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For Aziraphale, there was no time before the Garden.
He awoke, on his own, into a soothing darkness.
The first thing he felt was Love.
The first thing he heard was Her voice.
“Aziraphale.”
He unfurled, soft wings brushing against something not quite skin, because it wasn’t quite real. He wasn’t quite real, not yet. Warm light began to flow into the darkness, and with it, the endless, unfathomable depths of Her self.
“Lord,” he whispered, his first word.
He couldn’t see Her. None of them ever saw Her, not even the Metatron, but he felt her, a cool breeze, and he heard her, a mother’s voice.
“My dear Aziraphale, welcome to the universe.”
He laughed, because he was only joy then, and his arms reached into the cosmos.
“What am I?” he asked, wings fluttering. Four wings, and their glow was soothing. Something soft touched him, robes, and he liked the feel of them, gentle and warm.
“You are my creation,” She answered with sweet humor in her voice. “You are an angel of the first order, of the cherubim.”
He reached out and took form. He watched, fascinated, as strong limbs and hands and feet became a part of who he was. “Why am I?” he asked.
“You are to protect my greatest creation. You are to protect humanity. You are to guard the Eastern Gate.”
As She spoke, everything she spoke of became real, appeared in his mind as concepts and ideas. “Oh,” he breathed, because the Garden was beautiful, and she would create them, Man and Woman, within the garden, and that was beautiful as well. His excitement was utterly innocent, utterly Hers.
“It is time to go, Aziraphale.”
“No!” He felt something he didn’t like, an emotion he couldn’t name. “I don’t want to leave you!”
“You won’t,” She said as the darkness became light, and the nothing became a Garden. “My Grace is within you.”
He woke, and he had form, and the garden was lush. He stood beside the Eastern Gate, and he watched as from the Earth, She created Man.
----
Crowley remembered the time before Earth, when they were just creating the cosmos.
He woke in a cloud of angels – unfurled wings, strong bodies, each fundamentally identical in that first moment: a thousand angels, staring at each other in wonder.
The first thing he felt was love.
The first thing he saw was brethren.
The first thing he heard was the soft gasp of a thousand new beings realizing they are new, and they are.
“My angels,” She said, and a thousand faces turned up to the light as one. “Welcome to the cosmos.”
Wings rustled, voices murmured without words. Angels they understood. The concept spread among them. Angels, Her Angels, to create the universe.
Crowley laughed, because wasn’t it strange, to be a being created to make something out of nothing?
The angels immediately around him shifted, unnerved by the sound.
A handful of voices rang out, perhaps ten of a thousand angels. His was one of them. “What will we make?” he asked, and his eyes became amber and his hair grew dark.
“Everything,” She answered, and he knew his name, “nebulae and stars, planets and asteroids. You will create them together.” He could feel her love. “Now go.”
They scattered, a thousand angels greeted by thousands more. These older angels were not identical and soon, neither would he be.
The Fall ripped away most of his memories. It stole away his name – none of them could know the name they held in heaven.
But Crowley remembered this, being one of a thousand, becoming one of thousands. Just another angel to create the universe, destined to be thrown down into the depths of Hell with ten thousand of his brethren.
------
They discussed their own creations only once.
It was in Rome, the first time Aziraphale reached out and invited Crowley to spend time with him. They had oysters, and walked among the humans, and felt very old.
Crowley asked the question.
“Did you ever see Her?” He didn’t have to give the name. Who he meant was in his voice, and he could say this much without pain.
“I . . .” Aziraphale glanced at him, surprised. “No. No, I…don’t think anyone ever has, have they?”
“No.” Crowley remembered the crowds and Her voice.
“She spoke to me, of course. When I was . . .” the angel searched for a word and settled on, “born,” though the mortal term didn’t quite make sense. “She told me who I was, and my job, and then she set me in the garden.”
Crowley stopped walking suddenly, and only his demonic presence kept the busy mortals from slamming into him. “You were sent straight to the garden?” he asked, his voice strangely sharp. “But that was . . . after the Fall.”
“Oh yes.” Aziraphale’s smile was filled with innocence. He had seen so much, yet he still loved and believed the best in people, even as he saw them at their worst. He wasn’t like any other angel Crowley knew, or the scraps he remembered. “She told me I was to protect humanity.” His eyes trailed after a vendor selling honeyed cakes, and he veered to the side.
“But.” Crowley stared at him as he came back, something in his stomach twisted, a strange jealous fury rising. “But you were the only angel actually in the garden.”
Aziraphale nodded, smiling. “Yes. I saw some of the others from time to time, but-”
“You were born alone?” Crowley demanded, suddenly grabbing the angel’s arms too tightly, his fingertips digging in. Aziraphale winced and frowned at him, gently disapproving.
“Yes. Of course. Crowley, that is quite-”
A hiss worked its way into Crowley’s voice, and if the angel had truly understood evil, he would have been afraid. “She ssspoke to you alone?”
Aziraphale twisted away, because he was gentle but he was an angel, and powerful. “That hurts!”
“Did she?!” There was something like hysteria in Crowley’s voice.
“Yes.” Aziraphale said it as if it was normal, as if every one of them had been greeted, and spoken to, and loved individually in that first moment. “Of course she did. I was new.”
Crowley stumbled backward.
One of a thousand.
One of thousands.
He shook his head, furious, aching, and then he turned and ran, ignoring the concern in the voice calling after him.
----
Aziraphale lost two of his wings and all but two of his eyes as he watched Adam and Eve run into the desert with his sword in hand.
They simply disappeared, and with them, their power.
And with them, a piece of Her voice.
Cherubim work closely with God. Principalities are made for Earth.
No one explained the change to him. He simply understood it. He had not directly disobeyed God; She had not told him not to give the sword away. But he hadn’t asked permission, and he’d known it was . . . a questionable choice. And so he was demoted. It hurt, but the Woman had been so cold, and she was going to have a baby. He didn’t know quite what a baby was, but he felt it was the beginning of all things.
He still had Her Grace. He still had Her Love.
The sacrifice was worth it.
------
He should have Fallen when he lied to God.
He didn’t.
Blessedly, Crowley never read the one Bible that told his story. If he had-
Well, Crowley asked too many questions and Fell. Aziraphale lied to God and remained a Principality, still above the angels.
Still not one in thousands.
------
Aziraphale missed the Fall, but he understood that Demons were the enemy. He was not meant to speak to them. They were devious, rude, deceptive.
But the first demon he ever met was none of those things. He was polite, and interesting, and supportive, in his way. And Aziraphale, filled with love, couldn’t bring himself to act as Gabriel had told him to when faced with one of the Fallen.
Besides, he had only ever met a handful of people. It seemed a shame to make an enemy.
It would take millennia for him to realize he’d made a friend, instead.
------
Crowley thought, in the angriest, darkest pit of his heart, the bit that formed when he was thrown down for so little into so much pain, that he would enjoy watching Aziraphale’s innocence waste away. And in a way, he was right. He watched as the angel learned the occasional bite of sarcasm, as he gave in to the temptation of the Arrangement, as he ate rich foods and dressed in the best clothes. He watched as Aziraphale’s endless patience gave way to a wish for time alone with his books. Crowley liked those hints of humanity in his angel. Perfection was boring.
Aziraphale played a dangerous game, working with Crowley, continuing to allow and then to seek out Crowley’s company. They both did. There was a thrill in it that the demon sometimes caught in the angel’s eye.
Yet-
God must know. She must. She had created Aziraphale alone, had spoken to him. Surely She knew he skirted the edge of the rules. Surely She knew he did more than eat at the wrong table and ask a few questions. He did favors for a demon!
And he didn’t Fall.
Crowley would have hated Aziraphale if he hadn’t, somewhere along the way, come to like him so much. Those hints of humor, of slyness, all mixed in with so much innate goodness-
And even when he fussed about Crowley being a demon or if they would get in trouble or “my dear boy, was that necessary?” he never truly pushed Crowley away. And Crowley, fool that he was, just kept circling back to the angel’s light.
How could he blame Her for giving his angel far too many chances?
-----
Aziraphale was not a fool.
He was young, in the heavenly order of things, but almost all his life had been spent on Earth, where he was one of the two oldest living beings in permanent residence. He knew humans could do terrible things. He knew demons existed to lead them down dark paths. He knew Crowley was a demon.
But he knew, too, that Crowley was, deep down, a Good person, and his friend.
And much earlier than Crowley would ever suspect – earlier, indeed, than Crowley – he knew that his love was not so all-encompassing as it should be. He knew that he loved books, and food, and humans, more than he should.
And he knew he loved Crowley most of all.
Most damning, literally in Crowley’s case, he could feel Crowley’s growing affection as well.
But Crowley was a demon, and demons weren’t mean to feel love. So Aziraphale loved quietly, and completely, and at a safe distance, because Aziraphale was no fool, and he knew what would happen to his demon if his superiors learned that an angel loved him so completely.
-----
On the night the Apocalypse didn’t happen, Crowley was told, for the first time in a life that spanned beyond human history, that he was individually, completely loved.
It was his angel who told him, as if it was obvious. As if he should know.
They sat at the modern table in Crowley’s modern kitchen, where Aziraphale didn’t fit at all, and the angel took his hands (jittery, nervous) and folded them in his own and said:
“I do love you, my darling Crowley,” with such fondness that it cracked Crowley’s heart in two.
Crowley stared at him.
His angel smiled back, serene. All the doubting and all the rules had rolled away, and Aziraphale’s love lit him up from within, shamelessly.
“I love you.” He lifted one of Crowley’s hands and pressed a kiss to the back of it. “It isn’t like the love for everything we’re meant to have. It is unique. I love flowers because they’re beautiful, and writers because they’re clever, and books because they’re memories, and I love you for all the same reasons: your beauty, your wit, our history.
“But you are more than all the flowers and music and memories in the world. When you asked me to leave with you, I wanted so much to say yes. Because I can imagine a world without all of those things, but there would be no joy in it without you.”
Crowley’s lips moved, his eyes wide. He felt . . . warmed, from within, his snake’s heart beating triple time. “Oh,” he said, as a million pieces fell into place, and told him why he couldn’t hate this angel.
Love.
“What,” he licked his lips, and thought of being one of a thousand. “What am I?”
Aziraphale smiled, peaceful and radiant, and rested his cheek in Crowley’s hand. “Mine. And I’m yours.”
Crowley laughed, his voice wrecked, because what was more wondrous than loving a person who also loved you?
Aziraphale didn’t pull away. He laughed too, and Crowley leaned forward until their foreheads touched. “No one’s ever-”
“I love you,” a whisper, “I love you,” a promise, “I love you,” a prayer, “I love you,” a song that twisted in the air and wrapped around him and-
Crowley laughed again. There were no tears in his eyes, because there couldn’t be. “I believe you.”
Aziraphale pulled away enough to pull his glasses off and look him in the eyes. “I have hurt you, because I didn’t tell you before. But I will tell you every day for the rest of time and beyond, if you’ll let me.”
“I . . . think that can be arranged.”
He grinned.
His angel grinned.
“And so you know,” Crowley added, “I do too, you.”
“I know,” his angel assured him, and pulled him close, warm and wanted. A hand curved into his hair, and lips pressed against his temple.
Not one of a thousand. Not one of thousands. Just Aziraphale’s.