the good grace to know which is which chapter 10

X. The Treaty

Adam Young pauses his game to look out of his hotel window. 

The last he’s heard from Warlock is that when he’d come back to the museum after meeting his parents (and Adam pulling some strings to make sure the whole thing went off without a hitch and without Warlock getting yelled at), Beelzebub was no longer there. Ah, well, at the very least, there had to at least be some progress, right? Warlock said that they’d actually been civil, even if at times they seemed to be goading him to fall into his more ambivalent feelings about his father. 

Dog, sleeping beside him, stirs and lifts his head, sniffing.

Adam reaches over and pats his head. “Let’s hope they’re not getting into too much trouble,” he says. 

He turns back to his game, unpausing it. In another room, Aziraphale and Crowley are sharing a bottle of wine while discussing emergency plans for if something goes awry. In another room, oceans away, Warlock Dowling wonders if he’d managed to do anything at all, and thinks that while he’d prefer it if he did, he’d much prefer it if the world didn’t end even if it wouldn’t be attributed to his efforts. 

-

In the middle of nowhere, Beelzebub stands on the edge of a cliff and stares down at the water below, crashing against the rocks by the island. If Gabriel gets blown by the wind and is discorporated, they can just say it wasn’t their fault and he was just clumsy. 

By some miracle (haha), the idiot has decided to give them some space instead of crowding around them and attempting to make infuriating conversation. Which is a good call, honestly, as Beelzebub feels like they wouldn’t hesitate to tear his throat out right now. 

They’re not usually this irritable. Actually, they are, but they’re usually irritated with everyone in Hell, and in Hell, when they’re irritated,  they can just throw the offender at a hellhound to get ripped apart for a little while.  It’s just that they can’t take their frustration out on Gabriel right now. 

And oh, do they want to. He hadn’t even done anything when they’d nearly thrown a spear at him earlier, and they would have, and could have. Only - 

Beelzebub is angry, but Beelzebub is not a fool.

They draw in a breath, tamp down the urge to just scream, and instead let their frustration out as a sigh. It doesn’t work as well as a scream, but at the very least, they do feel a little less awful, and not in the Hell-acceptable way, in the actual awful-awful way. 

Eventually, as if sensing it’s safe to approach, Gabriel comes to stand beside them.

“If you’re going to say something, I suggest you think about your words very carefully,” Beelzebub says. 

Gabriel appears to do so. He takes a pause before he speaks. “Heaven and Hell are not made for compromise,” he says. “This is as frustrating for me as it is for you.”

“Don’t be stupid, Gabriel,” Beelzebub says, about to stab themself in the foot mentally for what they’re about to say, but they had been the one to offer aforementioned compromise in the first place. “Heaven and Hell have a Treaty. Aziraphale and Crowley have worked together for years.”

“Why would you ever base anything on them?”

“Because it would be stupid on our parts to ignore it. Think about it for a second,” they say. “We are in charge of Heaven and Hell. To ignore an anomaly is to allow it to do whatever it pleases. And if it’s decided to infect everything else, the responsibility is on us.”

Gabriel pauses again. Beelzebub dares a glance at him. He looks deep in thought.

“What?” they ask.

“To not ignore it is to acknowledge it.”

“That’s not always a bad thing.”

He turns to them with a frown, like he’s saying, Not to you. 

Beelzebub huffs. “I might be a demon, but I can tell the difference between beneficial-bad and detrimental-bad. This isn’t detrimental.”

“To acknowledge it is to entertain thoughts about it, and that can easily sway people.”

“It sways idiots, that’s what,” they say. 

Gabriel gives them another long pause, but this time he’s looking straight at them. Beelzebub takes too long to connect the dots.

They have to stop themself from knocking the teeth out of his corporation.

“If there’s anyone here who’s been swayed by an idiot’s ideology, it’s you,” they say. “You blindly follow orders.”

“Mother knows what’s right.”

“Mother kicked half Her kids out for wondering what She meant,” Beelzebub spits out. “And if I happened to be on the other side of the door after that awful row, that’s on Her, not me.”

“You just said only idiots get swayed easily.”

“But only fools accept things blindly, Gabriel,” they say, and - Satan, they’re actually heaving, like they’re upset. Beelzebub doesn’t get upset. They get angry and incensed but never upset. Upset means crying and getting hurt feelings while also being angry, but they don’t have time for that. 

Gabriel - Gabriel says nothing. A semblance of pity creeps into his expression, but he wipes it away after a moment. Beelzebub catches it anyway. They haven’t had about a thousand meetings with this guy, planning important events in human history ( at least the ones involving the legions of Heaven and Hell in one way or another) just for them to not be able to tell what he’s thinking. If they don’t know what the enemy is planning, they’d get caught by surprise. 

Actually, there’s an idea.

Beelzebub smooths out their expression, suddenly amiable.

“Look,” they start, in the calmest voice they can manage. “We’ve worked things out for hundreds of years. We’ve reached agreements and have guided plans to go off without hitches for so long that it’s ridiculous that we’re not agreeing on this one.”

Before Gabriel can protest, they plow on. “Egypt. I had Crowley harden the Pharaoh’s heart, had him do the miracles for the sorcerers, and you had Aziraphale guide Moses. Made for a rather extravagant thing, didn’t it?”

“That’s one thing.”

“The siege of Jericho, then. We had people inform the king about the spies you had sent, as per agreed.”

Gabriel grunts, not willing to give an answer. 

“David? Goliath? One of the most retold narratives of all time? As if that wasn’t theatre set up by two forces to craft a story?”

“Don’t - don’t say it like that.” Gabriel stands up a little straighter, like an offended bird.

“The point is,” Beelzebub says. “The point is that we have actually been working together to achieve things again and again and again, and we did that during the scheduled apocalypse too. That’s always worked out for us. Hell, we were actually on track for the {lan. We could have continued to be on track had it not been for our two bumbling idiots who decided that they didn’t want the plan at all. What makes this instance different?”

“It’s not in the Plan.”

“Which we need to figure out,” Beelzebub says. They have him. They have him. They know he can see that they have a point, they just need to reel him in. “It’s harmless. That’s why we have the non-violence treaty in the first place, isn’t it? To put a pause to things so we can figure it out.”

They wrack their brain for the briefest of seconds to find another hook to convince him. “Besides,” they say, “After we figure it out, we’re going to have to discuss everything anyway so we can properly follow the Plan. Wouldn’t do well for one side to know where the battle is and the other not to.”

There.

They can see when everything clicks in Gabriel’s head, even when he visibly looks like he doesn’t want to admit it. But they’re right. The kicker is they’re not even lying this time, because before the apocalypse, Beelzebub and Gabriel had a meeting about who was doing who and who was meeting where, and that had been necessary to make sure everything would go without a hitch. 

If they’re going to make sure the Plan is going to be executed, they’re still going to have to do the same thing. 

But he’s hesitating, because Gabriel is an idiot, but not that much of an idiot, so Beelzebub sticks a hand out. Appeal to him.

“Aren’t you as tired as I am about this, Gabriel?” they ask. The sad thing is, they don’t even have to pretend that they sound tired, because they are.

Of this stupid petty fight. Of the stupid Plan. Of the fact that they are, essentially, just settling a 6000-year-old grudge match.

They shake the last thought away. 

Gabriel stares down at their hand for a long, long while, before he eventually just sighs and takes it, giving it one firm shake. 

Beelzebub smiles. Strangely, it’s not malicious. In fact, it just feels relieved, and it feels a lot like being back in the old office room of Purgatory where they always discussed each side’s assignments.

“Alright,” Gabriel says. “Business as usual, then.”

“Absolutely,” Beelzebub says. “Business as usual.”