Good omens, the lost angel, chap 1.

So, when a Neil dropped the hint that ss2 would involve someone who lost their memory, for some reason I thought of Gabriel.

After the almost Armageddon, Aziraphale and Crowley set up a cottage somewhere outside the city and they decided to go to LA for a vacation (mostly because Crowley got bored of the simple and peaceful life in the countryside and the garden work).

And they ran into Gabriel.

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Made some gifsets for those who wanted to see them all in one post! These are all available as prints in my inprnt too (link here), feel free to check them out if you wanna have them!

WHICH GOOD OMENS CHARACTER ARE YOU?? hi guys i made another quiz

You guys know the part where Sandalphon says “Something smells evil” and we all know he’s smelling Crowley. Is that something that only Sandalphon can do? Is he like the blood hound if the angels or something?

I’m asking because during the trials surly the angels should be able to smell the evil on Aziraphale, and the demons smell the good on Crowley? Or do the angels and demons just assume that those two hang around each other so much that they smell like each other?

At a guess? They wore lots of cologne and hoped.

I mean, Crowley is in that book shop a LOT and he’d been hanging out in that very spot all night. And only Sandalphon could kind of sense him and thought it might be the books. This suggests that though the “evil” (whatever it is) is distinctive, it’s not strong.

Plus, since they are wearing each other’s bodies, they might each be carrying the lingering scent of the other. Smelling like a mix. Heaven and Hell make their own assumptions, of course. A close inspection might reveal that the wrong scent is the dominant one, though, especially after Aziraphale gets out of the tub.

So whatever cologne Crowley has, they both douse themselves in it, thick as they can. Maybe the others can still smell something but it’s clouded and unclear.

(Also — there’s a chance angels and demons can sort of sense each other’s auras or whatever. The fact that at both Noah’s Ark and the sushi restaurant Aziraphale seems unable to tell if he’s sensing an angel or a demon suggests the distinction is small, or unnoticeable.)

Some writers suggest that the smell is sulfur or brimstone, which poses a problem if those writers are also shipping it, because sulfur stinks. It’s not the kind of stink you can pass off as assertively sexy, like sweat or tobacco. If Pterry were still with us, he might gleefully mess with the fandom by asserting that the smell of evil is sulfur, which means that for all his Bowie-esque sex appeal and expensive watches, Crowley smells like a bathroom that somebody just wrecked.

Since I don’t have a strong sense of smell, I googled it early on and found that while hydrogen sulfide smells like rotten eggs, pure sulfur is compared to burnt out matches or the air after a lighting strike. (I’m taking it on faith that those don’t smell like farts because I legit can’t tell.)

So this kind of evolved in my writing to the following system:

This has become this headcanon that is really clear and specific to me, yet I can’t seem to convey it at all in my writing. Very frustrating, I can tell you!

(Fortunately, it’s not really a plot-relevant detail, just a world-building one.)

I can at least tell you one thing: some demons do genuinely smell bad, but Crowley either doesn't or masks it very well. How do we know?

Warlock straight up tells us.

He is adamant that Hastur "smells like poo".

When Hastur seems upset by this, Crowley gives him a look that says 'well, you do smell like poo; he wasn't wrong.'

But Crowley, despite being surrounded by a horde of eleven year-old menaces, doesn't get so much as a sneer. You think those little hellions wouldn't have mentioned they could smell poop while that dumb magician was performing? Or after?

From the original point, maybe Sandalphon does smell evil when (Crowley) Azirpahale enters Heaven at the end, but he just sees it as a confirmation that this angel is Bad and Deserves This

It is also of note that the dialogue in the bookshop’s back room suggests Sandalphon hasn’t seen Aziraphale (or at least.... hasn’t seen Aziraphale ON EARTH, and/or possibly Sandalphon hasn’t BEEN on Earth) since Sodom and Gomorrah times. It’s possible that the angels Aziraphale is used to interacting with (or at least, the ones who visit Earth more often) have gotten USED to the smell of “evil.” If Aziraphale is able to pass off the scent as “the Jeffrey archer books” then it stands to reason that humans, and/or things humans make or do, can smell like evil.

So if you are, say, Gabriel and used to having Aziraphale report to you stinking of human things, and when you visit London you’re used to the general low-level cloud of stinky evil, I think maybe you become a little conditioned to it, or at least dismissive of it. You know it’s going to smell a certain way so you stop noticing, kind of like how when you get sprayed by a skunk, your nose gives up telling you it smells skunk because that’s exhausting, or the way people with grandfather clocks dinging every quarter hour stop noticing its song. BUT if you are, say, Sandalphon and you haven’t been around in ages and ages, and your boss says “come down and help me with a thing” and you get there and it STINKS, you’re going to notice it, and you might wonder why no one ELSE notices it.

Thirdly, we already know that Aziraphale wears cologne, took a recommendation from his barber at least. And it doesn’t seem unusual to either of them that Crowley can smell him from several feet away, which suggests that the scent is stronger than the average human would smell (for example, my co-worker right now is sitting about as far from me as Aziraphale was from Crowley, and I cannot smell him at all). This suggests that perhaps angels ALSO have a scent (perhaps of good). It also suggests that there’s a better chance Crowley does NOT wear an extra scent, or at least not a strong one, if he’s able to smell Aziraphale still (although, it could be argued that he’s “used” to it the way you get used to skunk smell once you’ve been around it). My own headcanon is that Crowley would not wear an extra smell because THAT (a scent unique to or regularly used by him) would very easily and distinctly link him to Aziraphale if Aziraphale ever got it on him by being too close, and Crowley would, by my reckoning, not want to risk that.

Gabriel’s lack of concern over the scent of “Evil” in the bookshop also may suggest that Aziraphale is not be the only earth-side angel to smell like this, which may be a part of the reason he and Crowley got away with everything they got away with for so long. If there’s not much difference between “demon evil” and “human evil” scents, then Aziraphale may actually be seen as successful the more he smells like it; passing off “I have been doing work against evil, see, I’ve been so close to it that I smell like it.” According to the script, Gabriel believes Aziraphale had done a decent job to start with, but also the reason Crowley’s scheme to keep Aziraphale around succeeds is only because Gabriel must believe it’s possible for Aziraphale to be doing that kind of a good job. On some level, Gabriel believes Aziraphale is doing his job by thwarting evil- and through necessity, interacting with it enough to smell like it.

Or, quite possibly, Sandalphon who rarely ever goes to earth stepped in the bookshop that was maintained to Aziraphale’s ‘go-away-customer’ specifications and smelled...years of dust, old parchment, bits of rotting floorboard, congealed cocoa, glue, generation of rats hiding in a nest (where they are promptly ignored as long as they don’t ruin the books) and that basement smell and thought ‘anything that smells this bad must be evil’.

In the early 1900s Aziraphale is sent to Egypt to seal a demonic curse that humans have set loose in their exploration of ancient tombs. But demonic curses are nothing to play around with... Crowley better tag along just in case.

Things I adore about this pic:

Single big doodle dump and more comments on my DA

Part 2/???…idk how many parts but one part was just not enough.

And I think Happy Snek is kind of a mood™ too.

I’ve tried to keep each portrait more genderly ambiguous this time~

The bottom left one is special because it has been inspired by the picture of the first woman to wear pants in public ! She was forced to go into hiding after the ‘’incident’’… Crowley would have had none of it and would have probably just snek-spreaded wider.

Single big doodle dump and comments on my DA

Guess my Good Omens collection hasn’t yet finished growing…

I wish I had 6k years so I’d try all of those

Demon Aziraphale chops off his fingers.

⚠️TW: GORE AND SELF-HARM⚠️

The one thing they don't tell you about falling, is it comes with the compulsion to destroy.

The one thing Crowley didn't warn Aziraphale about was that sometimes the thing you crave destroying is yourself.

It's been three days since the fall, and Aziraphale hasn't found the strength to change his name. He cannot bear to spread his scorched, ruined wings. The wings that had been broken by Gabriel before Aziraphale was thrown from heaven.

Adding insult to injury, Aziraphale thought bitterly as he stumbled into the kitchen. In the days since the fall, Crowley had been tending to Aziraphale, and suddenly Aziraphale understood why the redhead acted as if he felt guilty whenever Aziraphale tried to care for him. Aziraphale now felt that same guilt.

I'm a failure. I don't deserve love or mercy. Don't touch me. Don't touch me.

It nauseated him to let Crowley tend to him, but for a few days he'd been too weak to stop him. Aziraphale knew that Crowley just wanted to help, just wanted him to go back to normal, but he didn't know what normal was anymore.

Hearing giggling from outside, Aziraphale curiously looked out the window.

A child sat on the sidewalk, playing one of those children's game that seemed far too dark for children. This particular game involved the child rapidly stabbing a pencil between their outstretched fingers, gradually increasing speed along with a song.

"I have all my fingers, the knife goes chop chop chop..."

Aziraphale watched, biting his tongue. He didn't realize, until he tasted blood in his mouth, what it was that he craved. A vision flashed through his mind of the child playing the same game, but with a real knife.

His hands began to move on their own. Though the movement was involuntary, Aziraphale didn't care to stop it. Into the drawer. Closed around the handle. Brought it up.

He needed to bleed.

He craved it.

He. Desired. It.

He let the knife fall.

Chop, chop, chop...

The sight of the blood, and the severed appendages, filled Aziraphale with a sickening sense of glee. He raised the heavy cleaver again, laughing like a madman. Down and down and down, he continued, chopping off the two remaining fingers, and then chunks of his hand. And then what was left of the hand. And then parts of his arm.

And...

And...

A... n... d..

Aziraphale froze, feeling dizzy and sick to his stomach, completely disgusted by the accompanying sense of satisfaction.

"Oh... oh my... what... what have I done...?"

He'd barely said the words when he hit the ground, and everything went black.

The next thing Aziraphale was aware of was something soft, a horrible ache in his arm, and something holding the opposite hand.

The... remaining hand...

He shot awake, startled by the sudden memory. "What the hell have I done?!"

Crowley jumped, startled. "Zira! Zira, calm down. You need to stay calm, okay? You're hurt really bad..."

Aziraphale looked down at his heavily bandaged arm. Or rather, what was left of it. "I... I did this..."

Crowley looked devastated. "I know... I'm so sorry... I shouldn't have left you alone so soon after you fell... I... I shouldn't have..."

"You wouldn't have been able to stop me," Aziraphale mumbled with grim certainty. "I would have hurt you..."

Crowley sighed. "You've been out for almost a whole day. I can't heal something like that, so I had to take you to a human hospital, but I brought you home as soon as I was sure you'd be alright..."

Aziraphale wasn't listening. In just a few days, he'd had his wings broken, fallen from heaven, cut off his own hand, and apparently completely lost his mind.

I really am a failure, he thought. I'm worthless.

I don't deserve love, or mercy.

He slowly pulled his hand free of Crowley's, despair gathering in his eyes.

"Don't touch me."

I, I'm so happy someone took the time to write about this concept.

What about a bit of follow-up, because I can’t leave this like that?

“Don’t touch me.”

“Azirap..” Crowley swayed closer, but jumped away when Aziraphale’s face was suddenly right there, full of teeth and furious.

“No! Don’t call me that. Not that, not...” The fury left, leaving him despondent and fighting off the urge to cry. To wail and beg and plead and swat away any dignity in exchange for his wings becoming white again. Anything. Anything to go back. “Leave me. Do you hear me? Go away. I don’t deserve...”

“Don’t deserve what,” Crowley spat the words like a curse. “You don’t deserve what!?”

“Nothing! Anything! I don’t deserve this, you...” Aziraphale whimpered when his gaze fell on his mutilated hand.” I don’t deserve help.”

“Huh, funny that. So, tell me...why did you stick with me for the last six millenia?”

Aziraphale shook his head, his eyes finding Crowley’s face. Pained, taunt. Grieved. He didn’t understand. He didn’t know where it was going.

He watched Crowley take a dish towel that just happen to materialize on the counter and then slide on one knee, wrapping it tightly around soaked bandage. He bristled, tried to move, but this time Crowley wasn’t letting go, his jaw growing tighter, like he kept grinding his teeth.

“If you, you, the best angel I’ve ever known, the best person I’ve ever met, do not deserve help...then why did you keep me around, huh? For fun? For better score in heaven? To feel better about yourself, maybe?”

“Crowley...”

“If being...if being a demon makes you worthless and...and undeserving...and...waste. If that makes you...nothing, then why,” Crowley looked up, his golden eyes too bright and his pupils barely visible slits and Aziraphale pushed his hand to his mouth to still a sob.” then why you love me? Why you loved me before? Why this Fall would change anything? I’m still demon. I always was. Always will be. And I loved you since Eden...so why do you think that...that Gabriel. That scum. That him, throwing you out would change who you are? It’s not you who is wrong, who is cruel and unworthy. It’s him.”

Crowley put his forehead on Aziraphale’s hip. The air filled with soft heartwrenching sobs as plump fingers found mess of dark red curls.

“Let me take you to the hospital, my angel.”  

“I’m not...I’m not...”

“You are always one to me. Please.”

“Yes.”

“Yeah?”

“Thank you.”

Love you.

“Always.”

Prince of Omens part 6

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Voice of God: Though I may have given Aziraphale a small push back over the line between life and death I cannot take all of the credit for his revival. Luckily for my principality, there just so happened to be a wily demon who was willing to lend the angel a hand.

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