InsaneJournal

Who: Aziraphale, Glory/Ben, and Parker.
What: Ending Glory's reign of terror.
Where: A street near Glory's building.
When: After this.
Rating: R.
Status: Complete.

Aziraphale had been getting restless, as Glory continued to attack people within the city. Though he understood on some level that there was a time for everything, and he certainly trusted his Father, he was still anxious to end this. He’d wanted to end it since before Molly was killed and her death had only served to strengthen his resolve to put a stop to this. But still he had waited. And now it seemed the time had finally come to put a stop to this madness. Claire had asked him to help, and that had been the one thing he’d been waiting for. Though he could not intercede of his own volition, he was able to step in at the request of a human. He was both relieved that the time had finally come, and frustrated that it had taken so much suffering to get to this point. Still, he was more than ready to do his duty.

It took little more than a thought to appear where Glory was, on an unassuming street in the city near the wreckage of her building. He knew he didn’t look like much to the hell god, a slight man with dishevelled blond hair and the wardrobe of a British librarian from the 1950s. But then, she did not look like much to him, still recovering from the explosion that had been a signal to the others. Besides, Aziraphale counted on the fact that so many in this place underestimated him. He never really flaunted his power like others, but the fact remained that he possessed it and he was not afraid to use it for the good of the people in this city. He gave the woman a civil smile and inclined his head slightly in greeting. “Glorificus,” he said mildly. “I think you have caused quite enough trouble in this city, don’t you agree?”

Glory hadn't expected to be bothered today. She figured she had killed and tortured enough of the humans to keep most of them from coming after her like a handful had tried. Not that she really cared if someone else wanted to try again but she had really thought she might get a little free time to do a bit of mingling with some of the... less than favorable non-locals. Her newest plan to get the Key was a simple one and hinged on making a few connections other than her minions. She knew it would work if she could find a few strong men with loose morals and a thirst for violence and mayhem and had been on her way to do just that when her building literally exploded around her.

Buried in rubble from not just her building but some other, neighboring ones as well, it had taken her a while to get out of the mess. By the time she had, her dress was in veritable tatters and her hair was a mess. And she was positively livid. Unfortunately, there weren’t any minions around who had survived and she found herself almost glad she had ordered most of them to go out and scour the streets until they found someone willing to give her her Key. However the problem with having no one around her after having just been in an explosion meant she also had no one whose brain she could eat to regain the strength she’d used climbing out of the rubble.

But all of that was forgotten when she heard someone speak.

Pretty certain there hadn't been anyone who actually mattered on that sidewalk a few seconds earlier when she'd passed, Glory had a look of mild confusion on her face when she turned around. She blinked at the sight of the seemingly mild-mannered librarian in front of her. She could tell that he wasn't human. She could even tell that he was some sort of angel. However, unlike... whatever his name was that she'd met at the hospital, this one definitely looked different in a way that didn't sit right with her at all.

Not that Glory particularly cared about the warning signs all but screaming at her to just leave while she still could. The fact was, he was just some winged religious freak whereas she was a God. So if he really wanted to pick a fight with her? That was perfectly fine. She had no trouble plucking his feathers and sending him packing right back to his daddy.

"It's Glory," she said flatly, as a way to break the silence between them. A lazy sort of smile slowly spread across her face. "And I keep telling you people. I'll stop when I GET MY KEY!" The last few words were all but shrieked as her tenuous hold over her sanity wavered a bit. Dealing with people who just didn't get it always did that to her.

“Glory then,” Aziraphale acknowledged, unmoved by her outburst. He wasn’t afraid of, or particularly impressed by, this woman. Her actions had left him with more than enough righteous anger to block out any other reaction, and his smile when he addressed her didn’t quite reach his eyes. Gone was the facade of a kind and somewhat ineffectual bookshop owner, and in its place was a millennia old warrior of God. “My name is Aziraphale,” he said softly. “And I’m afraid you misunderstand me. The question was rhetorical, and not open to debate.”

He slipped out of his jacket, letting the garment disappear with a thought, and rolled up his sleeves, completely unconcerned with the hell god. “You will not be getting your Key,” he continued. “You will not be opening any portals. And you will certainly not be harming anyone else in this city.” And then, calmly and with no warning, he punched her with as much force as he could put behind the action.

Glory had opened her mouth, fully intending on laughing at everything he’d just said. However before she could form so much as a word she felt pain explode across her cheek and she was literally knocked off her feet and thrown a good twenty or so feet through the air. Crashing into a car, managing to damn near bend it in half with the force of her impact, Glory climbed back to her feet with a positively lethal expression on her face.

“Hey!” she snapped, shoving the car out of her way and ignoring as it went flying into a nearby building. Stomping back toward Aziraphale, she continued her rant. “That hurt, you winged freak!” Grabbing ahold of a nearby parking meter with one hand, she yanked it out of the ground before smiling in a less than balanced way at him.

“My turn,” she snapped before smacking him with the metallic pole and meter with as much strength as she could muster.

Aziraphale’s head snapped to the side at the impact from the parking meter, stumbling back a few steps. He was, however, relatively unharmed. The same could not bed said for the pole of the meter, which had bent when it hit him. Spitting out a mouthful of blood to the side, he brushed himself off and raised an eyebrow at the hell god. “For someone who has caused so much chaos,” he said after a moment, “I find you terribly underwhelming.”

Grabbing Glory by the hair, he yanked her head back and forced her to look at him. “It is over, Glory,” he said, stressing each word. He could have just killed her, but he found that he wanted to draw it out, to her her. He wasn’t a violent being by any stretch of the imagination but she had hurt so many people, both physically and emotionally, that he could not justify giving her a quick and easy death. Pulling the damaged parking meter from her hands, he jabbed the end hard into her stomach.

That... was not what Glory had expected to happen. She didn’t have enough time to recover from her surprise, however, before Aziraphale was grabbing hold of her hair in a grip that damn near actually hurt. Her eyes widened ever so slightly, her features rippling a bit as the human trapped within began trying to claw his way to the surface when the metal pole tore through her dress and, unbelievably to her, her flesh as well.. She shoved Ben back into his cage, though, while simultaneously stomping on Aziraphale’s foot as hard as she could and punching him directly in the face.

She yanked free of his grasp at the same instant, stumbling back a step and staring in faint horror at the pole sticking out of her stomach. With a growl, she pulled it free and tossed it aside, the wound starting to heal even as she leveled her gaze at the being responsible for it in the first place. In a flash she was charging him, leaping at the last second so that she slammed into Aziraphale with enough force to send them both flying off their feet, wrapping her hands around his throat as they slammed through a large display window of a nearby shop in a move that was much more like a bar-room brawl seen in an old western than a mere exchanging of blows.

Aziraphale was actually a bit surprised as she threw herself at him. He was almost amused by the hands around his throat, given he didn’t actually need to breathe, but flying through a window with a mental hell god trying to strangle him hurt rather more than he had expected. He’d had worse of course, given he’d been discorporated on more than one occasion and also murdered by his brother, but it definitely still hurt. Still, he couldn’t help but be amused by the turn this fight had taken. It had been so long since he’d been in anything approaching a proper fight, and he could only imagine what people would think if they saw this.

He was on his back on the floor of a shop, with the hell god on top of him, and he brought his leg up and kicked hard to get her off of him. Then he stood up and checked himself over just to make sure nothing needed to be addressed. He was sore and there was blood on his clothes, but there was nothing worth worrying about. Striding up to Glory, he punched her again and sent her flying back out the broken window, channeling his anger over the things she had done. She had hurt people, good people and people he cared about, and he did not want that to go unpunished. Still, he knew he would need to end this soon, lest she somehow get the upper hand and escape. That was something he wouldn’t tolerate.

Unfortunately for Glory, and fortunately for Aziraphale and the rest of the city, between being buried by rubble following a rather nasty explosion, not being able to eat any brains, and not seeing a single minion or local who worshipped her in sight, she was losing her control over her body fast. In fact, by the time she was punched through the window, her legs didn’t even want to hold her anymore. Eyeing the angel with something almost akin to fear - though there was far more confusion than anything else shining in her eyes - she realized she was not going to make it out of this fight alive. In fact, she only had one option left, especially since fleeing would do her no good whatsoever.

Then, as though to make matters worse, something seemed to happen. She didn’t know what, didn’t know how, but she could practically feel the sanity she had absorbed from so many others being stolen away from her. She needed a brain now more than ever. She felt confused. Sluggish. Far, far too slow.

She had to let Ben out. After all, he was a human. A completely innocent man who had simply been cursed with a terrible destiny. Plus he was very convincing, particularly when pleading for his own life. Besides. Whoever heard of an angel murdering an innocent man anyway? With that thought in mind, she gasped and doubled over. When she’d straightened, she was gone and Ben was in her place.

He didn’t speak, however. Didn’t plead for his life as Glory had thought he might. He simply stood there, eyes wide with fear and blood coating his face, his breath coming in gasps and his entire body trembling from the pain. Waiting. For what, he wasn’t sure, but he had a feeling it probably wouldn’t be pleasant.

Aziraphale could tell that the hell god was reaching the end of her strength, and he knew the time was coming to end this. He felt an odd sense of relief in that knowledge, that this would be done and the city could return to a state that passed for normal and peaceful. Hopefully, those who had been killed by Glory would soon return and the people who were grieving, himself included, could find peace. He hadn’t expected it to be quite this easy, but then he hadn’t necessarily anticipated all that the humans in the city would do to help stop the hell god. It was reassuring to know that people could come together like this.

Then Glory shifted, turning into Ben, and Aziraphale had a moment’s pause. It wasn’t that he was unwilling or unable to sacrifice the man to stop Glory, because when it came down to it the greater good outweighed a single life, but there was still a difference between destroying the hell god and killing this man.

He looked at Ben, then closed his eyes for a brief moment, preparing to call upon his flaming sword. The least he could do, he supposed, was make this quick and relatively painless. The sword would destroy Ben easily, without drawing out his death. He felt the man deserved at least that much after all he had suffered as Glory’s host.

Ben knew. In that one instant, when Aziraphale closed his eyes, Ben knew what was going to happen. He was as good as dead and no amount of begging or pleading or reasoning was going to change that fact. He wasn’t resigned to it, not really, but he did know he would rather go out with a touch of pride than begging for a life that he knew would only continue to cause more people pain and suffering. Drawing in a breath, he exhaled slowly and raised his chin a notch.

Then pain exploded in his chest and his eyes went wide with shock. Distantly he heard the echoing of a loud bang, followed by two more in quick succession. The other two bangs were coupled with a force slamming into him that ultimately made him surge forward a few steps. Finally his knees buckled and, with a vague sort of glancing at the blood that was covering his front, he collapsed, face-first, onto the ground.

Behind him, perhaps half a block or so, stood Parker. The Colt was in her hand and there was an unreadable look on her face. She met Aziraphale’s gaze over the body then, without a word, turned on her heel and silently disappeared back into the alley she had stepped out of. A second later she was making her way to the roof and, ultimately, back to the casino. It was done, she told herself as she moved. Glory was dead. However as far as she was concerned the price had been far, far too high and while she had thought she might feel some sense of satisfaction over having shot the bitch’s human prison personally, the truth of the matter was all she felt was an overwhelming sense of sadness and loss that she honestly wasn’t sure would ever truly go away.

Aziraphale’s eyes snapped open at the sound of gunshots, so unexpected in the silence on the street. When his eyes fell on Parker, he understood in some way what she had done and why, and he nodded in her direction, though he didn’t honestly expect her to acknowledge it. He could see how someone might think he had hesitated with Ben, and Parker wasn’t the sort of person to stand idly by and risk Glory escaping to hurt more people. In many ways, he was grateful to the woman for doing what she did. Though he would have killed Ben, he would have felt regret and guilt over taking the man’s life.

Now it was done. Glory was destroyed and things were once more set right. And he felt tired. Kneeling down beside Ben, he turned the body over and shut the man’s eyes, before willing the body out of existence. That small task done, he headed back to his bookshop to wait out the rest. He would need to talk to Parker later, but for now he got the sense that she would want to be alone and that nothing he could say would do any good.