Work Text:
There are times in life when people must know when not to let go.
Balloons are designed to teach small children this.
(Terry Pratchett)
Contrary to Crowley’s expectations, it was a nice day. It was Warlock’s fifth birthday, a pleasant but not excessively warm August afternoon, and she was performing her duties as his nanny by sitting in the grounds of the Dowling residence keeping watch over the boy and his friends.
The young Dark-Lord-to-be had been treated to a lavish birthday picnic featuring a bouncy castle, various games involving balls or water pistols, an assortment of other small children and rather a lot more sugar than was strictly advisable unless you thrived on chaos. Now it was late afternoon, and Crowley was watching as the last of the stragglers were collected by their parents or guardians and hauled off home to bed, screaming and sulking all the way.
The boy didn’t seem overly infernal so far, at least no more so than was normal for a five year old child. Crowley hoped it meant the plan was working, but she had a disconcerting sense of something being off. Over many long years in Hell’s service, Crowley had developed an unparalleled ability to detect wrongness so it could be avoided or exploited or both. Those finely-honed instincts were currently telling her that somewhere, somehow, in some currently undetectable way, something very important had gone well and truly pear-shaped. Aziraphale was convinced she was imagining it, and he told her so every time they met up to discuss their young charge’s meandering path between good and bad. He had better be right.
Warlock was currently having a fantastic time stomping birthday cake into the once-immaculate lawn. In one sticky hand, he held a string, which was attached to a helium balloon shaped like a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It had been acquired from a tired-looking man in a threadbare clown costume whose sole role at the event was to inflate and hand out animal-shaped balloons. There had been only one balloon shaped like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and Warlock had successfully fought off half a dozen other children to obtain it. Crowley fully intended to mention this to Aziraphale later, with only a modest amount of gloating, just in case it meant Hell was gaining the upper hand.
It would have to be later because the angel was not at the party, which did ensure he could not be tempted to perform any magic tricks, but was otherwise very worrying. Aziraphale was not in attendance because he had been summoned unexpectedly back to Heaven to deliver an in-person progress report. He had not been due to deliver one and no explanation had been provided. Crowley told herself it was probably just yet another thing Gabriel did to keep him off balance, one that she had been unaware of before they began spending so much continuous time together, but it was hard to suppress the fear that it was something worse.
Heaven couldn’t possibly have found out about the Arrangement, could they? The pair of them had successfully kept it secret right under the noses of both sides for nearly two thousand years without any particular difficulty, but this plan to raise the Antichrist involved working much more closely together, and under much greater scrutiny from their respective sides. The risk had gone up substantially.
What if they called him back because someone had become suspicious of their simultaneous presence in the Dowling household? What if someone had been spying on them and knew about their rendezvous? What if Heaven now knew about their attempt to derail the Great Plan? Had Aziraphale been called back on a pretence only to be bound and confined and sentenced for treason? What if they cast him out? Or worse, destroyed him completely?
That particular runaway train of thought was interrupted by a blood-curdling shriek. Crowley looked at Warlock in alarm, noticed his empty hands, and lifted her gaze skywards towards the now very small and rapidly shrinking dinosaur. She sighed, got to her feet, and strode over to the bereft child. “What have we learned?” she said firmly.
Warlock looked up at his nanny and made a few sniffling noises, which Crowley recognised not as a reaction in itself but as the little rumbles you got from a volcano right before a devastating eruption buried three villages. When he got going, Warlock could cry like it was the end of the world, which was appropriate enough but somewhat tiring.
“Fine,” Crowley sighed. “Let’s go and find you another balloon.”
“No! I want the dinosaur!”
“There are no more dinosaurs, Warlock. The dinosaurs are all gone. You’ll have to choose something else.”
“Waaant it! Nanny get my dinosaur! I want it back!”
Crowley sighed again. She should let the boy learn a valuable lesson about carelessness or overconfidence or the inevitability of loss and the inherent unfairness of the world, or something like that, but she wasn’t in the mood. She guided the child, now damp as well as sticky, back to the bench where she had been sitting, sat him down and gave him a hanky. Then she grabbed her umbrella from beside him, glanced around to make sure the coast was clear, opened it, held it over her head, and jumped.
One miraculous and highly implausible gust of wind later, Crowley was soaring into the London sky in hot pursuit of an airborne inflatable reptile, cheered on from below by Warlock (who had of course instantly flipped from inconsolable to delighted). The blessed thing would not stay in one place, which was very inconvenient of it. Crowley dodged terrified pigeons and sailed through low-level clouds, willing the balloon to at least keep clear of any flight corridors, and tried not to admit that this was actually quite fun. The air was bracing, the view was remarkable, and the single-minded pursuit of her target gave her a little respite from worrying about Aziraphale.
After several minutes of mucking about, she managed to get her hand around the string. “Gotcha!” she cried triumphantly to the empty air. She headed back to the Dowling house with the recaptured dinosaur in tow, did a very stylish celebratory loop-the-loop, then floated gently and primly back to the ground beside the now ecstatic little boy. She ordered Warlock to hold out his arm, then tied the end of the string around his wrist.
“There you go, my dear,” she said, folding the umbrella and taking the opportunity for a little Hellish influence. “Always be ruthless. Never let things escape from your grasp. And remember, if at first you don’t succeed, shout at your minions until you do.” Warlock didn’t hear a word – he was pulling at the string and watching the balloon bob up and down with a gleeful expression.
Crowley glanced back around the grounds, now empty of everything except post-party debris. Coming up the path was a familiar figure in a ridiculous old-fashioned gardener’s outfit that he would not be dissuaded from wearing no matter how much amusement it caused among the other household staff. He was surveying the condition of the lawn with a dismayed expression. Crowley smiled, and the knot in her stomach loosened a little. Aziraphale was fine. They were fine. There were only a few short years to go, but for now they were fine.
She took Warlock’s hand and tugged him and his dinosaur gently towards the house. “Come along dear, it’s time for bed.”