Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consume and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
Matthew 6:19-21 Revised Standard Version (Catholic Edition) (RSVCE)
A Visit From Miss Crowley (Week 4): Non-Favourite Son
Hello there!
As usual, I cannot see a "challenge" and let it go so...Female Crowley month, here we are, FINALE STRETCH, THE FINAL DAY!!!!! The idea is, as every time I do challenges, write very short pieces of fiction...I hope I have done a good Job and thanks again to @missfellsbookshop for the challenge.
As usual, do please forgive my quick tipper and non-native speaker mistakes,
Marla
Allons-y!
CW: it's already on the tags but...child neglect, and that feeling of loneliness that certain upbringings migh bring with them not projecting nope
Also in AO3
Since Crowley had become Warlock’s nanny, she had started to wonder much more often about how the lack of parental figures had affected her character.
Yes, yes; she knew she had never been an infant per sé. Still, there had been a quite large part of her first existence where naivety had played a rather important role in the shaping of her persona, in which the closer she had come to having a parent had been Her Boss…Her Boss, who made a point of being a random cunt constantly.
Oh! Yes! There had also been the uptight older angels, the ones that loathed the fact that she had been able to get distracted with the slightest of moves in the corner of her presence and believed questions where only right if the answer could be provided by a canon they blindly followed.
In other words; she had raised herself in complete solitude, crawling from the darkness and the uncertainty into the light and knowhow of how the world truly worked. Uh, the dry humour in her naming was something she would never be over (and, likely, the only thing she thanked Her about).
Now, she and Aziraphale were trying their bests to make a neutral as humanly (and heavenly, and demonicly) possible individual out of the spawn of Satan; and they were doing a terrific job, mind them. And yet…
…there is always a major downfall to getting involved enough with a mortal so you can positively affect their morals: you get attached, you get attached to a piece of flesh than, sooner rather than later, is going to die (if they did their self-imposed job correctly; if not, they would be the ones doing the killing, for the good of the New World to Come).
And, in this particular case, it also pained her to see how ostracised from his own bloody parents the boy was.
It was worse than what she had had. Likely, worse than whatever Aziraphale had gone through too. They had been alone in solitude. Warlock? He was alone while still in the same room as the people that were supposed to be his parental figures.
He might not understand yet, but the demon could see it on his eyes. She could see the indescribable feeling made of mixed emotions piling up every time he got to spend time with them, every time he, in his stubbornness (and, up to certain point, spoiled rudeness) tried to bond with them.
Actually, come to think to it; Antichrist or not, Humanity was lucky they were in the young boy’s life. Between his parents’ attitude and his American blood…the picture was screaming High-School Shooter Material in crystal clear tones.
~~~~~
And, then, almost out of the blue, Aziraphale got fired.
Because, as a remarkable difference from Crowley, when he had witnessed one of the most painstakingly cold conversations between the father of his protégé and Warlock himself, he had not been able to shut up.
He had scolded The American Ambassador of all people about how to raise his only child. Him, the gardener (no capital letter to his title).
Crowley admired the boldness; though she could not wrap her head around not going about it in a much more Machiavellian style.
However, this was the last straw; without her Angel, the boy was lost.
She sighed, time to do some holy business (with a bit of blood and mayhem along the way, of course; it was her, after all).
~~~~~
“I cannot believe you murdered Warlock!” Crowley shrugged, as she filled once again the boy’s glass with orange juice (now that she had taken him under her wing in a much more definitive and literal way, there was no point in not telling the kid the truth).
“Well, they forced me to walk around in flat shoes all day long…and did something terrible to the most important being in my creation.”
“Oh, who that would be?” asked the angel, clearly concerned.
She didn’t know whether to sight or caw at how infuriatingly adorable he was being.
“Whoever they are, I know they are going to be a great influence in my human adopted child” that was another thing, the moment the bond between her and Warlock was created, she had known: he wasn’t Satan’s little guy.
They had celestially screwed it up.
But that was a problem for the Crowley and Aziraphale of tomorrow. Today, they were taking their absolutely legally adopted child to buy the angel some high heels to match Crowley’s, using the moment to teach the boy high heels had no gender.
She sighed for a second; there was going to be so much deconstruction to be done…
…and a bit of old fashioned corruption too, of course.
There was just so much holiness Crowley could accomplish, and she loved it that way.
