Chapter Text
Azira Fell was four years old when she first met Amber Crowley. They had been at a Sunday school lesson at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church and the date was December 24th, 1996 – and because the nuns who conducted the Sunday school lessons at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church were fastidious and firm believers in order and everything being in its proper place, the children were made to sit at small desks, built for two, in alphabetical order. That put Azira and Amber directly beside each other.
Azira Fell, like the nuns, was a fastidious child who believed in order and everything being in its proper place and, to her, that meant being in Sunday school on Sunday morning, every week, no matter what the date was, including but not limited to Halloween, birthdays, days when she had the sniffles, and even Christmas Eve. It was just how her Father, with a capital ‘F’, had raised her – partially because he was the preacher at Saint Joseph’s Catholic Church and expected his Azira to set a good example for the other children from the moment she came out of the womb.
Amber Crowley, unlike the nuns and her tablemate, believed that she should have been anywhere else.
“It’s Christmas Eeeeeeeeeeeve!” she whined, slumping down so low in her seat that it was due to nothing short of a miracle and sheer flexibility that she didn’t fall out of it entirely. Whipping her head around to look at the little girl next to her, her loose dark hair falling like a curtain in front of her face, she asked, “Don’t you know what that meeeeeeans? ”
“‘Course I know what that means, silly,” Azira had promptly responded as she smiled, the total opposite of Amber in her chair, sitting perfectly straight with her blonde curls in a pair of neat pigtails. “Christmas Eve’s the eve of baby Jesus’s birthday, so we have to go t’ church an-”
“Father Christmas is coming!” Amber exclaimed as if Azira hadn’t spoken at all, tossing her hands in the air before letting them flop back down like a pair of limp noodles at her side, slumping even lower into her chair. “Father Christmas is coming and I gotta make sure my list is finished and make cookies and put out the milk and get carrots for his reindeer and make sure my dog doesn’t eat the cookies and the milk and the carrots and I’ve gotta get my stocking hung up by the fire and make sure Mother remembers to put the fire out so Father Christmas doesn’t burn his bottom, and instead of getting everything done I’m here!”
Azira, her blue eyes wide, gaped at Amber like she’d lost her mind. What she was saying didn’t make any sense. Why was she so concerned?
“But that’s not what Christmas is about,” she tried to explain, pointing at the colouring page she was working diligently on of the baby Jesus in his manger with a lamb. “We celebrate Christmas because it’s when Jesus was born. Father Christmas isn’t real. He’s just a made up story that mummies and daddies tell to make children behave.”
Upon hearing that, Amber’s eyes widened. She had been given her name because of her eyes; from the moment she was born, they weren’t baby blue but a rather strange shade of brown that nearly resembled yellow. They faded as she grew into a shade resembling gold, but they were still peculiar.
“Father Christmas is so real!” she exclaimed, her cheeks flushing an angry shade of red. “He brings presents to all the good girls and boys and coal to all the bad ones, and he has a list of who’s been nice and who’s been naughty.”
“But that’s just not true,” Azira disagreed ever-so-patiently, setting her crayon down and pushing her little round glasses up on her nose before folding her hands in her lap. “Good girls and boys don’t need Father Christmas to be good. They’re good so they can go to Heaven someday to be with God and Jesus. Bad girls and boys go to Hell, an’ that’s why we gotta behave.”
Clamping her little jaw with an audible snap, Amber’s eyes flashed.
“Well, how d’you know that’s true?” she asked, sitting up marginally in her chair, and Azira blinked before responding plainly.
“Because my Father told me so.”
“Well, my Mother told me Father Christmas is real. Who says your dad’s right?”
Azira looked positively baffled. No one had ever posed such a question to her, the preacher’s daughter, before. Amber Crowley was new to the church, you see; it was wedged in a cozy part of London while Amber and her Mother (with a capital 'M') lived all the way over in Mayfair. But Amber’s Mother had wanted to make a Statement (with a capital ‘S’) because she always had a flair for the dramatic, and what would be more dramatic than joining the most prolific church for miles? Father Fell’s sermons were the talk of the Catholic community and his flock (supposedly) was the most pious. Truly Good people, with a capital ‘G’.
Amber Crowley’s Mother, Satana Crowley, was the CEO of a multi-million-dollar lingerie company called the Art of Temptation. Her business was seduction, and the foul-minded fantasies of men and women alike put bread and wine on the table – but she was bored. The same old people, according to all of the demographic statistics, were frequenting her stores and nearly no one from Father Fell’s area ever darkened the door of any of London’s many franchise locations. So, because Satana Crowley loved a good challenge, she decided to go straight to the source. What better way to sell lingerie than to plant the seeds of temptation herself?
Unfortunately for Amber, that meant that, for the first time in her four years of life, she had to get up early for church on Sunday mornings and go to Sunday school when she could be watching Golden Girls reruns on the sofa – and that included Christmas Eve.
“I…” Azira stammered, her blue eyes still wide, and a wicked little smile worked its way onto Amber’s lips as she used her hands, which were now gripping the sides of her plastic chair, to push herself up a bit taller.
“Your dad says Father Christmas isn’t real,” she hissed, “but my Mother says God and Jesus aren’t real.”
But, after a moment, the grin on her lips started to slip as a twinge of confusion settled in her belly. She’d always assumed her Mother was right about everything, and Nanny Ashtoreth had insisted the same. Now, however, she was faced with an entirely different ideology. This little girl with blonde pigtails felt the same way about God and Jesus that she did about Father Christmas. Puzzled, she asked, “…who’s right?”
Azira, who had always had unwavering faith in everything her Father preached, felt her faith waver for the first time in four years of church services and Sunday school lessons. Staring at this new girl, with messy dark hair and strange golden eyes, she admitted, “…I dunno.”
Blue eyes stared into gold, and vice versa, for a long moment before the blonde declared, “I’m Azira. Azira Fell.”
Sitting up (reasonably, but obviously not totally) straight, Amber held out a hand and said, “Call me Crowley.”
“Crowley? ” Azira asked, wrinkling her nose with confusion. That was a weird name. “But what’s your last name?”
“That is my last name.”
“Then what’s your Christian name?”
“My what?”
“Your first name. What’s your first name?”
It was Crowley’s turn to wrinkle her nose now, hissing[1], “Amber. It’s a ssssstupid name. She only called me that because my eyes are weird, and everybody who learns my name says, ‘Oh! It’s ‘caussssse of her eyesssss. Weird.’ So I don’t like it. Call me Crowley.”
Azira, who wore her heart on her sleeve, felt it go out to her tablemate. Offering up a smile, she bounced slightly in her chair, declaring, “I think you’ve got pretty eyes, Crowley.”
Crowley felt her cheeks turn red for the first time in her life over an emotion that wasn’t anger-related. Blinking several times, she slowly returned Azira’s smile, hesitantly stating, “You’ve… got pretty hair. It’s curly.”
“Why thank you, my dear!” Azira chirped in her happy little way that people always insisted meant she had an old soul (which her Father disliked immensely because old souls were tied to reincarnation myths, which are blasphemous).
Afterward, Azira let Crowley use her favourite blue crayon to finish colouring her picture of Mary and Joseph, and they were best friends from that moment onward.
As it would turn out, Father Fell and Satana Crowley were less than impressed by their daughters being inseparable. Father Fell didn’t want his precious little angel getting attached to such devil’s spawn, for he was certain that any daughter of Satana Crowley would inevitably tempt Azira into doing something sinful eventually; and Satana Crowley didn’t want her princess running about with a holier-than-thou little brat because she might get… ideas. The last thing that she needed was for her daughter to start pontificating to her about her many sins before she even hit primary school.
But, as the girls grew older and showed no inclination of growing apart, Satana began to see what she had originally perceived as a curse as an opportunity. What better place to meet Good people to tempt than PTA meetings at a Catholic primary school? Father Fell, as the years passed, saw an opportunity, as well; he saw little Crowley as a pet project. What could be more noble than trying to save the soul of Satana Crowley’s daughter? After all, it wasn’t the child’s fault that she was born into sin; we’re all born into sin. It was the job of Holy men like Father Fell to instruct the damned back onto the path of righteousness.
Azira and Crowley, on the other hand, didn’t give a hoot about their feuding parents and their not-so-secret agendas. They just liked spending time with each other. Sunday school lessons morphed into proper school lessons, and school lessons grew to add swimming lessons and skating lessons, and then there were birthday parties and garden parties and play dates – but never sleepovers. Father Fell wouldn’t let his daughter spend the night in the Devil’s Den any more than Satana would let her daughter spend the night in the Holy House of Righteousness.
And so it went, back and forth, for twelve years; Father Fell took Crowley under his wing and taught her hymns and Bible verses; to do unto others as you would have them do unto you; and how cleanliness is close to Godliness, and Satana used her new position in London's Catholic community to tempt a couple here and a single woman there, all while simultaneously plugging the Good Father’s daughter full of sweets and instilling in her a love for nice clothes. The results weren’t as profound as either would have liked; Crowley wasn’t sugar, spice, and everything nice and Azira wasn’t terribly naughty. They both fell… somewhere sort of in the middle. Crowley, unable to shake Father Fell’s voice in the back of her head, would find herself doing nice things for people “just because”, and Azira found that, despite her Father’s devout teachings and her own belief in God’s grace and behaving virtuously, she was just a little bit covetous.
But, above all else, Azira and Crowley were the best of friends. They walked to the same bus stop every morning, despite there being a route in each of their respective neighborhoods that would have been quicker; they sat together in nearly all of their classes at Our Lady of Edenic Rapture Catholic School; and they always, always ate lunch together in the school’s library. They’d eaten lunch there since their first day at the secondary school almost five years ago, mainly because Azira loved all of the books and Crowley just loved Azira’s company. She didn’t much care where they were.
Thus it was strange when, on a drizzly April afternoon in 2008, Crowley was late. She always sauntered into the library with her lunch around 12:13, giving her just enough time to change out of her gym clothes and get her lunch from her locker, and it was now 12:34. Picking at her bologna sandwich while flipping through a copy of The Importance of Being Earnest, Azira was so preoccupied with frequently looking up at the clock on the other side of the library that her inattentiveness resulted in her giving herself a paper cut.
Her soft yip of pain echoed in the quiet library and Azira blushed when one of the nuns glared at her from where she was reshelving books. She was subsequently so distracted by the shame that the nuns inspired in wafts just with a single glance that she didn’t notice when Crowley, sunglasses fixed firmly on her nose, finally wandered in. It took her dropping her messenger bag with a thump onto the floor beneath the table to get Azira’s attention, which caused a proper yelp of surprise, which caused another nun-glare, which caused more shame.
“Alright there, 'Zira?” Crowley asked, smirking and elevating an eyebrow as she peeked at Azira over the top of her black glasses. That was just the sort of person that Crowley was; she would adhere to the blouse-tie-vest-sweater-skirt-socks-sensible-shoes school uniform policy, but she’d find a way around it by slithering through the loopholes. There was nothing in the policy that said she couldn’t wear sunglasses indoors, and so she did. Every single day. Even when was raining like today which, in London, was quite often.
Taking a shaky breath to calm her nerves, Azira pushed her own (prescription) glasses up on her nose, nodding as Crowley sank into the seat at her left side where she’d always sat since they met on Christmas Eve in 1996.
“I’m fine, I just-”
“You’re bleeding,” Crowley cut her off, as was her tendency, taking Azira’s left hand delicately in hers and examining the damage done to her index finger.
Her cheeks flushing a bit deeper, as was her involuntary tendency whenever Crowley touched her lately, Azira stammered, “It’s nothing. A papercut.” Taking a breath, she added, “You are late.”
Smirking, Crowley brought Azira’s finger up to her lips and kissed it better before releasing her hand, her tongue darting out to lick away the drop of blood left behind on her lower lip (and God help me, Azira thought when her heart quickened at the sight).
“Got held up in the locker room. It’s no big deal,” Crowley offered by way of an explanation, reaching over to snag a chocolate chip cookie from the bag Azira had in her Hobbit lunchbox – and that’s when Azira noticed that Crowley’s Queen lunchbox was missing – and that she smelled like…
“Crowley, you weren’t. You didn’t! You promised me.”
Frowning pointedly, Azira’s blue eyes were blazing like Holy fire and Crowley groaned, rolling her eyes and taking a bite of her stolen cookie.
“Relax, will you? I did nothing.”
“Good.”
“Eve, on the other hand-”
“Crowley!”
“What? ” Crowley snapped in retort, huffing and shaking her head as she slumped in her seat. “Regardless of what you may think, just because she’s a prefect doesn’t mean she’s perfect. Quite the contrary, actually. She was the one who had the weed in her gym locker, and I may have mentioned that I knew how to make a bong out of an apple. And then I may have shown her how to do it. But I didn’t make her use it. That was her choice.”
“You’re going to get yourself into trouble. Big trouble,” Azira whispered angrily, anxiously looking around for the nun that had scorned her earlier for squeaking. If a squeak earned scorn, there was no telling what showing a prefect how to make an apple-bong would get.
“You worry too much,” Crowley countered, grinning as she finished off her cookie, reaching over to tuck Azira’s long blonde curls behind her ear.
Blushing again, now induced by frustration and sudden-Crowley-contact, Azira mumbled, “I worry about you.”
“Well, don’t,” Crowley said plainly, crossing her arms over her chest. With that she changed the subject, making a point of asking Azira what she was reading because Azira could never resist talking about a good book, no matter how annoyed or mad or sad she was. It was an incredibly useful tactic in a variety of scenarios.
But, as it would turn out, Azira had good reason to worry. Because, while Crowley may have been skilled at covering her tracks and not getting caught when she misbehaved, Eve wasn’t quite so clever. Eve thought it would be a good idea to find Adam, the other Year Ten prefect, and show him what Crowley had shown her. Then a nun caught the two of them using the apple-bong in the prefect’s lounge. They hadn’t even thought to open a window and the room was practically a hot box as a result; you could smell it throughout the entire floor. Adam and Eve, inexperienced as they were, weren’t exactly discreet.
The Headmaster, believing Adam and Eve to both be good students, had found it hard to believe that they would come up with an idea as wild as an apple-bong on their own. He’d demanded to know who told them about it. Eve, never good under pressure, cracked and told him everything. Crowley was pulled out of English class after lunch and taken down to the Headmaster’s office, where her Mother was waiting.
She’d been expelled[2].
Satana was furious. She didn’t care that Crowley knew how to make apple-bongs, or even that she smoked weed; why would she care about that? Satana Crowley was an advocate for recreational drug usage and truthfully wouldn’t have cared if her daughter had been caught with something stronger. No, what she was furious about was that her pool of Good people to tempt with her lingerie line had been cut off the second the pearly gates of Our Lady of Edenic Rapture Catholic School were slammed in her daughter’s face. Twelve years of carefully tempting devout Catholics had suddenly come to a grinding halt. So she punished Crowley in the worst way imaginable: she sent her to Hell -
- also known as Southside Secondary School, a school in Mayfair that was open to the public and which Crowley could barely pronounce without her old hiss bleeding through. Worse still, when Father Fell got the call from the Headmaster about Crowley’s expulsion, he forbid Azira from seeing her. He'd known, from the moment he set eyes on that little girl with her dark unkempt hair and unsettling eyes, that she would bring sin into his home. For all he knew, she’d already tempted Azira into all kinds of debaucheries and he would not have her lose her soul to that… that… that devil child.
He took her phone. He had the housekeeper turn Crowley away when she tried to visit the first time and then warned the gardener to stop her at the garden gate if she tried again. Slowly but surely, the girls grew apart. They went the rest of Year Ten without seeing each other, and then the entirety of Year Eleven. It wasn’t until Year Twelve that their paths would cross again, and in the most unlikely of places at that.
Because, in Year Twelve, Azira thought it would be a Good idea to join Our Lady of Edenic Rapture Catholic School’s competitive cheerleading squad. Her spirits, both school-related and personal, had been low as of late. Losing your best friend in the world will do that to you. So, she thought to herself, what better way to lift her spirits back up than with clever rally cries and a pair of pompoms? With knee-length skirts, sensible blue jumpers, and tight ponytails, her Father could take no issue with it.
That same year, Crowley joined Southside Secondary School’s competitive cheerleading squad because she “had nothing better to do” and “wanted to show off [her] rockin’ bod”. Not to mention, she’d seen plenty of American movies about cheerleading and it seemed like being a cheerleader gave you a free pass to be a bitch. That would make her life much easier, given she’d found as of late that being a bitch was the easiest way to keep your heartbreak and crippling loneliness well hidden. With short pleated skirts, red and black crop tops, and strong encouragement to wear matching red lipstick, Satana was thrilled with her daughter’s choice in an extracurricular activity.
Neither Azira nor Crowley anticipated that the Our Lady of Edenic Rapture Angels would be facing off with the Southside Secondary Demons on the very first day of their very first cheer-meet – and neither of them was quite sure, at first, after a year and a half apart, if they’re altogether happy about it.
[1] Amber Crowley has a speech impediment that manifests in her frequently hissing her S’s when she gets annoyed (which is quite often). Her Mother has had her in speech therapy for over a year. It hasn’t taken.
[2] So were Adam and Eve, but they don’t really matter.