Chapter Text
Crowley stops being able to feel Aziraphale when the lift gets a little more than halfway between Earth and Heaven. That’s it. Just - cut off. The connection between them snapped. Severed. Like humans used to think the Fates did to the threads of their lives. Crowley had met the Fates, once. Nice enough for Furies, as long as you didn’t cross them, or question them, or happen upon them when they were having one of their bang-up arguments. Crowley generally tried to avoid them, because nothing crossed them like being a largely-immortal being, like, say, a demon.
Still, he’d been drunker than a lord one afternoon - he and Aziraphale had been drinking for hours in the courtyard of Aziraphale’s current hovel, a bright, surprisingly airy little oikos he was renting a room in. It had just passed mid-day, the sun bright, washing down over them, so bright it hurt Crowley’s eyes, and he’d laid there, hand over his closed eyes, idly wondering whether one of those clever humans could invent something to be worn over the eyes to block out the sun - but how to keep them on, while Aziraphale nattered on about some Homely fellow. He kept wanting to tell Aziraphale it wasn’t very angelic to comment on others’ personal shortcomings, but he felt too drunk and lazy and sun-warmed to speak up.
Crowley was always impressed at how Aziraphale could find these little spaces, could make them feel like himself in a matter of no time, filling them with his scrolls, with jugs of wine, with little snacks, secreted away for safekeeping. It was almost - well, it almost felt like a home, something neither of them strictly had, or should need, being a demon and an angel. Crowley preferred his adobes to contain nothing personal: nothing that would give him away, nothing that could be taken from him.
He’d closed his eyes and let himself drift, and at some point, Aziraphale had told Crowley that he, Aziraphale, had some blessings to do, something to do with the wine harvest, and hadn’t Crowley somewhere better to be? “Lazy serpent,” he’d concluded, knocking Crowley’s feet down from the balustrade, almost fondly. And Crowley had risen, coming up with at least four better places he could be right that minute, telling Aziraphale all about them, and he’d almost pulled it off, but he’d teetered a little when he tried, in leaving, to put one foot in front of the other.1 Aziraphale had said, “My dear, are you quite alright? Perhaps you ought to sober up.”
“Naaaahhhh,” Crowley had said, and sulked - skulked - away.2 He kept going, headed for an olive grove he knew nearby, where this time of day it would be cool at the roots of the trees. Maybe he’d shift, sleep it off in snake-form, change back when the night turned cool and who knew - wander into the village again and see what Aziraphale was up to.
At his destination, though, Crowley had heard voices, and a soft rhythmic metallic snick. Curious, he followed the sound.
Wrong instinct, apparently. He really ought to work on that. He saw what appeared, on one level, to be three women: one young and dark, spinning out thread; one fair, slightly older, measuring it, and a withered crone holding a pair of shears menacingly. Satan. The Moirai. He wondered what they were doing here, in this grove, the three Fates, measuring and ending men’s lives. He supposed they’d got to set up somewhere, and this was as nice as place as any. He was just hoping it would’ve been nice for him. Crowley tried to slither away unnoticed.
It didn’t work. The youngest - Clotho, he thought, looked up. “Demon,” she said, her voice seemingly soft and pleasant. Something in it sent chills down his - well, his lack of spine. He pulled himself to a stop, straightened up. “So sorry, didn’t mean to intrude, I’ll just be going,” he said, already starting to back up.
“No need,” said the middle one. Lachesis, the allotter. “Stay, tell us a story. We get so little company.”
“Come closer,” said the eldest. Atropos. She snipped the thread that was stretched between the three of them. Crowley shivered.
“Nah, I, uh, really got to get going, got a friend - waiting on me…” he trailed off, couldn’t help but step a little closer. Behind them, he could just make out a loom woven tightly with the many-colored threads of men’s lives, crossing and intersecting. Here and there some gleamed more brightly than others: heroes, kings, important humans. And one, just over there -
“Hang on,” he said, forgetting himself for a minute, and leaning closer. “Is that…?” It was his; he knew it as soon as he had seen it: black and red with a shot of gold through it, twining malevolently through the warp. He had almost missed it, tangled as it was with another thread, white and gold and blue, shimmering with something he thought he recognized. He frowned, stepped a little closer, again, and Clotho stepped in front of it. Her tattered robes swung to hide it behind her. She smiled with the sweetness of youth. “That is not for you to know, demon.”
“Not yet, anyway,” the second Fate said, and grinned. Crowley didn’t like looking at that grin for too long. He looked away and caught a glimpse of Atropos, the third Fate, who remained squatting near the base of the loom. Her hands, holding her shears, dangled between her knees. She looked ancient - almost as ancient as Crowley, or maybe more so. Crowley didn’t know, and he didn’t particularly want to find out. All he’d really wanted was a good place to nap. He backed up, because while he was curious - maybe a little too curious for his own good - he was also not stupid. He had learned the word Consequences, the last time he had been so curious, and had learned then that some things once done can never be revoked. Like Falling, or learning your Fate, or maybe kissing your very best friend on the mouth, with your own mouth, like humans did, something you had thought maybe he wanted, had interpreted, from certain looks and little sighs and fleeting touches throughout the centuries, to mean it would be welcomed -
Well. Turns out he was wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. Probably wouldn’t be the last, either.
For millennia, Crowley’d wondered what it was the Fates were trying to hide from him.
Sometime in the fifth century he’d figured out that the white thread tangled with his own had been Aziraphale’s. For better or for worse. For centuries, he’d been sure what the Fates had been hiding from him was Armageddon, the point, ever nearing, where his thread dwindled, or snapped, or was cut, or, more likely, cast back down into Hell for all eternity, all exits sealed, no way out. Trapped with Hastur and Ligur for eternity.
And then Armageddon had - well, not come - and gone, and Crowley tried to put it out of his mind. Maybe they weren’t hiding anything from him. Maybe they were just protective of their secrets. And now, finally, sitting in his car, he knows that what the Fates had been hiding from him all along had been that inevitable point where his and Aziraphale’s threads had separated for all eternity, untangling to run parallel in the warp into the end of the world.
It’s a long universe. There’s a long time to be apart. Especially when Earth and all the kingdoms thereof are ended. By Aziraphale, no less. Crowley can’t believe it.
Crowley parks the Bentley in a fairly inconvenient place for everyone around him (hey, former demon) because he doesn’t think he can face his flat right now, and nothing in Heaven, Hell, nor on earth can ever induce him to go back into the bookshop. So he parks, half on the curb, in a prime parking spot in front of an overly expensive restaurant,3 and he drinks himself unconscious. Which is harder than it sounds.
He should be out taking over London, he knows, now that his Heavenly opponent is gone from the board. Should be sowing strife and discord and pain and suffering. Any self-respecting demon would. But he’s not a demon anymore. He’s not anything, really, except drunk in his car in the middle of the day in London.
Oh, and alone. He’s that, too.
And then seventy-three days after Aziraphale’s left, Crowley feels something scratching at the edges of his booze-soaked consciousness, like a song half-heard from another room. Crowley’s been trying to drink away his sense of time but he can’t; it’s innate, it seems, just like Aziraphale’s stubborn adherence to Doing the Right Thing, which he seems convinced, apparently, is martyring himself up in Heaven.
This thing trying to get through his consciousness feels familiar, and Crowley squints his eyes like it’ll help him listen better. He struggles to sit up from where he’s sprawled out, uncomfortably, across the driver and passenger’s seats. His seat and Aziraphale’s seat, really, because who else had ever ridden in the Bentley with him?4 It’s broad daylight, and the humans outside are giving the Bentley a wide berth - maybe because it’s parked half-up on the sidewalk, maybe it’s his natural occult camouflage, maybe it’s because they can sense his misery on some kind of molecular level and are staying far, far away from it.
The feeling comes again. It’s a strange magnetic pull, like gravity, almost the way Crowley had felt up among the stars. They had tugged on him, gently; his mass - in some physics-defying way - not quite equal to theirs, but strong enough not to be pulled into their orbit.
Except it’s not that, it’s stronger, it’s pulling him to realize the feeling is coming from the Bentley’s radio, and he leans forward and turns it on, turns the volume up and -
“-ley? Crowley, are you there? Can you hear me?”
It’s Aziraphale, coming from the Bentley’s radio.
Crowley feels like he’s been punched in the gut. “Nnngh,” he says. He can almost feel the angel, as if he’s right there next to Crowley. He recognizes the feeling for what it is: that strange magnetic pull he had always been able to feel when the angel was on earth, how he had always found himself orienting towards Aziraphale, like due north, that feeling that had been snapped, cut off, when Aziraphale had gone back to Heaven, had abandoned him, here, alone.
The first thing Crowley tries to do is change the radio station. Aziraphale’s words cut in and out - “-tron - judgement - need - shop-”
The bookshop, of course. Of course all the angel cares about is the blessed bookshop. Crowley tunes into the original station with a snap and glowers at it in silence, bottle in hand, eyebrows raised above his sunglasses, waiting for Aziraphale to speak.
And he does. “Crowley?” Aziraphale’s voice brightens. “Crowley, it’s me.”
He takes another drink before answering. "I know it’s you, Aziraphale.”
“Oh,” Aziraphale says. “Right. I, ah. Listen, Crowley, I - There’s something terrible in the works up here, I’m afraid. I need your help.” His voice going soft, the way it always does when he confesses something.
Of course he does. Of course he needs Crowley’s help, of course he’s going to interrupt Crowley’s me time5 because he needs something. I need you! Aziraphale had said, real pain in his voice, and Crowley hadn’t been able to help him, not that time.
“What?” says Crowley. “What? I can’t hear you. I’m going through the Chunnel, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale repeats himself louder. He’s starting to get a little pissy. Good, Crowley thinks, with satisfaction.
“Nope, didn’t catch any of that,” Crowley says, taking another swig. He swallows, hard. “Why don’t you try again, Aziraphale, third time’s a charm.”
“Are you drunk?” Aziraphale asks. He sounds scandalized.
“Jealous?” Crowley asks, and takes a long swing. He makes sure to sigh in satisfaction, to smack his lips. There’s an angry intake of breath from Aziraphale. Low blow. He pumps his fist for scoring a hit, mouth twisted. He hates himself for it, hates this game, hates how at their worst they pick at each other as a way to keep their distance.
“Crowley, will you please sober up, this is important.”
“Nuh uh,” he says, and takes another drink, just to prove his point. “You can’t just - leave and expect you can keep bossing me around. M’my own demon now.”
“Bossing you around?” Aziraphale says.
“Yeah,” says Crowley. “You know. I’m not your second in command anymore, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale sucks in an outraged breath. “That’s not what I meant, Crowley.”
“No? No, then what did you mean?”
Aziraphale dodges the question. “I knew this would happen, I knew you would sulk.” “Sulk?” Crowley says and jerks up so fast he swears he hears his spine twang.6“Sulk, this isn’t - this isn’t a sulk, Aziraphale, I’m not having one of your pouts.” He’s definitely having a pout. It makes him even angrier that Aziraphale’s nailed it.
“Crowley, I don’t want to fight!” Aziraphale bursts out. He sounds close to tears with frustration. “I just need to talk to you!”
“Doesn’t matter what you want anymore, Aziraphale,” Crowley says, heavily. “You left.” He leans forward and turns off the radio with a snap. Then he drives to a bar he likes because they have one of those Touch-Tone jukeboxes he can mess with, and he works on getting extremely, unbelievably drunk. Drunker. Drunkerer. Then he goes out to the Bentley and very indignantly does not sober up and sleeps it off in the alley outside the bar, waking some eleven hours later with what is possibly the worst hangover he has ever had, and a taste in his mouth like Ligur might’ve died in it.
But after that, he stays awake, stays relatively sober, because Aziraphale’s trying to get in touch with him, and although he’s angry - he’s so angry, Crowley can’t remember being this angry since - well, 1862, maybe - Aziraphale had been sounding a little desperate. So Crowley goes for more drives in the Bentley, winding down all the familiar streets of London, streets he had seen built, streets they had seen built, again and again and again. It’s astonishing to him how nothing seems to have changed with Aziraphale gone, at least, not outwardly. Doesn’t everyone know? How can the world not feel it?
It’s two months later when Aziraphale cuts in on a verse of F. Mercury’s Life’s a Gas.7 He’s picked a bad day for it. It’s dreary, a long slow gray rain that puts Crowley in mind of that one time in 1982, was it, that he had gone to pick Aziraphale up for a stroll in the park, and Aziraphale had dithered, and “don’t you think we ought to just” - and finally Crowley had suggested why don’t they just stay in the bookshop, angel, wait it out, go see a show later, if it doesn’t let up? And Aziraphale had turned bright grateful eyes on him, and they had spent hours there, the rain slow and quiet outside, Crowley napping on the sofa, Aziraphale puttering around him silently, almost, Crowley would swear, humming.
So, yeah, Crowley’s thinking about it, and then Aziraphale’s voice cuts in on F. Mercury fronting T. Rex, and he says - “Crowley? Are you there?”
Crowley sighs. “Yeah, I’m here,” he says. There’s a pause, like Aziraphale doesn’t know what to say.
“What’s it like in London?” Aziraphale says.
“Raining,” Crowley says.
Aziraphale lets out a misty little sigh, and Crowley knows, he knows he’s thinking that there’s no rain in Heaven, that Aziraphale misses the rain. “Do you remember-” Aziraphale starts and Crowley snaps, “No, no, I don’t,” although he does. He remembers everything.
It happens again, and again. Aziraphale, it seems, really wants to get ahold of him. Crowley tells himself he doesn’t want to hear from Aziraphale, but finds himself waiting, counting how long it’s been between each time. Ten days. Almost three weeks. Crowley’s pathetic. Still, what else has he got going on? A handful of half-baked schemes not even a human schoolchild would call evil? Something that is shaping up to be a real drinking problem? A flat full of limp plants with a spider mite infestation they can’t shake, a flat that still smells like sulfur and bird? Never get that smell out. Be better just to burn it down and start over.
Nothing. He’s got nothing.
The next - and last - time Aziraphale gets him in the Bentley, Aziraphale makes the mistake of cracking a small wry joke that catches Crowley off guard, makes him snort. Then he gets angry at Aziraphale.
“You don’t get to leave and pretend nothing happened!”
Aziraphale’s voice sounds funny. “I’m not trying to pretend! And this isn’t about that!” “Everything’s about that!”
The thing about knowing someone for six thousand years is you almost always know what that they mean when they say that .
Crowley grins, all teeth. He’s spoiling for a fight. “How’s Heaven,” he asks. “Is it nice?”
“Yes. Of course.” Aziraphale sounds stiff. “Crowley, listen, I need to see you. There’s something we need to talk about.”
Oh no. Not this again. “I thought we had just about covered everything.” Is that true? He wonders to himself, and pushes it down.
“Crowley! I’m in real trouble up here!”
And for once, Crowley doesn’t believe him. Aziraphale’s falling back on his old tricks. “No,” he says, “No no no, we’re not doing this. We’re not playing this game.” He’s wagging his finger at the radio. “M’sure if you just - issue the right memo - talk to the right people”- the words come back to him like an echo, a ghost - “it’ll all be fine.”
There’s a choked-off noise of rage from the radio. He grins. “You are impossible,” Aziraphale hisses, and then there’s just dead air. He can’t feel Aziraphale anymore. Again.
“Nnnn,” Crowley says, making a face at the radio, to cover the sinking feeling in his chest.
≠≠
It’s ten days later when Crowley feels it: that chest-clenching stomach sinking feeling he has come to associate with crepes, with churches, with a bag full of books clutched to Aziraphale’s chest.
Aziraphale’s in danger.
His first impulse is to panic. Then he tamps it down, because Aziraphale - despite being a royal idiot - is no fool, and it’s most likely, he thinks, that Aziraphale’s manufactured some half-cocked plan to force Crowley to come to him. Up to Heaven, like he wanted all along. Oh, sure, Aziraphale is in trouble - he believes it, can feel the angel’s panic, his racing heart - but Aziraphale, he is certain of it, has engineered some little plan just to talk to him. Satan knows he’d done it before. Funny, Crowley had never minded before.
Well, then. He’ll go up to Heaven - again - and when he makes sure Aziraphale is alright, he’s going to give him a piece of his mind - maybe several - and go far, far away. Alpha Centauri may be out, but it’s a big universe. He’ll find something, somewhere, where even an angel can’t find him, and just…cool his heels awhile. Maybe pick up drinking again. That’s a hobby you can do solo.
So he jumps in the Bentley and races through the streets of London while the Bentley plays Who Wants to Live Forever. “You certainly won’t, you keep this up,” he hisses, but his heart’s not in it, and he can feel a layer of actual concern coming from the Bentley beneath it all. If a car can be said to feel concern.8
It makes Crowley a little nervous. He parks outside the bookshop, half on the curb, where he can see faint movement inside the lighted windows. It pulls at - well, at something in his chest, anyway, even though he knows it’s not Aziraphale.
“Right,” he says, hands on the Bentley’s steering wheel. “Stay here,” Crowley tells it. “Don’t let the Inspector Constable even touch so much as a door handle, got it?”
The gauges flicker briefly. Crowley gets out, pats the roof, and walks to the elevator. By all accounts, based on what he knows, the elevator shouldn’t take him up to Heaven without an angelic escort, shouldn’t even allow him to press the button without some nasty side effects. (Legions of demons had tried it, for kicks, when the elevator had first been put in. For other’s kicks, mostly. Lots of Erics had tried to go up in the thing, and had not enjoyed the process).
Crowley smacks the button, and the doors slide open, serenely. He glances around, then steps in. “This had better be good, Aziraphale,” he growls under his breath. The elevator waits there, patiently, until he smacks the Heaven button. The elevator shudders, and then - it begins to rise.
Shouldn’t work, unless an angel - perhaps a powerful one, perhaps archangelic levels of power - had overridden it, somehow.
Still, Crowley’s not concerned.9 In fact, this definitely just points to Aziraphale meddling in things. He practices a few little one-liners in his head that he’ll unleash on Aziraphale after he rescues the angel - again - from whatever Machiavellian scheme the angel’s dreamed up.
Crowley feels it when he passes into Heaven; everything gets sharper around him, a little tingly. The elevator doors can’t open soon enough, and Crowley pours out of the doors and into Heaven. The first thing he notices is he can feel Aziraphale again, can feel his presence even closer and more real than he’d been through the radio, feels, in fact, like he’s standing right beside the angel, sitting across from him on the sofa, perhaps, leaning in for Aziraphale to pour him more wine. He almost falls to his knees. He grits his teeth, and stays upright.
The second thing he notices is the feeling that something’s wrong. No, that something’s Wrong. Deep and unsettling, something that feels like - he opens his mouth a little to scent it. Betrayal. Brewing violence. Danger.
He curses, and begins to run. He curses as he goes, a low stream under his breath, angry at them all. Angry at Aziraphale, for walking around life with his eyes wide open, seeing nothing despite it, so bloody - bloody - angelic. Angry at Heaven, angry at Hell, both of them, for playing a game they don’t even know the rules to. There might not even be rules. Angry at God - downright furious at God, even.
Junior angels scatter out of his way, an angry black snake slithering through Heaven.
“Hey! You can’t-” one says, and he shifts, quickly, to show them something dreadful. The angel freezes. They’ve likely never even seen a demon before. Well, isn’t today full of surprises.
Something happens, something shudders, and the lights, bright white, begin to strobe in hard pulses. Crowley grits his teeth and squints behind his glasses. “Aziraphale!” He shouts, throwing all caution to the wind, and thinks he hears something, off in the distance, from where he can feel the pull. He keeps going.
Finally he skitters around a corner and sees - Aziraphale. He’d know him anywhere, in any body, could see him even in that human woman, so even seeing him from behind, in unfamiliar white clothes doesn’t faze him. He recognizes, in an instant, the set of Aziraphale’s shoulders, the light fluff of his hair, his straight spine - it’s him. Still unharmed, for now. He’s surrounded by perhaps a dozen angels, most of whom Crowley recognizes, knows, remembers, and all of whom are armed: a bevy of swords and spears and other unpleasant sharp objects, all of which are pointed at Aziraphale. Aziraphale’s standing tall and strong, legs braced wide, shoulders set. Crowley feels a hiss starting low in his chest along with a glimmer of pride.
Crowley knows the moment the angels notice him. Michael sneers at him; Uriel’s face remains impassive - as it always has, as it did even as they watched their brothers and sisters Fall from the sky; and the nasty-looking one grins, flashing a bit of gold in his mouth. Sandals Resorts, or something, his name is, Crowley thinks. Aziraphale, too notices him; his shoulders slump the tiniest bit in relief, then straighten again.10 Aziraphale, what have you done now? Crowley thinks. This is no manufactured situation, not to have the entire host of Heaven arrayed against you. Even Aziraphale’s not that committed to the bit.
“Crowley,” he whispers, and the sound of his name again in Aziraphale’s voice, the sound of his name in anyone’s voice, really, after so long, is like a balm. “You came.”
“Demon,” says Michael. “What are you doing here? How did you get in?”
“Ahhh, you know,” Crowley says, sauntering closer and starting to circle. The angels - all but Aziraphale - tense up, tighten their grips on their weapons. He’s trying to get closer to Aziraphale, to get eyes on him. Crowley continues, “Got offered a new position, Grand Duke of Hell, figured I’d come up here and see how it should really be done. Take a few pointers from the best of the worst.” When he finally makes a half-circle he can see Aziraphale’s eyes, wide and dark, on him. His mouth - don’t think about his mouth, Crowley sternly tells himself - is partially open, and his eyes track Crowley as Crowley moves. Crowley can tell there’s a very small part of him that doesn’t know whether to believe Crowley or not. Good, the small, mean part of Crowley thinks.
“Course I came,” he mutters, low, under his breath, when he’s at the closest point of his orbit. Nobody can hear him but Aziraphale. “Aziraphale, what have you gotten yourself into.” He continues circling, sauntering, swinging his arms and hips, getting all the angels nervous. Good. Keeps their eyes off Aziraphale. When his path brings him past the nasty-looking angel, the angel feints with his weapon - a big, nasty looking axe that’s got holiness written all over it. Literally. Crowley can’t even look at the thing without his eyes stinging. Crowley sidesteps him. He hopes it doesn’t come to a fight. He hates fighting. He’s no good at fighting. What he is good at is slithering away, and at not getting caught in the first place.
Unlike Aziraphale, apparently. He sighs, even as he keeps moving.
“Oh,” says Aziraphale, keeping his voice light and hushed. “Just a little disagreement on policy.”
“Treason,” snaps Michael. “The word is treason, Supreme Archangel.”
Wow, Crowley thinks. He’d fantasized about weaponizing Aziraphale’s title like that for weeks while he was on his little bender, knew the whole time he probably wouldn’t be able to pull it off, not unless Aziraphale made him really, really mad. Which he was good at. And here Michael was, doing it like it was nothing. Probably because she was always a right cunt. It was something Crowley admired in her.11
“Aw, now, treason, that’s a big word. Dangerous word.” says Crowley. “Take it from me. What kind of treason you been up to, Aziraphale?” He’s circling, closer and closer, Aziraphale’s head turning to watch him like a charmed snake.
“Consorting and collaborating with the enemy is not the least of them,” Michael says.
“Going against the Great Plan,” Uriel says.
“Stopping a mistake before it starts,” says Aziraphale, “for the second time.” His voice is almost bitter.
“Well done,” says Crowley, low, and Aziraphale flushes a little with pride. You really think so? And Crowley wants to say yes, yes, I do. He’s still so angry with Aziraphale, so hurt, but he can see - from the look in Aziraphale’s eyes, the way his hands, down by his sides, open and close as if to reach out - can see from his pink mouth, the look in his eyes -
It doesn’t matter what he sees. Crowley can feel his heart rising in his chest like a hot air balloon. This isn’t the time. He can take this out and dissect this later, when they’re safe. Both of them. Together. Right now he needs to figure out what the Heaven Aziraphale has gotten himself into and get him out of it. And after that, what then? He really, really wishes Aziraphale hadn’t given away his sword right about now. This - a demon rescuing an angel, from Heaven, of all places - is unprecedented. Maybe Crowley can frame it as a kidnapping. Maybe Aziraphale will finally, finally, listen to him, will finally say yes, will take off with him to the stars.
Crowley, still circling, is too busy looking at the angel with the axe. That’s his mistake, because when Aziraphale startles, and looks behind him, his face already changing, half horror, half-rage -
- it’s already too late. “Enough of this,” Michael says from behind Crowley and in one motion - that Crowley sees too late from the corner of his eye, starts moving too late, too late, he’s always too late - drives her sword through Crowley’s back. There’s a terrible sound. Crowley’s not sure if it comes from him or not. Panicked, he stops time; just as panicked, he accidentally lets it slip, because he can’t stand the sight of Aziraphale’s face, twisted with shock and pain, the dawning look in his eyes, mouth pulling down, frozen forever, and he reaches forward towards Aziraphale, or tries to, but his knees buckle, and he falls to the ground, time slipped through his fingers, moving forward once again.
He falls, face down. He can’t breathe. He forgets he doesn’t need to. Everything hurts, more than just a stab wound - he’s had those before - and he manages to think enough to pull, to sidestep his corporation, to slither out of it, to shed his skin.
“Hah!” He manages to get out, turning to Michael. “Can’t even manage to kill a snake, can you?” But he stops taunting, because nobody’s paying any attention to him, which is rude of them. They’re all turned to - Aziraphale. Aziraphale, who’s dropped to his knees beside something dark and ungainly bunched on the ground, his white head bowed over it.
Crowley curses. Alright, so he’s been discorporated, but he’s fine. It’s just an inconvenience. And he’s in Heaven. He does’t technically need his corporeal form to do, say, this -
He reaches out for a spear carried by one of the soldier angels, still pointed at Aziraphale, but his hand passes right through the spear.
“Blast it,” he says. “Aziraphale! Aziraphale! Can you hear me?” But Aziraphale doesn’t move, doesn’t turn from Crowley’s body on the floor, the body that he’s lifting up. Crowley can’t see his face. He’s glad for that.
There’s a flutter of wings like the night tearing. HE CANNOT HEAR YOU.
Crowley turns, slowly. Azrael is standing beside him. They both stare down at Crowley’s body. Crowley feels a little funny, like he’s not all there. Or here. Or - wherever he is. Everything is strangely distant, as if seen through a pane of dirty glass, or corrugated plastic. There’s an unpleasant noise behind him and he turns to see Aziraphale pull the sword out of Crowley’s body. Steel on bone. Crowley makes a face. Aziraphale stands, steadies himself, and brings the sword up. His face is twisted, wretched, streaked with tears. The sword blazes suddenly with light. Everyone takes a step back. Everyone, that is, except Crowley’s very still, very dead body.
“Fuck,” says Crowley. Something sinks inside him, low, lower, lower than he ever knew he could go. “That’s a holy blade.”
YES.
“What are the odds on coming back from something like this?”
I AM NOT IN THE HABIT OF GAMBLING.
“But if you were.”
0.000001%.
“Right,” says Crowley, watching Aziraphale as he wields the sword, snarling something, his face set in a grimace. Between him and the angels, Crowley’s body. Holy blade, right to the chest. Crowley’s honestly not sure how he hasn’t been totally obliterated, a la Ligur, body reduced to a nasty mess on the floor. The angels crowd in, unsure, the ones in the back prodding the ones in the front. Michael, Uriel, and the nasty one seem to be arguing with each other.
Aziraphale lowers the sword, advances two steps. He drops heavily to his knees besides Crowley’s body, drops the sword. He presses his palms to Crowley’s chest. “What are you doing, angel?” Crowley mutters, half to himself, and -
Aziraphale tries to resurrect him. It’s an enormous burst of power that hits the entire room, dropping most of the angels to their knees. Aziraphale pours power into him, a holy golden light that illuminates and enwraps Crowley’s body, seeming to stream through the body’s skin from the inside, pour from his body’s open eyes - his sunglasses have been knocked askew - even, somehow, impossibly, gilding the trail of blood that has spilled on the floor. Crowley can even feel it in his - whatever he’s in now - can feel it like an approaching lighting storm, every single bit of his essence - on every plane - beginning to tingle and vibrate, to reach towards Aziraphale, towards his grounding palms. For a glorious millisecond, he allows himself to hope it might work. All that archangelic power, pouring into him. It’s got to be hundreds of lazerii, thousands, even.
But it doesn’t work. Aziraphale gasps, and falls back, and the light cuts out, and there’s only Aziraphale, looking incredibly tired, and pale, and sad.
Crowley turns to look at Azrael, beside him. His cowl is pointed towards Aziraphale, down on the ground, next to Crowley’s body. He could be looking at them. He could be making out a blasted shopping list in his head. Crowley really doesn’t know.
Michael and Uriel take a step forward. The remaining angels are watching the tableau unfold in front of them with a mixture of horror (about half) disgust (the other half) and curiosity (some of both the aforementioned above). Crowley keeps an eye on them, in case they rush Aziraphale, like he could do anything even if he wanted to.
Aziraphale gathers Crowley’s body up in his arms, then, pulls it half into his lap. Hands shaking, he presses one over Crowley’s hair, tries to brush it back, out of his face. He leaves a dark smear of blood on Crowley’s forehead. “Oh, Crowley,” he sobs. Crowley feels sick. He wants to stop watching. He can’t stop watching. “No, no, no,” Aziraphale says. It’s the last chance Crowley will ever have to see the angel. There’s no afterlife, not for them. Frankly, he’s surprised he’s still here, witnessing this, but maybe She was punishing him for daring to - who’s he kidding now - love an angel. Love Aziraphale. He watches Aziraphale press his lips to Crowley’s forehead, sweep trembling fingers down to close his eyelids - a desperate sob breaking out. He kisses his eyelids, then his mouth, gently, tenderly. The way it should have been done. Then he puts Crowley’s sunglasses back on, shaking so bad it takes him two tries, and then Crowley is really glad that he’s dead, and that he never really eats much, anyway, because otherwise he would be sick.
So this was it. What thousands of years of existence boiled down to.
Crowley had, like almost all living beings, understood the concept of death, but had never really thought that he, personally, could ever cease to be. And now here he is, facing down an eternity of nothingness. They didn’t have souls, after all. This was it, the end, donezo. The final cut. He had been cast out of Heaven, had been thrust away by Aziraphale, and now he was dead. Not just a little dead, but Dead Dead. Holy blades’ll do that to you, if you’re a demon. Which he is. Was.
“Is this it, then?” Crowley says.
EVEN YOU, STARMAKER, Azrael says.
As if he hears Azrael, Aziraphale gathers Crowley up in his arms and rocks back and forth, keening, like his heart is breaking. It’s entirely too dramatic. It’s also entirely genuine. Crowley can feel it. As a demon, Crowley can sense the grosser emotions, urges, and sins. Like wrath, and envy, and lust, and despair. He’s been able to feel it whenever Aziraphale’s been hurt or angry: the Flood, the Crusades, when they’d fought over the holy water, when he’d finally handed over the thermos to Crowley. But this, this dwarfs that. Makes it feel like a blip in space. He can feel Aziraphale’s grief swell and collapse under its own weight like a black hole. Crowley remembers making a black hole. He had made an enormous star, beautiful and bright, and then he had forced it smaller and smaller until it had collapsed in on itself, and it had started to pull everything in around it. He had barely gotten out of the way in time. Aziraphale’s pain is like that, now, sucking, all encompassing. He’s surprised Heaven doesn’t collapse under its pull. In fact, even the other angels look uncomfortable, as if they’re feeling something rippling through the air, but aren’t sure what. Maybe they’re disgusted by the display of emotion. Especially for a demon, for the enemy. For the bad guys. Crowley feels a surge of pain. If only he had come out and said it, outright, would Aziraphale still have gone to Heaven? Aziraphale, don’t go to Heaven. I can’t be without you. I love you. Stay here, with me. But it’s too late, too late, too late.
Demons can’t feel others’ love, but they can feel others’ pain, and sometimes, that’s the same thing. It’s only now that Crowley finally, fully, realizes that Aziraphale loves him. He had long suspected it, had hoped for even longer, had wondered about those darting glances - the tentative reaches, Aziraphale’s hand always retracted, curling his fingers into his palm, as if afraid to touch. Six thousand years and it wasn’t enough.
“I don’t want to see anymore,” Crowley says. His voice is hoarse.
ARE YOU IN SUCH A HURRY TO BE GONE?
“Didn’t think I had a choice.”
I AM NOT SO CERTAIN. LOOK. And there it is. That blasted kernel of hope in him slinking forward, hissing, eternal. Maybe there’s a way, have you considered…
Crowley looks, and, “Oh, Aziraphale, no,” he says. Because now Aziraphale is screaming obscenities at the other angels, at God, still clutching Crowley to his chest. “Show yourself, you, you - you bitch!” He screams, facing upward, face streaming with tears.
Wow. Crowley’s no-longer existent eyebrow raises. It’s Aziraphale’s first swear word.12 It’s a good one. There’s a horrified gasp from the other angels, and Sandalwood steps forward, raising that axe - Michael raising a hand after him -
and then there’s a Hum, and everyone takes a step back, and the space fills with light, blinding them. Crowley raises a non-existent hand to shield non-existent eyes. The other angels bow or shield their eyes but Aziraphale only continues to stare upward, glaring, furious, only the slight squint to his eyes showing any deference to the light.
Aziraphale, Supreme Archangel, Former Principality, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, God says. You seek an audience?
“Bring him back,” Aziraphale bawls, “Bring him back right now!”
You seem to have a habit of losing that which should be precious to you. Why should this behavior be rewarded?
“Because he shouldn’t be dead! That’s why!”
Everything has an end, Aziraphale, God says, and Her voice might be gentle. I had the distinct impression that was a lesson you had learned well.
Aziraphale recoils, pulling Crowley’s body closer. Crowley bares his teeth.
“You owe it to him!” Aziraphale says.
The light swells and throbs. I owe no one anything. Crowley’s choices were his own. As are yours.
He can see Aziraphale’s hand scrabbling slowly over to the sword at his side, though one hand stays protectively, pulling Crowley’s body to himself, into his chest, as he keeps starting up at God. Satan, what Crowley wouldn’t have given to be that close to him. Alive, of course.
“As are yours,” Aziraphale hisses. “Bring him back.”
If I do, God asks. What will you forfeit?
“Anything,” Aziraphale says.
“Argh, Aziraphale, don’t say that! You idiot!” Crowley shouts, jumping from foot to foot. He swears Her light fixates ever so slightly in his direction. He freezes.
I do not think name-calling is warranted, She says. Aziraphale’s choice is his own. I would have thought you had learned that by now, Crowley.
“Crowley,” gasps Aziraphale, picking his head up, looking around. “Is he here? Are you here?”
“Yes! Yes, I’m here. Aziraphale! Aziraphale, can you hear me?”
He cannot hear you, God says. To Aziraphale, She says, Aziraphale, if you want him, you must find him. In exchange for your duty in the Garden.
Azrael shifts. THIS IS HIGHLY IRREGULAR. Aziraphale’s head jerks up, as if sensing something, and he pulls Crowley closer, as if to keep Death from taking him.
You owe me one, God says. From -
1347, YES, AZRAEL says. I REMEMBER. His darkened cowl surveys Crowley. VERY WELL.
Aziraphale, if you can find Crowley and give him back the gift of life, I - and Azrael - will permit it. Consider it - and the light pauses, hovering, as if thinking - house rules?
Crowley gets the impression Azrael is frowning, somewhere under the hood. NOT EVERYTHING IS A GAME, Azrael says.
Is it not? She says, and the amusement is clear in Her voice.
“My Lord!” says Michael, clearly scandalized.
Aziraphale, remember the Garden, She says, and the brightness dims, and fades, and disappears into the finest pinpoint of light.
“I - wait, what?” Aziraphale says, frowning, and then Crowley feels a touch on his arm, cold as space and just as empty, and then a strange sucking, disappearing sensation, and then Anthony J. Crowley, AKA Crowley, AKA Crawley, is gone.
1. ’S hard, okay? return to text
2. Alright, so he had sulked a bit, but only because it was so warm and lovely there in the sun, with that close familiar scent - well, he just didn’t want to get up right then, okay? return to text
3. Their menu was overpriced, and their food had been middling to poor, Aziraphale had said, the one and only time they’d gone there, and serves everybody right for not going to the much better (and smaller) Greek restaurant down the street run by a very enterprising young man. Not that Crowley wanted them to go there; they would be annoying when he and Aziraphale went. Satan, was Crowley going to be thinking of Aziraphale for the rest of his miserable demonic life? Not if this case of Lagavulin had anything to say about it. return to text
4. Unauthorized drop-ins from Hell didn’t count in his book. return to text
5. Getting piss-drunk, on a sidewalk, in his car, in the middle of London. Y’know, quality me time. return to text
6. It does. return to text
7. I could have built a house on the ocean
I could have placed our love in the sky
But it really doesn’t matter at all
No, it really doesn’t matter at all
8. Crowley’s car could. It liked Aziraphale, blast it, no matter how much Crowley tried to get it to stop. return to text
9. Crowley is definitely not concerned, definitely has not been concerned since he had first felt Aziraphale was in danger; certainly has not been in a state of low-level panic since Aziraphale went up to Heaven, most absolutely has not been afraid since he had seen the Metatron darken Aziraphale’s door.
Coincidentally, Crowley’s pretty good at repression. Not quite as good as Aziraphale, perhaps, but he’s up there. Er. Down there. return to text
10. No one but Crowley would have noticed. No one but Crowley did. return to text
11. The only thing, really. return to text
12. That Crowley knows of.return to text