Archive of Our Own ^beta

The first time Raphael wept was when he was brought low — wings smoldering and broken but whole — on the burning shores of the Lake of Fire. The tears fell from his eyes, rolled down his fevered, soot-smudged face, hissed out into steam before they could even touch the ground. He had never cried before- he had never known that he could. But then again such sorrow, too, had become known to him only then, upon his Fall. He had never felt pain of any sort before he hurtled downward for what felt like forever, disgraced and suddenly imperfect, punished for something he did not understand. 

The first thing he did as the tears flowed was hunch downward over himself — on his charred knees, eyes screwed shut, forehead pressed to clasped hands, shaking — and pray. He did not know what else to do, did not know where else to go. So he prayed, and prayed, and prayed for what felt like days before days even existed. His name left him as he did, his identity, leaving only the unfillable emptiness that comes from the absence of self. It slipped from his mind and back to the Heavens where it belonged, and he was left only with the feeble memory of a crank, of wispy white curls, of the stars planned and pressed into being by his hand. He was Star-maker. He was nothing.

So he did the only thing he could do. He opened his eyes and raised his head. His back ached from the position, the weight of his wings — and that had never been there before, the aching, the heaviness — but he rose anyway, paying no mind to how the red of the Lake, the surrounding area had turned to a strange mix of blue and green. He lifted his gaze to the sky. 

(He would not know it, but his eyes were a glowing gold and had been as such since he opened them. Slitted, dichromatic- this was the first punishment that would lead to so many others. He was, in fact, the very first serpent and quite looked the part, with a forked tongue behind his teeth and the coiling brand of a black snake burning into his cheek.)

But he could not help the sob that bubbled over his lips, the fresh tears that sprung from his eyes. He felt the tug of his essence pulling him back down to obeisance, telling him to grovel before his Creator and beg Her mercy.

(He would decide later, much later, that She had none to spare. Not for him. He would often wonder why others were shown Grace in the face of their malfeasance while he was cast out for a sin he would never understand for all of his days. Before the Garden, before the Apple, was a Child of God, feeling the fear of Her for the very first time and not understanding why.)

But he did not. He searched and he searched until he could no longer bear to try and simply stared desperately upward. Why had She done this? Why had She sent him here, after all that he had done to Create in her vision? And why was this his punishment: stealing away all that he loved and cursing him to never look upon it?

He sobbed. He wailed. He could not see the stars. 

—

Crawley thought God's whole day/night cycle was stupid. There wasn't nearly enough time during the light hours and the dark hours were boring. 

At least, that's what he told himself. In truth, he disliked the night because it was only in the quiet that his mind would roam, the imagination gifted to him running far too wild for the stillness of the world around him. As it was, he sat on the edge of the Garden, its enclosure now vacant of humans, and thought, for he could truly do nothing else. 

His legs dangled off the side of the wall and he did his best to ignore the new ache that persisted in his joints. Gravity was not new, but it felt stronger now, the punishment for his Temptation truly setting in. It was the first time in so long that he had heard Her voice and it had been cold, distant, as if She hadn’t once murmured Her Plans into his ear, hadn’t formed him with Her own hand. As if She hadn’t made him to love, or to imagine, or to wonder. After all this time, Crawley was surprised at how much that hurt. 

Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

He supposed that meant the corporation he’d modeled after his very first form was now supposed to be a serpent always; it would make sense, as it now fit uncomfortably, like a too-tight shirt and pants (though Crawley would not think this, for neither had yet been invented). The pain was a command to inhabit his serpent’s form, but then again, he’d never been very good at following orders. 

He did not dare look up anymore. Not after that first time on the shores of Hell. No, it was too painful, even when the night was bright enough for him to make out the barest of silhouettes. It was merely a reminder that what he’d made was no longer his (though they had never been his, in truth; everything he’d ever done has been for Her, unequivocally and totally, and there was nothing he could do about that fact but deny and ignore).

He hated the night more than anything in this blessed world of Her’s. He could see too well in it, what with the state of his eyes and the way they had adjusted to Hell. It was too quiet and too lonely- lonelier than being a demon already was. Especially now, as he carried out this job. He was quite sure that they’d only sent him up here to get rid of him for a time. He wasn’t particularly well-liked downstairs- too powerful for a demon without a Duke’s rank, too… angelic. So they’d sent him up here with orders to rabble-rouse. Raise hell, they had told him. Stir up trouble , they’d said. Well, he’d done that and gotten the heat for it, so what was he meant to do now? He sighed. On the ground, he watched a small snake slither into a bush. 

“Crawley? Is that you?”

He turned at the call of the name he had chosen for himself. It wasn’t his, not really- it had never fit quite right, hugging his sense of self in the same uncomfortable way his corporation did. But he knew no other. “Hm?”

“What are you still doing up here?” The angel asked. The sweet angel who had been so kind to him on the wall just hours before, as the first rainstorm raged through the Garden and surrounding desert. Covered by a wing he knew was familiar and wished he could remember. “Your job is finished, is it not? Shouldn’t you be heading back downstairs?”

Crawley shrugged. “Their orders were vague, and I’m in no hurry to get back, you understand. I’ll go when they tell me to, but until then, you can be sure I’m gonna enjoy air that doesn’t constantly smell like something died in the walls.”

“…You’re a demon. That’s what you deserve.”

He huffed. He didn’t know whether it was supposed to be a scoff or a chuckle. “Yeah, maybe. But I’m also selfish, being a demon ‘n all, so I think She’ll forgive me my bit of Gluttony.”

There was a beat of silence before the angel spoke, a near whisper, sorrow in his tone: “No, she won’t.”

Crawley sighed, smelled the sweet scent of the flowers that bloomed below. Wondered when She would decide it was righteous to let them wilt, for there would be none to appreciate them other than a lingering demon. 

“I know.”

The angel, Aziraphale, did not answer other than to step closer, tentative. Crawley did not say a word lest he scare the angel away; soon enough, his inaction paid off and a large white wing entered his periphery. Aziraphale did not sit- perhaps that was asking too much. 

“So what’d She say about the sword?” Crawley asked after a moment of silence. Any longer and it might have been awkward, as they both existed there in each other’s presence, feeling the new breeze upon their faces. 

“She didn’t,” Aziraphale said, his voice quiet. “She asked where it was, and then disappeared before I could confess my wrongdoing.”

“Lucky you,” Crawley said. There was a ruffle of wings behind him. 

“Now, Crawley, don’t be bitter. Just because you Fell for your mistakes doesn’t mean we all have to. Envy is a sin.”

Crawley frowned and looked back at the angel. Aziraphale looked a little uncomfortable and was pointedly staring away, into the Garden, avoiding Crawley’s gaze. Hm. Perhaps he should have felt angry at the angel’s impudent scolding. Any other demon would have; in fact, any other demon would have ripped the angel to shreds right then and there. Crawley could have- he did not know a whole lot about himself, but that much he did know. And more than that perhaps he should have felt bitter about the mercy Aziraphale was shown. After all, giving up a gift from Her hand to help the newly-disgraced humans was surely a stronger reason to Fall than whatever Crawley had done. But he didn’t feel any of that- no, under the cool night, in that breeze, with the angel behind him, he did not feel much at all. 

“I was being sincere, Aziraphale,” he said. Sarcasm hadn’t been invented yet, but tone was a work in progress. “You’re lucky She didn’t linger. I wouldn’t wish the Fall on anyone, least of all you.”

Perhaps he shouldn’t have said that last bit, but it was true. And by the way the ruffling soothed, it did the trick of calming the angel as intended. 

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. “I see. Then… what did She say about your Tempting that poor human girl? I know She spoke to you three, but I could not hear it from my post.”

Because thou hast done this,

Crawley’s bones ached anew as if responding to Aziraphale’s question themselves. He grimaced and hoped that the angel could not see his face from where he stood. He wondered if this would be forever. 

thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field;

About this, apparently, he did feel bitter. He looked down at his hands, all slender bone and painful knuckle, and wondered what was so wrong about knowing the difference between good and evil. The Almighty had certainly made that difference clear to him; why shouldn’t the humans know? Shouldn’t they be given that choice?

upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.

( Your stars shall stay aloft in the sky, She said, for they are Good. You will Fall, for you are wicked. That is the difference: the goodness of a maker ordains the goodness of their creations. Good begets Good. Likewise, wickedness begets wickedness. Without the darkness, there cannot be light. You shall Fall, She said, because you have questioned my goodness, and therefore your own. You are Evil. You have always been Evil .)

“Nothing you need to worry about,” Crawley said. “You’re an angel- you don’t need to concern yourself with the punishment of demons.”

Aziraphale was silent again, the air thick with intention, and Crawley wondered if he was going to speak. He wanted the angel to speak. But he didn’t, and they stayed as they were, in a neutral sort of quiet, until the sun rose and the stars that Crawley could not see were shone out of the sky. 

Somewhere beneath them, a snake coiled up under a bush and placed its head atop its scales. It was a warm night, as the cold had not yet been invented; furthermore, it was not yet aware of the punishment it had been inflicted, and as such was as content as a snake could be before the meaning of contentment would change. 

—-

Aziraphale’s eyes were sad when they switched back after the thwarted apocalypse. Crowley had not warned him and hoped he would take the hint and speak nothing of it. Luckily, his angel was quick on the uptake and graciously waited until after the Ritz to start fidgeting in his overstuffed armchair. 

Crowley took a sip of his wine and watched Aziraphale attempt to keep himself, and his questions or comments or concerns, contained. He relished the strong, full-bodied taste of the wine on his tongue- Châteauneuf-du-Pape, which Aziraphale had suggested to bring everything full-circle. These days, Crowley would prefer scotch, but he’d never been able to deny his angel much of anything. He knew what was running through Aziraphale’s mind, however, and knew that it was only a matter of time before he would not be able to deny the angel the answers he so desperately wanted. 

As it was, they sat in silence. Aziraphale worked hard to keep the silence companionable but Crowley saw right through the façade. He saw the shakiness in the smile, the hard line of his shoulders. It could be chalked up to fatigue, of course. They were both exhausted, winding down from the hefty strain of the possession they’d exchanged just hours before. Not to mention all that they’d done during the failed apocalypse and before: the miracles to keep his beloved car together, the stopping of time and dimensional shift with Adam. The emotional heaviness, too, weighed him down- Crowley could still see the flames licking this very bookshop, the climbing inferno, the fear that he’d lost his friend. The same kind of fear as he stepped into Heaven, the constant tenseness and dread not for himself but for Aziraphale- was he alright? Had he been found out? 

But Crowley knew better. He knew Aziraphale better- it was not exhaustion that spiked his anxiety. As if there were any reason to be anxious, now that they were here and everything was calm. The creaking of the wood beneath their feet felt just as much like home as the shifting and aching of his own corporation. He wondered if Aziraphale was relieved to slip back into his own- wearing Aziraphale’s body had been a strange study in what it meant to feel no pain. It had been so distracting that he’d hardly noticed that he could see in full color. Honestly, as nice as it had been, Crowley found himself more on edge, waiting for the next wave of aches. He would rather endure familiar pain than uncertain relief. 

Aziraphale didn’t feel the same. Crowley saw the way the angel faltered when he tried to walk in Crowley’s body the first few times, saw the way his face screwed up into a grimace. It was interesting, seeing his own face scrunched up in such a way- like looking into a mirror against his own will. He would admit that his pain was especially bad at that time- directly after using so many miracles, after exerting so much of himself, was when his pain was the worst. The thing was that he’d come to expect such things and didn’t think it out of the ordinary enough to tell his friend, nor did he truly want to have that conversation. But it looked like that was what things were coming to. The night was hurtling in that direction with a familiarity that reminded him of something he didn’t exactly want to remember. 

The angel opened his mouth and Crowley downed the rest of his glass of wine. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale began, his voice tentative and carefully neutral, “may I ask you about something?”

Crowley sighed. Shifted in his seat to allow his joints a new position. “What is it, Angel?”

“When… When we swapped corporations, I… I felt…”

The demon stared, daring his companion to continue. It was an uncomfortable conversation and if they were going to have it, Aziraphale was going to have to start it. 

“Being in your corporation was… oh, Crowley. It hurt .” Aziraphale’s face pulled into a pained grimace at the memory. 

“Yup,” Crowley supplied very helpfully, leaning forward and putting his wine glass down on the table. His hips protested the movement. He ignored them. 

“Why?” Aziraphale asked. “You’re not meant to feel pain like that. You’re a demon.”

“You just answered your own question, Angel.” He leaned back against the chair and crossed his legs, once again ignoring their ache. Talking about it made him very aware of it. “I’m a demon. Demons get punished.”

Aziraphale made a mournful little sound and watched Crowley with wide eyes.

"It is what it is," Crowley muttered, averting his gaze and glad that he had not yet taken his shades off.

"But that's-" Aziraphale cut himself off and pursed his lips. He looked away for a moment, hesitated, then looked back. "How long?"

Crowley hummed, feigning consideration. "' Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life.' " He recited. He looked back to the angel. "The Garden. The first Temptation."

Aziraphale nodded once, obviously trying to school his expression back into a neutral mask. It was not working, or at least not working to Crowley.

"And the eyes?"

Crowley blinked. "What?"

"Your eyes. Your vision," he said, a frown working its way upon his face. "The light sensitivity, the trouble reading, the color blindness. What about all that?"

"My vision's always been like that, Angel," he said. That was the wrong answer; the frown deepened.

"It certainly has not!" He exclaimed. "What do you mean, it's always been that way? Surely you don't believe that."

Crowley shrugged. "Well, I s'pose it was different before the Fall, but I don't really..." he trailed off, hesitating. "I don’t remember it. Part of the punishment. The only reason I know it's different 's because I can't see the stars."

Aziraphale's breath hitched.

"That, and your corporation sees a lot more color," Crowley continued, suddenly desperate to fill the silence that Aziraphale's despair left. "A fucking shock, it was, seeing outta your eyes when we swapped. Didn’t think too much about it ‘til now, mind. Heaven’s all white and grey and gold. Always has been. Not much has changed on that front."

Aziraphale's eyes were becoming misty and Crowley didn't know what to do. He'd never been able to endure Aziraphale's tears with any sort of dignity- always wanted to wrap the angel in his wings, keep him safe. It was entirely un-demonic of him and too difficult to write away. Aziraphale always called him kind, and something about that always hurt.

"Angel, no, don't- it's fine, I swear. It's just how it is, y'know? Cursed above all cattle and beasts of the field, right, like I said. It's not all bad. I-"

"You can't see your stars?"

Aziraphale's whisper was horrified, entirely too emotional for the situation. Or, at least, for Crowley's liking.

"My stars? I mean... I s'pose. I helped make 'em, I know, but besides that... ngk. In any case, I can't see 'em."

"Oh, Crowley," Aziraphale stood from his chair, took a couple steps toward him, stopped. Fidgeted in place like he wanted, needed to reach out, to pull Crowley close. The familiar thickness of intention pervaded the air and he was reminded, suddenly, of a small snake in a bush at the beginning of the world. "Don't you remember?"

Crowley pressed his lips together. "No, Angel. I don't. 'S part of the Fall, yeah? I only remember enough to mourn the loss. Just how it is."

Aziraphale's eyes grew impossibly wider. "You... All this time, you didn't..."

"I don't know what I'm supposed to be remembering, Aziraphale, but I don't." His hands were fists, his body tense. He hated this. He didn't even know why he was getting so angry, but he knew that he had to flee before he did or said something he'd regret.
He abruptly stood, the chair scooting backward with a deafening screech, and rounded it toward the door.

"Gotta go, Angel," he said through grit teeth. "Shit to do."

"Crowley, wait!"

He did not turn or listen. He let his aching joints topple him all the way to the Bentley, then let her take him to the flat that had never been home. He did not look up to see the night- he had not been in Aziraphale's corporation for long enough to do so. Hadn't fully realized he could, after all this time and avoidance. He mourned the loss.

The angel stood in his shop and would stay there for a long time.

—-

Crowley saw Aziraphale in shades of blue and gold. 

Hair white and wispy, skin the warmest sky. Eyes like gems, so vividly blue that Crowley knew that it was their true color. Clothes that never changed, soft light blues and yellows where Crowley assumed there would be browns and tans, the tartan of his bow tie still easily recognizable if not slightly hard to discern. He had come to know how tartan looked; a weapon still sat on the windowsill of his old flat, untouched since its contents destroyed one who he might have once called kin. Once, mind. Not for a long while. 

The gold of the waning sun had pressed into those blues, muddling them, making the angel's small details harder to see. He would wonder if this was the punishment that God had intended when casting him down if his memory of the stars were not so vivid. 

It was this, too, this yellowed and indiscriminate picture of a beauty he'd known for six thousand years, that would stay clear in his mind for what future he could stomach. Blues turned to whites and golds, wretched and folding together like an unspoken promise, creating and blurring what lines had been smudged away before all this. 

He wished this Fall was the same as his first. Then, perhaps, the fuzziness in his mind would not be cleared and sharpened by the veil of familiarity and he would not see those blues and golds he had come to memorize. Perhaps he might have even forgotten the last six thousand years, left with only the bone-deep ache of loss without the heart to which it had been attached; he would find the ring that had been on Aziraphale's pinky finger, cold and lucid on a nightstand above the bookshop, and would think nothing of it. 

The colors of the world stayed the same, despite how desperately he wanted them to change. 

—

When Muriel took over the bookshop, they knew what to do. They had, at first, when the Metatron told them what their new posting would be, thought that it would be quite the challenge. They had never been on Earth before now and while they were beginning to appreciate Earth literature, they had never spent time in a bookshop, much less run one. But they were given some help in the form of two letters that they found not long after they stepped in place of the new Supreme Archangel.

They were on the same paper, with the same ink, and, curiously, held similar contents: lists with instructions. Muriel read them studiously and committed them to memory. Some of the points of contention were repeated across both letters which lead Muriel to assume that they had not been written in conjunction with one another. Still, though, they said the same thing, even if in different words. Furthermore, from what Muriel was able to study about the tone and inflection of human speech as it pertained to writing, they couldn't have been more dissimilar.
The first one they found was folded neatly on a desk with their name written in a loopy script. The handwriting inside was just as loopy and connected, and though Muriel had trouble reading it at first, they ended up getting the hang of it after a few moments. It used kind, if not distant, words and had a professional air of neutrality.

(Muriel was reasonably sure of this, as they had compared the letter to books with similar vocabulary. Their inexperience on Earth, however, led them to skip what lived between the lines; they could not read what had actually been said in that letter- in fact, there was only one who really could.)

The second they found on the floor of the bookshop, just before the door; they had almost stepped on it coming in from a visit with Maggie and Nina. At the time, they had not yet gotten over their aversion to Earthly 'contaminants' in their angelic corporation, and as such did not eat, but the company was appreciated nonetheless.
Digression aside, they found the letter waiting for them on the mat they'd seen humans use to wipe their shoes. It was not folded and did not have their name anywhere on the paper, but being that it was delivered to them (and due to the contents) they assumed it was meant for them to read. Unlike the first, the handwriting of this was as sharp and quick as the words themselves; from this one, Muriel could feel anger. It was as if the letter was imbued with the despair and desperate rage of its author. This one gave them an ache in their chest that they had never before experienced. They did not understand it. They wondered if they ever would.

(The ache was one of loss, a mere mote of what had been felt when the letter was written. In the bottom corner, curiously, there were small splotches of warping.)

The first rule on both of the lists was very clear: do not , under any circumstances, sell any of the books that resided in the bookshop. The job of a bookshop is not to sell books, apparently, though Muriel could have been fooled into thinking that it was, what with all the humans that came in from day-to-day asking after them and waving their money around. They must maintain the books and arrange them in a way that made sense (which was, in fact, quite the undertaking after Gabriel had gotten to them) but they should not sell even one. Instead, they should buy books from any seller at whatever price they asked. According to the second letter, ' He'll get around to sorting through them all at some point .' 

Again, the second instruction on both letters was the same: to adhere strictly to the hours of operation detailed on the front door. They were strange, and many humans had commented on that strangeness when they were able to get inside the shop, but oftimes Muriel was geared to close again before they got an answer. 

The third rule was where the letters started to diverge. One of them, the first they found with the loopy letters, told them to be kind to all of Earth's creatures. To feed ducks in the park and to be kind to customers even if no books would be sold. It said to make friends with the neighbors and had a small note at the end that looked added on after the fact: to be kind to themself. The second letter had no such hang-ups. It was succinct in saying that if someone was rude to them or even too pushy in buying something, that Muriel should tell them, in no uncertain terms, to fuck off. Muriel minded both of these rules and decided to also utilize their research into intonation by telling folks to, as the letter said, fuck off, with a sweet smile and a friendly tone. Curiously, many of the more belligerent recipients of such treatment became confused enough to retreat. 

The fourth in the first letter was to not mind the demon Crowley, should they come across him. He was of no consequence, the letter said, for as hostile and fearsome as he could be, he would cause no harm.
That was where the first letter ended, but the second detailed different arrangements that Muriel could follow when they fixed the books, how to clean the shop, and a link to a website that gave a very in-depth explanation of how to care for and restore old books. Muriel had taken a moment to get the hang of the ancient computer that puttered on inside the bookshop, but they figured it out and, consequently, figured out how to do the job that seemed to be half-done on the desk in the back room. They appreciated these instructions more than the vague and seemingly wistful meandering of the first letter, if they were being honest. 

(The story that laid between the words of these instructions was small, weak, old, almost a whisper. If Muriel had spent the last six thousand years with the demon who had written the letter, they might have been able to read it the way it was intended to be read. There was complexity in the in-betweens of the first letter; a certain turmoil that could not be put into words. In the spaces between the second letter, however, laid a sentiment that was most simple. Something primordial: I want to keep this place you love safe. I want to let others love what you love as you love it. I want to show you how much I love you. Don’t you see how much I love you? I love you. I love you. I love you. )

Yes, both of these letters had been exceedingly helpful and Muriel was sure that they'd continue to be helpful for however long of a future they had in this bookshop. There were, however, things throughout their two years of residency that Muriel had needed to figure out for themself. Things like food and the particulars of human mealtimes; what to do when they had their off-time; and, most pressingly, what to do with the large snake they had found curled up under their restoration desk.

No- unfortunately, neither letter had said anything about that. 

As it was, Muriel stared at the creature. Its scales were a shining black, its head tucked into the middle of its tight, tense coils as if to block away the rest of the world. Muriel had found it earlier and, figuring that this was not something that should be in a bookshop and as such would unsettle customers, they closed up for the day. It had still been there when they came back, seemingly having not moved even a centimeter from where it was.
They pursed their lips. This was a habit they'd picked up from Nina, and over the time they'd been practicing it, the expression had simply become natural. They didn't know what to do here- they had seen snakes before, but that had been in zoo exhibits and behind glass. They knew that snakes could be dangerous, but this one just seemed... stressed. If Muriel's snake-reading ability was getting as advanced as their human-reading, in any case. 

Still, they did not know how to handle snakes and did not know how it had gotten in. Maggie had told Muriel early on that they could reach out if ever they needed help with something. Over their time in Soho, they and Maggie had become quite close, however, and the offer of help had been exchanged for a general understanding that they could go to each other as needed. So, without much thought, Muriel whipped out their smartphone (that Maggie had helped them learn to use) and took a picture.

10:23 a.m. To: Maggie
Good morning, Maggie! It appears that a snake has gotten into the bookshop. What should I do? [Image attached]

10:24 a.m. From: Maggie
OH MY GOD??? Don't do anything. I'll be right over

Muriel slid their phone back into their pocket and watched the snake as it did not move. Soon enough, there was a knock on the bookshop door and Muriel miracled it unlocked. Quickly, she was in the back room and staring with Muriel at the snake with wide, shocked eyes. 

"What kind of snake is it?" Muriel asked. "When we went to the zoo, they said there were many different kinds."

"I don't know," Maggie replied, sounding quite nervous. "It's not like any snake I've ever seen."

"What should I do?"

"I don't know." Maggie took out her phone and took a picture as Muriel had done. "Maybe we should call the police or the RSPCA. They might have put out a BOLO for a snake in the area. It might have gotten out in a zoo transfer, or something. I'm texting Nina. She'll have a better idea, I'm... oh."

Muriel turned. Maggie's eyes were on her phone, her expression fallen into something in equal measure shocked and sad. She gripped her phone and looked up to the snake, sympathy flashing through her eyes. 

"Oh?" Muriel asked. "What is it?"

Maggie took a deep breath, not looking away from the snake. "Nina's on her way. That's Mr. Crowley."

Muriel blinked, their lips parting in surprise before they returned their gaze to under the desk. The coil finally moved, but only to curl impossibly tighter into itself. Himself, Muriel amended in their mind.
The bell above the door chimed as Nina entered and rushed to the back of the shop. She was slightly out of breath which led Muriel to assume that she'd run over here- they appreciated the urgency. 

"How long has he been here?" Nina asked, looking at Muriel.

"I don't know. I found him here a few hours ago and closed up the shop. I don't believe that snakes often inhabit bookshops."

"This one does," Nina replied. She took a step forward. "Are you just going to stay under there, then? Or are you going to come out and tell us why you're back?"

"Nina!" Maggie scolded, stepping next to her girlfriend (because they were girlfriends now, and had been for nearly a year, and Muriel had been quite pleased by the development- you really do have to just wait a few days!) to put her hand on her shoulder. "Be gentle!"

"He left Muriel alone in this shop for two years, Maggie," Nina said. She shot a glance at Muriel before turning back. "He and Mr. Fell both. No matter what Mr. Fell said to him, Muriel needed help with this place, and he was nowhere to be found. Two years!"

The snake hissed and all three froze. He shifted, but did not take his head out of his curled form when he said: "I ileft a note."

And oh, in that moment Muriel missed the time when they did not know how emotions could be conveyed, because they might have been blissfully unaware of how wretched the demon sounded. One might think that, after two entire years, the period of mourning the end of a relationship might be dulled or at least scabbed over. But two years were naught but a blink of an eye in the lives of angels and demons. Somehow, Muriel knew that the six thousand years Crowley spent in love had seemed much briefer. 

Even Nina deflated when she heard his voice. Maggie made a little sound of sympathy. Muriel, however, simply continued to stare. 

"I did," Crowley continued when nobody responded, curling even tighter. "I did. I left a note. I didn't just leave. I wouldn't just leave ."

Muriel wondered how someone could say words and mean something entirely different. 

"Where did you go?" Nina asked, her voice softer. "Why did you come back?"

Crowley did not respond. Well, that wasn't entirely true- he did hiss, very quietly, mournfully. Muriel frowned, turned their gaze to the floor in thought, then made a decision. They turned on their heel and walked back into the bookshop proper, heading up the stairs to the bedroom and living areas. Muriel had done some rearranging to better suit their needs over the years, but it largely remained the same when it came to the books. Specifically Aziraphale's diaries. 

The angel had kept a detailed record of his life for as long as paper had been around. Muriel, at first, had not understood that reading one's diary (or two thousand years worth of one's diaries) without permission was an incredible breach of privacy. But even after they had discovered this, they were too deep to stop.
There was an entire room of them that Muriel had found entirely by accident, stumbling into it when they rounded a corner of the living space. It was both created and hidden in plain sight by a persisting miracle and had Muriel not stepped into the right place at exactly the right time, it would have been left untouched. But they'd gained entry and ever since had made a habit of checking them out, so to speak. The handwriting in each of the books was the same as that of the first letter, and so they deduced that Aziraphale must have written both.

They'd not gotten through them all, but they'd gotten through quite a significant chunk. When one did not need to sleep, eat, or perform any other typical human maintenance activities, they had more time to devote to leisure. For Muriel, that meant skimming through Aziraphale's diaries one at a time, gaining an understanding of how the other angel's life had been throughout the centuries.
After a while, they found their attention lingering on the excerpts that mentioned a certain demon to whom they'd been told to pay no mind. Muriel liked romance as much as the next person (this was something they'd discovered after they and Maggie happened to have read the same book and were able to talk about it at length) but this had been... more. 

This was no letter left on the counter, intended to hide what feelings lived beneath the surface. Nor was this a sappy, plot-driven narrative between two people hopelessly in love, fated to be together in the end. This was a diary, the most secret of possessions, the thing into which one could pour their heart without fear of being seen, let alone judged. This was real. This was raw. This was bleeding out on a page and closing it to be forgotten until you did it all over again.
As such, Aziraphale had forgone his usual equivocations and ambiguity. Slowly, over the many, many years, the words he used to describe the demon grew warmer. Depictions of his depravity became lighthearted chidings for mischief, disgust toward his serpent's form became begrudging acceptance of it became accepting its beauty; descriptions of Crowley's red hair and gold eyes and gleaming, fanged grin. He gushed (without really knowing he was gushing) about the way Crowley's cheeks grew pink when he drank; the way his fashion changed over the centuries and how handsome he looked in his new forms. Muriel could tell that Aziraphale didn't entirely know that he was in love. The longer they spent on Earth, the more they could see it, and the more they could feel the love emanating from every page that mentioned Crowley. It was a love story, a dance, and a prayer that neither of them had any intention of indulging. And then came the diary for 1941. 

That was what they pulled as they entered the diary room, handling the old text with the utmost care. They held it gingerly as they left and descended the stairs, returning to the back room with it in hand. It was a small thing, innocuous unless you opened it. Stepping through the threshold, they paid no mind to Maggie and Nina, who both were watching them closely. Crowley remained coiled under the desk as Muriel approached, opening the diary and leafing through the ancient pages until they found the spot they were looking for. 

" Second of May, 1941 ," they read. Crowley shifted immediately, pulling his head higher in his cocoon of scales as if to hear better. 

" I was a fool, again. With the books of prophecy and the Nazis... I was am a fool. I am a fool, and once again, Crowley got me out of my own mess. This is not the first time nor will it be the last; oh, how I wish he would simply let me discorporate sometimes. Then all this would be made so much easier. "

Crowley's head slowly emerged and he looked at Muriel from under the desk. Muriel noted this, and kept reading.

" He did not just save me this time, and I believe this is the crux of the issue. I might not be so flummoxed, my thoughts so scattered, if he had not shown that kindness. Such a small thing, saving those books. It was such a small thing that I could easily have remedied after the fact, despite my panic at their destruction. But he saved them so that the originals would be spared. And I cannot find a reason for this other than for sake of my happiness. What am I supposed to do with that?

"Then there was the whole ordeal with the magic act and the show and the demons that followed us... I feel I somewhat returned the favor for the books, but that's not the point! That simple act of anticipating my panic, of unambiguous desire to see me happy... it is making me realize how common an occurrence it is. So often, little things, here and there. Things said to make me smile, silly mischief that is definitely too lighthearted for Hell so as not to hurt the humans of whom we both have become so fond.

"I am rambling so as not to admit the truth, here. It's preposterous: in my own diary, my own account, I cannot say the words that I know are plainly true. But, try as I might, I cannot say it aloud and I certainly cannot admit it to Crowley. I cannot even admit it to myself. It is so true it hurts. I don’t know if I have the courage."

The demon was fully out now, his head closer, his eyes wide. Or, at least, Muriel assumed his eyes would be wide if he were not in his serpent's form, which had no eyelids. Behind them, Maggie and Nina were silent as the grave. 

" I cannot lie to myself or obfuscate my own emotions toward him any longer. The ability to do so has been ripped from me and I do not expect I shall see it returned. I love him. Lord, I love him. It is such a blasphemous thing, to love a demon, and yet when I am with him, I feel nothing but holy. Please, let this not be sin, for I know I will not hesitate to Fall for this. For him. For my love of him. And that is the most terrifying fact of all this.

"I have decided not to tell him, for fear that he does not feel the same. I fear for the state of my heart, if I were to disclose my feelings and be spurned. It is a fragile thing, the heart- I do not believe it was meant to be so brittle, but mine is so much like glass. Perhaps, one day, we will talk about this over a nice glass of red. But, until then, I will mourn the loss of my ignorance."

Muriel closed the diary and looked down at Crowley, who was slowly slithering out from under the desk. In the blink of an eye, he was man-shaped again, with arms and legs and limbs, and was gently taking the diary from Muriel's hands. He opened it again, thumbing to that page and reading it for himself. And again. And again. His eyes were uncovered, suns against a sickly yellow sky. 

“He loved you,” Muriel murmured, as if that might be a reassurance. 

He closed the diary and held it to his chest, sinking to his knees on the floor. He said nothing as he hunched over, head to the floor as if in worship (hair longer than it had been in quite some time, curling, tumbling over his shoulders in a weak facsimile of the original Fall, the first pain, the burning and the charring and the mourning and the loss ) and sobbed. 

—

A very long time ago, Beelzebub Fell from Heaven. They fell for a reason they recognized as legitimate- rebellion against God, against the Divine Plan. Though it was painful — and, fuck , was it painful — it was, metaphorically, no skin off their back. Literally, of course, it was a whole lot of skin off their back. They were never God's favorite nor were they ever truly close to many of the other angels in that wretched fluorescent place. It was a blessing in disguise, the Fall- they fit in so much better in Hell and had been very proactive in making it what it is today.

That, however, doesn't mean that, under the right circumstances, they wouldn't desert in an instant. Hell was achingly cold and lonely, all stone grey walls and filth. Gabriel's chest was warm and kind, if only to them, and his voice was deep and resonant in a way that they'd never heard. So they ran away with him to Alpha Centauri, where they could be together. Where they would be happy.

They did not often wonder what became of Crowley and his pet angel. But when they did, they remembered his Fall, how they'd found him on the shores of the Lake of Fire, praying. How She'd let him keep his wings, though Beelzebub was never completely convinced it was a blessing.
They remember his keening cries. How their old, spurned heart had shuddered at the sight of him up close when they approached. How he'd lunged at them, scrabbling at their tattered clothes, heaving desperate, wailing sobs into their shoulder.

" She said She loved me ," he'd cried. " I thought She loved me ."

When they thought of Crowley, Beelzebub remembered how they'd sunk to the ground with him, wrapped their arms around his form, and held him for as long as it took for his shaking to stop. They remembered the crank clutched in his hand that would never again see its original use. They remembered how he had not looked at them, how his new yellow eyes had been locked to the sky.

When they would wonder about his fate, they would find themself hoping that he found what he was looking for.

—-

For three years, Crowley lived in the bookshop.

It started after the day Muriel found him under the desk. With more difficulty than it probably should have taken after two years, they were able to calm him down and sit him on the couch in the back room to talk. He had not at first, but after some coaxing from Muriel and Maggie (and some alcohol from Nina) they'd been able to pry some information from his tired, mourn-tight lips. He'd driven around for the past two years, bar hopping and sleeping around to try and numb the pain of Aziraphale's abandonment. He did not tell them the gritty details- he'd woken up in more alleys than he cared to admit and had experienced more of modern human depravity than he'd ever wanted to. But he said none of this, keeping it brief so that he did not have to speak for any longer than he had to. He'd found even speaking to be too exhausting, then.
He had made the mistake, however, of confessing that Shax still owned his flat, and Maggie was appalled when he told them that he'd been living out of his car. When she declared that she was going to go make up the bed, he'd regretted saying anything, and moved to leave, but the the three of them wouldn't have it. Muriel told him that they never used the bedroom and Nina gave him one of her unimpressed stares that would keep ice frozen for fear of disappointing her. Crowley always thought she would make a smashing gardener.

Still, he could find no way out of their fussing. He knew how he looked- his sunglasses were gone, his eyes empty and rimmed with red, set deep with purple bags. Sure, he could miracle himself away, but he knew that he wouldn't be gone for long. A day, a month, few years, at the most. But he would always come slithering back to the bookshop. As if there were anywhere else.

It was dark by the time their interrogations finished and he retreated upstairs with the excuse of going to sleep after refusing their offers of dinner. What reason was there to eat if Aziraphale wasn't there to chide him for not doing enough of it? He trudged into the bedroom and stared at the bed, made to be inviting; at the white sheets and comforter pulled back over an old, overstuffed but shockingly comfortable mattress. He gave it a wide berth and sat on the windowsill, staring out onto the street until the sun rose. He did not leave even after that- not for three days. Not until Nina came pounding on his door, dragging him out to help Muriel run the bookshop.
Maggie and Muriel were kind, but Nina was different. She was loving in her own way- a way that typically included alcohol and brusqueness but suited Crowley just fine. She'd seen his snake form before he showed up in the bookshop, as evident by her easy identification of him; he'd gone to her, the first night after Aziraphale left, and drank until he could no longer focus enough to look human. He'd left the next morning before she could wake, having found himself wrapped around her midsection with his head on her shoulder.

But after Nina gave him that push, he started emerging on his own. Such was his routine for the first year he stayed in the bookshop. Move from the sill, go downstairs to greet Muriel (although, for much of the first year, it was not so much a greeting as it was a glance in their direction) and continue the rehabilitation of the shop's arrangements. It seemed that Muriel had chosen one of his preferred layouts for this most recent rearrangement, which they said they'd taken to doing at least once a year 'to keep things interesting'. Muriel was really coming into their own on Earth, and Crowley, though he would never say, was entirely happy to see it.
At the end of the day, he would return to Aziraphale's room, regard the bed that had stayed just how it was since Maggie had made it, and then move to the windowsill to watch the cars on the street until dawn. Sometimes he would stare at the bed. Sometimes he would sink to his knees at the foot of it, as if he were a human child readying himself to pray. Sometimes, he even would.

"We can keep it yellow," he would whisper to nobody. "Anything. Anything."

He didn't know what he was asking for, anymore.

He did not so much as graze his fingers over the mattress until a month into the second year.

"You're not sleeping," Maggie had said to him over coffee. The three of them -- Maggie, Nina, and Muriel -- had all gotten him to sit at a table in Give Me Coffee to stage a bit of an intervention. "How long has it been since you've been sleeping?"

Crowley shrugged. He'd slept for years before- centuries, even. So why was it so strange, now, when he decided to do the opposite? He could stay awake for a few centuries, no sweat. When he stayed up, it was 'concerning' and 'not like him', but when Aziraphale -
He grimaced. Not the best train of thought. Best to stop it in its tracks before it really went off the rails.

"Don't need to sleep," he'd replied, easily. Or, he supposed, as easily as he could when surrounded by three interrogators who seemed hell-bent on eye contact.

"Maybe not, but you're a right prick when you don't," Nina replied. She was being snippy, as was her default. Didn't mean that Crowley had to appreciate it.

"I'm fine."

"That's not what I asked," Maggie said. "I asked how long it's been since you've slept."

Crowley leaned back in his chair, crossed his arms. He was closing off, getting defensive. He knew he wasn't being fair, and he would get nowhere if he behaved like this. Not that he was trying to get anywhere, per se, but he didn't like feeling childish. He didn't know where he would go, if anywhere. 

"Muriel doesn't sleep. Why don't you ask them?"

"I'm not the one sulking around like a wounded dog," Muriel said, because the worst thing about them spending time on Earth is that they were somehow able to grow a backbone. "You don't need to sleep, but you feel better when you do, right? Why don't you?"

Crowley could not answer without feeling too exposed, too vulnerable; he could not stay quiet, with his arms folded over his chest and his sunglasses on tight, without feeling like a petulant child. There was no winning, and so he sighed, deflated. Picked the secret third option and slumped forward, elbows on the table, burying his head in his hands. His sunglasses dug into the bridge of his nose.

"Does it matter?" He said, very aware of how tired he suddenly sounded. "I'm coming out of the bedroom. I'm helping around the bookshop. That's what you wanted. Why does it matter?"

Outside, it was early February. The snow was falling and it was, as it always was in London around this time of year, bitter with chill. Even without his reason for staying in the bookshop, he wouldn't have gone out in this weather. It made him want, of all things, a nice mug of hot chocolate. It made him think of Aziraphale. The winter hadn't been a nice one.

There was a hand on his elbow and he flinched back away from the touch, looking up just in time to see Maggie pull back. He bit back the urge to snarl and storm out of the coffee shop. She didn't deserve that. She was too good for that.

"It's not about what we want, Mr. Crowley," Maggie said, because she still hadn't dropped the 'mister' even after he told her to stop. "It's about what's going to help you."

The conversation ended without a response from him. He and Muriel returned to the bookshop and continued their rearrangements until the sun went down and Crowley went to retreat upstairs. Instead, Nina barged in with something a bit stronger than coffee.

"Y'know, you don't- you lot don't remember it, but thissss place burnt down." His hissed when he drank. He'd always hissed when he drank. He wondered how he hadn't scared Aziraphale off millennia ago.

"What? No," Nina had replied. She was not nearly as drunk as Crowley was, but he didn't need to know that. Not that he would notice, at this point. "It's fine. Still standing, see?" She knocked her knuckles against the wooden floor on which they sat. It was meant to be a gesture of comfort, but it only served to make him glare at her hand as if it would set the place on fire again. His sunglasses were off- Nina didn't know if she would ever get used to that.

"That'sss the p- the point, yeah? Like- the Antichrissst, yeah? Adam? Y'know, he"- Crowley waved his hand around in a circular motion, gesturing to the entirety of the bookshop -"he fixed it all. He fixed it all, so it'sss– it’s here now, but it was burned. It all went- went up. In flamesss. Fwoosh. "

Nina did not speak. She watched Crowley as he looked into what could have been his fifth or fiftieth glass of scotch, for all she knew. He picked at the wooden floor with his blunt fingernails and wondered for a moment if angels and demons were prone to picking their skin. He threw back the scotch; if he were a human, he might have winced at the strength of the alcohol. But he'd been burned by much worse. 

"I don't like fire," he said after some silence had lapsed. 

"Why?" Nina asked, her voice uncharacteristically soft. She was aware of Muriel in the next room, reading, no doubt listening closely to the conversation that was being had. They never had gotten the memo that eavesdropping was immoral. 

There was another silence. "It hurts," he said finally, the hiss suddenly absent; very noticeably absent. Nina had turned to him, to look at his face, and he had stared at something very far away that she didn't know how to define. 

"Why don't you sleep, Crowley?" Nina asked. She was still being softer than she normally would be, but she didn't know what else to do. Sometimes, Crowley seemed very much like a brick wall: solid and angry, rough to the touch and whose grooves were set with mortar. Climbable at first blush but would have you sliding down if you thought about it for more than two seconds. Would laugh at you as you hit the ground.
But sometimes, that wall would sag under the weight of the sky. It would fade, weathered by time, and the brick would crumble, and the sunglasses that belied how deeply fragile Crowley really was would be shed, revealing the glass within each brick. Revealing how dearly he needed to be handled with care. How little care he'd been handled with in the past. How little care he handled himself with now. 

He did not answer at first. He looked into his empty glass- Nina might have expected him to look into it with disdain, as if it was the glass' fault that it was empty, because how dare it not fill itself back up when he wanted more? But he didn't. His eyes were lidded, hazy, exhausted. His mouth was etched into that normal frown of his as he stared at the very last drops swirling around the perimeter of the glass. He looked... small. He looked so very small. 

"It hurts," Crowley replied, his voice little more than a whisper.

Nina, slowly, had approached, emboldened by his lack of acknowledgement, and wrapped him in her arms. She was not the biggest hugger, but then again she wasn't typically providing the comfort.
How do you show love to a person that's been punished for it? Maggie had asked, quietly, into the darkness of their shared bedroom one night when neither of them were sleeping. That, at least, had gotten a smile from Crowley, when they told him that they were moving in together. Not much else had. How do you handle someone who wants to be loved so badly that they reject it?

Every day, she hated Crowley less for what he did to Muriel. It helped that Muriel had talked to her and told her that they had done just fine with the letters that they'd been given. That they hadn't really needed Crowley, and that it might have been even more difficult if he had been there from the start, with the state he was in.
Every day, she hated Mr. Fell more for what he did to this frustrating demon who was now for the second time curling toward her, into her arms like a child shown kindness for the first time. This spiteful, angry, deeply hurt person whose love had been called sin too many times to even account for anymore. Who was burying his face into her shoulder and wrapping his own arms under hers and grabbing onto the back of her shirt like it was water and he was dying of thirst. Angel, demon, she didn't care- this wasn't about some inane, hereditary rivalry anymore. This was about what was right and what was wrong; this was about pain and how love was so carelessly wrenched away from those who needed it the most. 

"Why aren't I enough?" He whispered, almost inaudible; it might as well have been a screaming cry to the heavens. Nina pursed her lips, closed her eyes against the emotion of it. "Why aren't I ever enough?"

Nina didn't know how to respond, so she simply held him a little tighter, brought her hand to his head and stroked his hair -- red like fire, red like love -- like a mother might. He gave a low whine and pushed deeper into her shoulder. He did not cry- Nina wondered if he had any tears left to offer. She looked up to see Muriel in the doorway, watching them with something sad in their eyes. They might not have been here for the past six thousand years, but they knew more than Nina or Maggie ever could. It was times like these, when Crowley seemed so very young and Muriel seemed so very old, that Nina wondered what kind of life she'd gotten herself into. 

“You are,” Nina murmured. “You are enough. You have always been enough.”

How do you show love to a person that’s been punished for it? How do you handle someone who wants to be loved so badly they reject it?

They were able to get Crowley into the bed that night with little fanfare, and in the morning, he came down the stairs to greet Muriel with a sleep-drunk, grumbled "morning," rather than a simple glare.

Gently, Nina decided, and a whole lot of alcohol.

—

Sometimes, when it was very dark and very silent, Crowley thought about Extreme Sanctions.

It was something he used to use to frighten the cherubs, yes. It was something with which he’d been threatened himself on more than one occasion, jokingly or not. It was something that had never scared him because he knew that there was nothing to fear. There would be no fear after it happened, after all; no pain, no hurt, no anguish nor anger. To be erased from the Book of Life was something that struck terror into the heart of any immortal being, demon and angel alike. But not Crowley. Never Crowley.

It was a passive lack of fear, before. It was not courage in the face of it- rather, it was something he simply did not think about. These days, it came to mind more often. It was not as if he wanted it, to be erased. But it came to mind. It came when it was very dark. When it was very silent. When he was very sad or very angry or very numb. The inclusion of very is important.

It was just as it was when he had the holy water on his windowsill. That tartan thermos, handed to him with such care, used to destroy Ligur, left with just enough to destroy one more. It sat on his windowsill, innocuous, taunting, and he thought about it. What it would be like to pour it into a wine glass and toast to the world.

In the bookshop, he would lay in the bed he had avoided like the plague for a year and he would stare at the ceiling. He would wonder how everything might have been different, had he never existed. Because that’s what Extreme Sanctions was: the lack of existence. It would not be death nor disappearance. He would not be known to even the one who struck him from the book, let alone remembered by anyone who’d known him. Cut out of creation.

It wouldn’t be too much of a change, after all. He had not known who he was since his name left him on the shores of Hell. 

He wondered if Aziraphale had the authority to pass that kind of judgment. He wondered whether it would be easier for them both if he exacted it. He wondered if the stars would still hang in the sky or if it would be as he’d seen it for so long.

Sometimes, he would pretend that it was happening, that he could feel the cut of the holy quill through each of his many names (and forms and questions and prayers and tears) and he would pretend to ask that the ceiling be opened to him, that his serpents’ curse be lifted, so that he may watch the stars flicker out as he did . 

—

Slowly, things seemed to get better. Crowley spoke more, he left the bookshop for his own reasons rather than by Muriel or Maggie or Nina’s requests. He never changed the sheets of Aziraphale’s bed, though the other three knew he should dearly want to- in the diaries, Aziraphale had offhandedly mentioned that Crowley wore the softest of clothing, slept in the softest of silks; he swathed himself in materials with the highest thread counts because, he said, there was nothing wrong with a demon showing a little gluttony.
Maggie said he probably wanted those soft things because of how harsh Hell seemed to be. Nina and Muriel were inclined to agree. None of them were inclined to confront Crowley about his lack of desire to change. Crowley was even less inclined to confront that line of thinking, himself. It suited them all just fine.

Still, little things showed that he was on the up and up. He brought a plant into the bookshop and bullied it until it was green and lush (and until Maggie caught him doing so and immediately admonished him for his cruelty). He came to dinners when he was invited and, though he did not eat (as was normal for him) he drank wine slowly, sipping throughout the night rather than throwing back glass after glass. He smiled more, he laughed more, he miracled a TV into the living space upstairs and watched James Bond, made Muriel watch it too despite their confusion. He started gluing coins to the sidewalk and fighting with people on Twitter again.

(He went outside at night because he needed to be close and did not look up, because that was still too much, even after over six thousand years.)

By the start of the spring of his third year, he and Muriel decided to install a conservatory. His plants had very nearly overrun the apartment above the bookshop and while Muriel didn’t exactly mind, they did not enjoy having to redirect customers who asked about the yelling coming from just up the stairs. So they installed his conservatory and moved all his plants inside, and Crowley could yell at them and mist them to his heart’s content without fear of being heard. Miraculously, it did not increase the perceived size of the flat from the outside.

That conservatory was where Crowley spent most of his time for the remainder of that third year and into the fourth. The glass was clear and on sunny days he would shift to his other form and bask on the branch he had gotten angry at Muriel for placing. When it was storming he would stare up at the rain, listen to it, allow his troubles to wash away with it like sin from a baptism. His troubles were all very wonderfully mundane. His anger was light, these days.

Slowly, things got better. Slowly, Crowley relearned himself; like learning how to walk without grace, propped up on another demon who would have to let him go before they got inside Hell proper; like trying, failing to remember who he was, his name and sense of self, and deciding that, if God took back what was Her’s, he would simply create himself in Her absence. Brick by brick, he pulled himself together. Unlike the first time, he had help, and he pulled himself together.

As it was, it was a nice day. All the days had been nice this week, despite the meteorological disposition of London. The air outside was crisp and the snows were melting into the tentative warmth of late February. Inside the conservatory, there was a contented heat. Crowley would be there, as he had been every day this week, kneeled before the damp, giving soil, his hands covered in it as he tended his plants. He had not yelled at them at all this week, nor had he made an example of any that were subpar, and Muriel could feel the hesitant relief pouring from them in waves. If they were to stand in the doorway, as they had done only a few times, they would see him there, his hair pulled back into a loose, forgiving braid, his sunglasses gone from his yellow eyes, and with the smallest of smiles upon his lips. He would not notice them until he finished, and then he would gently admonish them for watching him work. He was gentle with Muriel these days, if no-one else. They could imagine him standing, his content smile becoming an equally as content frown, surrounded by the lush greenery that he had somehow cultivated in London, of all places. Things were peaceful.

And then there was the tinkling of the bell above the door. Crowley did not hear it, did not see who crossed the threshold; he was in the conservatory, content and thriving for the first time in years. 

“Hello, Muriel. I do hope I’m not intruding on anything.”

Muriel prayed to anyone who would listen that he would stay there.

—

The first time Aziraphale wept, his tears were washed away. He stood upon the deck of the Ark and waited for Crawley to return, wailing because he knew no other would hear him over the rains. He wept because he knew the demon would return empty handed this time. He wept because there was nothing he could have done. (He wept because there was so much he could have done.)
He wept when Crawley unsteadily touched down back onto the ark, his wings water-logged and heavy, and stumbled past him with the darkest expression he had ever seen. He’d allowed himself a few more tears before following the demon to where the few children he’d been able to save sat huddled, miraculously dry and warm and fed despite the strict rations. 

He did not weep for a long time after that. Not until Job, when he realized he would only go along with Heaven for as long as he could. When he realized how lonely he was, would be. Crawley had sat with him, on that flat stone, overlooking the crystal waters before them, and had very kindly pretended not to hear his sniffles. 

After that, after his appointment onto Earth became a permanent one, he had allowed himself to weep more. It was not tolerated in Heaven- angels should rejoice in the Glory and Grace of the Almighty and Her Word. Tears of sorrow were quick to get you looked at sideways, at the very least. So, when he was on Earth, he took advantage of the privacy.  He wept when humans died, he wept when the horror of the world was so great that no miracle he could manage would help. He wept when a young man was nailed to a cross for the crime of loving too much. 

He wept on his own as the ages progressed, as weeping became less and less acceptable for man-shaped entities. So when he cried for Crowley, he would do so from the privacy of his home and, when it opened, his bookshop. He wept when Crowley sank through the ground into Hell, off his ass on laudanum and fresh off what was likely the strongest good deed he’d done since his Fall. He wept after, when Crowley returned, he asked for holy water. He wept when he finally handed him the thermos. He wept when the Antichrist was delivered, and then when the world was to end. He wept when Crowley left him at the Bandstand, after Aziraphale said those horrible words. And he wept after the Ritz, when he and Crowley had the spat over their swapped forms. When he learned that Crowley could not see the stars. When he realized that Crowley did not remember their first meeting.
He wept openly and freely, quietly and hidden behind walls and closed doors. And what did all those tears amount to? All that sorrow, joy, fear, compassion, (and another four letter word he did not dare say for fear of weeping anew) and for what? To sit at a desk, unheard, unseen, barely a figurehead?

(He could not weep when he rose in the elevator to Heaven. He would not. This was good, nevermind how his lips tingled still and his palm buzzed where it had grasped Crowley’s back. He would not weep because he was doing the right thing, and this was Good.)

Sometimes, when he knew he would be alone for extended periods, he would allow himself to slump and to bury his head in his hands. To think of Earth, to think of the bookshop he had left behind. He wondered if Muriel had gotten the letter, or if Crowley had returned.
He had tried his best to make things better. He had tried his best to make this place worthy of being called Heaven. He tried to fight back against the Second Coming. He was shot down at every turn. He was sitting here, day in and day out, not knowing what day it truly was, how long he had been here, why he had thought this would be a good idea. 

(For what was not the first time, he thought about Crowley as he'd stood in the bookshop. After Beelzebub and Gabriel spirited themselves away, after the angels had gone back to heaven, after he'd spoken to the Metatron and come back to tell Crowley what had happened. He thought on the way the sun was just beginning to wane, catching the red of Crowley's hair like fire. The way it had settled into the planes of his face, the errant wrinkles in his corporation looking like the veins of gold that ran through mountains. The yellow of his eyes only caught the light and made them glow, the pupils slitted and distressed. 

After, he would always remember how Crowley looked the first day they met -- was it a day? More a moment, really, before time -- and his heart would hurt. His wings were wide, wider than Aziraphale's, and a pure white that was so much warmer and softer than the mimicry of it that plagued Heaven's halls. He remembered the way his hand had flourished after cranking the lever, seeming as if the stars were smoothed into the universe by his fingers alone. The way they had burst into being, creating and destroying themselves only to create again, and how they were beautiful. The way Crowley's smile had been even brighter, even more beautiful than the stars that had sparked it. The way the colors reflected in his eyes, in the perfect gloss of his wings; the way the light settled into the planes of his face, in his errant wrinkles, in his golden irises and round pupils. 

He’d mourned for Crowley’s stolen memories of this first meeting. He had mourned that joy on Crowley's face, gone ever since. And, more than to stop the Second Coming, more than his bookshop or the little restaurants he loved, he wanted to see that smile again. He had wanted to remake Heaven for Crowley. But he'd realized how foolish that had been.)

He idealized things. If he hadn’t gone with the Metatron that day, he would still be in Soho, living out his days in peace and planning with Crowley to tackle the Second Coming. Maybe they would have reached out to Anathema and Newt or Adam to see what they made of the whole situation.

He rationalized things. He was wasting time here. If he wanted to stop the Second Coming, he needed the allies that Heaven was deeply lacking. He couldn’t do this alone. Crowley had been right. Crowley was always right, and Aziraphale was always wrong, and he owed that wonderful, beautiful demon one hell of a dance. 

He sat at that desk. He thought and he tried not to weep and he sometimes failed. He talked to God and heard no response. He kept himself from searching for Crowley. He wondered if anyone would notice if he just stood up and left. 

There was, predictably, no response. I talk to God but the sky is empty , he recited in his head. He looked up, as if She existed higher than he. She did not- She was everywhere, above and below, and She was everything, above and below. She was the Earth and the sky and the stone beneath the feet of Her creations, and She was the animals and their food and their instinct. She was people, their souls, each and every one; their eyes and how they saw the world, their mouths and the words that they spoke. She was calamity and She was sorrow. She was the creeping death that chased and the reeking corpse that remained and the gentle decomposing that claimed; She was the peaceful calm, the warm conservatory, the silence of night. She was courage and She was fear, weakness and strength; She was the Beginning and She was the End. She was hatred. She was love. 

But Aziraphale did not know this. As an angel of the Lord, he could fathom Her entirety no further than the humans She’d made in Her image. No more than any of the other angels that She had, too, made from Her own Hand. This lack of ability to fathom the immensity of things had its uses, however, which was why She limited it to begin with: it allowed Her Creations to wonder, to think. Gave them space in their minds to ponder the hugeness of things.
This, of course, backfired. She gave Her angels free will and what did they do with it? She looked sadly on Her Supreme Archangel, and he thought about the sacrifice made for understanding. 

Aziraphale knew Crowley had been an angel before all this. He knew that he’d Fallen for ‘asking a question’, as the demon had mentioned every now and again, when they got especially drunk and he became especially maudlin. Aziraphale remembered, however, what Crowley did not. He remembered how much love had been in Crowley’s gaze when he looked at the stars, how aghast and pained he’d seemed when Aziraphale mentioned that they’d be destroyed in six thousand years.
He’d looked in the files. He knew what Crowley had been before all this. His name had been Raphael. He was Starmaker. He was everything . And Aziraphale missed him with a fervor that made his heart shudder and burn. 

Whatever questions Crowley had asked had been for love. He had sacrificed his name, his purpose, his stars and planets and nebulae for the love of them. In a way, even before he knew the name that Crowley had held, Aziraphale knew this. And perhaps, in a way, he’d tried to do the same with this- to sacrifice all that he loved for their sake. But it wasn’t the same. Unlike Crowley, he was left remembering, and, unlike Aziraphale, the stars didn’t miss their maker with every fiber of their being.
He couldn’t lie to himself any longer. Intentionally or not, he hadn’t wanted Crowley to come with him to Heaven- he’d wanted Raphael. He would have missed the demon either way. Because Crowley would not have been Crowley any longer. Because even after everything, Aziraphale had wanted to prove (to himself or Heaven was unclear) that he was Good, that he could not possibly love a demon . That he loved the angel that Crowley had been before. Because he was a coward.

(Because the very first person he loved had loved the universe with an intensity that rivaled that of the Lord, and had been punished for it. Because, in that way, he, too, had been taught to fear love. Because he was afraid of what loving Crowley as he was would mean. Because he was afraid of what that said about him.)

But Crowley was not that angel. He hadn’t been that angel for a very, very long time. And holding onto the memory of him would do nobody any good, least of all Crowley. He wanted Crowley to be happy, but not at the expense of who he was. He had lost himself enough already. 

Aziraphale stood and gathered what files he had on hand about the Second Coming. She watched him, as She always did and always would, and with a wave of Her Hand, She cleared his path. (Perhaps free will wasn’t all that bad, after all.)

One did not need to look up to talk to Her. One needed only to talk.

If She didn’t respond, then, well. She supposed he wasn’t asking the right questions. 

—

“You can’t be here,” Muriel found themself hissing. If someone were to have told them five years ago that they were hissing at the Supreme Archangel of Heaven, they would have likely panicked at the mere thought. But now, they could only see Aziraphale through the lens of his diaries, through the lens of what he had done to Crowley. It was not a pretty sight. 

“Whatever do you mean?” Aziraphale asked, his brows furrowed in confusion. As if he had any right to be confused. “This is my bookshop.”

“Maybe, but all the same, you can’t be here,” they said. “Come on.”

They grabbed his wrist (oh my god, this is the fucking Supreme Archangel of Heaven , and they were grabbing his wrist ) and pulled him out of the shop as quickly and as quietly as they could, dragged him across the street to the coffee shop. Miraculously, as soon as the two of them entered, the midday rush all stood to leave, realizing they had somewhere better to be. They sat Aziraphale down and stalked up to the counter, where Nina was watching a customer turn around mid-conversation to vacate the shop. Her eyes widened when she looked at Muriel and noticed who was behind them. She had not seen them come in, but she definitely saw them now.

“Has he seen him?” Nina asked, her voice dripping with urgency. She took out her phone, her fingers flying across the screen. 

“No. He’s in the conservatory. He should be there for a while, I hope,” Muriel responded.

“Maggie’s on her way. What do we do?”

“I don’t know!” Muriel exclaimed. They felt something stirring in their chest that they hadn’t felt since they first were given the shop. Something with deep roots and stems that threatened to push through their skin. They folded their arms against the feeling. “I don’t know. I don’t know what’ll happen if Crowley sees him. It won’t be good.”

“You can say that again,” Nina said as she gestured for Maggie to come in. “Turn the sign to closed, would you? Thanks.”

Maggie did so, shot a glance at Aziraphale, and paled. “I didn’t think… Oh, my,” she said, approaching the other two. “What… has Mr. Crowley seen?”

“Nothing yet. He’s working on his plants.”

“That’s good. He does love his plants.” They all turned when Aziraphale spoke up and he shrunk a little in his seat under their stares. Muriel could feel the heat of Nina’s anger even without looking at her.

“He killed them after you left,” Nina said after a beat of silence. “Every last one of them. These are all new. But you wouldn’t have known that, would you?”

“Nina,” Maggie hissed, and suddenly Muriel was reminded of when they first rediscovered Crowley. 

This time, however, the recipient of such venom was, in Muriel’s opinion, entirely deserving of it. He may have looked innocuous in that coffee shop chair, with his large, pleading eyes and the apologetic set to his mouth. But they knew what he had done and had seen the effects of it. They’d seen how Crowley had sobbed. They’d seen how he’d refused to speak, to move from the sill, to do anything until Nina physically dragged him out of the room. They remembered how he wouldn’t sleep, and the bags under his eyes from it. They remembered wondering how demons even got bags under their eyes. They knew what Aziraphale had done. No apology would be enough. No matter if Crowley accepted it, no apology would be enough. 

Their ire was likely palpable, as Aziraphale’s gaze seemed to roam back to them, only to avert it under their rage. Something about that was satisfying- the Supreme Archangel of Heaven, submitting to Muriel, a 37th degree scrivener. Satisfying and deeply, deeply wrong. 

“I don’t know how we’re going to-” Nina cut herself off with a frustrated growl. “He’s finally better ! It took him so long to get better ! Why did you have to come back now ?”

“Better?” Aziraphale asked. His face twisted with concern and he stood. “What do you mean, better? Was he ill?”

“You could say that,” Maggie said, her voice very sad. She was the very opposite of her girlfriend, watching Aziraphale with nothing but sadness. Muriel knew, however, that the sadness was not for the angel at all. 

“I can- I can heal him. I can help,” Aziraphale said, his voice rising in pitch with his desperation. “I can help!”

“You want him healed?” Nina spat, rounding the counter and stalking over to the angel. She got so close that Aziraphale had to take a step back. Almost fell backward onto his chair. “Then go back to fucking Heaven!”

Aziraphale’s breath hitched in a gasp. His eyes were misty with unshed tears, and Muriel wondered if he really had the right to cry. Neither of them spoke, the words sinking in and Nina meaning every one of them. Suddenly, Muriel felt the air thicken with something deep and wanting and hurt. It permeated the bookshop and slunk along the floor like a heavy fog. They turned from the silent battle that Nina and Aziraphale were waging to see where the thickness was coming from, because it wasn’t from either of the humans nor was it from Aziraphale himself; no, it was from somewhere worse. Shit , they thought.

“ Shit ,” they swore. There was, outside, a demon, staring at the four of them through the glass of the coffee shop, his lips parted. His sunglasses were on, but Muriel could practically see the wide stare through the dark lenses. Inside, the other three broke their focus to look where Muriel was looking just as Crowley turned on his heel and walked away. Aziraphale pushed past Nina and, after a moment taken to register the situation, the two humans stormed out of the shop after him. Muriel was left where they stood, watching as Aziraphale caught up to Crowley, as the demon wrenched out of his grip, ignored him as he spoke and slid into the Bentley. He drove away, leaving Aziraphale yelling on the street; leaving that awful, pained fog behind. 

-

It was dark when Crowley returned to the bookshop, the Bentley’s engine purring as he parked in his usual illegal spot. Muriel stopped their anxious reshelving as he stepped through the doors, looking wretched and for all the world like he’d rather be anywhere else. They hadn’t expected him for another few days, months, even years. They wouldn’t have blamed him, if he had decided to stay away.
In his hand was a plastic bag and his sunglasses stayed firm on the bridge of his nose- Muriel’s heart ached. He always took off his sunglasses in the bookshop, these days. 

“Is he here?” Crowley said. Once, he might have tried to sound casual, flippant, nonchalant. But Muriel supposed he’d given up on trying to seem alright, for once. His frown was drawn, his skin pallid; the slope of his shoulders was mournful and so, so tired. Muriel set the book they’d been holding onto a table to the side and took a couple of tentative steps toward the demon. 

“He’s in the back room,” Muriel said. “I… I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go see him.”

Crowley chuckled, but it was mirthless and strained. “Yeah, I know, Constable.”

“You’re saying that in the way humans do when they’re going to do something despite warnings,” Muriel said. “Are you really going to see him? After what he did?”

The demon sighed. “He did what he thought was right. I’m sure he did. He’s… He’s just as much a victim of Heaven as any of us.”

But not all of us were cast away for loving , Muriel wanted to say, because that was the issue with which they’d been contending for the past few years. 

Muriel frowned. “I don’t understand why you’re trying to excuse him,” they said instead. Because they truly didn’t understand. Why was Crowley standing there, with his plastic bag and his sunglasses and his tired slouch, and rationalizing Aziraphale’s abandonment?

Crowley was silent for a while. He looked in thought, though Muriel couldn’t tell much from behind his glasses. Then, he sighed again and looked up; Muriel caught the obscured yellow of his eyes, the deep bags beneath them.

“I need you to do something for me, Muriel.”

The angel was startled at the use of their name. They wondered if Crowley had ever used it before. They couldn’t remember a time that he had; they had no need to call each other by their names, seeing as they were the only two in the shop and therefore had nobody else with whom to speak. But, if he really needed to call them, it was Constable. Never Muriel. They didn’t like how grim their name sounded off his tongue. 

“Of course,” They said anyway, because they’d been with Crowley for over three years and the trust they had in him could be surpassed by no-one but God Herself. They wondered just how Aziraphale had left him alone- if he was half as gentle with the Supreme Archangel as he was with Muriel, then leaving was nothing short of sin. How could you claim to be a being of love if you cannot feel that which is so obvious? So much love that an angel could thrive on it alone for millennia. Perhaps Aziraphale had- perhaps he had gotten so used to that feeling of pure, unbridled love that he ceased to notice it. It was a weak explanation, but the only one Muriel could think of on the spot. 

Crowley stepped forward, held out the plastic bag. Muriel took it from him, looked inside; there, weighing down the bottom of the bag, was a thermos with a tartan pattern. They frowned and took it out, looking at it with confusion.

“I need you to keep that away from me,” he said. “Keep it, miracle it away, pour it out, whatever. But I- I need you to take it. Because I don’t want it now , but I don’t know what’s going to happen when I go in there and I don’t want to-” He cut himself off with a purse of his lips. 

“What is it?” They asked. 

“Holy water.”

Their head jerked up from where it had been studying the thermos and they took an instinctive step back. They shoved the thermos back into the plastic bag and tied it up as quickly as they could.

“Why do you have this?”

Crowley shrugged. “Aziraphale gave it to me in the sixties. I used it back when the world was ending to kill a demon that was coming after me in my flat, but I didn’t need all of it. Saved a little bit, just in case I…”

“Just in case you what?” Muriel snapped, surprised at their own venom. They took a deep breath. “Just in case you what , Crowley?”

He looked at them sadly and that was all they needed to know. They looked down at the thermos and, with their mouth set into a resolute line, they miracled the bag away. They did not miss the demon’s wince as they did so, as if Crowley had been hoping they wouldn’t. But there was no reversing it, thank Someone. 

“It was in case I needed to protect myself,” he said anyway, even if both of them knew it was a lie. “Hell doesn’t do stern talking to, y’know? You can forgive me for wanting some assurance.”

Muriel met his eyes. “No, I can’t.”

Crowley was quiet for a moment, studying their face, the steel they’d imbued into their eyes. Then, he smiled- small, sad, mourning loss and yet full of a knowledge that they knew he’d never wanted. Handed the apple. Forced to eat. 

“I know.”

He walked past them and to the back room, the handle clicking near inaudibly as he entered. 

Somewhere, a snake was curled under a bush, punished and suffering. 

—-

Gabriel remembered Raphael. He did, perhaps, more than most other than Michael and the Fallen. He had been tall and his wingspan broad; one of the Almighty’s first, one of the Almighty’s very favorites. He smiled wide and smiled often. His golden eyes sparkled like the planned stars for which he was so excited. Gabriel had never liked him. 

They hadn’t been especially close, even when they were few. Raphael was older than him and chose to spend time in communication with God rather than talk or collaborate with any of the other angels. It wasn’t that Raphael was rude- no, quite the opposite. He was endlessly kind, perfectly respectful, and passionate to a fault about God’s creations. He was, perhaps, one of the closest angels to Her, seconded only by the Metatron, who was Her Voice. But he wasn’t like any of the other angels. He was different. And, back then, different , to Gabriel, meant defective .
He remembered feeling justified when Raphael fell and then immediately feeling guilty for the thought. Just because he hadn’t liked the angel didn’t mean he wished him pain- no, quite the opposite. Gabriel, once, had been a creature of love and compassion. Though it took him effort to actually mean it, he really did mourn Raphael’s fall. He thanked God for casting him out rather than striking him from the Book of Life. And then he went on with his duties.

He lost his sympathy as time kickstarted and progressed. He’d been an Archangel for a long, long time, and he supposed that without Her Word, the job became only just: a job. The love from which he’d been made leaked out of him as Heaven turned from a palace of Good into a dull bureaucracy that didn’t really even know what they were supposed to be following. The Great Plan was Ineffable, as he’d always known, but instead of interpreting Her signs, he’d begun to blindly follow where his own biases took him. 

He did not think often of Raphael. Not until he first saw the demon Crawley turned Crowley and a weak, old pang of mourning shot through his heart. The love, the joy, the devotion for which Raphael had been known, been shunned , was completely gone. Or, at least, hidden very, very deep inside where it would be safe from harm. The gold of his eyes was the same other than the pupils, the flame red of his hair the same. Gabriel very nearly called him by his angel’s name a few times but knew it would only hurt him to hear it. The last dredges of his sympathy went into that, he supposed. He was a very old angel. He had little left to give.

He felt young and new when he first spoke to Beelzebub. Not at the Air Base, but after, when they truly sat down to speak. When they introduced him to music that wasn’t from a movie God enjoyed a little too much and smiled at him so gently, in a way that a demon should never smile. They knitted closed the hole in him that had been leaking love for so many millennia, just a little bit, every time they met afterward. He wondered if this was how Aziraphale felt with his own demon. 

(The demon who Gabriel had once been told was his brother, who he had been told to love, who had smiled at him so brightly that he was blinded as the presence of God leached away. The demon who had once been the most resplendent of angels, whose markings were gold upon his cheeks and dappled like his star charts and plans.)

He figured that it couldn’t be, because this was so much different than anything he’d ever felt. When he stood in the backyard of the house they’d found in Alpha Centauri, looking up at the sky, and felt Beelzebub’s arms snaking around his middle. When he turned around in their embrace and they smiled up at him, so sweetly, so gently, so lovingly, that he felt held in the hand of Creation again. 

A small part of him hoped that Raphael felt the same.

—

No dance could ever be enough. 

Aziraphale realized this as Crowley dragged himself through the door. Because that’s what it was, dragging- he did not stride nor did he sway in the way that he was apt to do, the way that kept his bones where they needed to be. He pulled himself through the door as if it was the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do. Aziraphale knew it wasn’t.

No dance could ever be enough. He did not take off his glasses. His skin was pale and his expression drawn, his mouth set into a grim line as if bracing against something inevitable. He looked at Aziraphale without saying a thing, and he looked so, so very tired . For the first time, he looked every bit his age. Older than Aziraphale by a long shot, hurt beyond hurting. A snake that’s been stepped on so often that it doesn’t know what it’s like to be hale.

“Why are you here, Aziraphale?” He asked, his voice very quiet. If there were any other noise in the room or outside of it for that matter, he might have been overpowered. But as it was, the room was silent as the grave and thick with grief. Aziraphale doesn’t need to breathe, but he felt suffocated by it. 

No dance would ever be enough.

He opened his mouth. Closed it. Took a breath. Though he’d wanted to, he hadn’t truly expected to get this far. He’d expected to be greeted with fury straight away, Crowley’s rage quick and burning. He’d expected yelling and words thrown that they’d both regret. He’d expected hissing and biting until the demon fizzled out and told Aziraphale how much he’d been missed. And then Aziraphale could tell him how much he had missed Crowley in turn. Or, perhaps, that last bit was just fantasy.
What he hadn’t been expecting, however, is this: sullen, wilting, tired. His hair was long, unkempt, as if it had been in a braid but pulled out by force. There was no anger on his face. Just a very, very old sadness. 

“Why are you here?” He asked again. If it weren’t so numb, Aziraphale might have thought he was begging. 

“I came back,” Aziraphale said, finally. “I- I came back.”

“I see that,” Crowley responded. He brushed past Aziraphale and fell onto the couch. He did not glare at Aziraphale, but it was a near thing. “Why?”

“Be- Because I was wrong! I came back because you were right, Crowley. I couldn’t do it alone, in Heaven. I can’t do it alone. I can’t stop what’s coming without you.”

“And what makes you think I’m going to help you?” Anger sparked in his eyes. That, at least, was familiar. Aziraphale held onto it like a rope to a falling man, and did not see the irony in the analogy. 

“You always help,” Aziraphale said, taking a step toward the couch. “We’re friends.”

Crowley’s face darkened. “ Friends ?” He snarled. “After what you did, you still think we’re friends ?”

Aziraphale frowned, searching Crowley’s eyes for something, anything that told him that he was lying. They were covered by his sunglasses, however, and his body language was rigid and unyielding. 

“Of course,” Aziraphale said, though he sounded unsure. He knew he sounded unsure. He hated that he did. 

“ Of course ,” Crowley spat, “ of course, he says.”

“Look me in the eye, Crowley, and tell me that we aren’t friends,” Aziraphale argued. The uncertainty turned to desperation. He didn’t want it to. “Tell me that we aren’t.”

Crowley ripped off his glasses, showing the angel his eyes for the first time since he’d put them back on five years ago. “Oh, you did a great job of telling me that for yourself.”

There was so much anger. So much that it very nearly bowled Aziraphale over where he stood. His breath hitched.

“I would never .”

Crowley growled. Slid his glasses harshly back over his yellow eyes. “Don’t be fucking daft, Aziraphale.”

“I would never !” He insisted. “You are my dearest friend. I would- I would never renounce that, no matter what happened.”

“Well forgive me for finding that hard to believe!” Crowley hissed. I forgive you. Oh. 

Aziraphale took another step forward. The air was thick with intention; he could taste ash. 

“I’m back, Crowley. I am.”

“Yeah? For how long, then?” Crowley bit. “How long until you get another job offer or have another moral crisis? Until you remember that I’m not enough for you? I’m tired of playing second fiddle to fucking Heaven , Aziraphale!”

Aziraphale pursed his lips. This was about more than what he’d done five years ago. This was an old fury, fermenting in the back of Crowley’s mind for many, many years. 

“I’m not going back this time. There’s nothing for me there- there’s nothing I can change alone.”

Crowley stood abruptly, the couch screeching behind him, and strode up to Aziraphale. Rage. So, so much rage. Oh, dear. 

“You don’t get to just come back when it’s convenient for you, Aziraphale!” Crowley growled, his fists clenching so hard that Aziraphale worried that his nails were cutting into his palms. “Taking on and off the title of angel like a fucking hat as if you haven’t been tempting humans for the last four millennia. You left me to go play Archangel with the suits- fine. But you don’t just get to come back !”

“What did you want me to do?” The angel cried. “Stay in Heaven?”

“ Yes !” Crowley cried with just as much vigor. “Stay away, far away, and leave me be! Things were just- they were just getting better, and you- you don’t get to come back.”

“It’s my bookshop.”

“You left it,” Crowley snapped. “You left it, because that’s what you do when things get hard. You’re selfish and you’re cruel and yet you’re still a fucking angel after all your sin!”

“ Sin? ” Aziraphale retorted. “What do you care about my sinning? You’ve never complained about it before! For that matter I am very sure you like when I sin!”

Anger was rising in Aziraphale now- he couldn’t help it. He was supposed to be here to apologize to Crowley, to beg his forgiveness, but he’d never been able to get through to Crowley when he was like this. He was frustrated. He was angry. He was endlessly remorseful. All of these things are not mutually exclusive. 

“Thousands of years of the Arrangement,” spat Crowley, “and you were never threatened with anything close to Falling! Thousands of years you worked against God, against Her supposedly ineffable plan, and not a single darkened feather!” 

“I don’t know what you’re mad at me for, Crowley. Is it for leaving or is it for not Falling? While I am very sorry for leaving you to work in Heaven, I am not going to apologize for something I cannot control!”

“I asked a fucking question, Aziraphale, and I lost everything ! And yet here you are, the Almighty’s favorite, prancing around on Earth after running away from being the Supreme Archangel as if it were a desk job you got bored of!”

“Running-” Aziraphale sputtered, affronted. “I thought this was what you wanted!” He repeated. “Us, you and me, together!”

“There’s no us.” Crowley sneered. “You’re just an angel I couldn’t corrupt.”

Aziraphale froze. “…What?”

“Too stupid to see what was happening,” Crowley continued, scathing and raw, “too loved by the Almighty to be punished. What did you think the Arrangement was, angel ?”

The endearment was said like a slur. Aziraphale flinched. He grimaced. This wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. 

“You were blessing humans the whole time, too. I hardly think I’m the only one going against the Plan, here.”

“Means to an end,” Crowley said, shrugging flippantly. “You forget- demons used to be angels. We don’t do Good, but that doesn’t mean we’re strangers to it. Doing Good isn’t well-liked Down There, but it’s not going to Ascend us, and I can write it off as a long-term temptation. Doing Bad as an angel, however…”

Aziraphale felt like he’d been punched.

“So- So all that time, you were…” His words felt dry; the ash coated his tongue, leadening it, gluing it to the roof of his mouth. 

“You were just an angel I couldn’t corrupt,” he repeated, a dreadful near-whisper. Crowley’s sneer was ugly, marring his face in a way Aziraphale had never seen.

“I see,” he said, his voice very quiet. “In that case, then, perhaps I- perhaps I will return to Heaven, after all.”

“Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” Crowley turned away, sitting back down on the couch and staring pointedly past the angel. Aziraphale watched him. His mind ran through their years together, a final mourning, of sorts. He remembered leaving, he remembered the argument they’d had the night after their respective trials. He remembered Armageddon and he remembered the years leading to it. He remembered 1941, the weight of the leather case in his hand after Crowley had handed it to him. He remembered every clandestine meeting throughout the many ages and how, every single time, his heart had fluttered with joy. He remembered the Garden. He remembered the Wall. 

“Lucky you.”

“Now, Crawley, don’t be bitter. Just because you Fell for your mistakes doesn’t mean we all have to. Envy is a sin.”

The guilt for what he’d done swirled around in his gut. He already knew he should have Fallen for his disregard of Her word, but he didn’t want to be reminded of it. Especially not by someone who had Fallen for much less. 

“I was being sincere, Aziraphale,” he’d said, surprising the angel. “You’re lucky She didn’t linger. I wouldn’t wish the Fall on anyone, least of all you.”

It surprised Aziraphale not because the words were kind, but because they were true. He could detect no lie of any kind and the hunch of Crawley’s shoulders showed no attempt at anything other than a gentle conversation under the blanket of night. He really did just want to spend a little more time up here, in the fresh, new air, away from the horrors of Hell. Aziraphale could hardly blame him, but he knew Someone who would. 

“Oh,” he’d said, for lack of a better response.

Aziraphale looked up from where he’d been staring at the floor. Crowley ground his teeth, his gaze askance. He was tense and restless, like he was waiting for Aziraphale to leave before he completely let himself fall apart. Aziraphale set his jaw. 

“You don’t believe that,” Aziraphale said, knowing with complete certainty that he was right. Because Crowley was not Envious and he never had been- he partook in Pride and Lust and Gluttony as well as Wrath and Sloth, but never Envy. And he never, never resented Aziraphale for remaining an angel.

“You don’t believe that,” Aziraphale repeated, with more conviction than he’d ever had. 

“I do,” Crowley tried to growl, though it came out as more of a croak. 

“You don’t.” Aziraphale took a step forward. “You’re a demon, after all. You lie.”

“Not about this.” But his voice was so hoarse and suddenly unsure. Aziraphale took another step. 

“Then let’s not call it a lie,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s call it what it really is: fear.”

Crowley growled. “Don’t fucking psychoanalyze me.”

“You’re afraid,” Aziraphale continued, paying no mind to Crowley’s withering glare. “You’re afraid of so much, Crowley. You always have been.”

“Stop.”

“You’re afraid that I’m going to leave again, but you don’t want to make the decision to cast me away. You’re spinning old insecurities so that I’ll be angered or upset enough to leave on my own. You want to push me away, and for it to be my choice to go.”

“ Stop .”

“It’s not going to work, Crowley. You know it and I know it. Whether or not I leave, I’m going to find myself right back where it all started. Where we started. And you’re the same- that’s why you’re here now.”

Aziraphale didn’t see the crumple of Crowley’s features before he buried his head in his hands, but he knew the demon like he knew his own name. He could imagine with perfect clarity the way his nose wrinkled, the way his lips tightened, eyebrows drew together. 

“ Please .” Crowley’s voice was a near whine. His glasses teetered on the edge of his fingers, dangerously close to falling. 

“You can’t chase me away any more than you can chase away your own wings,” Aziraphale said. “I’m here, now, and I’m not leaving again. So, I will say as many times as is necessary for you to admit it: you don’t believe that. ” 

The heaving sob shuddered through Crowley’s body as if it were fighting tooth and nail to escape. Aziraphale blinked, suddenly taken aback. He supposed he’d gotten too worked up, but he hadn’t expected this to end in Crowley breaking down. He pressed his lips together, his hands opening and closing at his sides. He wanted to reach out. He wanted to hold the demon. But after everything, after what he realized was nothing more than an attack on Crowley’s insecurities, he knew he had no right. 

“I- I’m sorry,” Aziraphale muttered, feeling properly chastened. “That was harsh.”

Crowley didn’t respond, gasping through sobs he tried to restrain. Aziraphale realized that Crowley was shaking. He’d been shaking the whole time. 

“I…” Aziraphale brought his hands forward. Wrung them in front of his belly so he wouldn’t gather the demon into his arms. It was all he could do to stay right where he was and watch. “I’m not going back to Heaven. I promise.”

The demon sobbed. The heels of his palms dug into his eyes. 

Aziraphale hit his lip. He fidgeted. “Tell me what to do, Crowley. How- How can I make this right? What do you want?”

It took a moment of gathering himself, but Crowley sniffed, drawing a long, shaky breath before releasing it. 

“I want you to leave,” he choked out, his voice more of a tremble than anything else. “I need you to leave.”

Aziraphale’s face twisted in defiance. “No.”

Crowley made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat and curled a little farther into himself. 

“Fucking-“ he cut himself off, his breath hitching. He sniffed again, breathed deep again, and collected himself. “For now, Aziraphale. I need- I need you to leave the bookshop for now . Not forever.”

Aziraphale’s fight left him all at once. “Oh,” he murmured, his voice very small. Crowley tensed, looked up. The full-blown yellow of his eyes, red-rimmed and exhausted, was visible for just a moment before his glasses fell back down over them; armor clicking into place where it had been ill-fitting. 

“No. No, you don’t get to be all sad like that. You don’t-“ he pinched the bridge of his nose, the anger draining, leaving him looking more tired than Aziraphale had ever seen him. “I need to think , Aziraphale. Sooner or later, I- I’ll always say yes to you, or go along with what you want. I can’t help it. I’ve never been able to help it. So I need you to leave so I can think without- without-“

He gesticulated with less animation than he should have done, but alluded to Aziraphale’s general direction. 

“Just… let me come to you, alright? Isn’t that always how it is?”

Aziraphale’s heart broke a little further. “Of course. Yes, of course. I’ll- I’ll find lodging somewhere and let you know.”

“No,” Crowley responded. “Don’t tell me where you are. When I’m ready, I’ll find you.”

The angel nodded. “Of course,” he said again. “I’ll just… go, then.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. His voice was low and gravelly, but the edge to it belied the dismay he still felt. 

Aziraphale hesitated, but turned and walked back through the door. Muriel sat ramrod straight in an armchair and their head snapped to the back room when the other angel emerged. Their eyes hardened as they closed the book they were no doubt only pretending to read and put it on the table in front of them. They stood.

“I’ll be leaving for a while,” Aziraphale said. He waved his hand and a slip of paper appeared between his thumb and forefinger. He approached the glaring angel. “This is the number to my mobile. Crowley doesn’t want to know where I am, but if… if you do, or if something… something happens -“

“Nothing’s going to happen.”

They snatched the paper from his hand and stuffed it into their pocket. They then sidestepped Aziraphale and purposefully strode to the back room, slipping inside and closing the door behind them. Aziraphale watched the door, feeling his mouth quirk down into a mournful scowl, and then sighed. He supposed this should have been what he was expecting. Fantasies are typically fantasies for a reason- it was completely reasonable for Crowley to need time. It’s only that Aziraphale had wasted so much. 

He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. He could hear voices from the back room, consolations muffled by the door. With all the strength he could muster, he left the bookshop, the bell tinkling as he did.

—-

When Maggie first met Mr. Crowley, she thought him unnecessarily cruel. He hissed his words and snarled when he didn’t get his way; he killed bugs that had mistakenly made their way into the bookshop or wherever he happened to be; his smile was always more of a grimace, a mocking thing that made her feel stupid for whatever she happened to have said. But she was always kind to him, as was her nature, and he never truly gave her any reason not to be. And, besides, he was Mr. Fell’s partner, so there had to be some reason for that. Even if he did glue coins to the sidewalk.

Her opinion of him changed as she got to know him. Well, ‘got to know him’ was a strong phrase. She’d interacted with him more than most of the neighborhood, being that she often went over to Mr. Fell’s shop to read. He also sometimes came over in Mr. Fell’s stead to pick up the records she’d gotten in for him, and he always paid much more than was owed despite her protestations. So she knew him better than most and, while her kindness visibly irritated him, she realized overtime that his cool exterior was just that- an exterior. He had warmth in him and while it wasn’t her job to coax that out of him, she knew that Mr. Fell must have been able to. She at least had gotten a smile and graduated from ‘Record Girl’ to ‘Maggie’ when she gifted him a Velvet Underground record. Mr. Fell had mentioned it once, and she of course had remembered. 

All this said, she wasn’t exactly surprised when she found out that Mr. Crowley was a demon. Sure, it was world-shaking to have found out that angels and demons actually existed; to have her beliefs both affirmed by the existence of Heaven and Hell and challenged when the details were laid out before her. It explained, at least, Muriel’s child-like naivety and lack of worldly experience at the age they appeared to be. It did not explain, however, why Mr. Fell had gone back to Heaven, when they had been so horrible to him and his partner. Nina told her how the demon had been the night that Mr. Fell left. Half manic, half hysterical, all desperate; he’d drunk himself unconscious, turned into a snake, and curled around Nina in what could loosely be defined as a hug. Maggie felt horrible for him. And then he disappeared.

For the first two years without him, Maggie and Nina worked on themselves, began their relationship, and helped Muriel figure out what it meant to live on Earth. They became their own person, listened to their own music, read their own books, and by the time Mr. Crowley came back in the form of a snake under the restoration desk, they were, for all intents and purposes, human. Or, at least, as much of a human that an angel could be.
Later, Mr. Crowley would tell her that Muriel had come farther in two years than he or Mr. Fell had in a hundred. When she’d ask why he thought that was, he’d shrug and chalk it up to having human help. She would bite back the desire to tell the demon that he had as much human help as he needed, now, and could get it whenever he wanted. He already knew. 

For the beginning of the three subsequent years he’d spent with them, he’d been a wreck. Not sleeping, drinking constantly, looking like death warmed over. As Muriel got through Mr. Fell’s diaries and told her about the years they’d been apart, Maggie had to wonder if it had been like this every time. Did the demon mourn the loss as if the world had been taken from him every single time?
But, slowly, he got better. Maggie hadn’t even noticed it at first, but when she did, it was staggering how far he’d come. Soon enough, his hair was long and curling, in braids more often than not. Soon, she was scolding him for being cruel to his plants and visiting the conservatory he and Muriel had installed. Soon, he was smiling — really smiling, not sneering or smirking or grimacing with too many teeth bared — and Maggie was marveling at how it transformed his face into something she’d never seen.

(Mr. Fell’s old gramophone had been pulled into the conservatory and, once, when she’d been sent to fetch him for dinner, she’d heard the Velvet Underground floating very softly through the air.)

She and Nina had hurried over when Muriel texted the group chat that Mr. Fell had come and gone. Mr. Fell was stood outside the bookshop, having likely just left, and Nina hung back to speak with him a moment. She gave Maggie the ‘it’ll be fine’ look and did not look entirely livid when she approached the angel, so Maggie assumed (and hoped) it would be fine.
Her heart broke when she got to the back room and saw Mr. Crowley hunched over himself, his head in his hands, fingers buried deep into his fiery hair. 

“Oh, Mr. Crowley…” She murmured. He looked as he had that first night he’d changed back from a snake- so very small and so, so very tired.

“I don’t want your pity,” he spat, though the croak of his voice did little to lend to any sort of intimidation. 

“Should I get the Talisker?” Nina asked a moment later as she pushed through the door. Maggie turned to her and gave her a Look. The demon sighed deeply. 

“No,” He said, sounding defeated. He sat up fully, drawing a long breath before blowing it out. “No.”

“What can we do?” Maggie asked. He looked to her from behind those sunglasses, the ones she so rarely saw anymore, that hid the golden eyes she’d come to love. 

“There’s nothing you can do, Mags,” he said, voice gravelly, shrugging. The nickname warmed her heart. “He’s gone for now. That’s all it is.”

“You were getting so much better,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

He pursed his lips. “Not your fault.”

“Still.”

Nina stepped forward. “Well, what can we do?” She put a hand up when he opened his mouth to respond. “Not referring to Mr. Fell. I’m talking about what we can do, right now, that will stop you from moping around for the next three weeks.”

His lips quirked up into a momentary half-smile at that and he sighed again. “I dunno,” he responded. 

“What about a movie?” Maggie suggested. “I still haven’t seen those Bond films, you know. I would like to.”

They all knew what they were doing. Maggie didn’t care for action films like Bond, Nina wasn’t inconvenienced by Mr. Crowley’s moping. But Mr. Crowley tipped his head thoughtfully anyway, because he knew he was indulging them and they knew that he would cave. Mr. Crowley, Maggie had come to learn, would do anything he could to appease the ones for whom he cared. 

“I s’pose I wouldn’t be against a movie,” he said, playing along.

“Oh, good! Let’s go straight upstairs, then,” Maggie said, flashing a grin. He waved her off and, even though it looked like his body weighed more than the entirety of the Earth, he stood and followed them out of the back room.

He fell asleep on Maggie’s shoulder halfway through the second movie, and she let herself mourn for him only then. Muriel whispered to both of them that they had the angel’s mobile number just in case anything happened. They seemed more troubled than the situation warranted, but when asked their face just soured further.

“Nothing’s going to happen,” they said, but it sounded as if they were trying to convince themself. “Not anymore, anyway.”

“What does that mean?” Nina asked.

“He-” they cut themself off, put a hand to their mouth. They shut their eyes, and that’s when Maggie realized they were trembling. “Oh, God. God .”

Nina sat forward. Looked at Maggie with alarm. Muriel did not lightly utter the name of the Lord, even now that they knew what She had done to Mr. Crowley. This was behavior they’d never seen from them. Nina set her hand on the angel’s shoulder.

“What happened, Muriel?”

“He was going to drink- oh, God . I got rid of it, but he- he had it the whole time and-”

“What did he have?”

“He had it the whole time . Oh, Lord, he could have- he was going to-”

“Muriel,” Nina took their other shoulder, getting their attention. Their voice had raised to a conversational level seemingly against their control, but Nina stopped them before they could get any louder. “ What did he have ?”

“Holy water,” they whispered, sounding haunted. “He had holy water .”

“I- I assume that would make him sick?” Maggie whispered, though she knew it was the understatement of the century. “Like an allergy.”

Muriel shook their head. They turned to look Maggie in the eye. “We don’t actually have bodies. They’re technically the property of Heaven and Hell. We don’t have them Up There and are given them when we come down to Earth. When they are destroyed or the human parts of us are too far beyond repair, we discorporate. The bodies we have are left behind and we go back to our respective offices, where we’re given new ones.”

“So if he drinks holy water, he’d discorporate?” Nina deduced. Maggie knew she was wrong, though, when Muriel’s face crumpled.

“There is so much that can discorporate us. These bodies are nearly fully human, after all. But- But there is not much that can- that can completely kill us. Truly- body, spirit and all.”

“Oh, God,” Maggie breathed. Nina paled.

“For angels, it’s hellfire,” Muriel said. “But for Crowley… if even a drop of pure holy water were to touch him, he’d- he’ll-”

“He had it the whole time,” Nina whispered. 

The three of them fell silent, the reality of the situation settling deep into their bones. Crowley slept on, unaware of their turmoil. The Bond movie played quietly in the background. 

—

When Aziraphale stepped out of the bookshop, he was surprised at how cool it felt outside. A part of him, perhaps, had expected it to be burning with hellfire, the air crackling with infernal energy that sparked when he, the catalyst, exposed himself to it- that would have been what he deserved, anyway.
The night was too quiet, as well. He’d half-expected the screams of the damned to rush up to meet him, hands to grab him and drag him down to where he belonged. To where his wings would be ripped from his back and that awful naivety ripped from his heart. To where he might forget about all of this and remember only his own depravity, beating hollowly in his chest. 

Before everything, if Crowley heard him saying any of this, the demon would have said that he was being dramatic. As if Crowley weren’t the most dramatic creature Aziraphale had ever met in his six thousand years of being on this planet. 

He hadn’t known what he was expecting, coming back. He came with his words and his apologies and his intentions, but it felt like everything fell apart when Crowley was finally in front of him. He hadn’t been prepared for how wretched Crowley looked. For how broken he sounded. For how those sunglasses couldn’t hide a damn thing. In his mind, Crowley hadn’t changed. On Earth, however, it seemed like nothing stayed the same.

—

It was not written, nor is it remembered by anyone but the Lord Herself, but She spoke to Raphael before he Fell. 

She remembered it as She remembered All Things and would sometimes consider it, when She had little to do. It wasn’t often that She had little to do. It was funny, She supposed, that She should devote such rare time to one who has become so estranged.
It was before time, before space, before matter. It was the era of gas and burning, the time after the holy war but before the Garden had been erected- Raphael had paid little attention to his peers as they Fell, minding only himself and the plans over which he’d pored so diligently. So, in this in-between time, he floated before Her. 

She remembered the form She’d taken, then. It was reminiscent of Eve, if not slightly older, and She’d really only taken it so he might have something to look at, when She delivered the news. And the form he’d taken was so close to that of the one he would inhabit for the rest of time- that red hair, those golden eyes. The wings, wider and more resplendent than anything else in the made universe. He stared into Her eyes, unsurprised, irreverent as he always was- it wasn’t the first time She had taken a Form in front of him and it would not be the last.
The reality of it hadn’t set in for him, yet. Or perhaps it had and he was just stronger than She’d ever expected of him. She mourned the loss of Her creature- Her beautiful, inquisitive, imaginative creature who saw Her when he looked.

“I am going to Fall?” He asked. “Why? I did as you asked of me. I made your stars, and I made them in your image.”

The stars that created themselves, destroyed themselves only to begin again, made in Her image. She supposed it was fitting, especially with how the next six thousand years were going to go for Her most favorite of creations.

“Your stars shall stay aloft in the sky, for they are Good. You will Fall, for you are wicked. That is the difference: the goodness of a maker ordains the goodness of their creations. Good begets Good. Likewise, wickedness begets wickedness. Without the darkness, there cannot be light. You shall Fall because you have questioned my goodness, and therefore your own. You are Evil. You have always been Evil,” She said, “but that is not your fault, for that is how I have made you.”

He thought about this for a moment, then looked back up. His eyes sparkled like the gold that did not yet exist.

“What does it mean? To Fall?”

So many questions. She had made him to ask questions, after all, and She was going to punish him for it. 

“You will become a demon,” She responded, because She owed him that much. “I will take from you your wings and cast you into the Lake of Fire. You will join the legions of Hell to rise against Heaven come Armageddon.”

He frowned. Such a terrible thing on that face, a frown. She had not made that face to frown, and wanted nothing more than to take it from him. But that would go against all that She had given to him- this was part of him, the frown, and someday he would wear it like armor. 

“You’re going to kill them all,” he said. He was not angry. He was confused. That’s all he’d ever wanted: to understand. “Why would you make them only to watch them die?”

“They will serve their purpose, as will you,” She said. 

He looked down. His wings dropped slightly, as they always did when he thought. His wings had been Her very best making, She believed. She would never make a pair so perfect again. 

“What is love, if not the desire to see your creations grow?” He asked. He looked back into Her Form’s eyes and She saw that spark of defiance that would characterize the person he would someday become. “To see them live?”

“Do not define love on your own terms, Raphael,” She scolded. She knew it would not be the last time She would have to do so. “I have created it, and I alone know its truth.”

“Then tell us its truth!” He flapped his wings once, agitated. “Why should your creations have to perish without even knowing why?”

“I do not answer to you.” She narrowed Her eyes. “You do not tell me what I am to do with my own creations.”

“Well maybe someone should!” He argued. If She had not already condemned him to Hell, this would have been the reason for his Fall. 

“And if that were true, Raphael, that someone would not be you,” She responded, lowering her voice. She moved her hands before Her, put one over the other, held them there. “You will be Fallen.”

The scowl that had marred his face softened. “Right,” he said. 

“Have you any more questions?” She asked, because She was selfish and wanted just a few moments longer with him. It would not be the last time, She knew, but it would be the last before the terms changed. 

He hesitated, looking away for a moment. His face fell further.

“Can I keep them?”

She tilted her head slightly to the side. She believed it made Her look more human. He believed it made Her look like something She was not. 

“It will hurt,” She told him. “You will never find peace.”

“I don’t need peace,” he responded. “But… if I can have nothing else, I should like to keep them.”

“If I allow this, you must give something in return,” She said. As if he wasn’t giving enough already. He nodded anyway.

“Anything,” he said, because he didn’t know what he would be giving up. 

“Then it is done,” She decided. They looked at each other for a moment. There was no such thing, yet, as a mother or a son. That was still being made up in what the angels were beginning to call Human Resources. But it existed, in a very particular way, here where they floated across from each other. His eyes glistened and She saw the stars She had let him make, the stars She was going to take away.

“You will serve your purpose,” She repeated very softly, mostly convincing Herself. “This is not for nothing.”

“I know,” he said. “Nothing ever is.”

She felt a crack in Her neutrality and allowed Herself a small, very genuine smile. It was too sad to be convincing, but he returned it anyway. She did not often smile. This would be the last for many years. 

“Thank you, Raphael.” This was the first time She had ever thanked someone. “I’m sorry.” This was the first time She had apologized. She only did both of these things because She knew the recipient would not remember. Only She would, and She would not regret it. 

“It’s okay,” he said, giving Her a weak smile. “I know how it is. Just… get on with it, yeah?”

She approached. Took his hands, held them gently.

“You will See again one day, my dear angel,” She told him. She leaned forward, pressed to his forehead what was the second most divine kiss he would ever receive, and let him Fall. 

She watched as he did, took the name that fled back to Her when he hit the ground, and kept it with Her, always.

—

If one was not raised from the Light of God and armed with Her Word and her Weapons, they could be fooled by the opulence of the world’s designated holiest places. They could be easily overwhelmed by the stained glass that stretched tens of feet tall between intricately carved walls; by all that gold: crosses, cases for Torahs, basins for holy water, structures for an Eternal Flame that was often snuffed after services; by the men who designated themselves the holiest. Those performers who stood atop their stages and read from the books written by other men to audiences of hundreds (thousands after the development of streaming). One could not be blamed for falling for this ruse- it was a meticulously crafted scheme that promised those involved an easy ticket to Heaven no matter what they did.
Those unholy places, as could be expected, tended to be the most blasphemous, the most corrupt, and the most hell-bound, though they rarely knew it. Some knew they were sinners, knew where they were headed, and so never saw the point of turning it around. Most others were not so self aware; they thought they were untouchable. That all of their actions were excused because they interpreted — and perverted — God’s word.

One could be easily fooled into thinking that wealth is an appropriate way to gauge divinity, and thereby exalt gold above all else. A certain angel, though he was preoccupied at the time, remembered vaguely the last time humans did this, though in a much more direct way. Something about a golden calf…? In any case, it was a flawed perception when, in fact, the exact opposite was true.

The holiest places were often the ones built generations upon generations ago by a few people. The ones that were built purely for the love of God; they were often in small towns where everyone knew everyone and where they all filtered in on their respective days of worship. The people who stood on the platforms of these places were not performers for an audience- they would do their services regardless of whether there were people in the pews. They considered themselves humble servants of God rather than divine interpreters of Her word. Perhaps the ancient wood of the pulpits and bimahs would be held together by faith alone, the pews softened with age; the Bibles might be bring-your-own and the Siddurim would be loose with overuse. The Torah would be behind clear glass in a well-kept case, the cross mounted just a little bit crooked, and both would be made of wood from the same trees as the floor. There would be windows where the light filtered and caught the dust, maybe even a broken one so that passers-by could hear the hymns floating through the air.
These were places that did not daunt or aim to intimidate- they were places where one could go to seek comfort in the presence of God. There was quiet and there was warmth and a sense of community that was nestled deep in the very foundations of the building. Love pressed into every wall, every floorboard, every creak and settling of the structure.

Aziraphale had taken to praying in one of these places: the closest was a small synagogue within walking distance of Anathema and Newt’s cottage, and being that he had too much anxiety and nothing else to do, that was where he went. He attended on Fridays and Saturdays for Shabbat and some afternoons or evenings for the Mincha and Maariv minyans; he always stayed afterward so he could pray on his own. He had gotten to know the rabbi, an older man named Joseph with joy in his eyes and a love for all things that had not blunted with age. His great grandfather had been involved in the building of the synagogue, he said, and had been its first rabbi. Then his grandfather took up the mantle, then his father, then him, and the next would be his daughter, who had just graduated from rabbinical school and was working as an assistant rabbi despite the small size of the congregation. 

Aziraphale told him when he first visited the synagogue that his name was Ezra Fell and that he’d recently moved from London temporarily. He was left alone for the most part, though the congregants exchanged pleasantries and smalltalk with him from time to time. It was strange, praying here. Angels had no need for these kinds of places of worship- humans didn’t, either, but they didn’t know that. When temples and holy sites were first being built, Aziraphale had prayed with the humans to see how they praised the Lord. When he reported about it, assuming that he would be taken seriously (because this was humanity- this was what they were all working for, and so why wouldn’t he be taken seriously when he relayed the humans’ needs and desires), he had simply been laughed back down to Earth. 

He had not been in a church or a synagogue or a mosque or any other place of worship for many years. Perhaps once or twice since the incident in 1941, but that was the last truly notable time. Still, he enjoyed the quiet contemplation of this place in particular; he felt as peaceful as he could in his circumstances surrounded by so much love and devotion to God. Even if he didn’t speak to Her himself, he could think here and find some clarity in his muddy thoughts. So he came often. 

After all, where else was he to go? 

“And who are you running from, then?” the rabbi had asked with a mischievous smile after a month of Aziraphale’s attendance. He had taken a seat next to Aziraphale when he noticed the angel had finished praying and was staring at the bimah, at the Torah held securely in its wooden case. 

“What?” Aziraphale had asked, understandably shocked. 

“I know that look you always have. I’ve had it myself a good number of times. And, besides,” he said, turning away from the angel, adjusting his tallit and settling where he sat, “we’re Jews. We’re always running from something, aren’t we?”

Aziraphale gave a gentle chuckle. The rabbi gave him another smile, though this time it was softened into something more sympathetic. 

“There is someone,” Aziraphale murmured. “I don’t deserve to pity myself after what I’ve done, and yet.”

“And yet. Why do you feel so guilty?” Rabbi Joseph asked. “You don’t need to tell me if you don’t like, but perhaps I can help.”

The angel smiled. The rabbi was offering wisdom from a place of greater life experience- this was, of course, part of the job, even if Aziraphale was thousands of years older than he was. 

“I have hurt someone who is very dear to me,” Aziraphale said, disregarding the age difference. “He suffered for years because of what I did.” The rabbi tilted his head. 

“There are many ways we can hurt people, and not all of them are our fault,” Rabbi Joseph told him, very gently. Aziraphale shook his head.

“It was. I was asked to be… well. It’s quite hard to explain. There’s a lot of context, but I suppose you could call it a rehiring and a promotion. A profoundly significant promotion. One that would see me sent back to where we both came from, working in a place that… has done very badly by him.”

“And you took it?”

“I did. You must understand that in this position I should have had the opportunity to do good . I wanted to change things so that they might be better for him, for us. Things were being done that needed to be stopped and I felt that I was the only one who could. But I- I was also given the opportunity to rehire him. I was a fool. I offered him the job and I asked him to come back with me and when he refused, begged me to stay, I… I said some very awful things that I truly regret.” Aziraphale sighed. “It seems like I am always doing that. Saying awful things and leaving him alone. I- I know what it does to him. I’ve seen what it does to him. And yet I do it anyway.”

“Are you leaving him alone, or are you running from him?” The rabbi asked. “You seemed to already know that he would refuse to follow you. Did you truly want to leave, or do you fear the love he has for you?”

Aziraphale frowned. “Both, I suppose. I love him too, mind, though I haven’t always known it. We have been together for a very long time. Or at least adjacent to each other. He… He always went too fast for me, and due to the nature of our… careers, it was always inappropriate to even be seen with him, let alone to love him. But when I was given the opportunity to return to- to my initial job and to have him at my side, I was blinded by my own idealism.”

“We often are.” The rabbi shifted again. His bones were growing old, Aziraphale could see, and they grew stiff when he was still for too long. Crowley’s were like that, too, but for reasons that decidedly would never apply to a rabbi. “So you took the job alone.”

“I did. And I stayed there for five years.”

“A long time.”

“Yes. I had… a lot of time to think, Up There. I was promised the power to do Good and yet I was little more than a figurehead. I did… I did nothing while he…” Aziraphale sighed. It did no good to go over this again. He could feel the tears bubbling up behind his eyes. 

“And so you fled to Tadfield?”

Aziraphale sighed. “He told me he needed time.”

“We often do,” said Rabbi Joseph, more softly.

“Even if he does choose to come back to me, I wouldn’t deserve it,” Aziraphale said. He was aware of how bitter he sounded. He hated it. “I- I told him I forgave him when he-” he cut himself off. He couldn’t even say it. The shame rose in him like a hurricane, the winds gutting him from the inside. 

“Is that not his decision to make? About what he deserves,” Rabbi Joseph mused. 

I wield forgiveness like a weapon. I wield forgiveness like a shield. I wield forgiveness like a warden offering a starving prisoner scraps of stale bread. Wielding it as a reward when there are no others to offer it. 

“He deserves forgiveness.” Not from me. Not anymore. “He has done things for which he has never been forgiven, and I- I used that against him.”

“Did you intend to?”

“No. But does that diminish the harm?”

“No.” The rabbi thought for a moment. “Do you know the story of Jonah and the Whale?”

Aziraphale’s frown softened in confusion. The rabbi took this to mean the angel did not know even before he answered, nodded once, and turned to Aziraphale more fully.

“As you might remember, Jonah was commanded by God to go to Nineveh to proclaim righteous judgment over the land. Overwhelmed by God’s Word, he refused and tried to flee to Tarshish. The boat that he was on was beset by a mighty storm that was only calmed when Jonah was thrown overboard and into the mouth of a whale, where he prayed for three days and nights. God commanded the whale to release him, and Jonah went on to fulfill God’s plan.”

“It’s not Yom Kippur quite yet, Rabbi Joseph,” Aziraphale said, cracking a small grin. He remembered- he’d not overseen that venture, but he was on shore with Crowley when the boat off which Jonah been thrown returned. The rabbi laughed.

“No, it’s not. But I have a point. While I don’t think you should go off and exact judgment anywhere”- Aziraphale bit back a snort because isn’t that what forgiveness was, when it came down to it? -”I do think you can learn something from meditating on this. But since I know you will regardless, I will tell you what I mean.”

“And what would that be?”

The rabbi smiled. He reached out and placed a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. It was warm and solid and Aziraphale hadn’t realized he’d needed it.

“Sometimes, we must repent for misplacing our devotions. Others, we must run from the things that scare us so that we can know how much we need them.” He removed his hand. “And sometimes, we must be apart so we can understand how empty the world feels alone.”

He caught Aziraphale’s eye. “And always, we must remember that forgiveness is a virtue that applies above all to ourselves. You seek forgiveness from the one you have wronged, but you feel you don’t deserve it- this is valid. This is normal. You must allow him to make that decision for himself, but before you can accept it, you must learn to forgive yourself.”

He stood and gave the angel one last smile. “You are a good man, Ezra. I’ll have to thank that love of yours- if he hadn’t sent you away, you would not have joined us.” The mischief in his eyes had returned, full of mirth and life. “I hope you consider visiting from time-to-time, even when this all is resolved.”

And with that, he left Aziraphale sitting in the pews, once again staring in front of him, lost in thought. 

He left a few hours later, just before the evening minyan, and bade Rabbi Joseph goodbye before he did. The early dusk was cool when he stepped out of the synagogue. A few frequent attendees were beginning to filter in and he greeted them as he left, walking back down the path that led to the couple’s cottage.
Tadfield was peaceful. The weather was still always perfect for the time of year, the people were still kind if not slightly exclusive, though as much could be expected of a small town. But he always felt a little lost, a little alone. He’d taken to sleeping at night, these days. It made things feel a little less like time had stopped. 

It was properly night when the cottage came into view. He’d been walking slowly, unwilling to go back- as much as he cared for the two, Anathema’s knowing looks and Newt’s fidgety worry was growing to be too much for him to bear. He knew how he looked- he didn’t need to be reminded of it every second. He stopped, however, when the driveway came into view. Dick Turpin was no longer alone.

His breath caught in his throat. The Bentley was parked on the street, her black metal gleaming in the young moonlight. Just like on the street before the bookshop, the sight of the car brought tears to his eyes; he blinked them back. He felt her joy at his return and made sure to send his own back before he forced his lungs to inhale deeply, though he didn’t really need to. It was reassuring to get air in his chest and steadying enough to take the next steps forward.
Crowley sat on a bench in the garden in front of the cottage. His limbs were akimbo, sprawled in that strange way Aziraphale knew made it easier on his joints. It didn’t look forced, however, as it was back in the bookshop. This wasn’t Crowley acting as if everything was alright- this was Crowley, alright as he could be. It was more beautiful than any Renaissance painting.

The demon’s head was tilted back, leaned on the back of the bench; he didn’t have his glasses on, and Aziraphale’s breath stopped anew. He was staring at the sky, at the stars that had started to twinkle into view. Aziraphale opened the gate, the whining turn of the hinges alerting Crowley to his presence. Aziraphale stood on the path, waiting for something to happen. Crowley’s hair was still long, but this time it wasn’t disheveled- no, it fell over his shoulders in ringlets so clearly reminiscent of their first meeting- the one that Crowley couldn’t remember. 

“I tried to let you see them,” he blurted. Crowley’s head picked up and his gaze fell upon Aziraphale, his face neutral. No, not neutral- peaceful. “The stars. I tried to reverse at least that part of your punishment. I- I really did.”

“You didn’t have to,” Crowley said. His voice was level, quiet as if not wanting to disturb the night.

“I wanted to,” Aziraphale said. “I wanted to.”

Crowley sighed. He sat forward, pulling his limbs closer, and shifted to the left so that Aziraphale could sit. The angel hesitated, but walked over anyway, settling rigidly next to the demon. 

“You’re gonna ask if I forgive you,” Crowley said after a moment, “and I’m going to, even though I really don’t want to. You know why?”

“Because you love me,” Aziraphale said. Crowley grunted.

“Yeah. Because I love you,” he said, “but also because if I don’t, nobody else will. Heaven doesn’t do forgiveness, and they don’t take kindly to deserters. So you’d be stuck down here, alone, and we’d just end up meeting again anyways in about six hundred years. Everything would go back to how it used to be, and we’d never talk about it. But I don’t want to just go back to how it was. I want to talk about it. Right now.”

Aziraphale stayed quiet as Crowley shifted. Old bones. 

“I’d ask what you were thinking when you left, but I already know,” Crowley said. “I know you thought you were doing the right thing. I know you thought Heaven was the only place you could do Good, and that I couldn’t do that as a demon-”

“No, Crowley, that wasn’t it at all!” Aziraphale cried, spinning to meet the demon’s gaze. “I mean, yes, I did believe I was going to do Good by going back to Heaven, but I didn’t think for one moment that you couldn’t… oh, I said some awful things, Crowley.”

“When I told you that I wasn’t going back to Hell, you said ‘ You’re the bad guys’. What was I supposed to think? That I was enough for you as I was?” Crowley’s mouth was downturned into a bitter scowl. Aziraphale bit his lip.

“You are enough. You’re- You’re so much more than enough. You deserve so much more than what you received from Heaven. I wanted- I wanted to rebuild Heaven with you. For you. I wanted Heaven to be what you- well. Not what you remembered, I suppose. You don’t. Remember, that is.”

“No, I don’t. All I remember is how terrible they are. To me and to you,” Crowley said. “I told you what Gabriel said to me when I was in your corporation. At least I was going to get a staged trial.”

“I know,” Aziraphale said. “I just… I wanted to keep Earth how it was. To convince them to leave the humans alone, and then I was going to come back. I wanted to do what I could to make things better, and then return to you. I never meant to be there long. I just thought that you- I remembered how much happier you seemed as an angel. I wanted to see your smile again.”

“That wasn’t me. Or it’s not anymore. I don’t remember that.” Crowley’s frown deepened into something more thoughtful. “Wait, by… you said that nothing lasts forever. What did you mean by that?”

“I meant that we’d be back soon. That you didn’t have to be beholden to Hell any longer.” Aziraphale fidgeted. “You said I couldn’t leave the bookshop. I was trying to make you understand that I don’t care about the bookshop. Well, of course, I do. But I care more about you. I’ll be happiest wherever you are. I always have been.”

Crowley rubbed the heels of his hands over his eyes. “I really wish you had just said that.”

“Me, too.”

There was a rustling of some bushes off to the side. Likely a garden snake, the back of Aziraphale’s mind told him. 

“Why did you forgive me for kissing you?” Crowley asked, quieter than he had been. He was no longer looking at Aziraphale, but at the bush that had moved moments earlier. He looked a little more fragile than he had been, but Aziraphale was relieved to see that it was nowhere near as extreme as in the bookshop. “Is it- Was it really that horrible a sin? For a demon to kiss an angel?”

Aziraphale grimaced. He didn’t know how to respond. Saying ‘No’ might have been the truth, but it felt too empty. Aziraphale had done enough to refute such a truth, genuine though it might have been. It wasn’t enough. Not for Crowley.

No more dancing, he thought. 

He took a deep breath. He turned away, and as he did, he felt Crowley’s gaze fall upon him once more, studying him. It was a gaze that could burn holes through steel, that could stare down God and live to tell the tale. It was a gaze that could take Aziraphale apart bit by bit, pluck his feathers one at a time, and, slowly, meticulously, turn him into something entirely unrecognizable.

“You don’t remember the first time we met.” Aziraphale looked up. “If you did, you wouldn’t be asking that.”

Crowley didn’t respond. He was waiting; out of Aziraphale’s periphery, he could see that long hair, falling over his shoulders like superheated metal. Pouring ablaze into the perfect mold that was his collarbones, the curve of his ribcage. Aziraphale wondered what it felt like, to run his fingers over that skin. He wondered if it would feel like touching stars.

“We were both angels. I was on my way to Human Resources and-”

“I still can’t believe that was the name that ended up Falling,” Crowley muttered.

Aziraphale continued. “And you called me over. You were alone- I so rarely saw angels alone around that time, but I suppose I was, too. But you called me over because you needed someone to hold the blueprints while you turned the crank. You kept it- it’s on the Bentley, now, I think.”

“Yeah, I knew that came down with me from Heaven,” Crowley mused. “I just didn’t know exactly why.”

The angel nodded. “You cranked it up and said all the words and you were so excited that you forgot about the most important one.”

“Let There Be Light,” he murmured. In the house, The light in Anathema’s study flickered on. They would not notice until the morning. 

“Yes,” Aziraphale replied. “But when you said it, you… Oh, Crowley. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. It was when I was new and it is now, six thousand years later. You told me about it. A star factory where they would create and destroy themselves over and over again infinitely, working off the remains of each other to be birthed anew. Completely automated, all by your design. It was incredible. You’re incredible.” He paused. Took a deep breath. Looked up to where Crowley’s stars twinkled in the sky. “You told the stars they were gorgeous, and I wanted nothing more than for you to tell me the same. I didn’t understand why, at the time. Now I know that I wanted to kiss you so badly it made me look like a fool.”

Crowley chuckled, and Aziraphale counted it as a win. The demon didn’t respond, though, and he had more to say. Crowley deserved to remember this, at the least, even through the eyes of another. 

“You were… You were so upset when I told you about what the Almighty was planning. I didn’t know how you hadn’t already heard, but when I started working as the Supreme Archangel, I came across your old file.” Aziraphale gave a soft, melancholy smile. “I did introduce myself back then, you know. I thought you were quite rude when you didn’t tell me who you were in return, but I suppose you didn’t think you had to. I had just been made when I met you, and you fell not long after- I never got the chance to know you.”

Crowley’s silence was tense, buzzing. Aziraphale wondered if it was against the rules to tell a Fallen angel who they had once been, but figured that he’d broken enough of them anyway.

“You had the Ear of God,” Aziraphale murmured. “You didn’t know about Armageddon yet because you were getting all of your information directly from Her. You-”

“Wait,” Crowley cut Aziraphale off, his voice slightly hoarse. He put his hand over Aziraphale’s, catching the angel’s attention. Aziraphale looked down from the stars to Crowley’s eyes- they were yellow from corner to corner, shining with something Aziraphale couldn’t decipher. 

“What is it?”

“Don’t tell me who I was,” Crowley said. “You’ve said enough. I’m… I’m not that angel anymore. I don’t want you loving the angel I was. That’s not me. That’ll never be me, no matter what you say or do. That’s what I need you to understand, Aziraphale- no matter what you change, I’m still going to be the same as I am right now. I know who I am. I know what I have done. And I have to — and would like to — live with it.”

“I…” Aziraphale trailed off. He knew that, but telling that to Crowley still felt so empty. “I want you to be happy.”

“I was ,” Crowley insisted. His hand was warm over Aziraphale’s. It felt vaguely of Creation. “I am . I… I don’t need to know about a life that threw me away. I don’t want to remember what was taken from me. I don’t need to see the stars to be happy.”

“Then what do I do?” Aziraphale asked. Because, he realized, that’s all he ever had to do. Ask questions . “What can I do to make you happy?”

And Crowley smiled – it was real in the way that things that change into new forms remain intact and whole; real in the way something can warp into an entirely different thing and remain recognizable in spirit alone. And somehow, despite all the joy that went into it, Aziraphale was not reminded of the time before time, where he’d wanted to kiss an angel that was not yet Crowley – and squeezed his hand. 

“That’s an easy one, angel,” He said. “Stay.”

—

She held Raphael’s name in Her hands and, with just a little bit of sorrow, blew it away to join the rest of the stardust in the universe. He didn’t need it anymore- he hadn’t needed it even back when he had it. It wasn’t meant to be his for long.
It was Crowley, now. It had been Crowley for a very long time, as much as she’d wanted to hold onto the past. It was funny, being an omnipotent God- it was difficult to be surprised by that which you already know, but you somehow still were. 

An angel and a demon. Made for each other, dancing around one another for millennia. Stretched thin and apart and brought back again time after time.

There would be no confusion. There would be no more dancing. This time, the kiss would be everything they both had ever wanted. She made sure of that- it was gentle and it was kind and it was on a night She’d commanded to be warm enough to soothe aching bones. 

She watched them together in the Garden. It didn’t matter which time it was- there would always be another.