Hello all! This excerpt was inspired by @penbwl‘s lovely post found here! I plan to do a full chapter for each episode as a fun little side project when my current WIPs are wearing me down and I need a quick break. This isn’t the whole chapter, just the first part to introduce Aziraphale, Warlock, and Crowley.
I absolutely love this show and when I saw a lovely drawing for this AU pop up on my dash, I just knew I had to write it. I hope you all enjoy this sneak peek. First chapter should be up on my Ao3 page by the end of the week.
Thank you again to penbwl for coming up with this brilliant idea and allowing me to take a stab at it. I’m having a load of fun so far :)
Excerpt below:
The forest was dark. Much darker than it ought to be, and quiet too. Shouldn’t forests have birds singing high up in the branches? Or cute little critters scuttling about in the underbrush, foraging of nuts and berries and the like? The darkness seemed to imply that it was nighttime. Would that not suggest the presence of at least an owl or two hiding in the dense treetops?
There was nothing. Not a single sound except for the crunch of dead leaves beneath his feet and that of the boy walking beside him.
Warlock. The child’s name was Warlock. An adventurous boy of six who had a love for asking the most ridiculous questions and a predisposition to not do as he was told. It was for this very reason the pair had found themselves in this predicament, he was sure of it.
He was...a pause. A glance. What was their predicament, exactly? Alone, in an unfamiliar forest? How did they get here? What had been the events leading up to this? Why was he so certain this boy was the driving force behind it all?
Yes. The boy, Warlock. This boy was named Warlock. And he was Aziraphale. Simple gardener for the estate and sometimes caretaker for the child as well, when his parents were too busy to mind him themselves. Which was often, now that he stopped to think about it.
“...Bartholomew, Curtis, Razzle Dazzle, Mr. McStiggins, Pete, Steve. But I think the very worst name for this frog is - ”
Aziraphale’s hand shot out reflexively, nearly slapping the child in his face and stopping them both in their tracks. The silence drifted in like a dense fog and Aziraphale found himself straining to catch a glimpse of anything that might seem familiar. Anything that might clue him in on which direction to go.
“Wait,” he chastised as a faint noise echoed at the edge of his hearing. Was that a bird taking off in the sky? The wind rustling through the thick foliage? “Wait a second, Warlock.” He paused, looking down at the boy beside him, dressed in his olive overalls and long-sleeved white shirt. His normally unruly dark hair was mostly hidden from view, with only the ends sticking out from underneath an old silver teapot that was, for some reason, perched securely on the child’s head. “Where are we?”
“In the woods,” the boy responded, shifting the frog he was carrying from one arm to the other. Aziraphale blinked. Where had Warlock gotten a frog? He didn’t remember the child stopping to pick one up. And why was this one so big? It was unlike any frog he had ever seen before, and yet, that was certainly what it was. There could be no denying it. A frog, bigger than his outstretched hand, lay dangling from Warlock’s arms like it hadn’t a care in the world. How very strange.
“Yes, my dear, I can see that,” the gardener replied, glancing around them one more time. There was something about this place. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was, but it made Aziraphale think that nothing in the world could be better right now than to curl up in his cottage, surrounded by his many books and nestled under a warm blanket, with a nice mug of fresh cocoa. “I meant, what are we doing out here?”
“We’re walking home,” Warlock stated so matter-of-factly that Aziraphale would have laughed were he not currently so unsettled by this bizarre situation they had found themselves in.
Looking around once more, Aziraphale reached down to take the child’s hand in his, a sense of dread slowly starting to creep in. thunder rumbled in the distance and the man suddenly had a certain feeling that they shouldn’t be here. “Warlock, dear.” He paused, not sure if he should continue. Aziraphale didn’t want to scare the child, but he needed to make the boy understand that this was no laughing matter. “I think we may have gotten a bit turned around.”
What to do, what to do? A frown made its way onto the gardeners face. What was one supposed to do in situations like this? He turned to look behind them, images of a familiar children’s tale filling his mind. Two small children wandering through a wood just like this one, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs behind as they marched toward their doom.
“We should have left a trail…” the man muttered to himself. Beside him, Warlock shifted, tugging his hand from Aziraphale’s grasp as he reached into his pockets.
“Don’t worry!” The small, yet boisterous voice declared as he tossed a fist full of candy at the path behind them. “I can leave a trail of candy. From my pants! See?”
Once again, Aziraphale felt the temptation to laugh, and once again, he stifled it. No reason to let his guard down now. Not until they were safely back at the Dowling Estate.
A dull thud sounded nearby and Aziraphale nearly leapt with fright. He spun around, peering in the direction of the noise, trying to ignore how his heart was currently trying to climb up and out of his throat. “Did you hear that?” he asked, hoping Warlock might say that he hadn’t and it had all been in the gardener’s mind.
“Yeah,” Warlock nodded his head in affirmation and Aziraphale once again took him by the hand and slowly moved them forward, keeping them mostly hidden behind the large trunk of a nearby tree.
There, just on the other side of the treeline, stood a man. He was dressed head to toe in black, pants tucked down into his boots, a rather tall hat atop his head. From here, Aziraphale couldn’t make out most of his features. The forest was dark, and the only light nearby was coming from a single lamp resting on the ground by his feet.
The thudding noise they had heard, it turns out, was the sound of the man’s axe, whacking repeatedly into the fallen tree in front of him. He was humming a soft tune to himself as he gathered the finely chopped pieces, kneeling down to ensure he gathered up every last bit. Aziraphale’s eyes drifted over the scene, trying to gather any bit of information he might have missed. Other than the sticky shadows of what looked to be sap upon the fallen tree, there appeared to be nothing of use here.
“We should ask him for help,” Warlock announced with all the innocence of a child that had not yet been taught to be hesitant around strangers. His frog croaked in what sounded like agreement and Aziraphale shot it a glare before realizing how ridiculous an action that was.
“No,” he cautioned his young charge, eyes returning to the strange man once more. “We should not ask him for help.”
“But - “
“Shush,” Aziraphale snapped, feeling immediately guilty at how harsh he sounded. He didn’t want to scare Warlock, or make him cry, but the longer they lingered here, the more nervous Aziraphale became. What they needed to do was stop wasting time and find their way back to someplace familiar. A street with cars or a neighborhood, perhaps, where they could borrow a telephone and call for help.
“You shush,” Warlock argued, tugging his hand free to bring a single finger to his lips like he’d seen his mother do a thousand times before.
“No,” Aziraphale was almost at his wit’s end. “You shush.”
The boy glowered, but there was a teasing glint in his dark brown eyes. “You shush.”
As the pair argued, the light around them grew dimmer and dimmer. By the time Aziraphale looked up to take stock of their situation, the woodsman was walking away, the light from his lamp slowly disappearing behind the trees up ahead until it was over the hill and out of sight, leaving them in darkness once more.
“Ah,” Aziraphale sighed, feeling that all-too-familiar uneasiness return to his stomach. His gaze lingered on the space where the man had been. “Perhaps we should have asked him for help.”
“Maybe I can help you.”
The voice, sounding from behind them, was soft and low. Not deep, like a bass, but warm and gentle, and just a bit sultry. Aziraphale turned and saw, to his absolute horror, a serpent, nearly seven feet long with inky black scales and a red underbelly staring at them from a nearby tree. He’d managed to climb his way up to the branches level with the top of Aziraphale’s head and was gazing over at the pair of them with bright amber eyes.
“I mean,” the serpent continued, never once averting his gaze, “you two are lost, aren’t you?”
Aziraphale gasped, reaching up a hand to slap himself in the face, now certain that this was a dream. Some kind of twisted nightmare he’d found himself in - one that he desperately needed to wake up from. When the action did not banish the snake or the darkness or the wood at all, he spluttered, hoping some sort of answer might be provided. “What in the world is going on here?”
“Well,” Warlock piped up, clearly tickled that someone had thought to ask him. “You’re slapping yourself, and I’m answering your question, and - “
Aziraphale heaved out a heavy sigh. Now was really not the time. “No, Warlock, dear boy. This isn’t real. A snake’s brain isn’t big enough for cognizant speech,” he explained, forgetting for a moment that the six-year-old wouldn’t have the slightest idea what that meant.
Before he could amend his statement, the serpent’s head drifted closer. “Excussssse me? What was that?”
Blue eyes widened. “I mean - “ boy, had he gotten himself into a puzzle. “I’m just trying to say that you’re, well, you’re abnormal, is all. Out of the ordinary, as it were. Completely unexpected, and rather a bit alarming and - “ Goodness, he was rambling now, wasn’t he? Aziraphale had a tendency to do that when he was nervous.
“Good heavens, Aziraphale,” the man muttered, breaking eye contact for the first time. “Stop talking to it.”
“It?” He had never heard a snake, or any animal for that matter, sound so offended in his entire life. “I beg your pardon?”
Aziraphale’s eyes flashed back up to the luminous yellow orbs. “Uh - well, the thing is - “
Suddenly, the sharp snap of a twig sounded behind them. Aziraphale whirled around, his heart leaping from his chest when he realized Warlock had wandered several paces off to examine a slow moving turtle that he had decided to balance a piece of candy upon. There, standing before them, was the woodsman. Brown eyes wide, shadows etched into the deepest crevices of his face. “What are you doing here?” he demanded, voice thundering in the space around them, sending Aziraphale scrambling to bring Warlock back by his side, despite the boy’s protests to remain with his new friend. “Explain yourselves!”
“Aaaaand that’sss my cue,” the snake hissed, coiling up on himself as he disappeared out of the light and into the treetops, his striking golden eyes, the only part remaining visible. For a moment, the luminous orbs lingered, casting a final wink in Aziraphale’s direction before disappearing completely into the darkness “Ciao.”
By the end of everything, Heaven and Hell both backed off from Aziraphale and Crowley, not sure what to make of a demon and an angel that were resistant to both holy water and hellfire... but you know they try again someday. It’s just bad optics, letting a couple of traitors escape judgement after all.
As much as Aziraphale hates his old armor, the weight of it, the memories it carries... he puts it back on all the same when he has to go and rescue Crowley from the clutches of Hell while trying to shake the forces of Heaven himself. He’s no warrior at heart, but that doesn’t mean he’s not one in practice when his back is to the wall and his husband’s about to take a long walk off a short diving board into a pool of holy water.
Old power rises in response to a desperate need and an old form, long since abandoned, is assumed for the first time since the stars were new and the Earth was just a twinkle in God’s eye...
[design notes under the cut]
Everyone’s been out here designing neat secondary angel forms for Aziraphale and I was feeling left out, so here’s mine! As much as I love versions that give him a million eyes, that design aesthetic is traditionally relegated to Cherubim, according to christian angelology, and I decided to take more inspiration from their description of Principalities, which supposedly wear a crown and bear a sceptre. Obviously I substituted the sceptre for the flaming sword here and threw in some extra arms and wings because tbh that’s just the kind of pain I like to inflict on myself XD Crowley wasn’t even supposed to be IN this picture, but Az had all those empty hands, and well, here we are XD
For Aziraphale’s armor, I ran with the fact that the flaming sword is obviously ancient Greek/Roman in design and took inspiration from Hoplites. Did you realize the hilt and guard of his sword are made of fucking wood? They are, seriously, watch the show real close next time. What idiot angel thought this was a good idea XD
And yes, those are apple blossoms in the upper corners, heh. Went for an Art Nouveau vibe cuz I’m weak for that shit XD
