The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 173: You Asked

Chapter 173: You Asked

She listened to them, her face set in stone.

"Better for you," she finally intoned," had this been a trivial matter"

"Opposite, is it?" Crowley inquired cautiously, noting that no one had finished the sandwiches. Aziraphale's plate was half full. Worrisome: the angel still hadn't retained his appetite.

"Indeed."

"And we don't ask it lightly, your majesty," Aziraphale explained.

Now her leaden eyes fell on him, considering. But he didn't shift or swallow. He steeled himself, and returned her gaze. And, the queen noted the fact, and leaned back, smiling.

"I can see you've both spent much energy and time on this. Impressive." Now her eyes landed on Crowley, and he didn't squirm either. "I've never seen you like this, Thorn Tongue. Never, in all our meetings."

"It's important. It involves children."

"And their parents," she reminded them. "Tell me, do you intend on separating them?"

"We were hoping to avoid all that," Aziraphale said. "Their guardians already fanatically protect them. We don't want to break them up."

"You'll have to convince them."

"We don't think that will be a problem," the demon assured her. She smirked. "No, I'm not going to persuade anyone!"

"You might have, in the past," the queen drawled, folding her arms and leaning on them. Her head swiveled around to the people in the diner. "Humans, thinking its their heads that draw them to love when its all in their pants." She turned back to them. "That's how you end up with all these little chimeras running amuck: half-this, half-that."

"I would emphatically disagree," Crowley replied darkly.

"Still. A big mess the rest of us have to clean up. Why have you two, of all people, taken on this Herculean task, and the knot that came with it?"

Aziraphale pushed away his plate and tapped a napkin to his mouth. "It's just like with the Ark."

"Oh?"

"We accepted, as we did then," the demon uttered, "that there was nothing to be done. That we were helpless to change the status quo, to alter the course of grand events. Then, a dozen little human brats did it for us, and shook us from our nescience."

"You actually did it," the queen shook her head. "You've managed to piss off the entire universe, and now you have the audacity to make me a bedfellow in this scheme!"

"I wouldn't put it quite that way," the angel tried, then trailed off at her glare, finally.

"And what of these human brats? These sethkin, as you called them? Their parents won't be so obliging, as if they ever knew!"

"Grant them safe passage to enter and exit, just them, no one else."

The queen threw her head back and bellowed a laugh. "This just keeps getting better!" She fell back, regarding both them and their nerve. "Really, Thorn Tongue, you cease to amaze! But this! In all our acquaintance, never once have you intreated such a thing."

"And I wouldn't, for me, or even him," he thumbed Aziraphale, who looked a little put out. "But this isn't some que we're trying to set in motion. We just want to sneak them off somewhere, safe-like, until we convince the laws of nature to let them be. And you can do that," he sniffed," briefly."

"You think much of my authority," she snarked.

"Or your subterfuge. Either way, it's temporary."

"Unless it doesn't work, and then?"