Stone of Farspeech | LifeAftr IC Contact

[eudaimonikos]

[Can't leave an answering machine message on these things, but hit him up! He barely sleeps!]

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voice;

[bibliophilicbells]

[Enter one very excited-sounding angel, who is trying his very best not to sound as excited as he is.]

I found him!

[Pause.]

...just thought you'd like to know.

[eudaimonikos]

Oh!

[It's a good thing these don't do video calls, because Michael is suddenly and intensely jealous!

But he knows, logically, that it's not a zero-sum game like that. Aziraphale having a friend here doesn't relate at all to Michael not having one.]

That's great! I - [wait, new demon arrivals] - ohhhh, was it Crowley?

[bibliophilicbells]

Yes! [The sound of an excited clap carries over the line.] I heard that you met him, wasn't sure if you connected the dots.

[eudaimonikos]

[Well, he mostly didn't because of wibbly-wobbly RP time, but - ]

It's possible I came on a little strong at first.

[bibliophilicbells]

[But who's counting, eh?

Aziraphale's tone changes some. Takes on an edge like, Please don't tell me you were rude, because then I will have to personally fight you.]

"Strong"? How so?

[eudaimonikos]

I just told him I'd stop him if he went after any of the mortals around here!

[Honestly, it was real similar to how he started things with Aziraphale, if a lot more emphatic on account of Demon]

And I may have tried to pull rank.

[bibliophilicbells]

[Aziraphale makes a face to himself. The first thing, well, that tracks.

But — rank. And Michael had mentioned something about a promotion, hadn't he?]

Where do... Architects, you said? — rank in the grand scheme of things?

[eudaimonikos]

There's different levels, but all Architects are at least middle management. I got promoted to senior staff, the day before my boss caught me smuggling humans and realized I'd been faking my reports for three hundred years - it was actually pretty funny, in hindsight.

[bibliophilicbells]

[Faking reports.

It's probably good that Michael can't see exactly how funny that is, to Aziraphale.]

Ah. I imagine your attempt with Crowley fell short?

[Crowley must've known, right away, that Michael isn't... like either of them, not really.

And even if not, Crowley is Crowley.]

[eudaimonikos]

I think things went okay, after we realized we were both threatening each other over the same thing.

[Michael doesn't feel bad for it, exactly; that's just demon talk. A little sheepish, perhaps, that he was so gung-ho when it wasn't needed.]

I never did tell him I don't work for Hell anymore. It's not - I don't just go around trusting other demons. Guess I could bring it up, though.

[bibliophilicbells]

You can trust him.

[Aziraphale takes Michael's point. He gets it. Generally, he's of the same mind - except in Crowley's case and, he guesses, Michael's.]

Take my word for it.

[eudaimonikos]

Yeah, alright.

[Michael was already inclined to lighten up on the matter, knowing that Crowley was Aziraphale's friend. That Crowley was like him, at least in the matter of turning his back on Hell.]

I've never even heard of another demon turning traitor back home. But I guess it's possible I wouldn't have - I know they were trying to keep my whole thing pretty quiet. Embarrassed a lot of higher-ups and all that.

[bibliophilicbells]

[#relatable]

A demon and an angel.

[It's an important correction to make.]

I never intended to, but — things happen, you know?

[eudaimonikos]

Oh, I don't know what angels get up to.

[Maybe some of them have gone rogue in the past. Though you have to wonder what happened with it, if so.]

It would be nice to think they would. In my world, they're still supposed to be good - care about humanity and all that. But their entire system is so inhumane... [He shrugs, invisibly because stones.] I don't know, maybe they're all just hypocrites. They probably are.

[bibliophilicbells]

In my world, all they want is war.

[So that'd be a yes. They are all hypocrites. Aziraphale is surprised by his own angry tone, by the ease with which he says what he says.]

— to prove themselves, once and for all, better than the demons, humanity be... damned. The world was supposed to end. They would've all — oh, I don't have to explain it to you, do I? [A pause.] What made you...? I mean, what changed your mind?

[eudaimonikos]

...our situations sound pretty different.

[Nobody wants a war, as far as he knows. What would that do? There's no love lost between angels and demons, but they're all still part of the same larger system; if the Good Place made war, they'd just end up stuck with all those imperfect humans they didn't want. And destroying the world - that'd just put them all out of work.]

I made friends with some humans. Or rather, they made friends with me - I didn't really set out to do it.

[bibliophilicbells]

So you... spent time on Earth, then?

[eudaimonikos]

N - well, yes. But that was later. I met them after they had all died. It was my first job as an Architect, and I was trying something experimental, so I just picked out four people to start with. Sort of a trial program.

[you know, for torture reasons]

[bibliophilicbells]

[You can almost hear some rustling in the background as Aziraphale settles in, as if he's expecting this to be Story Time.

It's too bad he doesn't have any cocoa. Or wine. Wine would be more apropos.

Bugger.]

Interesting. In Hell?

[eudaimonikos]

Mm-hmm.

[Yeah, okay, might as well start from the top.]

You said you don't have Architects, in your world? I don't know exactly how the angels do it, but for us, an Architect gets assigned batches of humans and crafts the form that their eternal torture will take. Lower-ranking demons get assigned out to Architects who require their particular skills. Basically a project management role, I guess.

Anyway, we've always just done physical torture - eyeball corkscrews, face spiders, stuff like that. But I'd always been...curious, about humans.

[It's easy, now, to look back and see that as a sign of things to come. But Michael's not sure it necessarily was. It was what made him break tradition to begin with, but if his plan had ever worked, he wouldn't have looked back.]

I wanted to try picking them apart psychologically. See what they'd do, how they'd react...how I could turn them against each other. Really get involved with them, not just move on to another set.

[bibliophilicbells]

[It's a very good thing this has no video component.

Which is to say, Aziraphale goes on a Face Journey.]

...and that backfired, I assume.

["Face spider"?

That is what he said, right?

WHAT THE FUCK IS A FACE SPIDER? Is it like a head frog?]

[eudaimonikos]

Constantly. On every conceivable level!

[It's weird, but a lot of his feelings about that now are just pride and admiration for Eleanor. God, she's good.]

[bibliophilicbells]

[Aziraphale thinks back to a little spiel of his that he'd delivered to Crowley, about how evil so reliably thwarts itself in the end.

But Michael needn't hear that, probably.

He smirks, but only to himself.]

And now you're a better person for it. Congratulations!

[eudaimonikos]

...that sounds very condescending, but I'm going to take it as a compliment.

[Deliberately, and because getting defensive over his own stupid plans he doesn't even like anymore would be kinda dumb.]

It needed to happen, anyway. Teaming up with humans was pretty much rock-bottom for me, from a demonic perspective.

[bibliophilicbells]

[Helpfully:] Teaming up with a demon, ditto ditto.

[It really needed to happen.]