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philosopherking1887 · 5 years

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Kol Nidrei (a Good Omens fic)

I’m back on my bullshit. @iscariotsss knows what I mean.

Word count: 2130 (including “footnotes”)

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Aziraphale liked going to houses of worship because it made him feel closer to God. He realized that this must seem foolish or paradoxical: he was, after all, a being suffused with God’s love and grace; and if he went through the right procedures, he could even (in theory) make direct contact with the Almighty. But calls to the Court of God’s Power through such channels—it had recently been made brutally, devastatingly clear to him—in fact went through a spokes-angel (no, not the wheeled kind), a mere mouthpiece who claimed to listen and speak on behalf of God. Speaking to God as an angel, using the capabilities and privileges his angelic nature afforded him, he had only ever reached a Glorified secretary.

Humans, though, when they prayed—it was possible that God truly listened. Angels listened, too, and sometimes took it upon themselves to answer; God was not in principle opposed to delegating, and angels were permitted a certain amount of latitude in how they executed the Divine Will, broadly understood. But sometimes miracles occurred, or moments of mystical inspiration, or improbable causal nudges, that could not be accounted for, even with all the Heavenly Bureaucracy’s scrupulous record-keeping. Then the angels had to wonder whether God Herself had heard and answered a prayer that Her agents had passed over. One of the Archangels would make a note by the observation of the anomalous event: “Divine intervention?” Always with a question mark, for God’s ways were known to none but God.

Aziraphale felt closer to God among humans praying than in the blessed Light of Heaven, or in his own grace-filled solitude, because he knew that their voices actually had a chance of being heard. Especially when they prayed in community, because although God did sometimes attend to solitary prayers (which might pierce through the noise because of the devoutness or holiness or strong personality of the pray-er), a group of people all speaking or meditating on the same message reinforce each other in a way that is not simply a matter of additive volume, but of resonance.

Because Aziraphale was at heart (and in body) an aesthete, he preferred places and modes of worship with a certain amount of pomp and ceremony. He could not abide the slick commercial atmosphere of ‘evangelical’ megachurches or the adaptation of modern popular musical styles to the purpose of worship; the mere presence of a guitar would send him out the door as quickly as consecrated ground did most demons. Nor was he much attracted to the simplest of gatherings, the mostly silent Quaker Circles, the unadorned meeting-houses that remained true to the Calvinist tradition (and, arguably, the original tradition of Christ and the first Apostles). No, he preferred the lushness of Catholic and Orthodox churches, their sparkling mosaics and glowing stained-glass masterpieces, the Masses and Liturgies composed by Europe’s greatest creative geniuses for sumptuous choirs and virtuosos playing thundering organs (Aziraphale found that of all artists, he had an especial rapport with organists). And if sometimes such fare was too rich even for him, he felt comfortably at home in the stolid, dignified (or as Crowley would say, stuffy and pompous) tradition of the Church of England. The Elgar and Britten anthems were not quite your Bach Mass or Verdi Requiem; but not even Aziraphale could eat lobster and venison every day.

So when the Jewish High Holidays came round and one felt compelled to put in an appearance (‘one’ referring not only to Heaven’s representatives on Earth, but to the Jewish worshipers as well), Aziraphale tended toward a certain style of Reform-to-Conservative congregation that favoured tastefully ornate architecture and a choir, accompanied by a piano or (in rare cases) an organ, singing nineteenth-century settings of the prayers and psalms much in the style of Mendelssohn,* or perhaps mid-twentieth-century arrangements taking inspiration from some combination of Rachmaninoff, Vaughan Williams, and dramatic film scores. Aziraphale was especially attached to the melancholy cello solo playing Bruch’s setting of the Kol Nidrei melody with which such congregations habitually began the Yom Kippur evening service.

On a mild, damp early autumn evening forty days after the world failed to end, Aziraphale went alone to the synagogue whose Kol Nidrei services he had been attending for the past twenty years or so (he was a creature of habit as much as, if not more than, a creature of love). He closed his eyes and let the cello’s plaintive voice set his chest to sweetly aching and was desperately grateful that he still had this—this salmon and crème fraîche omelette instead of the ‘eggs without salt’ of eternal celestial harmonies (stop thinking in food metaphors on a fast day!, he scolded himself, hurriedly directing his thoughts away from his stomach).

The cello’s final tremulous notes faded away and the cantor (who had classical operatic training; there was a reason Aziraphale preferred the services here) began singing the words of the Kol Nidrei. Aziraphale’s French or his Tibetan might sometimes grow rusty, but Hebrew and Aramaic always came back to him like riding a velocipede (or so they said; not that he would know).

“All vows,” the cantor sang (joined at musically appropriate points by the choir), “self-prohibitions, consecrations, bonds, promises, obligations, and oaths that we have vowed, sworn, consecrated, and taken as prohibitions upon ourselves from this Yom Kippur until the next—may it come to us for good—we regret and renounce them all; may they all be absolved, forgiven, cancelled, and rendered null and void; they shall have no force, and shall not endure. Let our vows not be vows, our prohibitions not be prohibitions, our oaths not be oaths.”

There was a widespread belief that the custom of making this declaration originated among the Iberian Jews who were forced to publicly convert to Christianity but who continued to practice their Judaism in secret—who insincerely forswore their faith in the sight of God and men, but wished to retract these false oaths in God’s sight alone. Among those who knew the text was older, the story was that it came out of an earlier time of persecution and conversions on pain of death. Aziraphale (who had witnessed the whole painful, arduous, improbable history of this people) knew that it came out of nothing of the sort: it was just that the Jews had an unfortunate habit, which caused their priests and rabbis no end of intestinal distress, of making solemn vows at the drop of a hat. There was even a significant commandment not to make vain oaths in the name of the Lord, but the habit persisted. So a formal ritual of renunciation was introduced in the hope that God could be persuaded not to take such utterances so terribly seriously. But it took on a darker, weightier significance in the face of the forced conversions that became a recurring theme in the history of the Jews. God’s Providence works in unexpected ways: a tradition that arose for one purpose might later prove even more essential for another.

When Aziraphale recited the formula with this congregation, it was always for the original reason for which it had been instituted. He, like the early Hebrews, had a shameful habit of making promises to God that he should have known he wouldn’t be able to keep. He promised he wouldn’t use frivolous miracles; he promised he wouldn’t eat and drink so lavishly; he promised he would be paying more attention next time, so that maybe he could stop or at least mitigate the next horror that the humans visited upon themselves—unless, of course, Michael or Gabriel told him it was part of the Divine Plan, in which case he would smile uncomfortably and wonder whether he should be praying that they were right or that they were wrong.

Above all, he promised to set aside his feelings for Crowley. He didn’t promise not to see him anymore—he had to keep an eye on Hell’s agent in his sector of the Earth, didn’t he?—but after every time they met, when he departed with a hollowness in his stomach that could not be filled by any amount of oysters or brioche, he promised that he would give no thought to the demon except in regard to thwarting him. He promised he would tell Crowley the Arrangement was over (of course, he never did… not until the second-to-last day of the world, when Crowley threatened to make him face up to what Heaven really was, and what they really were). He promised he would stay away, except to watch his counterpart’s movements, and perhaps to confront him directly if there was no other way of stopping his machinations. And he kept that promise for a whole century between 1862 and 1967—their encounter in 1941 had been entirely on Crowley’s initiative!—but during that century of separation, and especially after its unplanned interruption, he had been even more abysmal at keeping his promise not to think of Crowley in anything but his professional capacity.

Now Aziraphale was facing the first full year since the world had not been made anew, but somehow his world had; and he realized that he no longer needed to ask preemptive absolution for his usual vain promises to God. No one would be keeping track of Aziraphale’s “frivolous miracles,” much less sending him nasty letters about them. And though Aziraphale himself would never say it, he quite agreed with Crowley that Gabriel could shove his self-righteous comments about Aziraphale’s “gut” right up his tightly-clenched arse, along with that appalling tracksuit (he wasn’t entirely sure what Crowley had meant by calling him “basic,” but he gathered that it wasn’t good). Crowley liked him soft (he made a very good body-pillow, he was told), so Aziraphale liked himself that way, too.

As to preventing the horrors of human history… he wasn’t sure that he had any right to interfere, except by showing and encouraging kindness, where he could. As a Heavenly agent on Earth, he was retired, but he would remain a being of love until… well, until Heaven succeeded in destroying him, or God decided he deserved to Fall. But even then, he wasn’t sure: Crowley had Fallen (or “sauntered vaguely downwards,” as he liked to insist), but Aziraphale suspected that he was still a being of love, in spite of everything.

Most importantly, the primary impetus for Aziraphale’s empty vows, self-prohibitions, promises, and oaths no longer obtained. From this year on, there would be no vows not to think of Crowley, work with him, seek out his company. “For centuries I regretted and renounced those vows because I feared I couldn’t keep them,” Aziraphale said silently to God; he wasn’t sure whether or not he hoped She was actually listening. “Now I regret and renounce them because I should never have made them in the first place. I should never have wanted to be able to keep them.”

“Let our oaths not be oaths,” the choir was singing as the elaborate Romantic-style arrangement drew toward its dramatic close, the cantor’s voice rising in an impressive final cadenza. “Let our oaths not be oaths.”

“Ush’vuatana la sh’vuot,” Aziraphale whispered in time with the singers. All his foolish oaths had already been annulled,** most of them before he even made them; he could not now go back and retract them for the right reason. Well, he would probably come up with some new vain oaths, maybe about being less of a bastard to unwitting would-be customers in his bookshop.

There were some other vows he had it in mind to make where Crowley was concerned, but those would not be made only to God, and he had every intention of keeping them.

* “It sounds like bloody Gilbert and Sullivan,” Crowley had muttered to Aziraphale once when he had been invited to accompany him for a lark (the ground of synagogues did not burn his feet), and Aziraphale had had to bite the inside of his cheek to maintain his disapproving expression and stifle a laugh. “Listen, it’s the chorus of sisters, cousins, and aunts.”

** With the exception of those made during a year late in the eleventh century just before the change of tense instituted by Rabbi Meïr ben Shmuel, applying the renunciation to the year ahead rather than the year just past, had reached the synagogue in Paris where Aziraphale had been spending the Days of Awe for several years. Aziraphale panicked about it for a good six months, and indeed whenever he thought about it (with diminishing frequency) thereafter, not least because he and Crowley had first embarked on the Arrangement earlier that century and Aziraphale had spent decades regularly resolving to back out and never following through.

#i know yom kippur was 2 weeks ago #i've had stuff going on #it took me a while to finish this #my fanfiction #good omens fic #good omens fanfic #good omens fanfiction #ineffable husbands fanfiction #ineffable husbands fanfic #ineffable husbands fic #aziraphale pov #aziraphale and crowley #aziraphale x crowley

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imaginetonyandbucky · 6 years

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In Search of Something

Prompt: imagine tony and bucky in steampunk au

A/N: Dear readers, I am conducting an experiment, so to speak, and I beg you will indulge me. After having this prompt in my queue for quite a while and not being able to come up with a story, I found myself, this weekend, unraveling the knot and coming up with what will probably end up being a 60 – 90,000 word piece of Steampunk/Noir style WinterIron fiction. That being said, I don’t know that there’s a lot of demand for a Steampunk Noir story.

Consider this first chapter to be the pilot episode of a television show, so to speak. If there’s enough demand, I’ll write more. – tisfan

Chapter One: For Want of Aether

“That might well be the ugliest velocipede I’ve ever seen,” someone said.

Tony Stark, genius, inventor, rake, philanthropist, nearly spat out a mouthful of coffee. He hadn’t heard anyone come into the shop, although that wasn’t surprising. He was often lost in his own headspace when working, and he’d completed the amplification process for his Amberola a few weeks ago, which made the musical cylinders in his workshop particularly loud. He’d been replaying the Tchaikovsky recording several times, testing with a diaphragm sensor to measure the volume of cannon fire, to see if it was actually replicable at anything remotely resembling the normal level of sound.

“Probably good it’s on commission then,” Tony said. He wiped his hands off on a rag and came around the side of the workbench to look at the interloper. “What brings you to my humble ‘shop?”

There wasn’t anything humble about Tony’s shop and he damn well knew it, but at the same time, he was expected to keep up the generic merchant pater. Too many customers walked away and people might start wondering if he was actually running a shop, and if he wasn’t, what was he, instead, doing?

Tony couldn’t afford some snotty government official poking into his business, so… playing the humble inventor.

“Lookin’ for the son of Maria Carbonell?”

Yeah, fantastic. Tony reached under the bench and pulled out one of his gauntlets, being as casual as possible in attaching the connections to the tubes in his sleeve rig.

He leaned against the side of his work bench, crossing his legs at the ankle and presenting an utterly relaxed front to the newcomer.

Dark, ragged hair tucked under a fisherman’s cap, the man dressed like he was carrying his entire wardrobe on his back; undershirt, two button downs over it, a vest, a jacket and an overcoat. Despite the layers, he wasn’t sweating as far as Tony could tell. The evenings were starting to get cool, it was early October after all, but the afternoons were still fine. Perhaps the so-called customer hadn’t heard of suitcases.

Tony smirked. “There’s a name I haven’t heard in a long, long time,” he said, thoughtfully. “Who’s been name-dropping?” The arc-reactor finished charging the gauntlet repulsor with a dull whump. It was an old password, compromised almost a year ago when SHIELD was disbanded. Tony had managed to stay out of the crossfire, had hidden and protected a number of SHIELD’s agents, but it had been a mess.

The man jerked, as if he’d heard the repulsor whine, but the sound was nearly impossible to detect under the music and banging that went on in Tony’s shop. Or should have been. But even if he had, so very few people knew what the repulsor’s signature sounded like, and those who did weren’t usually in a shape to report it.

“Word gets around,” the man said. He raised his chin enough to look at Tony through ragged cut hair. He had eyes as gray as storm clouds and the sort of luminescent beauty that belonged in a painting by the old masters. Tony was somewhat of an expert on beauty in both the male and female forms.

How had that man wandered the streets and not drawn abundant attention? Just the sort that Hydra would send after Tony, if they were going to send someone. Knowing what they did of Tony’s eye and appetites. Knowing what everyone knew about Tony’s rake-hell lifestyle.

“Does it.” That wasn’t even a question.

The man could be hiding any number of weapons under that coat. Blades or guns or even some of the smaller, delicate explosives. He licked his lips nervously, eyes flicking in Tony’s direction and then away. “I can pay you.”

“I’m sure you can,” Tony said. “The question remains -- who sent you, and what do you want?”

“No one sent me,” the man said. “I’m here because you might b’ the only person in the world who can help me who ain’t gonna stick me back in a cage.”

“Fascinating as undoubtedly your story is, and pitiful as your plight,” Tony said, raising a hand and letting the repulsor show, “I think you should leave. I… don’t usually have the patience to ask more than once.”

“Wait, wait! Please,” the man said, and raised his left hand hastily, as if he was going to a sleeve-clutch weapon or to defend himself. The motion was accompanied by the distinct sound of gears and plates clicking together. Tony blinked; the man didn’t look like one of Vanko or Doom’s automatons, but the sound, that sound…

Bugger it. Shoot first, ask questions later.

The repulsor screamed defiance and the shock wave pulsed across the shop, sending loose papers flying like dirigibles, throwing small parts to the floor. And knocking Tony’s unwelcomed guest to the floor.

“Well, fuck.” Tony stood over the unconscious man, staring down at him. “Now I gotta carry you somewhere.”

He sighed. “Dummy, get over here!” Tony went to the shop door, hung out his By Appointment Only sign and locked the gate.

(more below the cut)

Panic surged and Bucky almost puked when he roused and realized he was locked down. He was locked down and seated.

“No, no, no!” He jerked at the restraints, struggling, although he knew it never did him any good to struggle. Once he was in the lab, once he was in the chair…

Except he heard a distinct sound of creaking wood and he was… sitting upright, not pushed over on his back, staring up into the too-bright ceiling gaslamps. And he was screaming, shouting, his mouth was free, not locked with a bite-strap or muzzle and…

He managed to focus, tamp down the panic long enough to look around.

What he saw was nothing like those industrial gray walls, the bank of nixie tubes and punch cards, the white-coated scientists with their shining steel tools.

Instead what he saw was a brick-lined room, a dozen wall sconces giving the room light. Bits of unidentifiable machinery littered almost every surface and the quicky, sarcastic little inventor was sitting on one of the tables, just looking at him. At some point, the man had stripped down from his merchant’s coat and was wearing a thin, white undershirt, plain dungarees, and a pair of suspenders, one on and one off his muscular shoulders. A round, blue light shone underneath the shirt and tubes with glittering strands of the same light were held to his arms with leather bands. He had a set of welder’s goggles perched on top of his messy black hair and there were grease and soot smudges on his face.

He was, absolutely, the man Bucky was looking for. Anthony Stark. Bucky hadn’t been sure before; the few daguerreotypes that Bucky had seen of the man were blurred -- Tony Stark was not a man to stay still long enough to get a good tintype made. But there was no doubt, now. The few files Bucky had liberated spoke of the artificial heart, what it looked like. What it could do.

He opened his mouth to say so, but found himself giving voice to a more pressing question. “Why am I naked?”

Tony scoffed. “What did you expect? I was checking you for weapons and you’re carrying a god damn arsenal. Didn’t know what to do about that--” He jerked his chin at Bucky, or more specifically, at Bucky’s arm, a mess of copper plates and brass wiring. “But it doesn’t seem to be functioning right now anyway.”

Bucky nodded. “Out of aether,” he admitted.

“Well, that’s both impractical and primitive. What little I could figure out on a quick inspection showed me that the refueling pod is in the back, too. Difficult to reload yourself.”

“I ain’t s’posed to be working without a handler,” Bucky said.

“Which is why you came to me,” Tony said. As if that made perfect sense. Which it did, because it was true, god damnit.

“Which is why I came to you,” Bucky said. “You’re th’ only one who runs independent that might even be able to produce such a thing.”

“You know running an aether mill without a license is illegal,” Tony pointed out. “Not to mention such a radical body modification should only be attempted by biomechanical professionals.”

“Let’s just say there’s more’n a few laws I’m on th’ wrong side of,” Bucky said. “What’d you shoot me for?” He was fair certain what he’d been shot with. Raza wasn’t a member of the Hydra camps, but Ten Rings had a tentative alliance, and after the brass-and-balls mess that had been Gulmira was over and done with, some remaining members of Ten Rings had taken shelter in Hydra safehouses. Zola had gotten a full report, and, still assured of compliance, had left the file somewhere that Bucky had been able to read it.

“You’re not the first pretty person that’s been sent after me,” Tony said, easily. “If people can’t tell the difference between SHIELD and Hydra anymore, that may say more about SHIELD than anything.”

Bucky managed a croaking laugh. It was almost too easy to flirt with the man while he was naked. Tony expected vulnerability, fear, or anger. Teasing and tension might disarm him, figuratively speaking, a little bit. “You think I’m pretty?’

“Actually, I think you’re Hydra,” Tony said.

I am. I was. I will be, if you don’t help me. But that was putting too many cards on the table, too soon. “But still pretty.”

“I didn’t say that,” Tony spluttered. “What are you, a virgin planning your coming out ball?”

“Yeah, actually, you did say pretty,” Bucky said. He licked his lower lip, giving Tony his best bedroom eyes. It was scarcely a chore. Tony Stark was a good looking man, muscular, compact. Smart as a whip, from everything Bucky had heard. Rumor hadn’t mentioned how sarcastic and quick he was, but those were traits Bucky had found attractive. Once. When he was enough in his own mind to find someone attractive. “I heard you. No takebacks.”

“Yeah, well, poison comes in pretty bottles, pal.”

“Infiltration’s not my speciality,” Bucky told him.

“Yeah, what is?”

“I’m a sharpshooter,” Bucky said, bleak. “Aether long rifle. Mostly. But knives, if I have to.”

“As well as a whole variety of other little nasties I found in your coat. You’re well prepared.”

“Not really,” Bucky said. “Most of it runs on aether, and I been cannibalizing it so I can keep movin’ my arm for almost a year now.”

“No handler to call on?”

“Got away from my handlers durin’ the battle of the Potomack. Been on th’ run ever since.”

“So you are Hydra.”

“I was, yeah,” Bucky said, sliding his eyes left, not able to meet Tony’s gaze. “Not by choice.”

“You’re a serum-swiller?”

“Not by choice,” Bucky repeated. “Prisoner of war. Captured. Altered.”

“Who were you before you became Hydra?”

“James Barnes, 107th Infantry,” Bucky said. “Look, if you ain’t gonna shoot me, or fuck me, can I get a blanket or somethin’? It’s cold down here.” Which wasn’t quite true, but he was practically starving. It’d been days since he’d eaten and while his body could run for a long time without human needs -- food or sleep or comfort -- he got cold, ice cold, if he went too long without. Eventually, those needs would kill him, the same as any man, but he’d freeze to death, and if Hydra could find him, they’d bring him back from the dead. Again.

Tony climbed down off the table and uncovered a tattered blanket from a long sofa. “Dummy, wrap him up.”

The automaton wasn’t human-shaped, but Bucky recognized the type; wind-up probably. It seemed old, creaky. Clicked and hummed as it crossed the room, a single mechanical arm with a three-prong gripper on a wheeled platform. Dummy, which seemed to be the wind-up’s name, apparently had a babbage engine of some sort, able to follow simple directions.

“Amazing,” Bucky said, as the claw-arm draped the blanket over him, and tucked the ends around gently, as if it was used to doing such a thing. Bucky had an instant’s picture in his head of the wind-up covering its maker, if Tony fell asleep in his workshop. “You make him?”

Tony nodded, once. “Comes in handy,” he said. “He’s a helper clockwork. My first.” Dummy retreated to Tony’s side, and he ran a hand down the arm, as if petting it for a job well done.

“So… you ain’t gonna shoot me,” Bucky said, not bothering to mention the other thing. “What’s your plan?”

“I’ve only got about twelve percent of a plan,” Tony told him. “It’s a work in progress. All things considered, I think I’m doing pretty well.”

“Well, while you got twelve percent, do you think maybe I could trouble you for somethin’ to eat? I ain’t seen a meal in three days, I’m ‘bout to perish of thirst, and someplace I can fall on my face t’ sleep wouldn’t go amiss, neither.”

“You’re pushy, for a self-invited house guest.”

“Call me a prisoner if it makes you happy,” Bucky suggested. “But ‘less you wanna compare unfavorably to Hydra, y’ might want to feed me. Look, I ain’t gonna hurt you, that’s self-defeating. This damn thing don’t work right now and a child could knock me over. I jus’... I jus’ need some aether. I have money, I have--”

“I can’t make aether. I don’t have the facilities for it,” Tony told him. “So if that’s what you want, I’ll share dinner and you can move along. But you said you’re Hydra, and that doesn’t give you much trust to put a leash on someone who’s as obviously dangerous as you are. Weakened state or otherwise.”

Bucky sighed. Tony Stark was his last hope. Without him, without the arm… Bucky was going to get caught, he was going to end up back in Hydra hands. “Then I need you to kill me,” Bucky said. “I can’t fall back into their clutches. I can’t go back t’ killin’ on Zola’s word. And they will. They can make me, an’ there’s nothin’ I can do about it. I’d rather be dead. Consider it a mercy.”

“Zola, huh?” Tony scratched his chin. “You say that name like you have a lot of hatred for him.”

“Buddy, you don’t even know the half of it.”

“Well, I can’t make aether, but if we can come to some arrangements, I might be able to help you,” Tony said. “If you can be trusted. And we’ll have to see about that, I suppose.”

“How?”

Tony made a face, then pulled up the thin shirt, showing off a muscular chest and--

“It’s called an arc-reactor. It makes power. Power enough to run my heart, enough to run your arm. Enough to run… well, quite a number of things. That being said, it’s killing me. And Zola… well, your old friend Zola has the one thing I need. To make a new core, so that the thing that’s keeping me alive will stop killing me. If you want to help… well, I can think of a few ways we can help each other.”

#winteriron #prompts #tony x bucky #tony stark #bucky barnes #tisfan #steampunk AU #not a good first impression #strip searched

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