Disclaimer: I don't own AMC's "Preacher." Everything belongs to whoever owns them, my wishful thinking aside.

Authors Note #1: Based on the popular fan theory that Fiore and Deblanc are actually Genesis parents. I wanted to examine their backstory a bit and ended up getting ahead of myself, so-

Disclaimer:canon appropriate violence, blood, gore, injury, death, religious imagery/definitions/symbolism/discussion.

Temenos

Chapter One

The Endless War had been churning on long before he crawled out of the ashy pits of charred bone and withered flesh that had birthed him. It was a war that lived up to it's namesake. One that had started with the seduction of Adam and Eve by the clever serpent and had continued ever since.

Heaven and Hell bleeding together on the same battlefield.

Slaying in their maker's name.

But for what exactly, he didn't know.

Perhaps no one did.

There was no satisfactory answer.

It was a strange parody.

Hypocritical, inelegant and wasteful.

But then- he supposed he wasn't one to judge.

He'd lost that right long ago.

He'd lost count how many of the light-bringers he'd crushed under his hands and dark-pitted steel. He'd known once. Back when it had seemed important to keep track. Back when he'd relished the bright flare of light as heaven leaked from their veins. Back when he'd openly mocked their last breaths. The moment when their sweet, achingly beautiful songs faltered in mid-stride. Looking up at him with ancient surprise, rage and sometimes- sometimes even sadness. Like they could see something in him he didn't recognize. Pitying the broken little slivers that remained that marked him as one of their father's favorite children. Something that even a thousand eons in hell hadn't been able to stamp out.

That was the part that had ruined it for him.

The part that'd made him think.

Realizing by proxy that it'd been a long time since he actually had.

Hell had a way of doing that to you.

There were times he could almost remember the soul that had created him. The man who'd originally worn this skin before they'd been twisted in the torture pits and branded with the Devil's darkness. The man hadn't been unredeemable. Not at first. But the man had been vengeful. Angry. The man had sinned and had fallen and hell had merely done the rest. Splintering what remained of the goodness - piece by fractured piece - until only the shadows remained. Exorcising the shell of every last inch of it's troublesome humanity so that he could be born.

After all, that was the grand joke, wasn't it?

That Lucifer had been wrong as much as he had been right. Humans were not inherently evil nor inherently good. They simply were. No matter how flawed, it was a rare thing indeed for a soul to come to hell already made for it. To pull themselves from the pits still whole and screaming. Skin sloughing off in angry sheaths of mottled-black. Accepting the darkness with a prostrated knee and a bared throat before the flames rose around them in violent greeting. Welcoming, but still merciless.

He'd stayed away from those ones from the beginning. And for good reason. He might be a demon. He might have the same eerie-dark eyes and blistered-bronze horns sprouting from his skull, but they were not the same. He didn't know if they ever could be.

Perhaps he was broken.

He considered the matter privately for a good half century. Brooding long into the inky-black of his brethren's shallow, fox-hole nests. Remaining apart from their twisting flesh and pitching groans. Enjoying each other as they licked away the ochre of old blood and hissed tales of the battlefield like a lover might whisper endearments. Their victories. Their conquests. The taste of electricity and comforting warmth that flooded across their tongue when they seized the soft of the divine in their gnarled little claws and tore.

The idea that he might be different was not merely just hard to swallow, but also not backed by much in the way of hard evidence. He still fought. Still hated. Still blasphemed and killed. He even still enjoyed it. It was just that sometimes- only sometimes- he had to deal with the occasional heart wrenching clench in his gut. It was a sensation that struck without warning or mercy. Followed without fail by the distant sound of a familiar stranger sobbing in the echoes of a mortal man's memories.

He never asked the others if they felt it too.

He wasn't that foolish – or naïve.

And hell had taught him, amongst other things, the value of a cautious silence.

Still, he hadn't been this confused - conflicted – in all his memory.

And honestly, he wasn't sure if he liked it.

While it did give him a bit of self-imagined distinction over his peers, it wasn't a complication he was supposed to covet. A demon with nasty, lingering soul-type echoes? That couldn't mean anything good, after all. Not down here. It wasn't right and it wasn't supposed to be possible. That much he knew for certain.

And yet-

It was possible.

It had to be.

He was possible.

So, naturally, he did the only thing he could do. He threw himself back into the fight with a willingness that made the first angel he crossed paths with tremble and spill over with a fountain of bright, iron-red and fast escaping grace. Fulfilling the purpose of his existence over and over, until one day, everything changed.

He was lurking in the shadows of a darkened hollow, ready to slit the throat of a careless, red-haired Adelphi when he saw him. A tall figure fighting alone on a pinnacle of jagged volcanic rock. Filling the air with a song he'd never heard. Something righteous and beautiful, fierce but also desperately lonely.

Something new.

It was so magnetizing he couldn't help but call out. Like a human child craving attention, he bellowed a cacophony of wrenching syllables that caught in purgatory's foul winds and echoed. Capturing the angel's attention as his blade sliced through a trio of demons trying to tear into him from behind. Electric blue eyes snapping down, down, down. Somehow finding him in the darkness the same moment he sank his steel deep into the foolish Adelphi's back. Watching with distinct satisfaction as the angel's face shimmered with grief and holy rage. Wings flaring high and predatory, like the threat display of a bird of prey, as he bared his teeth clear challenge. Daring the winged idiot to test him.

The next thing he was aware of was the beat of powerful wings and the sensation of falling.

And if a demon could fall in love with an angel at first sight on the thinnest edge of purgatory, he was wholly - doubly - damned from that moment forward.

A/N: Thank you for reading, please let me know what you think. – There will eleven more chapters, stay tuned.

Reference:

*Temenos – "place dedicated to a god."