Chapter Text
Aziraphale blinked.
He was standing on the stretch of browning grass in front of his and Crowley’s cottage in Midfarthing. He could tell that was where he was because he was facing the narrow country lane that bordered the front of the lot. The leaves on the poorly-trimmed hedges on the other side of the lane fluttered soundlessly as an unfelt eddy of wind brushed over them. Aziraphale blinked again.
The former angel thought back, trying to parse what was happening. His memory was fuzzy and frighteningly blank in many areas, as it had been a lot recently, but things were starting to come back to him one by one.
He’d awoken this morning, he recalled, with the singular desire to tend to the flower gardens, as he had done every morning for years. Aziraphale had inched down the steps and made it outside easily enough, but the unexpected, sweltering heat had borne down on him like an iron blanket. He had only been weeding for a few minutes when the mounting heat and exertion had become unbearable. There’d been a sharp tingling in his chest and a loss of feeling, the tickle of long, waxy leaves against his cheek, and then…nothing.
No. Not nothing. Someone had been there with him, right at the end. Someone with high cheekbones and dark hair, someone with golden, serpentine eyes, who’d held him and begged him not to go—
Oh.
WE MEET AT LAST.
Aziraphale turned and saw the figure addressing him. Death was standing in front of the cottage, watching him with what might have been amusement. With a face like his, it was difficult to tell.
“So…this is it?” Aziraphale asked, hearing defeat settle into his tone. It was all adding up in his head now. “The end of the line?”
WHAT IS BEYOND IS NOT MY CONCERN, Death told him.
Aziraphale exhaled heavily and tiredly waved away his words. “You can save the usual speech,” he said. “We both know there’s nothing waiting for me on the other side. Angels only get the one go.” Aziraphale’s eyes were drawn to the hand he was waving in front of his own face and he stopped in surprise.
He blinked at it, and then looked down at himself. “I’m young again!” he exclaimed in puzzled delight. Then he paused and re-examined himself. “Well, younger.”
NOT REALLY, Death said. IT’S JUST HOW YOUR SUBCONSCIOUS RENDERS YOURSELF IN THIS SPACE.
Aziraphale frowned, deflating a little. “Makes sense, I suppose.” He patted himself down automatically anyway, feeling a sudden loathsomeness to leave even this memory of his corporation, even if he wouldn’t really be around to miss it.
ARE YOU READY TO GO? I HAVE A SCHEDULE TO KEEP.
“Yes, yes,” Aziraphale said. “Don’t worry; I know you’re just doing your job. I won’t cause any…trouble…” His voice trailed off. Aziraphale’s mind was jumping back to Crowley, and the expression on his face as he’d pulled Aziraphale close and said, Only your best friend, angel.
Aziraphale bit his lip, feeling guilt settle heavy into the pit of his stomach. He shifted his gaze nervously to Death, and plucked up his courage. “Can I see him?” he asked. “Just…briefly? Before we go.”
Death debated. Or, at least, presumably he debated. It was difficult to tell.
“Consider it a dying man’s last wish,” Aziraphale added, trying to keep the desperation out of his voice. “Who am I going to tell? Just…please. Just for a moment. It would mean a lot to me.”
Death reached out a skeletal hand and took one of the black, iridescent swaths of his robe in between his thumb and forefinger. He pivoted his hand, twitching the shimmering material to the side, and then stepped backward and turned away, revealing behind him two figures sitting on the browned grass, one slumped against the other.
Aziraphale wondered with a sudden, intense pang why he had thought this was a good idea. He knew where Crowley was—he knew he wasn’t still sleeping peacefully in his bed or knocking around in the kitchen making tea. He knew that.
Crowley was sitting on the grass, as of course he would be, with Aziraphale’s motionless body slumped against him. Aziraphale’s head was turned to the side and resting on Crowley’s far shoulder, thankfully out of view. Crowley had wrapped his arms around Aziraphale and buried his face in the crook of the former angel's neck, and, against all odds, he was sobbing. Aziraphale thought it was the single most wretched sound he had ever heard.
Before he could fully register any of this, he’d taken several automatic, shaky steps towards the demon. As he neared, Crowley sniffled, gasped, and twitched his head up, as though sensing his presence.
Aziraphale’s gaze was drawn immediately to Crowley’s face, briefly visible. The demon’s serpentine eyes were already ringed in red, and tears were streaking down his cheeks. As Aziraphale watched, transfixed, Crowley squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the side of his face against the motionless Aziraphale’s, as though willing the contact to bring him back.
Aziraphale raised a hand reflexively to his own cheek, imagining he felt the warmth of Crowley’s tear-streaked skin against his own.
Aziraphale’s legs went weak and he stumbled forward and dropped to his knees at Crowley’s side. The demon sniffled miserably and readjusted his grip on the Aziraphale in his arms, moving a hand further up his back and twining his fingers in the locks of hair at the nape of his neck.
A few more tears slipped down Crowley’s cheeks from his closed eyes, and Aziraphale’s hand moved forward automatically as he felt the sudden need to wipe them away. The back of his knuckles passed straight through Crowley, though, and Aziraphale had to forcibly remind himself that he wasn’t really there.
Crowley made a small, desperately heart-breaking little noise and redoubled his grip on Aziraphale, fresh tears rolling down his cheeks.
The former angel gazed at his friend wordlessly, and realised that he had never seen Crowley cry before.
And then he remembered why.
“No.” Aziraphale blanched. He pushed himself to his feet and stumbled backwards, retreating from the insubstantial Crowley and his own lifeless form. He spun on Death. “He—he Fell? To human, I mean?”
Aziraphale felt tears of injustice spring to his own eyes. After everything—breaking into Heaven, Falling, almost losing Crowley, living as a human, and finally succumbing to the inevitable—after putting every ounce he had into the effort of saving Crowley’s life, the demon was now going to die anyway?
NO, Death said in a reasonable tone. QUITE THE OPPOSITE, IN FACT. He took another of his iridescent veils in his skeletal fingers, twitched it slightly, and suddenly the air was full of brilliant white feathers.
Aziraphale took a step backwards in surprise. Crowley’s wings were stretched out behind him, glossy white primaries half-raised, filling the air with a vibrant shimmer.
They were…beautiful.
Aziraphale had always thought Crowley’s wings were exquisite, and it helped that he kept them so neatly preened, but this was…something else entirely.
Aziraphale felt himself take a step forward, raising a hand to brush his fingers through the insubstantial feathers, admiring the kaleidoscopic shimmer of colour and the gleam of starlight. He felt a familiar pang of sadness for his own lost wings.
“He…unFell?”
YES.
Aziraphale lowered his hand, eyes trailing along his friend’s brilliant white wings. He paused when he reached the ragged gaps in the primaries, a stark reminder of what Heaven had done. Crowley hadn’t moulted since. The thought had never occurred to Aziraphale when he’d been mortal, but now he wished it had.
Moulting required a great deal of energy and was quite painful at best, downright dangerous at worst. Because of this, the process was usually undertaken in the relative safety of Heaven or Hell, but that hadn’t been an option for Crowley this time. Aziraphale would have gladly looked after him during the process, but it was too late now.
The thought of Crowley moulting on his own sent a pang through Aziraphale’s heart. Had Crowley not trusted him enough? As a human? As a friend? Or had it simply slipped his mind, as it had Aziraphale’s?
IT IS TIME TO GO, Death said from behind him.
Aziraphale nodded without moving.
In front of him, Crowley gave a wretched, broken sob and pulled what little he had left of Aziraphale closer. His ethereal wings shifted and, in one fluid motion, swept past where the intangible Aziraphale stood with Death. Crowley’s brilliant wings wrapped around himself and the figure he embraced, hiding the latter from view in a cascade of white feathers.
Aziraphale swallowed heavily. He could still sense Death standing behind him, and knew he’d need to get going soon.
Aziraphale forced his legs into motion, closing the distance between himself and Crowley. He bent towards Crowley’s trembling form, wanting to say one last thing to the demon—angel—Crowley he cared for more dearly than life itself.
Aziraphale opened his mouth, desperate to say something, anything, and finding nothing.
Finally, he settled for placing his hand as close as he could to Crowley’s intangible shoulder, and said quietly, “Take care of yourself, my dear.” Aziraphale’s mouth twitched to the side as he tried and failed to get a more secure grip on Crowley’s shoulder. “I’m sorry.”
Then, because Aziraphale was going to cease to be in a few short seconds and he wanted to do it just once before the end, he leaned over and gave Crowley a light, gentle kiss on his insubstantial, tear-streaked cheek.
Aziraphale straightened up, wiping at his own eyes. Remembering with a sad fondness how Crowley had always appreciated jokes where jokes had no business being, Aziraphale echoed his own words from a long-ago war and an unintentional discorporation: “Don’t let it get you down.”
Aziraphale’s voice broke on the last word and he turned away before he could stop himself, forcing himself to walk back towards the skeletal figure behind him.
“Thank you,” the Fallen angel told Death in a shaky voice. He swallowed. “I’m ready.”
Aziraphale turned, letting his eyes trail over Crowley’s shimmering white wings one last time. The corner of his mouth twitched upwards into a smile. “An angel again,” he said softly to himself. “After all this time.”
AND THAT’S NOT EVEN THE BEST PART, Death said confidentially, reaching out a skeletal hand to touch Aziraphale on the shoulder. THE BIG MAN WOULDN’T WANT ME TO TELL YOU THIS, BUT, BETWEEN YOU AND ME, HE’S NOT JUST AN ANGEL. HE’S—
~~***~~
Aziraphale was at the good part.
The former angel sat bolt upright, sending the cup of tea that had been balanced on the edge of the armchair crashing to the floor.
Aziraphale blinked and looked around in surprise.
He was sitting in the back room of his London bookshop, and that was strange in and of itself. Following the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t, Adam had restored the angel’s burned bookshop, but he hadn’t understood that Soho bookshops came with discreet back rooms, and had failed to include any in the new model. Since then, Aziraphale and Crowley had shifted to an upstairs room for—for—
Crowley.
—between you and me, he’s not just an angel. He’s—
Gleaming white feathers were drifting across Aziraphale’s memory, massive wings with every other primary missing, and Crowley—
—not just an angel.
There was a memory there, but it was slipping away like a dream, and the more Aziraphale struggled for it the more it evaded him.
Crowley—an angel?
There was a loud schwap! and the tinkle of a bell.
Aziraphale jumped again, head snapping around towards the open door of the back room.
“Angel?”
The voice was Crowley’s, and it was coming from the direction of the bookshop proper. That made sense; the demon never bothered to knock.
The last confused thoughts faded from Aziraphale’s mind as he stood up, noticing as he did so that there was a book in his lap. Baffled, he put it back on the chair and walked out into the main room.
Crowley was striding towards him across the span of the bookshop, reaching up to push his sunglasses into his ruffled hair as he did so. “There you are, angel. Can I tempt you to St James’s?” The demon grinned at him, and Aziraphale felt something in him warm, like he’d stepped into a pool of sunlight on a summer day.
“Of course…” the angel began, intent on finishing his sentence with you old serpent, just as he had for millennia, but his voice failed him halfway through. Something was wrong.
Crowley raised an eyebrow at him, but Aziraphale couldn’t manage to form his thoughts into words. He just took Crowley in.
The demon was exactly as Aziraphale remembered him, all slender lines and bespoke suit. His serpentine eyes were the same golden hue they’d always been, but there were faint laugh lines around them now, and around the corners of his mouth too. There was no hint of stress or worry on his face, though of course there was no reason for there to be. He was…perfect. Beautiful.
“Are you coming, angel?” Crowley asked when Aziraphale continued to stare at him.
The angel shook himself. “Yes, of course…my dear.”
When he still didn’t move, Crowley walked forward and grabbed him by the wrist. Aziraphale started at the contact, but the demon only rolled his eyes and dragged Aziraphale out of the bookshop.
The Bentley was sitting outside, sunlight gleaming off its sleek black surface.
Crowley walked around the front of the car and climbed into the driver’s seat. Aziraphale opened the passenger’s door slowly, hand hesitating on the silver chrome handle. Then he pulled the door open all the way and sank into the familiar leather seat. He had barely pulled the door closed before the gear stick jumped forward of its own accord and the Bentley pulled out into the road.
Aziraphale clung to the door as he usually did, but Crowley only broke one small traffic law. The angel didn’t fear for his life even a little.
As the Bentley turned calmly onto Oxford Street, going merely thirty miles per hour and easily avoiding all of the pedestrians, Crowley leaned towards the Blaupunkt and slid a cassette into it that he had produced from somewhere on his person.
“Brahms’ Concerto No. 5,” the demon informed him as the Bentley yielded conscientiously to the traffic already in the roundabout.
“This thing…called love…” Freddie sang, “I just…can’t handle it…”
Aziraphale glanced at the demon, but Crowley didn’t change the song, nor did he even protest when “You’re My Best Friend” came on next.
It was possibly the most pleasant ride in the Bentley Aziraphale had ever experienced.
When the demon finally parked, Aziraphale was almost sorry to depart the vintage car.
St James’s Park was also as the angel remembered it, and on the walk to the edge of the water Crowley miracled a loaf of bread into existence, tore it in half, and handed the larger part to him.
Something in the back of his head was still nagging at Aziraphale, something urgent and distressing, but he couldn’t put his finger on what it was.
“I think I’ve got the plants right where I want them,” Crowley said, derailing Aziraphale’s train of thought.
“Pardon?”
“The plants. Back at my flat. I’ve been threatening them for so long, I think maybe a nice long reprieve will do the trick. Really make them wonder what I’m planning.”
“Hm,” Aziraphale agreed, something occurring to him that he’d always wondered but never bothered to ask before. “Whatever did you do with the ones you threw out, before?”
Crowley pointed to a nearby row of short, mismatched plants Aziraphale had never noticed before, growing right along the edge of the very path they were walking on. “What, you thought those grew there like that on accident?”
Aziraphale blinked and looked at the demon. “Oh, my dear, that’s so thoughtful!”
Crowley shrugged and flipped his sunglasses back down onto his nose. “You know me; I’m mean, not malicious.”
Aziraphale frowned. “Yes…”
And yet this isn’t like you at all, he thought to himself worriedly. Obeying traffic laws, looking after your plants…but wait. There had been a time, once, Aziraphale was certain, that Crowley had obeyed traffic laws. They’d been on a trip of some sort, going somewhere very important…
“Look at all the ducks!” Crowley interrupted, nudging Aziraphale in the shoulder.
The angel looked up, nodding but not really seeing.
Something was deeply wrong here, but Aziraphale just couldn’t quite get ahold of what it was. The feeling of urgency was back. Something terrible was happening somewhere, he was sure, and it was all his fault…
“Let’s just relax and enjoy the afternoon, angel,” Crowley said, leading Aziraphale over to a bench and all but forcing him onto it.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, still distracted. There was a knot in his stomach and it didn’t feel like it would be easing anytime soon.
Crowley started throwing chunks of bread at the ducks and making the latter sink, but Aziraphale was staring at the water. It was so clear and clean, and for that matter so was the park itself. Not a piece of litter anywhere. And there were so few other people. And the sky—there wasn’t a wisp of cloud anywhere.
He remembered another cloudless day, sitting on a bench beside Crowley, and the demon had been uncharacteristically quiet as Aziraphale had clung to his arm and pointed out some cute ducklings…
“Come on, angel, don’t you want to feed the ducks? Look at the poor things; they’ll starve without you.”
Aziraphale blinked and looked over at the demon. He had a sudden unplaceable feeling that this Crowley was, somehow, not his Crowley.
The angel searched his friend’s face, but nothing seemed amiss. Every inch of Crowley’s face was as it should have been, and it was all so comfortingly familiar.
Before he realised what he was doing, Aziraphale had reached out and was trailing the back of his knuckles gently down the demon’s cheek, transfixed.
With no warning, a series of images was flashing before Aziraphale’s eyes, each very real and solid, surfacing from his memory like the ducks the demon had sunk earlier. The chunk of bread in Aziraphale’s other hand fell lax to the grass and rolled underneath the bench.
He saw Crowley, but he was barely conscious and his gorgeous black wings had been pinned to the wall behind him, the monsters—
Crowley was unconscious in his arms, and now Aziraphale could feel his breaths winding down, the demon’s wings spread behind him on the plastic sheeting, bleeding and ravaged—
Aziraphale miserably swung open the cottage door and, against every logical conclusion, it was Crowley, and he was holding something that smelled very much like breakfast—
The demon had fallen asleep on his shoulder again, and Aziraphale finished off the bottle himself, glad to have spent another Christmas in such excellent company—
Crowley was sitting on the floor surrounded by the ruins of an antique clock, thinking that Aziraphale cared for it more than him—
The demon was screaming and shaking him, and Aziraphale just wanted to remember who this my dear was that he had written so lovingly about in the row of slim black journals—
Crowley was begging him to repent, pressing a length of rope into his hands and telling him that this was what he wanted—
Crowley was sitting on the sun-baked grass, face twisted in grief and tears rolling down his cheeks—
Only your best friend, angel.
And then Aziraphale remembered everything.
“Let’s do the Ritz,” Crowley suggested, standing up and tossing the rest of his bread to the ducks.
Aziraphale, still processing, looked blankly up at the demon.
“Come on, it’ll be swell,” Crowley said, tugging gently on his arm. “They’ll have cream cakes and those little cucumber sandwiches you love…”
Aziraphale blinked and focussed on the demon. He took him in again, and then where he was. It all clicked into place.
He really shouldn’t have been all that surprised.
“Angel—”
“Don’t call me that.” Aziraphale stood, shaking off Crowley’s hand. He looked around himself again, taking in the park. “They do a good job; I’ll give them that,” the former angel muttered, inspecting the wood grain of the bench critically. “I’ve never seen the system from the inside before.”
“What are you talking about?” Crowley—no, Not-Crowley—said.
Aziraphale waved his words away and started off in the direction they’d come.
“Hang on, angel—”
“I said, don’t call me that,” Aziraphale snapped, already striding away.
Not-Crowley hurried to catch up and fell into step beside him. “What’s wrong?”
“You know what,” Aziraphale grumbled, refusing to grace the imposter with a glance. How could he have thought that this was the real Crowley, his Crowley, for even a second?
“Know what?” Not-Crowley asked innocently.
“You know because I know,” Aziraphale said, spotting the Bentley and making a beeline for it. “And you’re just a…a projection of my subconscious. A figment of my imagination.”
Not-Crowley scoffed in a very believable manner. “Me? A figment of your imagination? Angel, you couldn’t imagine someone like me.”
“You’ve got that right,” Aziraphale said, sneaking a guilty glance at Not-Crowley out of the corner of his eye. “You’re far too nice. You don’t act like him at all.”
“What, you don’t like me treating you well?” Not-Crowley asked, offended.
Aziraphale sighed and came to a stop beside the Bentley. “I—it’s not that,” he said. “It’s just—I don’t want you to be what I want you to be. I want you to be what you want to be. I didn’t—I don’t like you because you act like me. I like you because you act like you.”
Not-Crowley thought that over. “That doesn’t make a lick of sense, angel.”
Aziraphale scowled at him. “It makes perfect sense,” he snapped. “And stop calling me that.”
“Hey,” Not-Crowley protested, holding up his hands in surrender. “If I’m just a projection of your subconscious or whatever, then clearly your subconscious likes it.”
“Get in the car and drive.”
Not-Crowley smirked and a minute later they were speeding down the Mall, heading back towards Soho.
When the Blaupunkt picked up playing “You’re My Best Friend” where it had left off, Aziraphale was the one who leaned forward and turned it off.
Not-Crowley raised his eyebrows but said nothing.
It wasn’t long before the demon was pulling the Bentley back into its usual spot outside the bookshop, and Aziraphale got out before it had even stopped moving.
The former angel was halfway across the shop by the time Not-Crowley hurried in after him, the bell tinkling as he pushed open the door.
“I think we both need to just calm down a little,” the demon said, but Aziraphale ignored him.
The angel raked his eyes along the books on the nearest bookcase, and was relieved to find that they belonged to his original collection, not the one Adam had left him after the Apocalypse-That-Wasn’t.
Aziraphale debated for a moment and then walked down one of the aisles. Not-Crowley followed him.
“So what if I’m not really him?” the demon asked as Aziraphale turned and started poking among the books, looking for a particular title. “What does it matter?”
“I already told you,” Aziraphale huffed. “It’s just not the same.” The angel’s questing fingers found the book he was looking for and pulled it out. He looked down at it for a moment and then tucked it under his arm and started further down the aisle.
“But you can’t reach him,” Not-Crowley pointed out, following him doggedly down the aisle. Aziraphale stopped to search for another book, and the demon leaned casually against the shelves. “Little though you may like it, you’re stuck here. You’re dead.”
Aziraphale paused in his search to scowl at the imposter. “You think I don’t know that?”
“Like I said,” Not-Crowley said. “Stuck.”
“Not…quite,” Aziraphale said, pulling out a book and glancing at the cracked leather cover, frowning. He flipped it open.
“What, you know how to break out of Heaven? Going to sneak past Jophiel and climb down to Earth on a long celestial rope? Have fun with that.”
“Not exactly,” Aziraphale mumbled, only half-listening as his eyes scanned the table of contents page. He flipped to the next spread.
“So what’re you trying to do, then? You can’t contact him. You can’t get to him. You’re trapped in this reality, this…little slice of Heaven.”
“And don’t think I’m not surprised,” Aziraphale said as he snapped the book shut and slid it back onto its shelf. He paused, one hand still on the book’s embossed leather spine, considering the implications of the imagined demon’s words. “Who would have thought I’d end up with an immortal soul when I Fell? And why…why Heaven?”
Not-Crowley shrugged, still leaning against the bookcase. “If you don’t know, how would I?”
Aziraphale frowned at him. Then he turned back to the shelves, pulled another book from its place, and brushed the dust off the cover. He added it to the other book he was resting against his side and continued down the aisle.
“I’m just saying,” Aziraphale’s memory of Crowley continued as the former angel walked back to the centre of the bookshop and dropped the books onto a table that had almost certainly not been there before. “There’s nothing you can do for him. So why put yourself through more pain trying to accomplish the impossible? Just forget about him and stay with me.”
Aziraphale ignored him and sat down at the table. He pulled the nearest book towards him and flipped it open.
“What are you doing?” asked Not-Crowley, who was incredibly annoying for being a figment of Aziraphale’s imagination.
“Looking for a spell,” the former angel muttered as he flipped through the book. “I read about one back in…oh, 1672? ’73?”
“Good Lord, he remembers the bloody year,” Not-Crowley announced to no one in particular, pulling himself up so he could sit on the edge of the table.
“And somewhere around page two hundred and thirty, I should think,” Aziraphale said mildly.
Not-Crowley groaned, the familiar reaction eliciting a small smile from the former angel. He may not be able to imagine Crowley perfectly, but he did know the demon awfully well.
“Ah, here it is,” Aziraphale said a moment later, tapping the appropriate page with his finger. “Two hundred and twenty-six,” he added smugly.
The demon craned his head over Aziraphale’s shoulder. “So what’s this spell do?”
“Strictly speaking it’s a scrying spell,” the former angel admitted, scanning the particulars of the spell and glancing over the sigil carefully printed on the adjoining page, “and it’s engineered to show particular locations on Earth, but I think with a little persuasion I can convince it to tether its focus to a person…” Aziraphale trailed off, engrossed in the text.
“Hmph,” Crowley said. The demon tapped his fingers in a bored fashion on the side of the table.
“I need a mirror,” Aziraphale announced once he’d finished reading. “Or really, anything reflective, but a mirror would probably work the best.” He looked up at the demon. “Where can I get one?”
Crowley shrugged. “How would I know? It’s your heaven.”
“My heaven,” Aziraphale repeated. “Yes.” An idea occurred to him, and he looked up at Crowley excitedly. “This was never my department, but each human soul is allotted a patch of Heaven, right? It’s a sort of sandbox for their minds to fill with whatever they want. So eternity isn’t just you staring at a blank wall.”
“So just imagine you have a mirror,” Crowley suggested.
Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at him. “It’s not the same as willing or miracling things on Earth,” he said. “I don’t have my powers back. The individual heavens are designed to keep the soul inhabiting it happy, not wait on their every whim.”
“Well, wouldn’t you be happier if you had a mirror?”
Aziraphale scowled.
Rap. Rap.
Aziraphale looked up and glanced at the door of the bookshop, but the sound hadn’t come from that direction.
“What was that?” Aziraphale asked. It had sounded suspiciously like someone knocking on a door.
Crowley shrugged and hopped off the edge of the table. The sound came again, clearly from the back of the bookshop this time.
Aziraphale stood up and wound his way around the table towards the source of the noise, noticing as he did so a door set into the back wall that certainly hadn’t been in his original Soho bookshop.
The former angel walked towards it warily, Crowley two steps behind him. Aziraphale pushed open the door hesitantly and found himself looking at the interior of his and Crowley’s cottage in Midfarthing.
Aziraphale blinked.
There was another knock, and a voice called, “Hallo? Anyone about?”
Aziraphale walked forward automatically, crossing the living room and opening the front door.
“Ah, Mr Ziraphale!” Oscar the postman greeted him, hefting a box in one arm. “Package for you.”
“Er,” said Aziraphale, clumsily accepting the package Oscar pushed into his hands.
“Say, are you doing all right? You look a little pale.”
The former angel blinked at the postman, but he seemed genuine. Aziraphale’s imagination had apparently done a fairly decent job of rendering Oscar as well, neatly trimmed moustache and all.
“Just fine, thanks,” Aziraphale mumbled, and shut the door in his face, telling himself that the postman wasn’t any more real than the version of Crowley currently lounging on the sofa.
“What do you want to bet it’s a mirror?” the demon asked, crossing his legs and stretching out luxuriously.
Aziraphale muttered something under his breath and dropped the package on the kitchen table.
“And what do you know; looks like you’ve got the bookshop and the cottage,” Crowley commented. “That’s neat.”
Aziraphale ignored him, walking into the kitchen instead to retrieve a Stanley knife. As he fished the box cutter out of a mug on the counter, he felt a sharp pang of familiarity.
He and Crowley had cooked in this kitchen so many times. Aziraphale had had to, of course, since his newly mortal body demanded it…but Crowley hadn’t. He had done it solely to make Aziraphale feel more at home.
“Hey, angel,” Not-Crowley’s voice came from the other room. “Do you reckon we can get drunk in Heaven? Because I bet I would be far happier with some top-shelf wine right about now…”
Aziraphale walked back into the living room, and his eyes fell automatically on the row of bookshelves surrounding the fireplace. His gaze dropped to the hearth, and he felt himself still as memories overtook him, the Stanley knife lax in his hand.
First, he saw the blackbird that had tumbled down the chimney, crying and trying to beat its wings as fire raced along their black lengths, having suffered a fatal fall. The memory of the journals surfaced next, as Aziraphale, frightened and confused, shoved the impossible volumes into the flames, unable to reconcile the handwritten confessions with the terrifying emptiness in his mind.
Then the former angel’s eyes slid inexorably upwards, along his collection of books to rest on the orderly row of slim black journals. They were still there.
“The journals…” Aziraphale breathed, feeling guilt crash over him like a wave as the full implications of his actions finally became clear to him. The grip of the Stanley knife was cutting into his hand but he didn’t register it.
He’d burned the journals, destroyed them all in a moment of weakness. And that was after he’d taken all that time to write them for Crowley in the first place, and to include in them some fraction of what he felt for the demon who had been his best and only friend for six thousand years. They were to have been his last, parting gift to Crowley, a way for the demon to remember him if he’d felt so inclined. And instead Aziraphale had burned them.
“Oh, God.” Aziraphale’s hand went to his mouth, and he felt a little ill. He remembered Crowley’s reaction, and how the demon had shaken him, demanding to know what he’d done with them, unable to put together the conclusion obvious from the evidence around him, unable to believe that Aziraphale could had betrayed him. When Crowley had finally given up the fight and pulled Aziraphale into an exhausted embrace, the former angel had never felt the gesture was more undeserved. “Crowley…”
Without his quite knowing when, the other Crowley had come up beside him and placed a gentle hand on his elbow. “It’s okay,” he said quietly. “I know you didn’t mean to.”
Aziraphale turned horrified eyes on the demon. Crowley looked sincere, and the former angel found himself desperately wanting to believe him, to believe that Crowley had forgiven him for this terrible offense.
“Forget about it,” the demon urged him. “It doesn’t matter anymore. You’ve lived a long life, and had more than your fair share of suffering and pain. Let it go. You’ve done your part, and this is your reward. This...heaven. It’s okay to enjoy it.”
Aziraphale swallowed, just drinking in the visage of his friend before him. He did look so very much like the real Crowley, and Aziraphale imagined that he could maybe one day forget the difference. He could stay here, in this odd dual world of his bookshop and their cottage, and carry on with the demon like nothing had happened. No one would think any less of him.
His Crowley was absent and unreachable, but this one could offer absolution and companionship. And he was right after all; the angel deserved a break. Someone had clearly decided that his human soul was better suited to Heaven than Hell, and didn’t that mean he had earned this little paradise?
Aziraphale looked into Crowley’s golden, serpentine eyes, and thought that living here with Crowley forever truly was the best way to spend eternity.
Then he swallowed and looked away. Maybe someone had decided he deserved Heaven over Hell, but he wasn’t sure he agreed. He remembered the last few years of his mortal life, and how he had treated, mistreated, and ignored Crowley. He remembered the demon’s half-hidden sniffles and quiet pauses, but also the way he had steadfastly stayed by Aziraphale’s side through it all, and never once asked for anything in return except for Aziraphale to keep on living. He could still almost feel the demon’s arms around him as his life ebbed away among the lilies, still see the pure, terrified desperation in his golden eyes.
Aziraphale turned abruptly, pulling away from the false Crowley’s comfort and walking determinedly back towards the kitchen table. He fought back a sniffle as he ran the blade of the Stanley knife along the plastic tape on the box. He opened the flaps and pulled a small rectangular mirror out of a wad of packing foam. It was a little smaller than a sheet of paper, and encased in a plain silver frame.
Aziraphale set it on the table and went into the kitchen again to fetch a felt-tip pen. Crowley was standing next to the table when he returned, examining the mirror critically.
“Not very fancy.”
“It’s not for you,” Aziraphale snapped, more harshly than he’d intended, snatching the mirror from him and walking back through the new door and into the bookshop.
“Tetchy, are we?”
Aziraphale ignored him as he set the mirror on the table next to the open book and began copying the sigil onto the surface of the glass.
Crowley scooted back onto the edge of the table, heedless of Aziraphale’s chilly demeanour. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” he pointed out. “He’d never know. He thinks you’re dead. Properly dead, I mean.”
“That doesn’t matter,” Aziraphale ground out, carefully altering one of the glyphs in the sigil to include persona alongside the sign for locus.
“You might not like what you see,” Crowley cautioned as Aziraphale finished with the sigil and chanted a few words from the book. The black marker on the surface of the mirror gleamed brightly and faded from view, leaving only the smooth, unmarked surface of the glass.
The demon put his hand on Aziraphale’s wrist, and the former angel’s eyes met his. Crowley’s hand was warm against his skin, and very solid. “You won’t like what you see,” the demon corrected. “Trust me.”
Aziraphale, feeling his irritation wane—he could never stay angry with Crowley for very long, not even an imagined Crowley—gave him a faint smile. He let out a long breath. “I know that. I just…even if I can’t help him, I can’t leave him. Not alone. Not like this.”
Crowley nodded, but his hand remained on Aziraphale’s wrist. “Is this place really so bad?” the demon asked. “Am I such a poor substitute?”
“I can tell the difference, if that’s what you mean,” the former angel admitted. “But, then again, I know how the system works. And this place is…” Aziraphale looked around himself, at the exact replica of the bookshop he’d lost on Earth. “It’s nice, but I’ll take him over it any day.”
Crowley gave him a small, sad smile.
Aziraphale turned back to the mirror. If the spell had worked, he needed to only ask for what he wished to see. “Crowley” was a bit vague, so he was hoping a more specific name would suffice.
The former angel opened his mouth, but Crowley’s hand moved further up his arm, coming to a stop at his elbow. “Wait,” he said.
Aziraphale looked over at him; the demon was biting his lower lip and looking a little desperate. He raised his eyes to meet the former angel’s, and they were shining with honesty.
“Aziraphale—angel—I love you.”
Aziraphale felt a sad smile twitch at the corner of his mouth as he looked into the demon’s beautiful golden eyes. “I know that, my dear,” he said kindly. “But Crowley would never say it.”
He turned back to the mirror. “Show me the Serpent of Eden.”
Beside him, the imagined Crowley faded away as a much more real, but also completely unreachable, Crowley came into view in the mirror.