Warlock asks Nanny about it once.
She’s cutting apples for him, just the way he likes, and he’s gazing out of the window at the lush, green gardens that his mother so proudly upholds. Among the waxy leaves and spindly saplings, Brother Francis tends to the flora carefully, though Warlock’s quite sure he’s just taking certain leaves between his finger and his thumb, and studying them closely. But what did Warlock know about gardening?
He notices Nanny looking out those windows, too. Though she always gazes and stares with a deep intent, as if she only cares when she does, and it so happens that she never looks upon the garden empty.
What was that funny thing Nanny and Brother Francis had taught him? The thing that Nanny discouraged, to which Brother Francis promoted quite devoutly?
“Nanny, have you ever been married?”
Warlock knows what marriage is. After all, his parents are married, if you can call it that. They married, once, out of love. But it’s since faded. It’s more traditional, now. Out of convenience and a general apathy to trying again.
Nanny’s quick hand stills, blade edge flat against the cutting board. With her back turned to the young boy, he cannot make out her expression. He never can, what with her poised shades she wears pointedly upon her nose. But she speaks soon again.
“No,” she replies, simply.
Warlock considers this. “Do you ever want to be?”
Nanny, who had taken up the cutting again, pauses once more. She sets the knife against the board and tilts her chin towards Warlock. “Wherever have you learned such personal questions, dear?”
She’s not refusing to answer him. She never has. She just asks in true curiosity, and perhaps a slight avoidance. But Warlock’s eight, now, and he knows how to navigate her tricks.
“Where do you think?”
At that, she pauses, lips pursed with their consistent purple tint. The lipstick she wears, that faintly stains Warlock’s forehead when she kisses him goodnight and tucks him in after a bedtime story: often about a garden, or a bird that chirped too loudly, and was cast down to the ground by the other birds. One who became the kind bird of the grounds, and took in other reject birds that had fallen similarly.
She considers his answer a moment more, satisfied with the obvious influence she’s had on him. She turns back to the apple slices.
“Perhaps,” she answers.
There is quiet for a moment. He doesn’t mind, he’s grown up with Nanny at his side, and has become quite fond of the silence. It is where thoughts are made, she said once.
She finishes cutting the apples, and plates the sweet snack to serve to the boy. “What troubles you, dear? You seem awfully curious, all of the sudden.”
Not that she minds. Nanny never rejects curiosity.
“Nothing’s wrong, Nanny, it’s just—” he pauses, considers his next words and how to place them. “You look at Brother Francis a lot, and—”
Nanny interrupts him after an audible, suspicious gulp. “Who?”
He frowns, eyes boring into the back of her head. “You know Brother Francis.”
She seems quite comically nervous, like she’s pressed a wax-seal act over her true thoughts. “Oh, yes,” she decides, too much breath coming with her words. “The gardener.”
“You like him, Nanny.”
She turns, abruptly. “I most certainly do not!” Her voice comes out a tad shrill, though perhaps it’s just outrage and scandal.
Warlock narrows his eyes, perplexed. “But you look at him all of the time.”
“When has that ever had anything to do with- with love?” She struggles with the word.
The boy shrugs. “Mum and Dad don’t look at each other,” Warlock observes. “But Brother Francis looks for you, too.”
Nanny’s mouth, ready with a retort, or perhaps a counter-argument, flicks towards a different shape. One that might be, he does? Or perhaps Warlock is mistaken. She pauses, lips pursed again, and sets her teeth.
“I’m sure he does, love.”
The plate is set before him, and Warlock soon forgets his questions. He never asks Nanny again.
But he’s reminded of it when her eyes, barely visible in the light, flick towards the window into the dazzling garden.
Years later, Warlock is nearly sixteen, and has since let the thoughts from half his lifetime ago fade. They never die, just sort of… wait. Wait to be plucked again, notes of memory leaping from their tinny strings. Like a harp.
His mother takes him into town. Soho, where he has no interest in seeing, but his mother so desperately needs a new vinyl, a coffee, and though she never says it: a moment to get away from the house, or more specifically, her husband within it.
She agrees to let him wander. She trusts him, for all she hasn’t before. And perhaps, she says, the fresh, un-televised air could do him some good.
He’s only taken two steps out of the coffee shop, where his mother remains to await her tea, before he almost runs smack into two pedestrians, arm in arm. He takes a surprised jump back, tongue set with an angry scolding, when he gets a good look at them from behind.
“Nanny?”
They both freeze in unison, as if they both know the name, and the voice that has conjured it forth once more for the first time in five years. Warlock notices something else.
“Brother Francis?” He prods, shocked. “Izzat you?”
Both of the two now turn, and everything around the three fades into blurring colors and churning noises.
Warlock would be a rotten liar if he had said he hadn’t missed them dearly. He would also be a lousy boy if he didn’t recognize them by the backs of their heads alone, he thinks. Because he would know them anywhere. They’d always done a much better job at raising him than his own parents.
They both look different now. Brother Francis seems to have had dental work done, and has cleaned up quite nicely. Nanny, though, appears to have changed her style completely. Her- his? Their? Who knows. But she still sports a fine pair of shades upon the bridge of her nose.
The pair seem to stutter, splutter with a little awestruck surprise. It’s as if they’d never expected to see him again.
“Oh- Warlock,” Nanny Ashtoreth begins, feigning a cool-headed surprise. “How good to see you.”
She sounds different too. Less of a high strain on her voice, more natural.
But Warlock seems to finally feel a gear shift, and a puzzle piece clicks into place. He glances down to the space between the two, where their arms are linked.
In his dumbfounded state, he feels a smile split the trance.
They both see it at the same time, chins tilting to follow his gaze. When they catch where his eyes are, their stares mingle together in concern. It’s a look that wonders aloud whether or not they should be worried, or blatant.
Warlock looks back up to their faces. “I see now why you two left,” he adds, grinning wider.
He can’t help it. He was right all along.
Warlock remembers something, then. It takes all of his power not to burst out into a triumphant laugh.
“I’m sure he does,” he says, slyly.
Nanny’s eyes, illuminated from behind with daylight, widen. She remembers, too. Of course she does.
And she bites back a twinning smile.
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I have some things to say.
to begin: Neil Gaiman sucks. I loved and looked up to the man because of his work, because I thought his writing was amazing and Good Omens helped me through the toughest time in my life. the recent news however, does change my opinion - as at should for EVERYBODY.
I feel disappointed by the Good Omens fandom. I do not think making yourself the victim publicly is at all okay. The women are the victims. If it does turn out to be fake: that’s good. But it does not change the fact that the power imbalance was there and would have affected how the relationship worked from the beginning. No matter if it is fake, right now saying “but how will I enjoy ___” is not okay . I understand, I do. I love Good Omens and I will continue to love Good Omens because it is a piece of media that matters so much to me.
I admit I have gotten of point. To get back on track let me make it simple and clear: You can not say “believe the victim” then go on to say “but Neil Gaiman is a good person…”. He is not. Yes it is wonderful that he has supported queer and trans people but you, I have to say, are not a good person for saying it if it depends on who assaulted - ASSAULTED - someone. No, PEOPLE. Two GIRLS.
Neil Gaiman is not a good person.
You can separate the author and the work, I am doing that with Good Omens as I have done it in the past but you canNOT support and endorse HIM.
And to end it off, if it turns out to be false: good. But he met one of the girls when she was 18, and waited for her to be of age. That is not something good men do.
Believe the victims, it doesn’t matter that you looked up to him. He did something bad, horrible, tragic and disgusting, admit that and talk about it to bring awareness.
And I would like to add: It is hard - and nearly impossible - for me to let go of Good Omens and The Graveyard Book. The Graveyard Book is the only book my father read to me as a child that stuck with me and led to an obsession. The obsessions have died down. If you own his books and enjoy them you are not a bad person, his writing is good. If a book means a lot to you, you are not a bad person. You are only a bad person if you make excuses for him. His is a shitty human who is a good author. Fuck him, but you owning his books doesn’t make you a bad person. Just refrain from buying NEW work.
And if it does turn out to be false, yes it eases the entire fandom. He is still sketchy in my books because as far as I know he cannot prove he has not done anything and got with two very young woman as a much older man.
An updated opinion: Neil Gaiman most likely did it. The amount of tales from people who - as young women - met him and had horrible interactions or stories of friends of his employees. He, most likely, has always been a bad person who simply uses the themes he does to make himself seem like a good person. This is not ours to mourn, it’s ours to take action and keep characters you happen to love alive in yourself instead of something HE did. Or, get rid of your stock. Up to you. It’s 1 am and I am distraught by the news but I’m not denying anything because given every piece of proof to show that he most likely did it, denying it is a bad thing to do and is a horrible name for the fandom.
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