Chapter Text
Current theories on the creation of the Universe state that, if it were created at all and didn't just start, as it were, unofficially, it came into being about fourteen billion years ago. The earth is generally supposed to be about four and a half billion years old. These dates are incorrect. Medieval scholars put the date of the Creation at....
You know how the bit goes. We don't have time for this.
An angel is standing at the gate.
He’s being pelted with rain. He’s drenched and miffed and cold, but he’s holding something beneath his wide white wings, and he’ll be damned if he doesn’t keep that Something dry. The Something whimpers underneath the white feathers over him, shivering as thunder cracks the newly-made sky. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. To tell this story right, we need to rewind.
An angel was standing at the gate (specifically, the Gate-Next-To-The-Eastern-One-But-Just-Slightly-Over. It wasn’t a gate of particular importance. But it was a gate to Eden nonetheless.
He was standing straight and narrow. He was waiting for something. What that something was, he didn’t know, and so he kept doing what he had been doing ever since he'd been made- he waited for orders. It’s what he’d been made for.
"Ah, hello," said a sudden voice.
The angel Amiel, esteemed Principality and Guardian of the Gate-Next-To-The-Eastern-One, nearly fell off the wall. He looked over. There was something standing in the spot next to him, wherein there had been absolutely nothing just a moment ago. The Something had black hair, fit to the demonic style. And it had big white wings which- Amiel thought, frowning- are much better groomed than mine.
"Nico," Amiel greeted, stiff.
"N-nice to see you too, Amiel." He was being genuine. Wrapped in his long black robes, he gestured down to the garden below them. It was overflowing with greenery and life. But, as of recently, two creatures of the garden had gone rogue. "That went down like a lead balloon, didn't it?"
"What the heaven does that mean?"
“You weren’t watching?” Nico asked. His mouth was open in a small, scandalized O.
Amiel was insulted. Of course he’d been watching. It had only been the most important event in all of Creation (so far). Leave it to a demon to assume he, the Principality and Guardian of the Too-Long-Of-A-Name Gate, had been slacking off. “Not that. I meant, what’s a lead balloon?”
Nico gave him a sideways look, as if he was afraid to make direct eye contact with the agitated angel, who had taken the stance of a tired preschool teacher, hands on hips and his foot tapping a hole in the floor. "I-I heard someone else say it. It’s just a metaphor. I’m trying to say that, y’know, it didn’t turn out very well for them.”
“That would be a simile, actually.”
“Regardless, I think it was a bit of an overreaction."
“Oh, come on. They ate an apple from a tree that had a big sign on it saying 'DON'T TOUCH'." He pointed down below, pointedly. “Insolence is written all over them.”
As if on cue, two figures appeared in the sprawling desert down below, little black dots on the white surface of the Earth.They were lost and alone and wandering aimlessly, bound to whatever awaited them in the great beyond. Their backs were to Eden. In the horizon, the sun was setting. Amiel made throaty grumbling noises while Nico leaned forward to get a better look. His brows drew down in something between surprise and worry.
“Hey, what does that one have in his hands?”
“Looks like a sword,” said Amiel, squinting down into the rolling hills of endless sand. “I wonder who gave him that….”
“A sword... that’s on fire. A flaming sword! Don't see that every day, do you?"
"We've only been here for seven of them. Give it time."
For a while, they watched the two down below find a lion and start to play with it. They swung the sword around, like a spatula. The lion glanced at them. It seemed more confused than anything else.
“Wow. It’s flaming like anything.”
“I think that’s supposed to belong the Guardian of the Eastern Gate,” said Amiel bitterly, like someone quite miffed that they hadn’t been given their own flaming sword. “I don’t see why he’d just give it away. That would have to be against God’s Plan. Right?”
“Well don’t look at me.”
“Maybe they stole it from him.”
“I highly doubt two bare naked humans stole a sword from an angel.”
Amiel made some more grumbly sounds as he watched the traitors of the Garden poke at the lion. Some fire wisped and caught the lion's mane; it roared painfully. Encouraged, the man thrust the sword and then the lion was no more.
"Ouch." The demon seemed less thrilled than a demon should have been while witnessing death.
“Barbarians,” the angel said, with more malice than an angel should have been able to muster. “I don't know what I expected from creatures stupid enough to go against the word of the Almighty and risk everything for one tiny apple. And now they're stranded in the desert, serves them right."
"That… First of all, I don't mean to disrespect to the Lord or anything," the demon said, to Amiel's utmost surprise. "But that should have been counted as a first offense! They didn’t deserve this. Besides that, I don't see what's so bad about knowing the difference between-"
"Wasn't it your first offense?” Amiel snapped, cutting Nico off as if his ramblings meant nothing- which, of course, they didn’t. “Hm? Before you fell? I don't see why you're sympathizing with them. Also, you're a demon, so I don't even know how you're able to sympathize-”
Amiel would have been happy to rant all day about moralities and right and wrong, and how if you did Wrong when you were supposed to do Right, you should be punished. But Nico had looked away. He wasn't looking at wall, or at the people, but at something entirely else. When Adam finally noticed the far-off look on his face, he couldn't help but fumble over his words to an abrupt stop.
The silence which had fallen upon them was loud in its own way. It was stifling. It was the sort of silence that made you think you’d done something wrong, even though you had no idea what you could have possibly done. All he’d done, after all, was say what was on his mind. And he was an angel. He wasn’t sure he could do wrong. Still….
“Nico?” he ventured, quietly.
But the demon seemed to be in an entirely different world, staring in deep contemplation at the sand-colored bricks underneath his bare feet. Amiel sighed a fed-up sigh. He stepped toward him, and put a hand on his shoulder before he could slither away. Nico gave him a look which Adam couldn’t read.
"Sorry. I get carried away sometimes with the, the righteous-angel thing."
When Nico didn’t respond immediately, Amiel took his hand back awkwardly.
"I guess this’ll be another conduct complaint against me,” he went on awkwardly.
“I get a lot of those. A lot of people Upstairs don’t like my ‘attitude’."
He made quotations in the air. That, at least, coaxed a little laugh from Nico- barely a chuckle, but it was there. Amiel found himself happier than he really should have been.
"Don't worry about it. I don’t even think a demon can file a conduct complaint against an angel.”
Amiel left it with a shrug. Nico briefly touched the place where Amiel's hand had been. He smiled.
It was the sort of shining smile which reached all the way up to the eyes; Nico’s were the color of sulfur, little bits of green buried inside each. Amiel would be lying if he said those eyes weren't just a tad bit unsettling. He was trying his best not to stare.
Nico was saying something. He stopped, suddenly concerned, and said, “What are you looking at? Is it the eyes?”
“Uh. No.”
“You’re not a good liar.”
“What kind of angel would I be if I was?”
“I’m not that good at it either.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
The demon let out a laugh. It was louder than the first. The angel, standing close by his side, laughed with him.
Then, they looked up in unison as little droplets fell on the stones below.
It had started to rain.
"Oh fuc... fudge.," said Amiel. "Quick, get under."
“Get under what?”
Amiel’s wide white wings snapped out like great big fans over Nico. And, stretching his arm around him, with the painful grip of an insistent hand, he yanked him flush against his side. It was just in time; the rain roared as sheets of it covered the land.
Nico cast his eyes up at him as he tucked in closer, a silent question in the yellow-and-green. Amiel looked away after a second’s sideways glance.
“And what’re you looking at?”
“Why are you getting your wings all wet for me?”
“Because I don’t have an umbrella, obviously.”
That wasn’t the point. Nico couldn’t tell if his counterpart was avoiding the question intentionally, or if he was just a really literal person (or rather, a really literal supernatural entity which happened to be person-shaped).
Further, he didn’t know if he should ask again, or if he should just let it be. He worried his lip. Before he had the chance to make up his mind, Amiel sighed.
"Could be holy water. Y’know-” He waved his hand noncommittally.
“The stuff that makes my kind die a really, really horrible death.” Nico looked out at the rain. "Is this really...?”
"How should I know if it is or isn’t? It's the first rain in existence.” He held his hand out. Little drips of cold water immediately started attacking him, forming a cold puddle in the cup of his palm. He wiped himself off on his robes, getting the white fabric damp.
Nico made a sound, stuck between a cough and a whine. He didn’t move to clarify which he was going for. Amiel would have ignored it, but then Nico started leaning repetitively from one foot to the other.
“I’m not a mind reader,” he said.
“I’m just thinking.”
“Well don’t hurt yourself.”
“It’s just, wouldn’t you get a commendation or something for letting a demon die? Brownie points? On the first week of the invention of the Universe, no less. I’d give you a promotion.”
“You’d be a puddle of guck. And I don’t feel like getting any guck on my robes.”
“I see.”
Amiel’s wing was beginning to ache from the effort of holding it up, but he wouldn’t ever admit to that.
There was silence, then, filled only by the rain, and by the soft breath of the softly-smiling demon standing close to his side.