'JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.'
In which an angel, a demon, and their adoptive daughter decide to stop Armageddon. Except it's days away, they've lost the antichrist, Heaven and Hell are both breathing down their necks, and th...
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Crowley yells at plants. Freddie, on the other hand, monologues about her problems to them. (Aziraphale doesn't care what they do, just as long as dirt doesn't get all over the floor.)
***
Freddie's bedroom above the bookshop was a small and cozy. The walls were a soft, warm shade of yellow, made even more so by the sunlight that streamed in from the window overlooking the street. A circular green rug lay atop the hardwood floor. The curtains framing that window were pale pink and patterned with red flowers, and the bedspread on the bed below the window matched. On either side of the window, decorations had been hung - a series of family photographs on one side, and a poster of the teenager's namesake on the other. Against one wall, the same one that the doorway was on, was a tall bookshelf filled with all her favorite volumes. And on the opposite wall, there was a small, messy desk, and a swivel chair, tucked in one corner, and a dresser beside it.
It was on top of this dresser that Freddie kept a small selection of plants, specifically cacti. There were four of them, each uniquely shaped and prickly, and they were all in small, colorful pots - one pink, one teal, one orange, and one purple. Freddie had first taken an interest in keeping cacti when she was eight or nine, after spending so much time around both Crowley's own plants and the gardens at the Dowling residence. Her fathers had proceeded to get her cacti, because, well, they didn't need to be watered often, so they'd be easy to maintain, even for someone so young. Evidently, the interest had stuck.
On Thursday morning, two days before the scheduled Apocalypse, that was where Freddie could be found - in her bedroom, picking up her cacti and inspecting them to ensure they were healthy. (They were indeed healthy, partially because Freddie did take good care of them, and partially because they were inherently resilient.)
"I dunno how we're gonna find the real Antichrist," the girl complained. "Dad and Pops seem sure that they can do it, but they also think that they have 'human expertise' and subtlety. So I'm not fully confident about this one."
See, in her sixteen years with Crowley as a Dad, Freddie hadn't just picked up on his proclivity for gardening. She had also gotten into the habit of talking to the plants. Except, while Crowley yelled at his plants and held them to the highest standards, Freddie preferred to monologue about her problems to them. Like that scene in Hamlet (one of her Pops' favorite plays - she thought it was just alright) with poor Yorick, except there was a tiny cactus in place of the skull.
"This is such a mess. No, I'm not confident at all."
She put the cactus in the teal pot back onto her dresser. Then, with a heavy sigh, she flopped backwards onto the bed, spreading her limbs out like a starfish.
