One thing that was really driven home for me this season was how much power Crowley has. How much influence.
To recap:
Shax, despite hating him and being his literal replacement, is constantly asking him for advice and help.
Furfur comes to the magic show in 1941 to arrest him and Crowley, like, laughs at him and goes back to sleep. "We shant, this is ridiculous."
In a room (the bookshop) with both Heaven and Hell's top brass, somehow Crowley was in charge of that meeting.
Both Furfur and Saraqael really really wanted him to remember working with them.
The Metatron knew he had to separate Aziraphale from Crowley in order to effectively manipulate him.
Like. He's unafilliated from both Heaven and Hell at this point, everyone (but Aziraphale) hates him, and yet people listen when he talks. People do what he says. It's incredible.
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Ok well i had the brief thought “what about an ER nurse Eddie au?” and then this popped fully formed into existence so fuck it Friday pt 2.. warnings for smoking and vague references to critically injured kids
“That doesn’t seem very healthy.”
Smoke curls up from the cigarette held loosely in Eddie’s hand. “It’s not, particularly.”
Buck’s hands are in his pockets as he strolls away from the glass doors out into the ambulance bay where Eddie is doing the mature, professional equivalent of playing hide and seek. He comes to a stop barely a foot or two away from where Eddie leans against grimy concrete. “Didn’t know you were a smoker.”
“I’m not,” Eddie sighs, “Particularly.” He looks over Buck’s face as he takes a drag, cataloging bruises and cuts. He hadn’t been the one to look him over before he was discharged, probably because he was out here avoiding having to do so. “Only when it’s- only after the bad shifts.” And only once a month, even if the bad shifts come again and again. He bought this pack in January, it’s stale as shit.
Buck’s eyes follow the smoke as it drifts skyward. “Rough one today?”
Eddie thinks he probably doesn’t have to explain to Buck that it’s sometimes better when a kid is dead on arrival so he doesn’t have to try his best to administer care he knows will be useless. He doesn’t have to explain a day where nothing goes right and he loses more people than he can save and he still has to walk away from someone’s parent or wife or sister, left behind forever in a waiting room on the worst day of their life, and go on to lose the next person too. Doesn’t have to explain why he’s out here, and not in there. “Mm. We’ve got this repeat customer, always hate to have him back.”
Buck’s eyes flick to his face before they settle somewhere around his elbow. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. He seems like a nice guy. I worry about him. He’s here too often.”
Buck doesn’t look up. “What was he in for this time?”
“Minor concussion. Bruising. Lacerations.” Eddie sucks cancer into his lungs. “Heard a house fell on him.” Exhales it into the night.
Buck does look up this time, eyes a darker blue out here in the shadows. “Part of a house. Just a staircase and the- like, the balcony, really.”
“Maybe he should stay away from those.”
“From houses?” Buck asks, half his mouth twitching into a smile.
Eddie rests his head on the wall behind him. “Guess that’s not really practical.”
“No.” Buck is quiet for a moment, one hand slipping out of his pocket and running through his hair. Eddie wonders what he looks like, when he’s not here. He’s more styled, sometimes, when things aren’t very bad. He wonders if he’s usually all gelled up and neat. Eddie kind of likes the loose curls. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Making your day worse.” Buck looks genuinely apologetic, and Eddie shakes his head.
“The guy made it out okay this time.” Buck is just close enough that Eddie can kick at his boot with his sensible orthopedic sneaker. “You didn’t even need stitches.”
“That’s good.” Eddie’s left foot is pressed along the inside of Buck’s right, and Buck is staring down at them. “His favorite nurse was on break. I would have missed you if someone else had to do them.”
Eddie laughs, just a few bursts of soundless oxygen. “You gotta find new ways to see me before something happens that I can’t fix.”
Buck moves, taking the few steps necessary to lean against the wall beside him. Carefully, he takes the cigarette from Eddie’s hand, holds it between two of his own fingers, and takes a drag. Eddie watches it happen like he’s monitoring somebody’s pulse ox, and when Buck coughs he laughs again, louder this time. “Fuck,” Buck says, laughing too. “Thought that would be cooler than it was.”
“Smoking isn’t cool, firefighter Buckley,” Eddie says, taking the cigarette back and pulling from it again between smiling lips.
“Hm,” Buck says, grinning out into the night. Then he sighs, and rolls his head along the concrete to look at Eddie. “I think there’s nothing you can’t fix.”
They’re very close. “There’s lots I can’t fix.”
Buck shrugs like he disagrees. “I also think I’d like to find other ways to see you.”
Buck’s eyes are even more in shadow at this angle, and they’re the color of the lake back in El Paso that he and a bunch of kids went to after graduation, drunk off beer somebody’s cousin got for them, skinny dipping with breathless terrified delight under bright constellations. “Then ask me.”
Buck inhales as Eddie exhales. “What time’s your shift end?”
“5:30 AM. So, probably 6:15.”
Buck traces the two fingers he’d used to hold the cigarette down Eddie’s arm. “You wanna get breakfast with me?”
“Yes. I would.”
Buck smiles, and Eddie snubs out the cigarette on the wall between them. “I’ll meet you here?”
“Alright.” He takes a step forward, then a step to the right so he’s standing in front of Buck. “Two hours.”
“Uh huh.”
He should really get back inside. They’re understaffed, as always, and there are too many patients, as always, and not enough beds, as always. “See you then.” He doesn’t make any move to leave.
“See you then,” Buck almost whispers. He leans forward, and Eddie still doesn’t move, so he presses a tiny kiss to the corner of his mouth for just a moment. His lips are warm. Eddie hadn’t noticed it was cold outside.
Buck pulls back and leans against the wall again. Eddie smiles, puts a hand in his pocket, and walks back toward the doors.
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"Child of man, may I see some of your sketches?" Malleus' question surprises you, for two reasons. The first that moments before you were sketching him, which you had assumed he hadn't realised considering he hadn't look in your direction once.
The second that you hadn't even mentioned to him that you even drew sketches. But you supposed the sketchbook and pencil in hand did make the latter rather obvious. You aren't sure if you want him to see your sketchbook, a singular drawing of him would be easy to explain away, but the several, page consuming ones, would be a bit more complicated.
"I would appreciate it if you would even permit me a single glance at the current page in front of you." As if reading your thoughts, he gives you room to reject his curiosity, and while part of you considers doing so, his inquisitive expression is enough to show him the page in front of you.
"I was sketching you." You confess, heart beginning to pound as his expression refuses to give away any of his thoughts as he examines the various sketches of him on the page. Eventually he looks back up to you, a smile tugging on his lips.
"I am honoured that you would chose me as a muse." Your face feels hot, searching in your brain for a reply that doesn't give yourself a way.
"Well you're a rather good one," is not what you want to reply with. It hints at too much, it peaks his curiosity further, you can tell from how his eyes drift to the corner of the page. But if he figures that this isn't the first time you've drawn him, he doesn't voice it. "Anyway, I should really get going." It's an excuse, you really don't want to have to explain why you don't want him to see the rest of your sketchbook.
"Of course, thank you for showing me your sketchbook." He pauses, meeting your gaze before continuing. "It's fascinating to see how someone else views you."
"I hope you didn't find it offensive."
"Nonsense, I'm flattered. You seem to view me quite favorably, if your sketches are anything to go by." Part of you wants to say that he doesn't even know that half of it, but the way that he stares at you, his lips curled up into a smirk. Makes you think that he may be onto you.
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Michael, the Ruined Prince
Michael, having used all of his power to seek out God, had failed as the Prince of Heaven. He had abandoned his people, absent for centuries on a fruitless search filled with unheard, increasingly desperate prayers and an unrelenting, bone-deep exhaustion that is now permanent. His grief grew day by day, and an angel in isolation begins to wither, to warp – they must be with one another lest they twist into their extremes, retreating into their divine purpose until it becomes self-destructive parody. And Michael had already been scarred long ago by his role in banishing Lucifer, by God’s own ever-mounting wrath that ate away at the mercy he was meant to feel alongside it. Michael had already been insular, something had already pulled at the seams of his soul, and now centuries of failure consume him. He would return to Heaven with nothing for his people. Nothing for the siblings he swore to protect.
So his final thought in a deeply troubled mind urged him to try one last time. That if he could not find God, then he must bring God to himself. He must sin, he must beg for punishment, and then God will come to deliver it onto him. Just as He once did to Lucifer. It disgusted him, to think he had to debase himself to be as the sinners he held nothing but vile contempt for ever since he couldn’t cope with the guilt of the first fallen angels. But his prayers have failed, his days of weeping have failed, he moved Heaven, Earth, and all of Hell to come up with empty hands. Less than that. Not even a feeling. So Michael, even as a Cherub who could not, did everything he could to replicate his memories of when he had witnessed God Himself tear the light from His angels. Michael had seen it every time, it was he that had to bind any fallen angel that survived it to their place in Hell. He knew, implicitly, what the ritual was even if God seemed to enact it in one beautiful, elegant motion. And he did just that. Imperfect pantomiming, flawed execution, but the same ritual as best as Michael could copy it. All to himself.
But only God and the high Seraphim can sever an angel from their light.
His soul was rent from his body. His light was torn to shreds by his inexperienced hands. The agony that it screeched resounded all the way back to Heaven in unintelligible, muted whispers of nauseous grief no one could understand. Michael felt himself die, but it was incomplete. He was left in a corpse, a body destroyed and succumbing to all it meant but with him still inside of it. God did not come, and Michael was trapped a ruined body, bereft of a soul, of his light, giving way to rot and deterioration yet fully functional. He could do nothing but take this as a sign from God, one that he will not be punished no matter his crime for being such a loyal servant. Even as his body falls apart, as plants begin to burst from his remains, he believes himself to be blessed – see how he grows God’s garden. See how his crown remains pristine. He adorns his exposed bones with gems and finery, ostensibly as thanks to God for keeping him alive, keeping him sinless when he had so despised his impending fall from grace. But. Michael is, in the back of his mind, highly aware of what he’s become. He knows he is rotting, he knows he is in a dead body, he knows, somewhere, God had nothing to do with it. It was just a mistake, it was just his own foolishness with catastrophic consequence. He is more noxious than a fallen angel now, a botch job shambling numbly back to Heaven when he feels the death of Gabriel.
Upon his return, he largely attempts to hide the rot of his body, at least from the citizenry – he cannot hide it from Raphael or Uriel, nor does he try. To Michael, it proves his devotion, it shows God’s still present love for him, and it is a testimony to how he cannot fall, that he can never lose his place in Heaven. Raphael begs for him to be healed, Uriel pleads reason to him, but neither had ever been as strong as Michael and ultimately, he is their leader. No matter the state he returns in, he is the Prince of the Archangels and truthfully...they both fear him now. He is not the Michael they loved, not the one that had been quiet and stoic yet still loving in return. The Michael that would have done anything for them, that never wanted to lose another like he lost Lucifer. He commands them now to join him in binding Gabriel, his tangible grief the only thing that seems to be left of who he had once been.
Internally, Michael sees their fear, he feels the crushing guilt of Gabriel’s fall, he is violently ill with one true look at himself. He had gone wrong a long, long time ago, when he lost Lucifer, and now all of that was being made manifest, but he can’t face it. As flesh falls away, he covers it more and more with jewels as if that could hide the decay he can feel spreading night and day, the only thing he feels now. He must retreat into his purpose, he must not allow such devastating failure to be his legacy. So he turns on Gabriel. Gabriel, whose light had been severed. Who walks freely in an abandoned Hell. Who still has a living, breathing body. Michael’s vitriol toward the damned hones in on Gabriel, consumed with being sure he is left nailed to the lowest pit in Hell for his treachery. All the love he once had turns to hatred and in it, the other three can see that Michael has been left shattered, that nothing in him truly believes God made him this way. God’s most loyal, left to rot.
Additional information:
Michael now always exudes the Odor of Sanctity, but there is a distinct undertone of mold to it
The opalescent webbing that runs through his body is the angelic brain - normally it is iridescent and transparent with a strange glow, but Michael's is opaque and dull
Michael now prefers walking, something noted as unusual when he returned to Heaven, but it's simply due to the fact that his body has been left entirely numb and so it's difficult to maneuver in the air properly
He is very protective of his crown and dragon-skin bag, as they seem to be the only things left uncorrupted on him
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this game this game this game. I have been thinking about this.
The endings have such an ironic human expression attached to them.
The middle, neutral ending is just that, a hollow and neutral victory. There is no expression tied to it.
In the worst ending, where we remain as a puppet - albeit one of flesh and blood - He smiles at the end, an expression of joy. But in the "good" ending, in the most interpretably "good" ending you can possibly get in the game, that expression is a tear. An expression of sorrow.
Maybe this is drawing from Collodi-esque ideas. As though telling us that it isn't the ability to experience happiness that makes us human; It is the ability to experience pain.
[And both of their skin is speckled and "flawed" in either ending. But in the good ending, his skin is "flawed" in the FAR more human way]
I don't have any smashing conclusions right now, I just thought they were juxtapositions in the story that were super interesting. And so beautiful.
There aren't really any "happy" endings in the game (in true k-media fashion). All of them are sort of melancholic, in my point of view. Krat is still totally destroyed, and either our father dies or the entire hotel, no matter what we do.
It's also reminding me of this verse:
Oh, we don't own our heavens now
We only own our hell
and if you don't know that by now
then you don't know me that well
Buy the Stars - MARINA
As in, we cannot own what makes us happy. We can only ever own what makes us sad. Maybe that doesn't make sense, but I've been wondering about those verses since the song came out.
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