Chapter Text
Let there be light. Genesis 1:3-5
Several years ago, Anathema, professional descendant of Agnes Nutter, sat in the grass of Tadfield’s village park. Under the late summer sun, children played games no adult could understand and she burned the old witch’s nice and accurate sequel to the end of the world. The descendant had chosen her own destiny and had lived happily for it since.
Had Anathema chosen differently she would have ensured the end of all things.
Had she chosen to remain a professional descendant, she would have never solved the sequel's final prophecy, even with all her clever reasoning. More accurately, she would have tortured herself over its meaning and unique nature. For starters, it was not numbered as all of Agnes’s other prophecies were.
Anathema would have scrawled theories over the original page and additional post-its. They would have read: “Exists at all times?” and, “When time stops? Maybe before time?” and, “What the HELL does it mean!?!?” There would have been a few rude words and tea stains as well.
What the descendent would have been missing was the trick, which was that the book was never to be known. If she had kept it then the last prophecy, the only one that mattered, would have never come to fruition at all. It was not meant for her.
Had she not set the old parchment to flame and ash, she would have obsessively continued her duties and lived in vain trying to achieve an impossible validation. In doing so, she would have let Agnes down.
One by one, Anathema would have agonized and solved the hundreds of other prophecies this new book contained. She would have been where she needed to avert sorrow and treachery and the cold machinations of a heartless Heaven. She could have prevented the separation of Earth's angel and demon. Her successes would have doomed existence itself.
It was all written out, but it had been there for her to burn.
…
Crowley and Aziraphale were falling. There was almost nothing to this space, making it impossible to determine whether they were headed towards Earth, Hell, or had been condemned to plummet down an endless pit. It was also the deepest dark Crowley had ever known. He could feel wind buffering against him, the pull of an exaggerated gravity, and the fear of not knowing when the bottom would greet them.
And, there was Aziraphale.
The black around them was suffocating. He felt the angel’s strong grip slip down his arms. Afraid he would drift away, Crowley reached out and grabbed his wrist. With his other hand, and without any real awareness of why, he held onto the lever he used as a weapon.
Crowley called out through the chaotic gale, but it was useless. His voice could not travel through the turbulent space between them. Instead, he closed his eyes so hard that colors exploded behind his eyelids. The sparking stars of pain were a strange comfort in the dark.
…
Agnes was not the only true prognosticator that had ever existed. Most beings that had an inkling of the gift never gave much credence to the odd and seemingly inconsequential habits they showed. It could be as simple as knowing it was going to rain because of pain from a previous injury. It was an ominous feeling that kept you home on a stormy night. There were also rare occurrences where, upon first meeting, two people just knew they were meant to be.
More specifically, it was casually talking to your enemy at the Garden of Eden. It was joking about lead balloons thousands of years before lead or latex. It was wearing sunglasses before they were invented and explaining helicopters to Da Vinci. It was the habit of showing up before big disasters, taking credit for them, and by chance avoiding the Spanish Inquisition. It was recommending hand-washing to a resurrectionist surgeon whose descendant would become a witchfinder.
It was the uncanny ability to know when your best friend was in danger.
The demon had been ignoring these subtle signs because it was part of a life that wasn't his anymore, and a part of him that he couldn't fully remember. Before the fall, he was able to see the future of things. He had the potential to paint, to mold, and to move the energies of creation into apparatuses that took millennia to fully complete.
This innate ability was where his imagination came from. Prophecy’s original source was Divination, after all, and it had demonstrated itself through Crowley in many ways. Namely, an angel choosing to use an engine crank as a tool before engines were of the world. And then, once a demon, refusing to let it go.
…
Aziraphale clutched Crowley’s forearm and pulled himself closer. Their foreheads bobbed against each other as they fought the gale trying to tear them apart. This close, Crowley heard Aziraphale cry out, obscured but pleading. He opened his eyes and was shocked that he could see. It was faint, but there was light shining on the angel.
A few stray feathers ripped away and disappeared above them. Tears that gathered in his blue eyes followed in an endless stream. Aziraphale was looking at him with such needy desperation that it threatened to cave his chest in more than the crushing force of their fall. Then, the angel furrowed his brow and yelled again, its purpose never reaching his ears.
Crowley dug his fingers into the Aziraphale's wrist and wished he was strong enough to hold that gaze until it was the end. However, he couldn’t stop himself from looking away.
That is when Crowley realized their feeble glow was emanating from the engine crank in his hand. He didn’t understand why, but ‘Why?’ was a question they had determined wouldn’t get an answer anyway.
The metal felt heavy and cool in his hand, teasing at his curiosity. When he had little else, the demon always had his optimism, and he thought that perhaps he should be asking, "Why not?"
He rolled his shoulder, gritted his teeth, and gave it an experimental twist.
…
The trick behind solving Agnes’ final prophecy was a game. She had understood that all of life was.
The stakes changed, pieces switched, and the choices players made rearranged the rules. That’s what made life interesting, and it was all played in tandem on a multi-colored five dimensional chess board with twenty-sided mahjong tiles, Clue envelopes whose cards were swapped when you weren't looking, and Hungry Hungry Hippos at the corners held together by Escherian elements of Mouse Trap.
Every nonsensical move was loosely woven together to create a bigger picture. The Bigger Picture. You could not pull one strand out without destroying the whole tapestry.
This ongoing highest concept installation piece was all recorded permanently within another book; the Book of Life.
Like Agnes’s book that was meant to burn for everything inside to come true, the Book of Life was forever to be unknown, all knowing, and, in a word, ineffable.
The driving force was chance. Most of life was a roll of the dice. To be alive is to be impetuous, and in moments where anything could happen, the most amazing things did.
…
Crowley struggled to rotate the engine crank a full turn. The muscles up his arm screamed in protest. His grip faltered as it fought against the domineering resistance that threatened to crack his weapon into two. Once more, he held his breath and battled the unyielding force, gaining another quarter turn against what he could only assume was the Will of God.
Thunder gathered. Its rattling clamor added vitality to the empty dark he was battling against. A moment of faithless wavering would unwind whatever little he had done, and he was not even sure what that was.
Aziraphale was still shouting. His eyes were stressed and hopeful and his grip stayed strong. While Crowley could not hear what the angel was saying, he knew it was probably a string of naive encouragements and accidentally condescending sentiments. Possibly some admonishments sprinkled in as well. He laughed to himself, a stunted cackle that would have irritated Aziraphale into a pissy rant. He would have loved to be able to hear it.
Veins in Crowley's neck pulsed as he fought to make progress. He cranked the weapon again, capturing another half turn despite his shoulder wanting to pop out of joint, and he could feel a change.
Below them, the dark split open.
…
Agnes’s last prophecy had read, " Ay, Jonty repenthles Crown , twist mine name and heed instruction when there be no other light than yours blessed. "
Anathema, though accustomed to Old and Middle English, would have never solved this because she did not know the name of the demon that stood with her the day of the Apocalypse. Which is fine. She wasn’t meant to.
If you did know the demon's name, Agnes' game was simple to solve because the puzzle was an anagram. By switching the letters of ‘ Ay, Jonty repenthles Crown’ , it would become ‘Anthony J Crowley, serpent’.
And, if you were to twist the witch’s name, it became a final demand of action to a falling demon who, in spite of being considered unholy, had the gift of divination.
Her name read, "Agnes Nutter, witch."
It meant, “Winch, Regente Star.”
…
Far below, the small crack in the dark bathed them in fast-approaching light. This light wasn't hellfire nor divine. It was sunlight.
Crowley's slit pupils blew wide and every nerve of him, corporeal and otherwise, was on fire. The sudden invasion of light in this empty dark awoke a lost memory from before the beginning. In his mind's eye, he saw a million explosions rain down as he conjured a nebula to life.
Sure, he had known academically that his hand had helped design the universe, but had forgotten the pride and awe of creating something so violently beautiful. He could feel it now in his bones, in his being, and he realized he had been coming at this all wrong.
Crowley was not a fighter, not really, and the tool in his hand wasn't a weapon. It never was.
He was an engineer, a craftsman and a clocksmith. He designed things to culminate through chaos — to be wound up and then just left to run.
It was the basis and brilliance behind all his plans. Everyday traffic. Mobile networks. Cricket. Establishing a standard nationwide teatime so power grids would fail at 4:00pm decades in the future. Crowley knew exactly where to install mischievous cogs in the great Engine, as was his right. Then, he would sit back and watch them play out like a demented Rube Goldberg machine.
You had to be a little insane to understand it coherently, but at least he did not have to start from scratch. This was bigger than just working from the original plans, however. He had to understand 6000 years of the machine working as well. Then he had to wind it back enough before jump-starting It. All of It .
Luckily, he had been there. Hopefully, that would help.
He stopped focusing on fighting and instead concentrated on what he knew. There was the sunlight — easy, it was right there. Whales were a thing. There was the bookshop and the multitudes it hoarded away. It was outside London, less than an hour from the country. There were hills, plateaus, and canyons. Earth had rivers and rocks and sand… tiny particles of sand that vibrated and got into everything and were once mountains themselves…
Crowley began seeing the fractal movements of entropy and evolution. Clouds swirled around each other and ocean tides slammed into shores. Swarms of birds and bugs moved as a singular massive beast, then burst apart. Things were in harmony, things were out of tune, and all of it was playing on top of each other.
Remembering all of time resembled building a structure with an infinite tin of dominoes, except each piece was simultaneously cascading and standing tall like a pernicious cat in a box. He had to play Schrödinger and poke it with a stick. Crowley held the idea, bordering on madness, and twisted the engine crank again. It rotated twice.
The crack of light below them widened.
Crowley tried to stretch his awareness to capture everything. He could conceive how cities and skin cells turned to dust against a soundtrack of Ozymandian wailing. There was calls of Rage, Rage Against the Dying of the Light and To Be or Not To Be and somewhere inside him a fool was singing.
Water broke down mountains and carved canyons and moldered in the windowsills. The Moon created waves and, depending on the reading, could predict futures if they were nebulous enough. The same joke that made Jesus laugh caught Alexander off guard and earned a slap from Queen Elizabeth, and then split the sides of her plumber. Cave paintings came alive in firelight and graffiti covered advertisements and children traced their hands in chalk and people took selfies, and they all were crying out, “I was here!"
Gravity pulled worlds together and then ripped them apart. It dropped an apple into Eve's hand then down on Newton's head then rotted on the ground to feed the seeds within.
Crowley felt the concepts form and, before they broke apart, he twisted the crank again. It clicked and spun twice before abruptly stopping. He was unwinding entropy and, as a defining trait, it was fighting back.
Next, he had to understand the terrible things. Skies were burning. Poison bled into the seas. Infestations bubbled and stomachs collapsed in on themselves like dying stars. The Horsemen horrors that lived in the depths of human minds smiled at him, awaiting his acknowledgment. Crowley could have ignored them, but then the small defiant acts of hope made against them would have been erased as well. Yes, humans could conceive of things more terrible than a demon could dream, but they also could act more glorious than the brightest angel. It had to be the whole picture, or it would all unravel.
6000 years and he had been there through it all. Good, for better or worse. Evil, whether hellish or divine. And the mundane, it was the most precious part of it all.
Most beings thought their life mundane but, oh, they were wrong. They were tweaking the Engine and writing beautiful stories by just being lucky enough to be alive. The everyday minutia affected the most profound narratives.
And it was too much. He was keeping it all in his head. There wasn't a map or book to write it all out, and it was overwhelming. But he was so close. The lever in his hands buckled and Crowley fought against it unwinding, screaming against the pressure to no effect. His mind reached for a touchstone to hold fast to, the missing piece and point of it all. They were running out of time but he knew he almost had it. The point was… The point was …
Aziraphale’s free hand made it to the back of Crowley’s head, fingers shaking as they tangled in his red hair. Every idea Crowley had been holding onto let loose, but didn’t fall away. It channeled into a single thread of memories and bound the tapestry together.
The Angel of the Eastern Gate gave his flaming sword to Adam and Eve, choosing his own morals over orders. He complained about sand in his sandals. He defied the supreme archangel to save children.
Without guilt, he would swindle a rare book from an unsuspecting mark. In the same breath, he would give a stranger the coat off his back. Not his good one, of course, but he would miracle a similar one like a clumsy magic trick.
He would bless a barista with good fortune because she couldn’t make a proper espresso even if her life depended on it. When looking in shop windows at mounds of baked goods, he would take a moment to smile at their reflection standing together. Crowley was convinced Aziraphale was the one to inspire the concepts of laminated dough and anonymous donors.
The angel had miraculously mastered how to handle chopsticks and then took French lessons the hard way. He ranted about improper champagne labeling and people who dipped biscuits in their tea. He secretly abhorred ostentatious florals even as he wore a three piece vintage suit daily.
When Aziraphale’s head and heart conflicted, he would wring his hands together. If the angel himself was threatened, he would shrink. When his world was attacked, he could blaze. He glowered when annoyed, pouted when wrong, and became infuriatingly snooty when he was right. He battled the bloody Leviathan just to get in God’s face.
The angel would lie, and lie about lying, and he loved so much that it fueled his endless hope.
They were so complicated and conflicting and so much bigger than what they were supposed to be. Everything was. And that’s the point…
Crowley prayed to the world they should have been promised and twisted the crank easily, feeling the storm build as it spun once, twice, then paused before the third and final time. The hum of Creation sang discordant compositions in his ear. The Engine rumbled a thunderous rhythmic harmony. It was such a mess that tears pooled in his eyes. It just had to be what it was, and it was gorgeous.
God missed the point. Your creations had to be a piece of you, or they weren't honest. They also had to be apart from you, or they couldn't grow beyond your intentions. She had clung too hard on the expectation of Her creation and had smothered it. That wasn’t really love, was it?
Crowley gave the lever its final twist and set it spinning. Then, he held onto Aziraphale and let go of everything else. The Engine crank disappeared in the dark above them. He didn't pay it any mind. An instinct told him he would not need it anymore. Everything was already running.
The light fully opened beneath them.
Aziraphale was staring at him, confusion wrinkling his brow and the bridge of his nose. Crowley smirked, answered him with an obnoxious wink, and laughed at the annoyed, thin line of the angel's mouth as they broke through the dark.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Aziraphale’s eyes burned from the light a moment before his whole body was shocked by the impact. The force had driven him and Crowley apart, but he was quickly able to determine that they had not landed on hard ground.
His lungs immediately flared in pain as he tried cry out. His movements dragged as he fought to gain his sense of direction. Then, he waited for it to burn. Sulfur was supposed to burn. As he understood the process, it would stick to every hollow of your being and scorch your wings. It was supposed to embody the feeling of having love ripped out of your heart, Her love, but this is what he had asked for. His choice, their side. As he tumbled through the ether, Aziraphale bitterly thought, “Let’s just get this over with.”
The angel relaxed, and the sinking sensation slowed. It didn’t burn. In fact, it was cold. Gravity slowly reversed on him, pulling him up and out of the hole they had landed in. The not-sulfur calmed enough that he could see the rippling surface above. Speckled light broke through in a technicolor prism that danced all around him.
Aziraphale resurfaced, sputtered, and shook brackish water out of his eyes. Off in the far distance he could see the shore, where amusement park lights and music filtered through the disappearing fog. Behind him, he could just make out a whale spouting off and descending back into the sea.
“Crowley!” he called, treading the River Thames and swinging his head around for a glimpse of the demon. Then, he found him. He wasn’t far off, but he was just floating.
An indelicate yelp escaped his chattering lips as Aziraphale started swimming. The cold water weighed his clothes and white wings, but he hardly noticed the resistance. He had been personally trained by 1900 Olympic medal winner John Jarvis, though his form was now far from perfect. He was out of practice and had a frantic urge to get to Crowley’s side. As he swam and splashed about, he demanded the stubborn demon to answer.
He expected something terrible. A vision of Crowley’s sharp, angular face cut up and bleeding plagued his mind. He could have been seriously hurt. He could be dangling on the brink of discorporating, and there was no chance of getting a body again after that. Black wings were splayed out around him, water logged but otherwise intact, but they didn’t twitch. No part of him moved at all. Crowley’s body lay face up and just swayed with the motion of the waves. And he wasn’t answering him.
Aziraphale now feared for the worst. In his heart he knew he was still an angel, still who had been, but what about Crowley? He thought he was going to swim up to an empty shell, that his demon would be lost to him forever. God had heard Aziraphale’s criticism and this was their punishment…
Tears were already forming in his eyes as he finally reached the body. He expected to fully understand the tortures of Hell.
What he found was Crowley floating happily in the water, grinning like an idiot and his honey-yellow eyes staring at the sky.
Indignation flared in Aziraphale’s chest. “You… You absolute fiend! Why didn’t you answer-”
“Aziraphale,” Crowley interrupted, and Aziraphale had no choice but to stop. His tone was wonderstruck and soft, like it should have been whispered in his ear where it could have lingered, not lost to an errant, salty breeze.
Another moment passed, but Crowley didn’t continue. He just floated there without a stressful bone in his body. It was very unlike him.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale tried again, “what’s wrong?”
The demon’s smile widened and it was one of the most open and genuine things Aziraphale had ever seen. Then, never turning to look his way, Crowley pointed up to the sky. “Just, look.”
A benevolent scowl took over Aziraphale’s face. He was ready to admonish Crowley again when he glanced up, then gasped.
Across the entire stretch of blue sky was the most vibrant rainbow to have ever graced Earth. Each color rang true, even the ones not typically on the visible spectrum, and wave after wave of light cascaded down. All the soft edges and shades of gray had returned. The world was reawakening around them, just as it had been.
Awed, Aziraphale stared up and stumbled over his words, “I don’t… I don’t understand.”
Crowley dropped a hand onto his shoulder. “It’s a promise, Angel.”
The idea of what was just said began to dawn in Aziraphale. He shifted his scrutiny away from the rainbow to look at Crowley once again, and found himself in a memory from before the beginning.
Every color of the universe was reflecting in Crowley’s eyes.
…
The End
Whale-Watching
And when at last the road
gives out, I’ll walk –
harsh grass, sea-maws,
lichen-crusted bedrock –
and hole up the cold
summer in some battered
caravan, quartering
the brittle waves
till my eyes evaporate
and I’m willing again
to deal myself in:
having watched them
breach, breathe, and dive
far out in the glare,
like stitches sewn in a rent
almost beyond repair.
Kathleen Jamie