Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Alright so hear me out:

Someone¹ got curious why Crowley and Aziraphale survived their punishment, decide to investigate and still caught the switch.

Obviously, Crowley and Aziraphale get the hell of a doge. But together.

And hey, it works. Mostly.²

So Crowley ends up on an island in the Caribbean and he doesn’t like it. So he works non-stop and writes his way out (of hell). He rises up. 

Eventually, he hears about one Aaron Burr and decides to meet him, because it worked very well the last time he made this decision.³ He had his Bentley and Queen and his houseplants.⁴

Meanwhile, Aziraphale ends up in New Jersey with a family of preachers and that is what they had been telling other humans? That certainly explains a few things.

But Aziraphale is always one for action and direct confrontation when it is needed. So he decides to lend his own hand to give weight to a certain moral argument about self-determination and free will.

The man he calls his uncle tells him he is selling himself below his rank and that he should be careful before he falls into certain company.⁵

Eventually, they meet up.

Crowley!Alex, trying to appear Cool™: “Angel.”

Aziraphale!Aaron, love visible in the eyes to literally everyone who can see: “Demon.”

George Washington, incredibly confused: “You know each other?”

The other two, in sync: “Since The Beginning.”

But before they meet up again, they spend around two decades as humans.⁶

Anthony J. Crowley⁷ hates it in the Carribean. Sure, the beaches are nice but that’s not worth it in the bigger context of things. He misses his Bentley, he misses his houseplants,⁸ and he misses the advancements the humans have made between whenever he is now and where he had come from.⁹

So why does he stay there? Because a) traveling through time and space takes a lot of energy and b) he is trying to stay hidden. This is right around the time that Aziraphale got that strongly worded letter of his, it’s best to avoid detection. The very last thing Crowley wants is to have someone notice there’s two of him running around. The questions that even Upstairs and Downstairs are bound to ask? He’s very much fine with the idea of avoiding them for a while. Perhaps forever even?

Consequently, Crowley lives the life of one Alexander Hamilton - and he knows that name. The musical had been rather hard to miss.¹⁰ He’s not surprised when his ‘father’ leaves, when his ‘mother’ dies, or when his ‘cousin’ commits suicide. He still works and writes and even starts to drop his habit of sleeping because he is not staying here any longer than he has to, thank you very much.¹¹

Then, there is a hurricane, named after a saint, like it is usual at this time. And Crowley writes. He writes to God, the heavenly father,¹² and describes everything he sees. This is the mercy, the new leaf that he’d turned to after Jesus? Yes, it’s better than the whole thing with Noah,¹³ but that’s one Hell… one Heaven of a low bar.

He takes the collection of funds the people give him.¹⁴ He takes the funds, he stands on the bow of a ship headed for a new land, and he looks forward to meeting this Aaron Burr he has heard so much about.¹⁵

Meanwhile, elsewhere.

Aaron Burr is the son of a Presbyterian minister and a daughter of a noted theologist, so it is only logical that it is Aziraphale out of the two of them who is him.¹⁶

Of course, all the named human parties and the theologist's wife die before Aziraphale has been hiding in this body for five years,¹⁷ but that isn't relevant. Aziraphale isn't actually a child, he can handle it, and he'd much rather it would be him than Crowley.¹⁸

The man that ends up in charge of Sally and Aaron,¹⁹ one Timothy Edwards, his uncle, is not the nicest person to go around. Certainly not one that should be put in charge of children! He is too violent for that, truly. And Aziraphale is not a child in almost all senses. He has lived thousands of years, seen the violence in Heaven and on earth. He can handle this. Sally, however? She deserves so much more. Which is why he attempts to run away with her multiple times.²⁰

While staying with this family, he learns a lot regarding how humans view religion. And, for the first time, he understands just that much more about various things that had confused him over the past two thousand years or so. Humanity had gotten a whole lot right about things both divine and occult, but they had… misinterpreted an equal if not greater amount about Heaven and Hell.

For instance, just how could Heaven be the leader of all that is Good and Great if angels²¹ did not know the difference between good and evil? It is, admittedly, something that Aziraphale himself had only learned recently. That, however, did not make it any less true.

By the time Aziraphale has been here²² thirteen years, he gets admitted to Princeton University, just like the man he had been named after²³ had requested. Aziraphale had actually tried to enroll two years earlier, but he had been thought too young.²⁴ He studies theology and joins the literary and debating societies on campus. By the time it’s been sixteen years since he fled here,²⁵ he has a degree, but he continues studying the human’s view of Theology for another year, as it is just so interesting. Then there are two years as a sort of understudy under Joseph Bellamy before he decides that no, this is not it. 

He moves to Connecticut with his sister and her husband to with the intent to study law. Only that it doesn’t quite get to that, because Aziraphale had forgotten to consider the outbreak of the revolution right around this time. Aziraphale pauses his studies right then and signs up with the Continental Army.

He’s pretty sure that this is one of the things that are purely human in origin, even if both Hell and Heaven spare no effort in trying to take credit for it. The last time around, he vaguely remembers popping over here once as per The Arrangement and Crowley doing the same exactly once. What he cannot recall, however, is which of Heaven and Hell had supported which side in the conflict. He’s got a sense that they might have switched back and forth at some point. Odd, that.²⁶

^{1. It’s not really important who, but let’s say it was Hastur [return to text]} 

^{2. As for why they go specifically where they go, that’s all part of the Great Ineffable Plan. [return to text]}

^{3. Even if the end was questionable. But hey, it was still better than The End [return to text]}

^{4. The Arrangement and everything connected to it is obvious enough that it’s barely even worth mentioning. [return to text]}

^{5. An aside, isn’t it kind of funny that they both choose to go by names/initials that start with A both times? There’s something here to be said about beginnings. [return to text]}

^{6. Give or take a bit. When you’re over six thousand years old, that’s not the kind of thing you keep track of. [return to text]}

^{7. Once known as Crawly, the Serpent of Eden, now known as Alexander Hamilton. [return to text]}

^{8. Incompetent as some of them are. [return to text]}

^{9. He also, very much, misses a certain angel who is just enough of a bastard to be worth loving. [return to text]}

^{10. Even Aziraphale noticed it… once it had gotten a show in London. [return to text]}

^{11. He knows better than to admit, even to himself, how much the slavery bothers him. With his early twenty-first-century post-Apocalypse pro-human mindset and all. Nevermind the fact he hadn’t been a fan of it the first time around. [return to text]}

^{12. Who, like angels and demons, had to make an effort if he ever felt like having a gender. [return to text]}

^{13. All those poor children. [return to text]}

^{14. He’s… taking up funds that could be used for rebuilding, he rationalizes. But then it hits him that he is Team Human now and that he no longer has to do so. [return to text]} 

^{15. Definitely not because what he hears reminds him of a certain warrior of heaven turned bookseller. No, that would be preposterous. [return to text]}

^{16. And he actually is him. He isn't simply pretending to be, but the explanations as to how this all happens to go beyond human understanding. [return to text]}

^{17. So maybe it's not all that much of a party. [return to text]}

^{18. Of course, what he doesn't know, is that almost three thousand kilometers to the south southeast, he is going through very similar things. [return to text]}

^{19. He can react to the name, but he needs at least a few decades of adjustment more before he can mentally connect that name to himself. He has spent over six thousand years only switching around the last two letters of his name, after all. [return to text]}

^{20. It doesn’t work out in the end, but he’s pretty sure that his attempts count for something, at least. [return to text]}

^{21. Possibly, with the exception of Aziraphale himself. That part was still new and terrifying. [return to text]}

^{22. That is on this continent, in this time. [return to text]}

^{23. He just didn’t really stick to it. [return to text]}

^{24. Consequently, he signed up for the second year when he applied again. He blamed Crowley's influence over the centuries. [return to text]}

^{25. Since he last saw a certain demon who, deep down, had a spark of goodness that had the chance to grow. [return to text]}

^{26. Or, maybe, it's not that odd at all. [return to text]}