The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 148: Playing the Fool

Chapter 148:  Playing the Fool

"I really don't know," Despair hissed at him. "If you're playing the fool or if you really are one!"

"Bit hazy on that," Aziraphale admitted. "Sometimes a bit of both. I've cultivated it so much I'm not truly sure myself."

She was taken aback. "You made yourself this way!" she inquired in disbelief.

"Why, goodness no!" the angel retorted. "But...there was plenty of material to begin with. And I'm rather aware of it, unlike some people, which means I can use it to my advantage."

"You fool even yourself. That can be dangerous."

Aziraphale giggled, making the freak snarl. "Only if you haven't mastered it over 6000 years."

Crowley's hopes rose. "Keep being you, angel! Play the bastard for all it's worth!"

"You like being a jester, making fools of others with your obliviousness?"

"Never give it a moment's thought."

"You lie. Right now, you're engaging us just to weigh us."

"Are you not doing the same?"

"And so right there you prove us correct. Do you really thing you can defeat us at all?"

Aziraphale barked a laugh, and shook his head. "I am tied and bound, at your disposal! What could I possibly do to stop you?"

"You could borrow the demon's blindness. He must be with you somehow."

"Oh, he is, the fiend," the angel conceded wryly. "But blindness won't stop you, not when my soul is bare to your tender attentions."

She actually grinned, impressed. "Very good, angel! You are indeed. However, the wards make it tricky, don't they? And we are not what we were, and so our approach must be...strategic."

"Yes well, if it makes you feel any better you terrify me."

Despair smiled her terrible smile wider, knowingly, and began to pace back and forth, relieving him for a time of her terrible stink. She paused and popped her head up. Red burning eyes slid across the surface of her face, unable to stay put and oozing to and fro like runny eggs in a storm-rocked ship galley. "I tire of this."

She threw herself back in his face, all business now.

"Do you have any idea what it is to be torn apart and put back together again?" she declared accusingly.

His eyebrows rose. "Does that include reincorporation? Then, yes."

"Augh!" She raked her claws across his chest, shredding his jacket.

"Here now, there's no call for that!" he spouted. "Take your vehemence on me, not my clothes!"

"To be ripped apart, piece by tiny piece, and melted to another creature?" she hissed in his face. Oh, how his nostrils flared with her intrusion.

"Of course, I do!" he rebounded, leaning away. "Two in fact! You were there!"

She had to pause to think on that one, about their last battle. And the very remembrance of it, and how it led to this, fueled her fury.