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Across the tarmac, they looked at each other. Armageddon was not going to plan. Not the battle plans they’d been drawing up for their respective sides over the past 6,000 years, nor the Almighty’s Great Plan. They were here to deal with it.
And there, standing off to the side, were the problems. Two problems, to be specific. The Principality Aziraphale, who both Gabriel and Beelzebub knew was supposed to be leading his platoon, and the Demon Crowley.
Aziraphale fiddled with the ridiculous bowtie he insisted on wearing as the Demon Crowley bowed, elaborately, mockingly. “Lord Beelzebub. What an honour.”
Gabriel would’ve probably appreciated the sarcasm more had he not been glaring at Aziraphale.
Beelzebub spoke first. “Crowley. The traitor.”
“That’s not a nice word,” said Crowley. As if he was owed niceness. As if he was owed anything.
“All the other words I have for you are worse.” Beelzebub’s voice gained a sharp, buzzing quality. “Where’s the boy?”
At this Gabriel looked over. Crowley nodded at a human child with unruly brown hair in a blue jacket. Gabriel zeroed in on him and pointed in the way he was certain was authoritative. “That one. Adam Young.” He smiled disarmingly. “Hi.”
Beelzebub stayed at his side as he approached the Antichrist. “Young man,” he started, “Armageddon must… restart.” He kept smiling. “Right now."
Adam Young stared back, somewhat blankly, and did not restart Armageddon, so Gabriel continued. “A temporary inconvenience cannot get in the way of the greater good.” Fulfillment of the Great Plan, Heaven’s victory over Hell, and an eternity of goodness following it.
“As to what it stands in the way of, that has yet to be decided,” said Beelzebub pointedly. “But the battle must be decided now, boy. That izzz-” they caught themselves as the buzzing edge to their voice started to overtake it. “Your destiny. It is written. Now start the war .”
When Adam Young, the Antichrist, did speak, it was not to agree or apologize or say some grand, Antichrist-y thing to restart Armageddon. “You both want to end the world,” he asked, as if this were unfathomable, “just to see whose gang is best?”
Gabriel had to laugh. “Obviously. It’s the Great Plan!” The Antichrist wasn’t very clever. “It’s the entire reason for the creation of the Earth.”
“I’ve got this.” Beelzebub stepped deftly past. “Adam.” They smiled and leant down to talk to him face-to-face. Clearly appealing to the boy’s duty wasn’t working. Temptation would be better. This was the son of Satan, after all. “When all this is over, you’re going to get to rule the world. Don’t you want to rule the world?”
To their shock, Adam shook his head and refused. “It’s hard enough to think of things for Pepper and Wensley and Brian to do all the time so they don’t get bored.”
“Well you can’t just refuse to be who you are,” said Gabriel. “Your birth, your destiny, they’re part of the Great Plan!”
“Ahem.” The Principality Aziraphale spoke up. “Excuse me. You keep talking about the Great Plan.”
Beelzebub rolled their eyes. Gabriel held up a hand to stop the traitorous angel before he said something unforgivable. “Aziraphale, maybe you should just keep your mouth shut.”
“One thing I’m not clear on,” interrupted Aziraphale, “is that the Ineffable Plan?”
“The Great Plan!” Beelzebub whipped around angrily. He should know that, the damned interfering angel! “It is written. There shall be a world and it shall last for 6,000 years and end in fire and flame!”
“Yes, yes, that sounds like the Great Plan,” said Aziraphale. “Just wondering. Is that the Ineffable Plan as well?”
Beelzebub looked at Gabriel.
“Well, they’re the same thing!” he said.
Crowley slunk up behind his angel and the Antichrist. “Well, it’d be a pity if you thought you were doing what the Great Plan said, but you were actually going directly against God’s Ineffable Plan.”
Gabriel looked back at Beelzebub.
“I mean everyone knows the Great Plan,” continued Crowley, the traitor, “but the Ineffable Plan, it’s, well, it’s ineffable, isn’t it? By definition we can’t know it.”
“But it izzz… written,” said Beelzebub. The Great Plan couldn’t be wrong. Could it? They couldn’t be wrong. Could they?
“God does not play games with the universe,” said Gabriel, that hand he always waved around in front of him like a shield, and maybe he was shielding them, too.
“Where’ve you been?” asked Crowley.
“Can I just-?” Gabriel tapped Beelzebub on the shoulder and the two walked away a bit. He leaned down - why did he need to do that? They weren’t that short! He looked nervous. Archangel Gabriel was, by definition, never nervous. “I’m going to need to talk to... Head Office,” he said, pointing upwards. He hesitated for a moment, and then broke. “How I am supposed to get ten million angels to stand down from their war footing is - it doesn’t bear thinking about.”
“You should try to get ten million demons to put down their weapons and go back to work,” said Beelzebub.
Gabriel turned around, and they realized how close they’d been to him. “Well, at least we know whose fault it is!” He started walking away, so they kept pace. It wouldn’t do for Heaven’s representative to do anything Hell’s didn’t, after all.
“Young man, you were put on Earth for one reason and one reason only.” As they approached Aziraphale and Crowley, Gabriel shifted closer to Beelzebub. He must have known he couldn’t trust Aziraphale any more than Beelzebub trusted Crowley, that is to say, not at all. Clearly the Antichrist was a wildcard. Gabriel glared at Adam Young. “To end it! You’re a disobedient little brat and I hope someone tells your father!”
“Oh they will,” said Beelzebub. “And your father will not be pleased.”
They would tell him. And Satan would make this child do what he had been born to do. Armageddon would restart, Heaven and Hell would fight, all according to the Great Plan. It had been written.
Frustrated, Beelzebub emerged from the soil at Megiddo. Ten thousand demons all spoiling for a fight and so were they, if they were to be honest, and had they had one? No. No, they’d instead had to deliver the bad news (“Armageddon’s off”) and the as-good-as-Hell-gets-to-good news (“it’s Crowley’s fault, you lot all get to watch him die”). Satan couldn’t be arsed to even be there, and it had been his son refusing to start Armageddon!
And then, to add insult to injury, the very public execution of the traitor Crowley had not gone as planned. The (former?) demon was immune to Holy Water! He really had gone native. Everyone had seen, and they’d been forced to acknowledge they didn’t know the limits of his power, and that made him very, very dangerous. He was now on Earth, not to be bothered, and completely unpunished for his crimes against demonkind.
Lightning crackled from the clear sky. They turned around to see, for the second time in as many days, Archangel Gabriel in the flesh. Of course. Lightning was his preferred travel method, the git.
He looked as worn down and disturbed as they felt, but he'd changed and was wearing a snappy grey suit, annoyingly clean and free of the grime of battle.
He narrowed his eyes when he saw them. “Beelzebub,” he said, and he sounded surprised. “I don’t suppose you’ve got another Antichrist.”
“Don’t be absurd,” they said. “Of course we don’t have another Antichrist! It - it was written. One Antichrist.”
“One Antichrist, one Armageddon,” agreed Gabriel.
“A Great War,” said Beelzebub, almost wistfully.
“Smiting demons,” said Gabriel, “the victory of Heaven over Hell.”
“Or of Hell over Heaven.”
Gabriel frowned, brows furrowing over purple eyes. “The greater good would persevere.”
“You don’t know that.”
He cast those purple eyes over them. He raised a hand.
“Oh, you’re not going to smite-”
They never finished their sentence. They were in Hell, bodiless. That angel. Smitey angel. They’d been smitten.
They swept over to the Corporation Department desk. “I’m going to need a new corporation - just hand over the bloody paperwork.” At the open-mouthed stare of the demon behind the desk, they waved a metaphysical hand. “Archangel. Smitten.”
“Here you go, Lord Beelzebub,” said the demon. “Your corporation will be ready for you - um - soon as we can!”
“Oh, make it a new one this time,” they said.
The desk demon brightened. “Would you be interested in looking at some options?”
They hadn’t changed their corporation in 6,000 years. They could say no, go to their office, deal with the masses of complaining demons demanding to know why they weren’t fighting. They thought of Gabriel in his ridiculous suit saying “one Armageddon.”
“Go on,” they said.
Demons in the crowd were muttering. “Beelzebub! Smitten!” They ignored them and followed the desk demon back into a string of rooms full of sample corporations arranged much like mannequins. Many were the standard humanoid, but there were some that were much more like amorphous blobs and others that were the sorts of horrors only found in the margins of old manuscripts and maps of unexplored foreign lands.
They went with darker skin this time. The same black hair, unkempt by design, straggly bits like trailing antennae. Brown eyes instead of piercing blue. Ever so slightly shorter but not different enough they’d have to change their clothes. They had an old mirror in their office, which they stood in front of once they were settled in the new corporation. The mirror was cracked and grimy, as all things in Hell were, but they could see well enough how they looked. Their flies swarmed around their head, some landing on the fresh sores erupting on their new face. They were the Grand Duke of Hell. They weren’t Gabriel, with his tailored suits and purple eyes and mocking smile.
Gabriel. They ought to meet. Have a civilized discussion to resolve things, Armageddon and all that, if they weren’t to be resolved in war. Beelzebub could go to Heaven, the Disposable Demon had delivered Hellfire there, and wouldn’t stop enthusing about the view, but the idea of being surrounded by holier-than-thou angels sat like a pit in their stomach. They could ask Gabriel to come to Hell, but…
They ran their hand over their new face, over the boils already emerging and bursting, their skin red and peeling away, the way it always did when they were in Hell.
Gabriel didn’t belong down in Hell. The meeting ought to be on neutral ground. Earth. And they knew just the place.
They scribbled a note with an address.
Beelzebub could see Gabriel just inside, wearing another one of his stupid tailored grey suits. They glanced at their own reflection in the window. No boils, no rotting flesh. Their eyeliner was even. Their uniform was neat.
Here went nothing.
The bell clanged as they opened the door.
He looked up as they approached the table he was at and sat down. “You can’t sit there,” he said. “I’m waiting for someone.”
“You’re waiting for me.” They were wearing the same uniform! Did he really not recognize them at all? Not recognize their demonic essence, at least?
But he looked at them as if they were wrong, and said “I don’t think so.”
They rolled their eyes. “New face.”
He frowned.
So they had to explain. Fine. “I had the old one for 6,000 years, I just thought it was time for a change.” It had had nothing to do with him. There was no reason it would. They didn’t care about him.
But still he looked confused. “I don’t know who you are.”
“Come on, it’s me!” This was getting old. “Beelzebub? Lord of the Flies?”
He made a ridiculous face. “Watch,” they said, and spat a fly out towards him. He looked at it as though this took intense concentration. Ridiculous angel.
“Why did you want to meet me here?” he asked. At least he’d moved on from the identity question.
“Well, if we’re going to have background talks, they can’t be in either of our home territories,” Beelzebub explained. It was true. And they really couldn’t imagine Gabriel in Hell at all.
“And what do we need to discuss?” he asked. He was clueless.
“Arma-bloody-geddon,” they said, unhappy with the memory. “That was a complete and utter pain in the arse.”
“I know, but we are ready for round two,” he said, and there was the smug git they remembered meeting at Megiddo.
“As are we,” they said quickly. “Utterly ready. Armageddon here we come.”
“Arma-bloody-geddon,” he said in his American accent, struggling to get the sounds out. Why, out of all the accents he could’ve used, he chose that one, they didn’t know. “Arma-bloody-geddon,” he said again, and it sounded silly like that. He smiled and laughed. He had a nice smile when he meant it. Of course he did, he was an angel. It was probably required. “Well, you lost,” he said.
“So did you.”
“No, we didn’t.”
“Well, you didn’t win,” they said.
“Tell me about it.” He leant towards them. “Everyone in Heaven is all like ‘well you’re the commander in chief, can’t you just make the war happen anyway?’ Like I make the rules.”
Something inside Beelzebub was warm. “That’s exactly what my lot said.”
“Well, it’s good to know there’s someone who understands,” said Gabriel, and then his warm genuine smile was for them. “Thank you.”
They wanted to hug him, except they didn’t really because that would be very undemonic.
“It’s a pity we’ll never speak again,” said Gabriel, before they both left.
They didn’t realize until much later that they hadn’t actually discussed what to do next.
Gabriel sent the second note. He suggested they meet in a park, one he apparently knew to be where all covert operations on Earth happen. Reading this, Beelzebub wasn’t sure he’d got it quite right, but they’d humour him. They were already looking forward to the meeting.
He wore a grey sweatsuit, and was jogging when they found him. He wasn’t sweating, they doubted he bothered with inconvenient human things like sweat, but all the same they looked at his jawline and wondered what it might be like to lick it.
He didn’t stop, so they joined him. “You’re not supposed to jog in a suit,” he said.
“This is what I wear,” they said, adjusting their cuffs.
They could feel him looking them up and down with those purple eyes. “It suits you,” he said, and then laughed at his own joke. “Get it? Suits you!”
They rolled their eyes. “So. Business.”
“Right, business. We’re more or less going back to how we were, until we can figure out the next Armageddon.”
The next one? Gabriel expected Hell to come up with another Antichrist? They hadn’t spoken to Satan since they’d delivered the bad news. They weren’t sure anyone had even seen him. Still, it wouldn’t do to let on their uncertainty. “Of course,” they said. “The next Armageddon. Armageddon 2.0. We’re still waiting to hear back from… the boss.”
“Tell me when you work out the logistics,” he said.
“I’ll send a note.”
They jogged in silence for a moment. Then Gabriel said “why don’t you just call me?”
“Because I don’t have your number,” they said.
“Oh.” He sounded genuinely surprised. “Well I’ll give it to you then.”
They retrieved their new - well, it was new compared to the rest of the technology they used - phone from their pocket and passed it to him. He stopped jogging under the shade of a tree and typed for a bit. When he passed their phone back, it had a new contact. They’d wondered if he might use his full title, because he was vain that way, but he’d called himself simply Gabriel.
“Great,” they said, deadpan, putting their phone away.
“Wait,” said Gabriel, “text me so I have yours.”
They fished their phone back out of their pocket and sent a brief message. A very brief message.
He got his own phone out - it was almost clear, shining with some unearthly light, and they looked away from it when it started burning their eyes - and smiled. They looked at his smile, because it was bright and didn’t burn their eyes.
“A fly emoji? Really?”
They shrugged minutely. “Now you have it.”
Satan didn’t reemerge from wherever he was sulking. Life in Hell fell, more or less, back into the routine it had developed over 6,000 years of existence except without the ticking clock over everyone’s heads reminding them it would end with a glorious war. Demons were disappointed, but rumour had spread that there would be another go at Armageddon eventually. Beelzebub assumed it was Dagon’s rumour. Dagon had her finger on the pulse of Hell, and generally liked to know everything that was going on. She was also currently lounging on a long-forgotten beanbag chair in the corner of Beelzebub’s office.
Beelzebub’s phone buzzed. They scowled at it. Who would be texting them? Dagon was the only demon they texted with with any regularity, and they rarely called. They flipped it over and looked at the cracked screen in case it was important.
It was Gabriel. Any news? he was asking.
They responded. No.
“Who’s that?” asked Dagon.
“No one important,” said Beelzebub.
Their phone buzzed again. Gabriel again. Do you have an idea when there might be any?
Dagon was smirking. Beelzebub directed their scowl at her as they tapped out another reply to Gabriel: no. v busy. back to having to sign off on everything.
His next text came almost instantly: Me too! I was looking forward to things being calmer after the world ended.
“No one important, huh?” asked Dagon.
“None of your business,” said Beelzebub.
Call? They asked Gabriel. They could always kick Dagon out to take it.
Sorry, he texted back, I can’t right now. In a board meeting.
Gabriel was texting them while in a board meeting? That was delicious. Their chest felt odd. He was choosing to pay attention to them instead of the meeting he was in, with whoever Gabriel had board meetings with. The other archangels, they presumed. That silly angel.
“You’re smiling at your phone,” Dagon observed. “What is it?”
“Temptation effectiveness is up this quarter,” Beelzebub lied.
“Right,” said Dagon. “And if I go and check the records, I’ll find an increase significant enough to make you smile? Cause if I’m not mistaken, you look pretty smitten.”
“Go and check, if you want,” said Beelzebub.
Dagon shrugged. “Don’t need to. I believe you.”
Gabriel called later that day. Beelzebub answered, flicking Dagon on the shoulder and indicating the door. The Lord of the Files left, her eyes shining suspiciously.
“Uriel wanted the next Antichrist in the next decade,” said Gabriel over the phone, “Michael got so snippy! She said it wouldn’t be possible because he has to be eleven, and Uriel said eleven years counts as the next decade because it’s so close, I thought they would start duelling!”
“Twelve years,” Beelzebub corrected. “It would take twelve years if we started now.”
“But Adam Young was eleven,” said Gabriel.
“Growing the infant takes most of a year,” explained Beelzebub. “So the whole process takes almost twelve years.”
“Oh,” said Gabriel. “Well. Now I know something they don’t! Is it born the human way?”
“I-” Beelzebub thought back to eleven years ago. “I don’t remember being there for that part. I put the baby in a basket and told two of the Dukes to take it to Crowley.”
“So I suppose you weren’t the one to pull out one of Satan’s ribs,” said Gabriel.
Beelzebub blinked in confusion. “Excuse me?”
“You weren’t the one to pull out one of Satan’s ribs,” repeated Gabriel.
What was the silly angel on about? “No, I heard you,” they said, “I… I don’t understand. What have ribs got to do with it?”
“That’s how birth works,” Gabriel explained proudly. “You pull out a rib, and then boom! Baby.”
“That is… not how birth works,” said Beelzebub. “That doesn’t sound right at all.”
“It is,” said Gabriel. “I’ve seen it happen personally. Have you?”
“No, I’ve never seen it myself,” they admitted. “Maybe you’re right.”
From then on, they made calling a habit. Gabriel would tell them about his day, and Beelzebub would tell him about theirs. It was… relaxing, if they dared admit it. And he kept texting, mostly things like late for our call today, lots of meetings and can you believe this angel has written the date wrong ten times so I can’t approve any of this , and then once, can we meet in-person? It’s a sensitive matter.
Sure, they replied. I’ll send an address if that’s okay.
It was a bar they knew, one they’d been to before to start a fight. They were there first this time, enjoying the music. Everyday.
“I have a proposal to make,” said Gabriel as he walked in. “Instead of Armageddon, how about no Armageddon?”
They laced their fingers together. That would go against… well, everything. But… “An interesting proposal,” they said. That meant no war. No war against Gabriel. “No Armageddon. They won’t like that, though. Most of my demons live for Armageddon. If you can call that living.”
“Well, my angels too, but you can’t always get what you… live for,” said Gabriel. His voice was the same as it was over the phone but being in his presence was different. His elbow was on the table and they could smell him. Ozone and clean fabric, the scent of angel. Or at least, the scent of Gabriel.
No Armageddon. No war against him.
“Advantages to no Armageddon?”
“We keep the status quo static, and uh… quoey.”
He was so… so silly. They wanted to smile. Instead, they leaned in. “No one could ever know, of course.”
“Of course,” he said. “A deal?”
His eyes were so incredibly purple. They were… they were pretty. They hummed and nodded.
Gabriel looked around. During their phone conversations, they’d both started sharing bits of more personal information, so surely it wasn’t unreasonable to do so here? “I like this song,” they said, looking at the jukebox.
“Song?” He sounded confused.
They looked back at him. “The music that’s playing now.”
“What music?”
Seriously? “The noise.”
“That’s music?” Gabriel chuckled. Beelzebub was sure they were smiling now. He was endearing.
“I like it. Contains information in a tuneful way.” Which was the best way, in their opinion. And the song was right. “Every day something is getting closer.” Until their conversation, they’d assumed the something was Armageddon, but it could just as well be something else.
“Then I also like it,” said Gabriel. They listened to the end of the song together. As Gabriel nodded his head to the beat, they wondered if he could dance. Angels didn’t dance, they knew that, but Gabriel could surely learn.
“So,” they said, “agreement concluded. No need to ever meet again, is there?”
Unless… unless one of them suggested otherwise.
“None whatsoever,” he replied, and his voice was less sure than usual but maybe that was just the rush of blood in their ears, blood they didn’t need to have but was there anyway, disappointed, ashamed. They left without another word.
He called the next evening. “I’ve been thinking,” he said. “About never meeting again.”
They’d been miserable all day. “I don’t want that,” they said, the same time he did. “You understand me more than… anyone here.”
“That’s exactly how I feel,” he said. “It’s nice. Listen. I’ve got something I want to show you. Can you meet me in Edinburgh?”