bigapplesauce | You're what happens when two substances collide

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You're what happens when two substances collide

The longer she dwells in this world, the more she despises it.

No one will see her.

A vengeful God-King is not something so easily ignored. She is destructive and regal and demands the attention of all who would worship her. But there are no worshipers here. There is nothing here, nothing at all, just endless swarms of humanity that apparently care nothing for Illyria the Merciless, Ruler of the Primordium, even as she grows ever more indignant and ever more enraged and ever more desiring in her need to do violence.

The vermin are to remain untouched. The vermin are to remain untouched.

So she will not touch them. She will not touch anything here. Illyria will not remain here any longer than is necessary, even if it has long since ceased to become necessary.

The mortal-built bridge will be her focus point. She stretches one shell's hand out, testing the scintillating tear of unclassifiable dimensional energy against her vessel. There is resistance there, a barrier intended to prevent any motion beyond the isolated pinprick of too-small, too-confining space. If she can reach past it, she can escape this metaphysical prison and thus seek out the way back to her world.

The God-King's shell smiles, small and self-satisfied. Nothing can hold a god.

She reaches further. The crackle of foreign energy against hers is unbearable. And then further - the shearing, rifting edge of the barrier begins to screech against her being.

She will test these waters no further. Illyria launches herself at the barrier, driving forward with fists and blazing intent, and the strength of the unfamiliar matter rips at her, eliciting a blistering, tearing roar of utmost pain and displeasure. It is unbearable. It is intolerable. But Illyria is not yet through. She will continue driving at it, regardless of the shrilling agony webbing its way through her shell, into the core of what she is -

The God-King's strength, once glaring and eternal, runs out. She no longer possesses the will or instinct to even draw herself back. Her shell howls, the pain of simply being is exquisite and unquantifiable, and Illyria falls away from the torment of the conscious world.

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"I am older than the world. Unconquerable." In all respects, even this one. "My shell cannot become inebriated."

Illyria does not know if her shell can become inebriated.

She has never tried.

She is confident that it cannot become inebriated.

The alternative would simply not be dignified.

Aziraphale smiles and raises his glass, toasting and/or accepting the implicit challenge. This may be a terrible idea but it could certainly be worse.

About three bottles later, he's draped across the armchair like an ungainly lanky child in the arms of its mother, legs over one arm and shoulders scrunched up against the other. His glass is cradled in his lap, his head lolling back lazily.

The drinking process has been fast and mostly silent, a lot of staring and cocked eyebrows and increasingly intense glowering. It's been an arms rest to end all others, and now he's slowing down, warm and happy.

"This is nice," he mumbles. "Not as nice as with Crowley, mind. But it's surprisingly pleasant." Nevermind that he hasn't mentioned Crowley yet. It's not like she hasn't done plenty of contextless namedropping. How's it treating you?" He glances over, curiosity overriding his complacent haze.

Illyria's shell can become inebriated.

Of course, she would have no way of knowing this. Nor does the revelation particularly perturb her. In fact, the progression of sequential thought has chosen to advance in a completely separate direction than that revelation.

Presently, her shell's eyes are narrowed in an effort to understand the many physiological effects of human alcohol. Her shell is physically advanced to the point of nigh invulnerability, but the interior is - susceptible, it would seem, to the ethanols and polyphenols and resveratols and the many multitudes of chemicals that are having an interesting effect on the God-King coiled within.

The principality's words take a frustratingly long moment to become evident. Belatedly, Illyria turns her shell's head to stare at it with less coordination than befits a slightly intoxicated God-King. Slightly.

"What is a Crowley?" Vocalization has also become difficult. This is noted. This is processed. This is -

Illyria abruptly forgets what she was thinking about.

"Oh he's my demon," says Aziraphale brightly. "He's lovely. We usually drink together but right now I suspect he won't be able to see me."

A depressing thought. No, no. He doesn't like that. He pushes it away with a flap of his hand. "We're from the same universe. He came here before me. Er. I guess we came at the same time. But for some reason it seemed like a long time to me." He knocks his glass back and flicks his finger against it for some more. "You know once he said I was his favorite?" That's a nice memory. He smiles faintly, remembering the dream. One of the few good ones, at least mostly.

"What's the Primordium like?" he says after a moment, distantly aware that people don't like it when he talks a lot about Crowley. Or is it Crowley who doesn't like it? Whichever.

The principality's words make little sense, though Illyria understands the sentiment demon well enough. She does not understand inflection the word receives, however, something tantamount to - affection? In Illyria's experience, demons are something to be crushed and cowed into submission. She had an army of them once. They made excellent footsoldiers, if somewhat lacking in tactical imagination. They were simple. Pliable. Subservient. Which is why they required a leader, she concludes with some satisfaction.

Its next few words make even less sense. How can anything, let alone a celestial principality, be the subject of demonic favoritism? Truly her perception of these events cannot be so flawed. She has consumed very little of the alcohol. Is the principality more inebriated than she? Has she bested it already? Illyria thinks she would know were this the case. There would be a signal of some kind that the time of the challenge had elapsed.

The question of the her own past, however, is something Illyria has every authority to answer. She does so. Proudly.

"The Primordium Age," she murmurs fondly, reminiscing. "The truest and most magnificent age, eons before the time of men. I existed in my true form, free, and we Old Ones warred against one another in supreme, endless glory."

She can still remember it, even in her impaired state. The expanse of Hellfire, the incredible grandeur and power of the pure demonic Primordials driving endlessly for territorial expansion, legions of demonic soldiers at the command of their god Illyria, Shaper of All Things. The earth was in its genesis then, a dark and blazing little rock, hardly recognizable from its present state.

"I miss it," she says quietly, once the memories have faded and she is reminded bitterly of her reduced and trampled state. "There, I was absolute. I had purpose."

"Sounds very nice," says Aziraphale, though he's more than a little distracted, still thinking about Crowley. Where is Crowley? Why isn't he here? "It is nice to be absolute. Sure of yourself, like. Ineffability, and that. Used to be I swore by it. Back in the, the Beginning, made the world in seven, you know, all that. Not like your place. No Primordium. But then, then, then, Armageddon, all of a sudden, when no one was watching, they try to drop that on us. Like a bloody... bomb." He's talking not quickly but fluidly, as though afraid that if he stops for a moment he'll lose the entire thread.

"Crowley got the baby, y'know, the Antichrist, Devil-child, that thing. Had to go drop it off but here's the thing: the nuns, Satanic nuns, they give it to the wrong parents. Whole great mix-up. Screwball comedy stuff. Only s'not very funny when we think we're looking after the real thing. But... but it all worked out in the end."

He leans back, grinning, apparently operating under the assumption that this was a good story cohesively told. "That was a pretty good purpose while it lasted. But now I dunno what it is. Work for Rebels. Take care of Melanie. Stop - stop Lucifer, maybe. Hnn." He frowns, a big over-expressive one, thinking about the last time he and Crowley were properly alone together while awake. Recovering from all that.

He doesn't know how long he's been ruminating when he blinks and looks back over at Illyria. "Sorry," he says. "What was I saying?"

"I have no comprehension of what you were just saying," Illyria responds flatly, because she does not. She recognizes Armageddon and Devils but that is as far as her conception of those events extends.

The mention of Armageddon makes her wistful, however.

"We were in the midst of dismantling the Apocalypse when I arrived," she murmurs, abruptly finding herself to be marginally elegiac. What is this? Inebriation should not be doing this to her, God-King supreme, it should not -

She loses that thread and decides it is not worth pursuing, so she continues: "The world was to be swallowed into Hell, and we stopped it."

There is some satisfaction to be taken from that, at least. Though how well her companions fared in battle once the God-King was gone from their side has most certainly diminished their chances of victory significantly.

"How thrilling," he says. He's learned not to tut and laugh at other people's Armageddon stories. "Good for you. To the dismantling of Armageddons." He raises his glass, narrowly avoids spilling some on his sweatervest, and downs it all at once.

"How is the wine treating you, then?" he asks, arching an eyebrow with intrepid smugness.

She considers the question carefully.

The alcohol is certainly doing something to her internal chemistry.

Something beyond her - beyond -

Illyria lets out a low cry, her shell jerking because she had not anticipated -

To the outward eye, the blue of Illyria's shell dissolves, ripples away, and left in the God-King's place is a quite ordinary-looking but incredibly confused and somewhat terrified young woman, identical to Illyria in every respect save the overpoweringly singular color scheme, wearing very normal clothing and a rather alarmed expression.

"Wh-what," she manages for a second, whipping around in an attempt to look at everything around her at once, then turns back to stare in unbridled bafflement at the apparently quite drunk man across from her. When she speaks again, it's in an understated Texan drawl. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

Oh. Oh, that's different. That's another matter entirely.

It takes him just a moment to register what has happened before he sits up very sharply, which makes his head pound with the force of a bloody earthquake, ugh. With a wave of his hand the alcohol is gone, purged from his system. He sits forward, adjusting his glasses.

"My name is Aziraphale; I'm an angel," he says, prompt and urgent. He has no idea how long this is going to last. "Who are you?"

"Fred, er, Winifred. Burkle?" she responds immediately, eying the other man with a wariness that just barely misses the criteria for 'frenetic'. "I don't - it, it was just a normal day, I was in the lab, I -"

She halts for a moment, eyebrows drawing together into a puzzled frown. It takes a moment before the other man's words fully register.

"Angel?" She sits bolt upright, hope brightening her expression marginally. "You - you know Angel? Is he here?"

"What?" He blinks at her in momentary confusion. "No. No, I - I don't know anyone named Angel, I am an angel. Angel of Heaven, that kind of angel. Wings, flaming sword, the whole bit. Miss Burkle..." He gets up, towering over her somewhat, looking suddenly so meek on the tatty old sofa. He crouches down before her and grips her hand.

"Try to understand me; we may not have much time. Are you aware of - of the entity that's living in your body? Until now I had not realized it was possessing a human."

Stupid of him. He should have seen it, somehow, though there were no signs. She certainly didn't look human, it looked like a body she'd made for herself - his, itself? - like he and Crowley do. All that flourish, all that blue.

"I want to help you," he says, a bit desperate. "Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Edited 2014-11-18 04:26 (UTC)

"I - I don't." Fred simply shakes her head, uncomprehending. "That's impossible. I was just in my lab, it was an ordinary day not two minutes ago."

Unless this is - there could be some serious mojo going on. It's happened before under far weirder circumstances. Though this is a first as far as angels go, at least in the literal sense. Assuming this man - Aziraphale? - is even telling the truth in the first place.

"You don't look much like an angel," she says dubiously, very much getting her situational priorities in the right order. "Don't they have a couple dozen wings and lion heads or some-such? Bibles weren't always clear on that." Though she hasn't read one since she was a girl, so her memory could be a little spotty there.

"Well, yes, but I can't look like that here," he says, only somewhat impatient. "Too many dimensions, you wouldn't even be able to perceive it, or it would harm you to - look, that isn't important. You've got a bloody elder god inhabiting you. I - I need to-"

To what, exactly? What is he going to do, free Illyria, bring it out into the world in its full eldritch form? That could mean disaster. Speaking of too many dimensions! Or would is it Illyria's destruction he's after, such that this small human could live unappropriated? The idea is enough to quell his spirits. To be sure, Illyria is not a being he would choose to hang around under different circumstances, but that doesn't mean he wants to destroy her, or whatever pronoun. They'd been getting to a point of understanding, he thinks, mutual respect. He doesn't know that he has any right to stop her from existing in the way she's accustomed.

This is all suddenly very complicated.

"Miss Burkle - Fred, is it?" He breathes out slowly. "You've been brought through a rift to another universe. An extremely powerful entity has been inhabiting your body, I don't know for how long in your world, and now the two of you have been brought here. It seems to have lost a grip on you for the time being." Alcohol must have done that. Well. An experiment that has paid off in ways he didn't expect, he thinks bitterly.

"Another universe?" she sighs, sounding completely defeated. "Oh, blah. Again. You'd think I'm always tripping and falling into portals, the rate that I, that -"

She peters off when the tail-end of Aziraphale's explanation catches up to her.

"I don't understand." Fred's head goes to one side, a completely unintentional mimicry of the being possessing her. "I, I don't - I don't feel any different, it's just me, just plain ol' Fred, like always -"

Plain old Fred's body chooses that moment to convluse and pitch forward and in the next moment Illyria is halfway collapsing onto Aziraphale, uttering the God-King equivalent of a groan.

"I do not like alcohol," she decides grouchily.

Edited 2014-11-18 04:53 (UTC)

Oh, well, at least she's used to it? He cringes slightly at her distressed confusion, wondering how he can make her understand without frightening her, and how much time he has left before-

She convulses sharply and he immediately reaches out to catch her; no sooner has he done so than he realizes that Fred is gone. Her body is pale and blue once again.

He continues holding her, too stunned and demoralized to let go.

"This is not your body," he says quietly, anger stirring beneath shock. "It isn't yours."

Edited 2014-11-18 05:00 (UTC)

Illyria's whole head and body and everything are hurting, shell and all, something she finds to be both maddening and intolerable. Mortal liquid should not be doing such things to her shell.

The principality's fury is dark and smoldering and a complete tonal shift from its earlier attitude of general pleasantries and nostalgia. Illyria does not know how her shell landed itself in this position. She pushes it out and away from the principality's grip with a fraction of her usual dexterity.

What business does it have, criticizing her shell? Illyria could dispense all sorts of comments about its shell, of how inanely normal it looks, but she elected to remain silent out of respect for what she assumed was an honorable opponent. Now it criticizes her shell indiscriminately for no reason she can so easily discern.

"I did not choose it, I assure you," the God-King replies, extricating her shell from the principality with obvious distaste. "Had I the choice, I would never have resurrected myself in a body so small and so fragile." And so human, but that is near enough implied.

Aziraphale stays where he is, even if it does leave him on his knees before them. He looks up at them, anger now very much on the surface. He realizes he's trembling. "There's a girl in there. She's still alive. Do you realize that? Do you even care?" Of course not. Why would the God-King care about the 'vermin', as they call them. "That was her body, and you took it."

He knows he's repeating himself, stating the obvious. It doesn't matter. Illyria's complete disregard for the life they've overtaken infuriates him beyond reason. He can't just pretend nothing happened, though that seems to be their plan.

The principality has made a sudden shift to righteous anger, which at this point Illyria simply finds tiresome. She is also tired, a completely foreign sensation to an otherwise tireless body.

"Impossible." She rights herself enough to stare down at the principality with relative dignity, though her impeccable balance has begun to waver. "The soul of Winifred Burkle was destroyed in my resurrection. Were it possible I would abandon this shell and seek out another."

The longing to return to her true form unexpectedly becomes overwhelming and omnipresent, and Illyria looks at her shell's hands with an expression that one might mistake for sorrow.

"I am shackled to it. Such is the nature of my being."

"But I just saw her!" he explodes, and climbs back up to his feet. "She was here, moments ago, talking to me. I tried to make her understand, but-" He turns away, shaking his head in frustration. "How could you not realize that she's still in there?"

And yet, he knows Illyria is not lying to him, that if they could choose another form they certainly would. They have no choice. And Fred is still alive, even if she is trapped. Perhaps it's good that she's unaware. That she can't see what's being done with her body. That she's not sitting in there like a paralyzed prisoner, being puppeted around by this arrogant creature.

"I thought you made your body," he murmurs, softening, fatigued. Unsure what else to do, he slumps back to his chair and collapses into it. He refills his wine glass and takes a slow, ponderous sip. "I made mine. Don't understand why something like you needs to borrow."

Illyria watches the principality impassively. None of what it says makes any sense. Winifred Burkle is gone. She must be. Illyria can take her form well enough and access those fragmented memories, but she is gone. She is gone. She has been gone.

She is gone.

Isn't she?

"My true form was taken from me millennia ago," she murmurs. "I chose not the moment of my rebirth. Nor could I know that it would be a moment too late, in a time that no longer knew of gods or kings, or cared to remember them."

She is choosing to blame the effects of the alcohol for this unexpected divulging of personal history that the principality should have no right to know. Only that - she shared this with it, did she not? Earlier, at the edge of the Rift. Yes.

The alcohol is impairing her memory it seems. Illyria registers this with a dull acceptance. She does not like alcohol.

Aziraphale finishes his wine without enjoyment and disappears the glass, leaning forward and dropping his head into his hands.

"I am sorry," he says after a moment, and looks up to meet their gaze. "This has been... a very trying day."

He, meanwhile, misses being drunk. Pleasantly drunk. That was nice, wasn't it? Briefly.

"I do not know how to help you," he says, "or Winifred Burkle. Now is not the right time. I have other matters I need to attend to." He has to know if Melanie is all right. Why she's stopped praying to him. It was painful, but at least it assured him she was there, still holding out hope for his return. Maybe she finally discovered his note?

"Stay here, will you?" he says. "Please. It's all locked up, no one will disturb you. Just... stay here, and I'll come back tomorrow." He has no idea if tomorrow will be any different, and even if it is, he has no idea what he'll do about this. "I need to get home and you need to sober up. You'll want to sleep this off, I imagine."

He gets to his feet. He feels tired and defeated, and his voice is gentler for it. "Will you stay here?"

Edited 2014-11-18 06:01 (UTC)

"Sober up," she repeats distantly, entirely uncertain of the phrase's meaning. At the present time Illyria is feeling oddly - tired, yes. Had she the energy to be disgusted she would be. Obviously the alcohol's effects are draining in addition to soporific. She will have to remember that.

She looks at the principality, at how equally worn and conflicted it is. The leaking of emotion is unsuppressed; she struggles for a moment with that stab of, of, of - ?

Of pity. Pity. Yes.

How profoundly unnerving.

Illyria nods.

"I will remain." She hopes it will not forget her. She has tangled with that sensation often enough as of late and she does not like it. She will stand in the room and analyze the tiny creatures in the air and the atoms and space she occupies and await the principality's return.

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You're what happens when two substances collide

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