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My son knelt for the death blow, and I struck.
I left Nicholas' full wishes disregarded, however, and struck with the hilt of the walking stick rather than the point. He fell to the carpet in front of me, graceful as ever, even in unconsciousness. Wasteful as ever, also; blood painted its slow, thick path down his temple towards the wool of his carpet. I left him there, let the liquid slide to its pointless destination, and turned to sources I had hoped not to consult.
Given a long life -- or unlife, should one wish to be pedantic -- one may, with sufficient care and forethought, acquire a great many favors. I have always found the greatest benefit in instilling debts on all sides. I prefer to have a foot on the winning side, no matter which that may be.
He appeared in a gleam of gold and a flicker of fire, spine straight and shoulders level, in sun-bleached white and hammer-clean gold. He even sustained such power and glory through two words.
"Fear not-- Oh. It's you."
Reverted to his more normal appearance, he is appallingly insipid for an angel. Despite the flaming sword. He also sounds, and dresses, like the worst type of English homosexual: bland, blasé, and boring. He looked badly out of place in a binding circle with a mostly dead coroner at his feet.
One would think a creature which lived through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries would have acquired a greater grasp of interesting invective. I suppose the lack of descent does interfere with what he may say, but that shouldn't interfere with all the available comments. Put simply, he sputtered. The light from his sword did not -- that easily allowed me to complete the shorter, simpler sigil to call the angel's counterpart.
In a binding circle of his own, of course; I've attained a few centuries, not senility.
"Blast you, I don't sss--" The demon, at least, had some style; he arrived dressed as the man who controls the men one hopes not to meet on a dark street. His tongue forked mid-word. Upon sight of the sigils holding him in place, perhaps. He considered the circle around him, Nicholas lying limp beside my feet, Dr. Lambert unconscious in the angel's binding circle... and laid all blame at the angel's feet. By name. How interesting.
"Aziraphale! Would you quit fixing things?"
"Dear boy, I'm merely... holding them steady." His expression of innocence was patently underwhelming.
" 'Steady'? Nicholas de Brabant is a vampire, you idiot." Oddly, the demon sounded concerned. It did keep him from trying to lose his temper at me. A benefit, I'm sure.
"Yes, well, he is trying to repent. I have to encourage that." The angel sounded faintly dubious about the matter's possibilities, which boded well for me, although less so for him.
"And her?" The demon tried to scuff the binding circle and, when he stubbed a toe on it instead, hissed maledictions in a language I've not heard before. My carpet didn't rot away in moments, although hardly for lack of his glaring at it. His sunglasses, on the other hand, shattered.
"Dr. Lambert is trying to commit suicide. You know I can't allow that." The angel folded his wings down his back, settled his crossed arms on the pommel of his sword (tip-down on the carpet, but not cutting it; ridiculously considerate, even for an angel), and added, "You don't actually want her, Crowley. Some idiot ill-wished her into despair, but really, you just don't want her."
The demon glared his sunglasses back into one piece -- a useful trick, that -- and turned to face me. "Cut to the chase, Divius. What do you want?"
"Fix this," I said, and left the details to them. Or rather, I attempted to do so.
"Oh, no." Crawly ran his nails down the field containing him, and only looked angrier when it made no noise. "Be precise. Fix what? Those slowly dying idiots on the rug?"
It had been rather a long month, and I had been rather rushed. Since the angel held matters (however temporarily) in abeyance, I permitted myself the luxury of sitting down on the couch. "My desire is that you correct those causes which have left them both dying. I have no wish, whatsoever, for you to 'fix' my daughter's demise. Put that idea from your mind."
The angel blanched. "No, no, we have absolutely no dominion there. Your mortal offspring--"
"And vampire parent," the demon pointed out, mocking and annoying and fully aware of both. "That must be confusing."
The angel ignored him with an ease that could only come from long practice, making me still more curious. "Crowley, do stop helping. Divia is dead, finally, and gone--"
" -- and it's amazing how many of the nobles Down Below she'd pissed off in those few years, really," the demon finished for him. "I don't owe you nearly enough to stick a hand in that mess. Not even someone else's hand."
Their recitative did sound practiced. I've known married couples who told stories less easily than these two argued. Very interesting indeed. "I don't want you to interfere in the fate of my defilement of a descendent," I repeated. "I wish to keep my son, however, which means the woman must not die of his doing."
The demon gave me a remarkably old-fashioned look; it matched neither his form nor his taste in clothes. "That's not all it's going to take. He reeks of grief."
The angel waved a hand and managed to sound exasperated. "Yes, Divius, we both owe you. Do get rid of these circles and put the kettle on and we'll discuss this over tea and cakes like civilized beings."
"I didn't admit any debt." The demon hissed at him, but shut up rather abruptly when the angel glared at him.
"Crowley. I want a cup of tea and a comfortable seat while we sort out this little problem. I have no intention of being pulled away from my reading again, which means we're going to do this now and properly. Admit you owe him for that saint he killed in Malta and quit arguing." His wings were twitching by the end of his discussion, little flutters at the tips as if he wanted to flap in outrage -- or box the demon's ears for stupidity. Hmm. Blasé was incorrect, after all. Perhaps boring was wrong as well.
"Fine. I want some good wine." The demon folded his wings out of existence again and summoned a formidable amount of sarcasm with which to ask, "May we discuss this on chairs instead of through wards?"
"If you concede the debt. If not, you may stay there." I smiled and extended my hand in invitation... just outside the wards. He reached for it and growled, thwarted.
It took surprisingly few exchanges to settle the matter; the angel's glare was more potent than I'd expected. He did insist upon his tea first; the demon stuck to a surprisingly good brandy Nicholas had packed away. I took a glass of it as well, rather than defile my palate with sang de vache.
When they ignored the question of what they must do to leave, I brought it up. "You are maintaining the woman," I pointed out to the angel. "Restore her. As you said, if she commits suicide, she is lost to you."
"No." He sipped his tea again before explaining, "I said that if she committed suicide Crowley's side will get her, and really, she wouldn't suit them."
The demon swirled the brandy in its snifter, managing not to splash any over the edge only by invoking powers of some sort -- good brandy has considerable 'legs' but it does not usually maintain its surface tension two inches past the rim. "Fine, fine. It's a lousy attempt at ill-wishing anyway. Whatever happened to craftsmanship? Go ahead, Aziraphale. Thwart away. Fix her." Yellow, snake-pupil eyes glared in my direction, although he directed nothing inimical at me; the grumbling did seem pro forma. "That won't solve your Nicholas's problem."
"His partner has died, and two of my younger vampires have died at my offspring's talons -- one he was beginning to see as a protégé; the other was an innocent, or as innocent as one of us can be. All of these are wounds, but you are, I believe, forbidden another Lazarus, so what's to be done?"
To my surprise, the angel blinked a few times as if I had committed some social faux pas he was loath to point out. The demon, however, laughed and asked, "Is that all?"
"Since I imagine you can neither convince him that he must make the best of being of my kind, nor teach him the timing necessary to turn a human, I believe it will do."
"Well, we can't do anything about the loving Janette," the angel began, only to freeze as I hissed my displeasure. "Really, dear boy, true love is so rare that it should be encouraged... never mind," he went on hastily.
The demon just shook his head and said, "As to turning humans, tell the idiot it's a matter of timing. He can manage ragtime syncopation; he ought to be able to master when to stop sucking and start feeding." The demon waved his hand, languid as any courtier, and a sizzle of sparks hissed its way down to singe the carpet. "Really? That's it?"
"Yes." I kept it short from irritation; such dearly-obtained favors, to be handled so casually. So long as the matters were handled, however, the favors had served their purpose.
As his kind ever do, the demon had to press the point. "And then my debt from Malta and his debt from Avignon are paid?"
I nodded, reluctantly, and the angel shook his head in dismay. "Really, it's too much, LaCr-- Divius." He changed the name hastily and looked apologetic at the hint of pink the burns left on my hands. "I'll have to still owe you something later, really... this is so minor." He shrugged and stroked a wing across Dr. Lambert's face. Her color immediately began to improve and fine lines of stress subsided around her eyes and mouth, not to resurface for years, perhaps.
The demon gestured in a movement that should have been overly flamboyant but wasn't. Sparks flew off his fingertips in shades and mattes and glitters of black, sinking into Nicholas's skin and vanishing without so much as a mark. "He'll heal nicely, and be more--"
"Crowley!" The angel started to draw himself up to his full height, fine wool shredding around bristling feathers and mantling wings.
The demon waved him back down. "Calm down and drink your tea. More mischievous, angel. Not more evil." The demon growled, annoyed. "He's not going to slide any farther to my side without me breaking that inconvenient 'free will' rule, and I'm not tempting that fate just for one lousy saint on Malta."
The angel relaxed again and brushed his fingertips over his sweater, restoring it to its formerly pristine appearance other than the pinfeather caught in the hem. "Oh, well, that's fine, then. Right. So, Berkeley Square, that dinner you owe me?"
"I owe you? I distinctly remem--"
"Gentlemen." My irritation cut cleanly across their little squabble, and yet they had the gall to act as if I were the unreasonable party.
"Yes?" The angel's wings ruffled, pinfeathers settling back into place as he smoothed his hair down, too.
Other matters, however, had not been settled. "This does not solve my problem."
They traded glances of commiseration and shared -- hoarded -- knowledge, then favored me with remarkably identical pitying looks.
"Doesn't it?" The demon lounged on nothing, arrogant and annoying as he'd been when I first noticed him tempting priests in Nicaea.
"You have implied you can 'fix' the other problems: his partner, Miss Vetter, and the youngsters, Vachon and Ursula. Can you, or can you not?"
The angel gave me that same galling look of sympathy. "Really, Divius, when did you start believing everything you heard? Miss Vetter isn't dead. She's at her father's home being nursed while under protective custody. Small surprise he's hidden her so, after she was shot in a police precinct with an officer's gun. He is rather--"
"Overbearing, paranoid, patriarchal--"
"Controlling will do, Crowley. The young lady is hardly dead, Divius, although I might have to stop by and do something about the abdominal wound.... Really. You used to check your sources more closely." He tsked and murmured something about 'nonexistent head wounds' and 'dotage.' Damn him.
The demon shook his head and said, "As for your two youngsters, we don't have to do anything. Div-- That sharp-nailed offspring of yours is finally dead, remember? Her death freed Knight from her venom -- now that curse was craftsmanship; they don't make malice venom like that anymore -- and her death negated the poison in the other two as well. Vachon's been digging his way out for the last hour, and he'll probably help Ursula out as soon as he's fed. Not really surprising. It's hardly as if anyone beheaded them. "
The acid wounds Divia had inflicted, caused by her evil? And healing with her... removal? And yet, Nicholas had healed....
The angel was, one hopes, trying to be helpful when he suggested, "Next time, dear boy, do call us before it all goes pear-shaped, won't you? Much easier to fix it then."
"This wasn't exactly complicated," the demon said with a smirk and only mantled those raven wings at me when I hissed.
The last I saw of those insufferable egotists was a cloud of clashing sparks as they faded, still squabbling about who was buying dinner for whom and how soon they needed to visit Detective Vetter. Blast them both.
The angel was right about one thing: they remain in my debt.
Both of them.
Comments, Commentary, & Miscellanea:
No, really: Forever Knight's last few episodes killed off pretty much everyone. Vachon, Urs, and Screed, died on screen; no, neither Urs nor Vachon was beheaded, although Vachon staked himself on a piece of wood Tracy was holding which would take a while to heal. Tracy was shot through the abdomen, taken to the hospital, and pronounced dead in a telephone call to the precinct, but she was in fact shot at the precinct with an officer's gun, and er, despite what the phone call said, I cannot find even a skull impact to cause a head wound. Natalie supposedly became suicidal after being called to a death scene and finding a good friend had a) committed suicide and b) left the explanatory note to Natalie. At the end of that final episode she was drained of blood and dying in a mistimed and ridiculous attempt of Nick's to turn her. (Seriously, how is becoming a vampire going to cure suicidal depression?) And yes, Nick really did ask LaCroix to kill him; the wood staff coming down is the final shot of the series.
None of this made any sense to me, and the Hamlet scenes in Season 1 of Slings & Arrows only made me more impatient with it, so I gave up and started fixing it. I would like to say that, despite Crowley and Aziraphale's presence in this story, I actually used very little deus ex machina; I tried to create some semblance of continuity/explanation instead and I hope it worked for you. Also, I'm pretty sure other people watch S&A and go on to write S&A fic. Oops.
A. J. Crowley (aka 'Crawly,' aka, 'hey, snake!', perhaps best known as 'An Angel who did not so much Fall as Saunter Vaguely Downwards') and Aziraphale (aka 'oi! Angel', and 'you ponce!' , possibly best known as 'just enough of a bastard to be worth liking') are the creation of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett, from the novel Good Omens, which I heartily recommend.
Sang de vache -- cow's blood. Which is what Nick stocks in his refrigerator, much to LaCroix's disgust.
'True love is so rare.' -- I'm heartily afraid that Aziraphale has just suggested Janette's mortality might be his fault.
Oh, and the title is, of course, from the final scene of Hamlet: "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night, sweet prince,/And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" All told, it was inevitable.
All other questions answered upon request, but, er, yeah. Did I mention crackfic?
Feedback would be very much appreciated.