, as Crowley often did, but once again Kokabiel didn’t seem to notice, making no motion at all towards them. “I’m just getting a drink and—and perhaps another story. Did you like the story I read?” At that, the little mind flared up, fully alert and questioning. “Oh, yes,” he said. “Many, many more stories. And I’ll share them all with you.”

The little globe drifted uncertainly back towards Crowley, a bit of the distress returning. “I… Why don’t I find one of Daddy’s favorites for you?”

All hesitation vanished at that. Aziraphale swallowed. It was fine, really. He’d wanted Crowley to be part of this, more than anything. No point in complaining about it now. “Yes. Let’s find one of Daddy’s stories,” he said as he slid out of bed.

He saw an image from Kokabiel’s mind, the nursery Crowley had designed, warped and discolored but just barely recognizable. And Crowley’s voice, distorted as well, far past the point of understanding. But his soothing tone and the sound of his laugh were unmistakable.

“I… yes. That’s a lovely idea. We can bring one of his books up here and read to him while he sleeps. I think he’ll like that.”

Aziraphale drew the duvet up over Crowley, covering him as carefully as he had with his wing, then started hunting about for his slippers. But now the little mind urged him on, almost impatiently. “Yes, yes, I’m hurrying,” he sighed indulgently, stepping out of the room and pulling the door gently closed behind him. “There. Now why don’t we—”

The moment his bare foot touched the carpet running down the stairs, he felt a chill. His stomach went tight, and the tightness reached tendrils up his arms and down his legs. His eyes locked onto the front door, and he found he couldn’t look away.

Kokabiel stirred, picking up on his worry. “No, it’s—it’s nothing.”

Gripping the railing until his knuckles turned white, he forced himself to continue down. He’d hoped the motion would ease the unexpected worry, but it only seemed to grow with every step. “There’s nothing to be worried about.” Halfway down now. “Abs—absolutely no cause for alarm.” Heart racing, fingers trembling, body tingling with expectation. Waiting for a knock, a shouted voice. “There’s… there’s nothing to harm us. Not here.” Eyes straining for a hint of a shadow beyond the frosted glass. “It’s… fine, we… we’re fine…”

At the bottom of the stairs he came to a halt, one hand on the newel post.

This was absurd. The door was locked, chained, and bolted. The fireplace poker leaned against the wall beside it, near the little table where Crowley kept his glasses. The wards were set, as strong as ever. No one was getting in. No one was there to try.

A sense of unease separate from his own drew his mind to Kokabiel. “Th…” he licked his lips and tried again, smiling shakily at his wing. “There, my dear, don’t you see? Nothing to worry about. Nothing… nothing to harm us…”

No sign of Kokabiel’s soft red glow now, outshone by the light at the bottom of the stairs, a little island of clarity in the dark cottage.

Well, that was easily enough solved. A flick of his fingers sent a miracle through the rooms, turning on… two living room lamps and the light over the hob in the kitchen. “Oh, bother.” He wiped his hand on his trousers and tried again, managing to catch one of the larger lamps this time, but nothing more.

“Oh, look at me… big silly.” Stress sometimes made miracles more difficult, particularly ones that required fine control of the surroundings. Aziraphale crossed his arms, fingers picking at the linen top. “Worked up over nothing. Let’s… let’s just get a story, some tea, and then back upstairs to Daddy.” He shuffled forward, legs so tense he could barely move. “Hardly… take a minute…”

Turning away from the door filled him with an immediate dread, a sense that someone must surely be behind him. But now his eyes were fixed on the bookshelves, and he couldn’t have pulled them away for anything. “See? Nothing… nothing…” Tears pricked at the corner of his eyes as he shivered in the cool room. “Just have to…” Kokabiel burrowed down beneath his coverts.

With a great effort, Aziraphale pushed through those last steps, clutching at the corner of the book case.

“There… there… there we are. Nothing to… Let me just… just find…”

He blinked his eyes clear. Before him stretched the rows of paperbacks he and Crowley had selected, all of their favorite books. Crowley liked to rearrange them according to his latest whims, and to toss a few into the picnic basket for Aziraphale to read aloud, out in the meadow or down on the sand by the beach. Only the cheapest copies they could find, with almost offensively modern covers; anything less and Aziraphale immediately became overprotective of the books.

Collections of poetry, plays, short stories. Don Quixote and The Three Musketeers. The complete works of Ian Fleming, Georgette Heyer, and Jane Austen. Photo-books featuring architecture from all around the world.

Only, just now, Aziraphale couldn’t make any sense of it. Confusion. Chaos.

“I’ll… I can grab…”

His hand bumped against a framed photograph, which clattered to the ground.

A whiff of vetiver in the air.

Choking back a cry, Aziraphale seized the nearest book and fled, stumbling into the kitchen. He could hardly think around the white mist that filled his mind, the fear—Kokabiel’s and his own, mixed together—obscuring everything.

For a long moment, all he could do was cower, eyes shut tight, wings wrapped around him. Waiting for the attack.

It never came.

Slowly, Aziraphale became aware of his own shaking breath, of the cupboard doors digging into his back, the sharp edges of the book pressed against his hands. The cold ceramic of the kitchen tiles below his feet. Kokabiel’s mind trilling anxiously inside his own.

He forced open his eyes, searching the room. Hints of light reflected off the windows, the granite counter tops, the glass jar of flowers on the dining room table. But apart from that, darkness, closing in on every side.

“There, you… you see? Nothing to be f—frightened of. We… we’re safe…” Gulping down a deep breath, Aziraphale pushed himself to sit properly upright, the book lying on his lap, though he still couldn’t bring himself to release it. “It—it’s al… it’s alright… Nothing… nothing…”

His thumbs ran across the cover. It was too large for a novel, too smooth—one of Crowley’s glossy photo-books. Meaning if he wanted to get a story, he’d have to go back.

A shudder ran through him at the very thought, and the tears welled up again. “Can’t…” His eyes drifted sightlessly across the room. “Can’t hurt us here. Nothing can hurt us here.”

That was, blatantly, a lie. The wards hadn’t protected him from Gabriel. The truce wouldn’t protect them, not even the oath, the most powerful one Uriel knew. He couldn’t even protect himself. It was only a matter of time before… before…

He bowed his head, and saw a silvery spiral gazing up at him.

What?

Aziraphale wiped his eyes and looked again at the brilliant galaxy depicted on the cover of the book. The Pratchett Foundation Encyclopaedia of Astronomy. The title framed a carefully rendered image of the Milky Way, major and minor arms flowing from the white-hot center, curving and trailing off into long streamers. So vivid he almost expected it to move, to come to life, a hundred billion stars in their slow, endless dance.

“Oh…” He traced his thumb along the arms, one after the other. They were simplified, of course. Thin, delicate structures instead blurred into one larger cluster, many of the features he knew still undiscovered by humanity, and individual stars and nebulae swallowed up by the miniscule scale of the image. But he could remember…

“Kokabiel. Look, dear. Look at this.” The tiny form shifted, still quite buried in his down. “This… this is our home. Our galaxy.” His thumb came to rest on one particular spur, a branch connecting one thin arm to the much broader one beside it. “Here. This… this is where we are. Just one tiny planet around an average star surrounded by… by unimaginable beauty. There’s so much out there, so much…”

Slowly, the worry Kokabiel felt began to fade, replaced by curiosity. Confusion. Searching for something familiar in the strange image.

Of course. The little youngling hadn’t experienced anything but these few rooms and the garden beyond. They couldn’t comprehend galaxies or planets. They didn’t even know what a star was. But they wanted to, so very much.

“Would you… would you like another story?” A fluttering excitement. “Good. Let me see…

“In the Beginning, there was God, and God was… Everything. But God dreamed of more: a World full of Endless Beauty, of flowers and birds and waves crashing against the shore, and stars shining in the sky. A World of Infinite Complexity, where each layer built upon the next and the next, growing and evolving in ways even the wisest could never foresee. And so, God made… the Angels of Creation.”

His eyes drifted towards the dining room. It was too dark to see through the windows to the garden or the greenhouse, but he could picture them perfectly anyway. “These angels were tasked with… making all the beauty of God’s dream into reality. Some wrote the songs sung by the birds, a glorious symphony performed every day. Some crafted snowflakes, tiny fractal patterns born from pure chance, a septillion different variations every year. They designed flowers, trees, grasses, so many kinds, to fill even the most inhospitable parts of the world with life. Miracles, all of them. But the most miraculous—the most beautiful—the most clever of them all… those were the Starmakers.”

Aziraphale opened the book in his lap, paging slowly through image after image of moons and planets and brilliantly glowing stars. “They were artists. The universe was their canvas, and they created their masterpieces from… from particles of dust, nothing more, but twisted and spun into…” Finally, he found what he was looking for.

An immense cloud boiled across the sky, nearly thick enough to block out the stars behind it. Shades of deep red and gold cut through with darker columns, here and there tinted to bright blue and green. Turbulence where jets of flame imperceptible to the human eye tore paths through the calm, creating formations that could swallow solar systems. A dark patch like a keyhole cut through the sky, and just above it a dense patch of bright stars, shining like a priceless treasure.

On the opposite page lay the heading, “Born from Stardust: Eta Carinae Nebula,” followed by a long write up about the birth of stars as humans understood it. Aziraphale ignored that, turning instead to the next page, close-ups on various features etched deeply in his memory. The dark keyhole rift. Seven columns, each nursing a newborn star. A raised fist with one extended finger. A mountain of smoke. And the brightest star of all, caught between the two spheres of dust it had thrown off.

“They had a sort of fire inside them, the Starmakers, a warmth that illuminated everything they touched. And the beauty in their minds, the vision that guided their work… it was unlike anything else any angel had seen. Tapestries a billion miles across, hand-woven from threads as thick as an atom. Delicate choreographies that played out across countless millennia. The impossible made manifest, then tucked away behind a cloud, hidden in plain sight. Other angels might work miracles; they created revelations. And the… the most brilliant of them all was your Daddy.”

At that, Kokabiel brightened up, all anxieties forgotten as they bounced, trying to peek above Aziraphale’s feathers. “Oh, yes.” Aziraphale turned the page, eyes scanning across more nebulae, some familiar, some not. “He used the fires inside him to build the heavens, one shining seed at a time. He tended those stars, nurtured them, whispered encouragement when he thought no one was listening, and under his care they grew and blossomed and…”

Another image brought Aziraphale to a pause. Artists’ conceptions of the black hole at the center of the galaxy. “But the others… so many others… didn’t understand his vision. They couldn’t appreciate his beauty, so they… they tried to extinguish it, to smother his fires, make him go dim. They tried so many times, in so many ways. But in the end…” He closed the book, staring again at the galaxy on the cover. “In the end they failed. His creations still fill the sky, his smile still lights up the room, and the fire inside him…”

Kokabiel was hopping in and out of his feathers again, tracing a wobbly line just below the leading edge of his wing. Perhaps they hadn’t understood a word apart from Daddy, but they seemed to be at peace once more. “That fire burns in him still. I feel it every day, every time he draws near. It guided me for thousands of years, when my hope was so lost I didn’t even know it was gone. And last night…” the little globe seemed to grow tired of jumping, settling down at the base of his feathers again. “…last night, my little star, that fire brought you to us.”

Aziraphale ran his hand over his coverts and felt something like a giggle at the back of his mind, a bubble of joy and affection.

“Well. I suppose that’s enough of that for tonight.” With a great effort, he heaved himself to his feet. There was a brief moment of vertigo—he was getting used to them, at least—but once it passed, Aziraphale felt stronger than before. More solid. More sturdy. “Let’s try this again. We’ll pop back over to the shelves for Pride and Prejudice, and then I’ll teach you how to make tea.”

Read the rest on AO3!

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