A/N: SO. QUANTUM WITCH HAS GONE ABOVE AND BEYOND "AWESOME BETA" AND HAS GONE INTO SOME SORT OF UBERPLACE. SHE DREW A PICTURE. SEEEEEEEEE: http: // quantum-witch. livejournal. com / 121733 .html ! Z0mg. Inner Aziraphale is PERFECT. Now I'm drawing pictures. Since you don't want me to do that, you should draw pictures and send them to me or something awesome. I'm easy to please. Her picture was lovely, but stick figures will make my day. Okay, done rambling about that.

Also, thanks to Keeper of Tomes for correcting the name of Famine's corporation so that it actually means "Food" in Chinese :) And thanks to Purplefluffychainsaw for helping to correct my British!

As per usual, thanks to my betas Quantum Witch (*glomp* and continued well wishes in your fight against the plague) and Foxxfire5 (don't worry, I still heart you even if you don't draw pictures XD), you for reading, and you should review 'cause reviews make the world go 'round. Or my world at least.

War was actually starting to get tired, an absolutely unique sensation to her. She decided to ignore it and kept on fighting.

"You know, it's been so long since we've been anywhere together, I feel like we're wasting the time we have left! Oh, I know, we ought to play a game! Okay, I'll start - I spy with my little eye something beginning with-"

"SHUT UP RAPHAEL."

Crowley dragged Aziraphale out of the Young household, bypassing the enraptured Brian and the twins. Aziraphale, taking the book with him, insisted they make a stop by the Device-Pulsifer home before leaving Lower Tadfield; he wanted to say goodbye to Anathema. However, she was asleep, so he merely left the book between the locked front door and the unlocked screen door.

"You know, it only just occurred to me that I don't know where we could possibly go," Crowley admitted. "Now that I don't have to worry about you getting killed, do you have any place you want to visit before the world ends? Might I suggest something tropical?"

"Well, I suppose that now is as good a time as any to tell you what I found out from the book," the angel replied as he and his counterpart walked to the Bentley, "It's simple, really. It will take Heaven and Hell coming together, banding together, to close the two gates. Once the gates are closed, everyone will be sucked back to their respective dimensions, and this whole mess will cease to be! At least, that's what I assume I read said. You know how these things are. Agnes was hard enough to understand as she was, but it was like she was run through a filter of incompetence."

"That whole bit about stopping the end of the world sounds perfectly simple," Crowley drawled, "given how easy it will be to convince both sides to give up. You know, both Lucifer and God are so easy to manipulate and have both shown themselves to be perfectly reasonable. Angel, do you ever think before you talk?"

"It's my fault this is happening," the angel replied frigidly.

"It is not," Crowley scoffed. "If it's anyone's fault, it's mine. I even got a Commendation for it."

"You got one for the Inquisition and you had nothing to do with that."

"So sometimes they make mistakes, but-"

"If I recall correctly, you also got one for the invention of sun bathing, which was absolutely ridiculous."

"It causes skin cancer."

"You did not invent sun bathing!"

"Sure I did! I was out soaking up the sun before humans even knew what the big ball of fire in the sky was!"

"Grr – that's all beside the point. The point is-"

"I bet you can't think of anything else," Crowley interrupted.

Aziraphale glared. "High School Musical 2."

Crowley glanced around as if looking for an escape route. Finally he admitted, "And how, exactly, was I supposed to resist taking credit for that? I mean, I know I'm supposed to dish out the temptation but sometimes even I can't resist…"

The angel looked hurt as he responded, "You should have resisted because you had nothing to do with it! You know full well that only humans could have taken the perfectly wonderful moral of the first movie – that we shouldn't let our roles define us – and somehow make a sequel whose moral was you should give up your dreams in the honor of friends who are too selfish to let you achieve greatness and whom, if we're honest with each other, you will likely lose contact with after high school anyhow! Even you on your best – er, worst – day couldn't have managed to do that!"

"Angel," he said soothingly as the two made it back to the car, "I'm sure no one meant to offend you personally-"

"I was so proud of the first one!" he squeaked with rage as he tried to open the locked Bentley. "It had - it had a moral, and it was so cheery, and the music was bebop but was still so very catchy…" Crowley wasn't sure if this was better or worse than the angel talking about going towards the end of the world as opposed to away from it.

Regardless, Aziraphale composed himself and continued, "But, again, that is all beside the point. The point, once again, is that yes, this is my fault. They went around what we stopped last time, decided to use me to bring about the End, and I simply can't stand for it. I'm asking you for help, although I will understand if you don't accept."

Crowley sighed. This seemed very familiar. "Did you ever think that if this was happening, maybe someone wants it to be happening? That they want it, and we should just… you know… go on vacation and wait for the end? Besides, what exactly are we supposed to do?"

Aziraphale stopped trying to open the door. "Heaven," he said, pointing to himself, "and Hell." He pointed to Crowley.

Crowley also stopped walking, too surprised by this sudden proclamation of martyrdom to properly insult Aziraphale's efforts toward opening an obviously-locked door. "Wait, so we just have to walk up to the gates, and as long as we tell them together to close they will?"

"Well, it's not quite so simple."

"Is it ever?"

"The representatives' lives go into the business, and it's their auras that close the portals in the first place. Well, should we be the representatives our lives will end. I assume some greater powers could pull it off, but none of them would want to, I suspect."

Crowley's jaw dropped. It also unhinged, so he had to pop it back in.

"Yes, you did hear me right," Aziraphale admitted.

"So you want us to die for this?" Crowley demanded.

Aziraphale crossed his arms and looked at the ground. "As I said, I will understand it should you reject me. I am seriously trying to think of someone else who can be used instead of you. But… Well, consider the alternatives. Should my side win, you will cease to exist and I will spend eternity being dreadfully bored and, I'll admit it, awfully lonely. I like The Sound of Music, but not nearly so much. Should your side win, you will spend eternity likely being tortured – after all, they are rather peeved with you - and I will cease to exist. Given those options…"

"But… but what is the point?" Crowley asked, disturbed at how this was looking to be the best solution. "I mean, eventually Armageddon will happen…"

"Crowley dear boy," Aziraphale said serenely, "we'll be buying humanity time. What does humanity want more than that?"

The two stood in silence.

"And there are no houseplants in Hell," Aziraphale tacked on.

Crowley's eyes closed in pain. "Don't you dare."

"No Ritz. No vintage wines – I know how much you hate the taste of blood."

"Stop it!"

"No silk sheets. No sunglasses."

"Actually, they have sunglasses."

"Oh? Do they really?"

"It gets bright Down There. Well, depending on where you happen to be."

"Regardless, there's no bebop. No nice Italian black suits. No Bentley."

Crowley visibly shuddered.

"You'd have to spend your days torturing people or doing something else equally pointless and ridiculous; no more lounging around for you."

"This is so completely unfair! I'm the tempter! You can't tempt the tempter!"

"High School Musical 2, my dear."

"But still! It's against the rules!"

"But not of the Arrangement."

"Well it should be! I'm adding it as a rule!"

"Well, there you have it. In Hell there's no Arrangement anyway, and no me for you to pester," Aziraphale finished, unable to come up with anything else.

Crowley thought about it. He didn't have to think long. "Let's do it."

Aziraphale smiled. Then abruptly his entire body went rigid, his wings came out and his halo appeared. The pose made the peaceful, still-smiling look on his face seem dreadfully out of place. Crowley poked him a couple of times, but got no response. "Oh, emergency contact," he said lamely, not sure what to do with himself and feeling awfully alone.

"Oh, I am the very model of a modern major general, I've information vegetable animal and mineral, I know the kings of England and I quote the fights historical from Marathon to Waterloo in order categorical; I'm very well acquainted too with matters mathematical-"

"SHUT UP URIEL."

Aziraphale's eyes were closed, but he could feel the warm blue light surrounding him like a cocoon. The feeling of pure love was so comforting and fulfilling that he couldn't help but feel at peace despite the crazy goings-on.

DEAR AZIRAPHAEL, HELPS HEAL GOD, WHY DO YOU GO AGAINST MY WILL?

"Your Will?" Aziraphale echoed stupidly.

OF COURSE, MY CHILD, the Presence replied soothingly, and there was a sensation like having his hair stroked. YOU DIDN'T THINK THIS COULD HAPPEN WITHOUT MY WILL?

"Well no," he replied, "but last time it wasn't actually Your Will, was it? And I can't be wrong about assuming you don't mean it happen this time either, can I?"

THE TIME HAS COME, AZIRAPHAEL. THE BATTLE BETWEEN HEAVEN AND HELL WHICH HAS BEEN FORETOLD FOR EONS SHALL NOW COME TO PASS. YOU SHALL JOIN THE HOST AND WE SHALL TRIUMPH OVER THE ENEMY ONCE AND FOR ALL. AS IT HAS BEEN WRITTEN, SO IT SHALL BE. NO BUGGERING IT UP THIS TIME FOR YOU, AZIRAPHAEL.

Newt's job at FAN™ Enterprises Inc. wasn't the best job in the world, but it paid the bills. He had started off as a computer tech, citing a relatively made-up history of technical skills training, but after three different instances of computers giving up their computerized wills to live upon his cursory glance he was summarily reassigned to personnel relations, a job that involved answering telephones for eight hours per day. It was a job that induced more guilt than a job rightly should in poor Newt, as FAN™ manufactured Chinese food that was made with – if he had to guess – MSG and not much else. But the food was easy to make and made families feel "Oriental" or at least "foreign," and so it sold. Which, while it made him feel a little rotten, paid the bills, and that was what was important.

And his working there did not obligate him to actually eat the stuff.

Bidding adieu to his neighbor Wensleydale, who was leaving his shift, Newt walked over to the front desk of the large business building and sat down. Instantly the telephone rang.

"This is FAN™ Enterprises Inc., Newt speaking, how can I help you?"

He instantly had to hold the phone away from his ears as a very angry-sounding Chinese man began screaming what he had to assume were obscenities at him. He was used to this; the company had an entire department of people fluent in Chinese in order to deflect any lawsuits and soothe any rage over the blatant abuse of their traditional foodstuffs. Newt pressed the transfer button.

And that was really the extent of Newt's job. People called to complain or order more food, and Newt punched them through to the correct person.

He tapped his fingers on the desk and sighed. His job was remarkably boring, much like he felt himself to be. It was hard to not feel somewhat outclassed when you considered that both of his children and his wife had psychic powers, whereas he had boring, ordinary, useless powers.

"Mr. Pulsifer."

Newt sat straight up, looking at the CEO of FAN™, who was looking at him with that charismatic leer. Now this was exciting. Newt had seen Mr. Sable a couple of times but had never actually spoken to the emaciated man. Perhaps this shift wasn't going to be so boring after all?

"What can I do for you, Mr. Sable sir?"

Sable placed his fingers on the desk, and Newt felt his stomach grumble. "Mr. Pulsifer, every night you dutifully come to work and do your best for FAN™, and not once have we ever had a conversation. I think that is a shame, don't you?"

"Er, you're very busy all the time, sir," Newt ventured, his sub-consciousness deciding he really did not want to spend any length of time with Mr. Sable, thank you very much, "It's understandable you wouldn't have time-"

"Nonsense, FAN™ is a company that makes us all family. Come, I would like to talk to you about yours." The black-clad businessman gave Newt a follow-me gesture, and Newt reluctantly obeyed.

The two walked through the quiet halls of the company, their respective shoes making comparatively loud clinking sounds on the immaculately clean floor. Hadn't Newt eaten dinner? He was fairly sure he had made something – oh, that's right, it was only macaroni and cheese, Anathema had been busy with that book –

"So I understand you have a wife and children?"

"Yes sir, a son and a daughter. Twins," he said proudly.

"How nice. And your wife?"

"Anathema. Stay-at-home mum."

"I'm sure she's much more than that," Sable said pleasantly as the two got on the elevator to go to the sixth floor. The entire floor was devoted solely to being Sable's office.

Newt noticed a sickening smell, like a petrol spill. "Is there a gas leak in here?" he asked, looking around. The higher up they went the stronger the smell got.

"I don't smell anything. Tell me more about your wife, Newt."

"Er, she's, er, she's very into homeopathic things, you know, herbs and the like. She's also a vegan, and she only bakes healthy things."

"Sounds delicious," Sable replied with derision in his voice.

"Yeah, sure, that's one way to describe it," said Newt, whose actual term more closely resembled blech, "Are you sure-"

The door to the elevator opened into Sable's large, expansive office that really only had a desk in it with a beautiful view overlooking Lower Tadfield. At least, if the windows hadn't been covered with grime the view would have been beautiful. There was a young boy dressed in all white sitting at the desk, turned toward the window so that Newt couldn't see his face. The black marble floor was covered in a thin layer of oil.

Mr. Sable grabbed Newt's shoulders, leading him into the office. "Would you say she is friends with a young Mr. Adam Young?"

Uh oh. Anathema had said he was the Antichrist, hadn't she? "Yes," Newt squeaked.

Sable smiled. It was not comforting.

"SHUT UP MICHAEL."

"… But I didn't say anything!"

The Words of the Lord filled Aziraphale with a fabricated sense of relief, which his own sense of dread overpowered. He simply couldn't believe what he'd just heard. He knew better, however, than to question ineffability.

That being said, his own words left Aziraphale's lips before he could control them.

"But why?"

There was blackness.

The scooter finally came to a stop in front of the second Young's residence with a putputputput-put—put----put.

"Well," said the Madame Tracy that wasn't Madame Tracy, "that was an, er, interesting experience."

"Quit yer whinin' ye Southern Hippie," Shadwell grumbled.

"Turn the other cheek, turn the other cheek… Nice, deep breaths…"

"Now now, Mister S," chided the Madame Tracy that was Madame Tracy, "our guest has been most accommodating thus far and we ought to be polite to, er…"

"Him. Well, in a sense."

"Yes, him. And now that we're here I'm sure that all of our problems can be solved, and Lower Tadfield is such a lovely town and it's good to get out of the house every once in awhile." She hopped off the scooter and started walking to the door.

Adam opened it up before she had a chance to get halfway up the cobblestone path.

"Hello Adam! You're a sight for sore eyes, truly!"

"Hello yourself," Adam replied with a raised eyebrow, "It's nice ta finally meet you, I guess."

Shadwell got off and quickly hobbled up the path behind "them," put off by the young man standing in the doorway. There was something off about him… He looked like a normal, casually-dressed young man, which made him (of course) evil, abhorrent and Southern by default, but there was something more, something wronger that Shadwell couldn't put his finger (or hand-gun) on.

Coming to the doorway, Madame Tracy held out her hand and the two shook. Adam invited them in, and Madame Tracy, her passenger and a perturbed Shadwell sat on the couch. Adam brought in some tortilla chips as a snack.

"You wanna explain the, er, body?" he asked, sitting down himself.

"Yes, yes, the body. Well, you know, there are such options nowadays, I couldn't really choose one of my own."

"Wait," said Madame Tracy, no longer looking so affable, "so you possessed me because you couldn't decide what to look like?"

"Oh dear. Yes, that is the case, but you don't understand! The last time I was here, my choices were very slim – male and Jewish. Now… now there's a whole wide world that I can be a part of! And you have to be here anyway, so don't feel too angry, please. Just think of your vacation that you were so excited to be on!"

"It's not right," Adam said with a sigh, feeling a sense of déjà vu as he created a new body for the passenger.

This new body was that of a young woman in her late teens or early twenties, with long brown hair and deep brown eyes that betrayed how old she reallywas. She was clad in a tie-dye t-shirt that had a huge peace sign on the front of it, ripped wide-leg jeans, flip-flops and was even wearing a crown of flowers over her head. She also had immensely large breasts, because Adam is a 20-year-old male.

Shadwell wasn't sure what part of it to be surprised about – that he was right and the person actually was a Southern Hippie, or that a person had appeared out of nowhere. He chose the latter, pointing at Adam in a very determined gesture and stammering when he didn't explode.

As the newcomer observed her body with pleasant surprise, murmuring comments as she poked ("Well, I never had these before!") Shadwell gasped out, "Ye – ye – ye, ye Southern, er, Southern… Obviously a witch!"

The Southern Hippie sighed, one small fist clenched. "My apologies, but we need to be alone right now." And with less than a thought, all of the mortals who had been in Adam's house appeared out on the lawn. "Sweet me, what is wrong with him?"

Pepper, who had been taking a shower and was now naked on the lawn, started screeching at the top of her lungs.

The Antichrist winced. "You're gonna have to deal with her," he said sternly.

The Christ smiled, annoyance forgotten as she materialized some tea. "I'll wait until after she calms down. So really, Adam, a female hippie?"

"You said you wanted somethin' different, but I didn't want it too different – you know, make you a gorilla or something - and you are kinda a hippie, you have to admit." Adam put up his hands and wiggled his fingers. "Turn the other cheek! Love your neighbor as yourself! Hug trees!"

"I said nothing about trees, at my best recollection. But then again, we didn't really have trees where I lived. Not big ones like you have. England has such a lovely countryside!"

"You sayin' that makes it pretty obvious that you cheated to make sure there wasn't any fog," Adam retorted.

She looked embarrassed before changing the subject, "If by calling me a hippie you mean that I love love, then yes, I suppose I am one. Not that I endorse many of the other messages of that era." She grabbed a tortilla chip. "Oh, look, me!" She held up one that could, if one looked cross-eyed, was standing upside down and was half-blind, construe looked almost like a bearded male.

Adam glared at her.

"Heehee, sorry. It's one of my favorite hobbies. Heaven can get awfully boring; however, as boring as it may be, that doesn't mean I want it gone. Speaking of… You and I have a lot to talk about, now don't we?"

Anathema finally woke uo when she heard the front screen door shut. She shuffled out of bed – she figured it was Aziraphale leaving the book for her, and she was never one to leave books out in the cold. Besides, despite her exhaustion, she hadn't been sleeping well – she really was terribly curious to figure out what Aziraphale had discovered.

The book was, as she suspected, sandwiched between the screen door and the main door. She picked it and flipped through as she carried it to the kitchen table, getting to the section that Aziraphale had annotated. The angel's impeccable penmanship filled up a few note cards with phrases like "Really? He couldn't think of anything else to make the opposite?" and "Sigh. I should have had Crowley torment him when he was alive." And "Good for her!" She made a mental note to come back to those.

Then there was "Oh, so if Heaven and Hell work together then we can avert the Apocalypse. It's such a pity that it's going to kill me. Crowley, too… but we'll see if we can't find another way around that. Poor dear has so much to live for, after all."

Anathema read that again.

And again.

"But I like Aziraphale!" she protested, looking through the rest of the note cards. They all had inane comments with one "Well that is awfully rude!" put in. "He can't die! He just can't! Who else will appreciate the inanities of Olde English with me! Who else will I make fun of for being so very in denial about his adorable boyfriend he doesn't even realize he has! Who else will dress even more old-fashioned than I do?"

Anathema was actually tearing up, feeling distinctly like she had felt when she lost the first Agnes book. Which, a corner of her mind mused, had been Aziraphale's fault too. Somehow.

The phone rang.

Wensleydale, on his way home from work, slowed down to a stop outside of Adam and Pepper's house. "Er, what's going on?" he asked the humans sitting on the lawn. "Pepper, why're you dressed like a stripper nun?"

"Ask Jesus," she snarled, looking less than happy. Sister Prudence, who always had an extra outfit for when hers got destroyed, had lent her one.

"We're not stripper nuns," Sister Prudence protested.

"Hey Pru."

"Hi Wensleydale."

"I can't believe they interrupted Sailor Moon," Brian lamented. He looked considerably more upset than the two three-year-olds he had been babysitting, who were now sound asleep on the grass. "We'd just gotten to the part where it turns out that Sailor Venus-"

"You know, if you spent half as much time looking for a job as you did watching cartoons-"

"Anime." It had hurt Brian's soul to refer to them as cartoons when introducing Sailor Moon to the kids, but figured they were too young to understand the concept of an anime just yet. Some day…

"-you would not only have a job, you would be rich and could move out," Pepper finished.

"I'm working on it," Brian replied lamely.

"Wa's wrong wi' me hoor?" Shadwell demanded, poking a comatose Madame Tracy.

The four younger folks gathered around, each poking her in turn.

"Yeah, she's gone," Pepper said dismissively.

"Quiet ye hussy! We have'ta fix 'er! She's just a helpless, defenseless Jezebel, she dinna mean nothin' by it!"

"I'll show you hussy, you misogynist pig!"

Sister Prudence and Brian were becoming very adept at Pepper-wrestling. Maybe someday it would become an Olympic sport. One could only hope.

"You know," Wensleydale said tentatively, "Mrs. Pulsifer's pretty good at this sort of thing, maybe she can help?"

"Eh? Lucifer?"

"No, Pulsifer."

"Th' name… sounds… Newt! Newt and, an' 'is witch!"

Grumbling about the end of times as he now had to rely on a witch, Shadwell nevertheless started dragging Madame Tracy down the road. Eventually the others actually picked her up.

The door was locked and no amount of knocking got a response. That was because Anathema was gone, having received a phone call mentioning a personal meeting or the death of her husband. Had they arrived earlier, they would have seen her storm out of the house in a fit of rage that she had never before felt and would likely never feel again.

But they hadn't, so they sat on her porch and waited.

Crowley had moved the paralytic Aziraphale –wings and all - into the Bentley, somehow maneuvering him into sitting in the front seat before speeding off towards Manchester. Admittedly he wasn't speeding as fast as he usually did, because this being the "best situation" or no it still wasn't a great situation, and and he hadn't even bothered acknowledging that both he and Aziraphale were going to die…

There was so much he hadn't accomplished. It just didn't seem fair. He had never learned to play the tuba, for instance. Had never ridden a camel. Had never gone swimming with dolphins – even after he told himself he would because they had big brains and would suffer just as much if not more than anyone else during the Apocalypse when it inevitably happened! Had never learned to use Microsoft Excel. Had never started his very own rock and roll band. Had never tempted Aziraphale into sleeping, or trying illegal substances, or into trying sex, or into being the lead singer of the aforementioned rock and roll band, or -

After leaving the city limits, however, a look of sheer agony crossed Aziraphale's face and he collapsed forward into the dashboard. He had the distinct air of a puppet whose strings have been set on fire.

Crowley slammed on the brakes. "Okay, what the he… … uh oh." All of Crowley's annoyance at being interrupted and of time wasted was wiped away by Aziraphale's tears.

Tears. Had Crowley ever seen Aziraphale cry? He didn't think so.

And Aziraphale had turned in his seat was clinging to him desperately, claws ripping through his shirt and digging into his skin.

And his once snow-white wings were now a dingy, dirty gray.