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Neither Gabriel nor Beelzebub seem exactly assured now. They step together to consult.
GABRIEL
(quietly)
I’m going to need to talk to … head office. How I’m going to get ten million angels to stand down from war footing doesn’t bear thinking about …
BEELEZEBUB
(quietly)
No? You ought to try to get ten million demons to put down their weaponsz and go back to work.
GABRIEL
(quietly)
Well. At least we know whose fault this is.
And they both glance at Crowley and Aziraphale. Aziraphale gives them a happy wave. Crowley sighs at this.
*
Had Gabriel and Beelzebub known anything of magic and the power of Names, they might not have done it. Perhaps. Neither of them, after all, was known for their independent thinking. Or their understanding of consequences.
Regardless.
The fact remained however that, while the two great generals of The War To End Everything had certainly made many mistakes in the run-up to Armageddon, their biggest mistake was made jointly, quite inadvertently, and immediately after Adam, the Antichrist, the Adversary, Destroyer of Kings, Angel of the Bottomless Pit, Great Beast that is called Dragon, Prince of This World, Father of Lies, Spawn of Satan, and Lord of Darkness, refused to allow the start of The War.
They both went and laid the entirety of the blame for events unfolding as they did at the feet of an angel and a demon; Aziraphale and Crowley. And in doing so, these two beings found themselves becoming the two most powerful creatures on Earth.
*
To be clear, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley had been exactly powerless before their mistaken promotion. Not for nothing had the Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eastern Gate of the Garden of Eden, been trusted with a flaming sword. His crown and sceptre all but glowed with their righteous power [1] and his four wings, wreathed in fire and adorned by thousands of blazing eyes were enormous and strong.
[1] Or at least they would have done so, had Aziraphale not - after thoroughly failing in his many attempts to ditch his crown alongside his lost flockmate's memorial plaques and finally given up on his even more stubborn sceptre altogether and ended up wrapping the wretched things in old newspapers and tucking them into a shoe-box under the bed in the bedroom he never used. Such celestially powerful items were awfully conspicuous, after all, and clashed very badly with his favourite jackets.
Of course Aziraphale would never go around just flaunting that kind of power; there’d have been paperwork involved, after all! Not to mention extra scrutiny and higher expectations and … well, it just didn’t bare thinking about!
It had not taken Aziraphale long after being sent to Earth to guide humanity and thwart the Forces of Evil to realise that ‘over-achieving’ [2] was a sure-fire way to be required to submit full reports rather than brief memos and a great many more meetings than anyone could really want. Crowley would later threaten him with Eternity, but Aziraphale had once had no less than five meetings within the space of a month with Gabriel and Michael, and he felt like he had already thoroughly investigated the concept.
[2] Or rather, rubbing it in to the archangels that he out-ranked and out-powered them by a significant margin – Gabriel might call him ‘soft’ all he liked, but Aziraphale at his most soft and peaceful was still hovering around the same level, power-wise, as Gabriel on a good day, and that was without the flaming sword.
Maybe it was Wrong - not just a little wrong, but actually, fundamentally Wrong - of him, but Aziraphale also felt that there was such a thing as doing far too much Good in the world. Not that performing miracles wasn’t important and all, and Aziraphale was certainly prone to flinging his miracle-doing powers around like an especially indulgent grandmother hands out sweets at family gatherings, but if he went around doing great big miracles and compelling the world to be a better place by sheer force, then where did Free Will go? Aziraphale didn’t claim to be an expert in such matters by any means, but he rather suspected that being an interfering busy-body would get in the way of the Ineffable Plan if he wasn't extremely careful. If he'd been meant to do humanity's moral thinking for them all ... well, the whole Incident in the Garden would have gone very differently.
So instead, Aziraphale kept as far as he could to minor miracles, generally stayed under the radar and got on with appreciating all the strange and wonderful ways humans found to be brilliant and kind and innovative. And then he shared those things with his demon, because Crowley would understand far better than any of his angelic colleagues, every time.
*
More relevant to our current interests, however, is the reason behind Crowley’s power. Unlike Aziraphale, he had not been an especially powerful angel before he Fell, and he was not a remarkably powerful demon afterwards … at first.
However, shortly after the Beginning, the Powers Below had told Crawly to “get up there and make some trouble,” and he absolutely had gone right ahead and done just that. Admittedly it had all gone rather better (or worse?) than he had expected it to, what with the whole ‘Adam and Eve being banished for their first offence’ thing, but he’d still done it.
And that might have been the end of it, commendation for exemplary service aside.
But then the stories started to be told, on Earth as in Heaven … alright, and in Hell too.
Mortals, and angels and demons all told each other the story of the Original Sin and every single one of those tellings and retellings, every different version of them, they all gave the staring role to one being: The Serpent in the Garden. Crawly.
And being credited with such a monumental event causes people to think of you as a powerful person. And when enough people think that you are powerful, so you will become.
As Adam Young would one day, at the End of the World, come to understand; perception is what shapes Reality, just as much as the reverse. Very mouldable stuff, Reality. Very forgiving.
And so it was that Crowley often found himself perfectly capable of achieving minor demonic miracles with ease which would have left his demonic brethren with a blinding headache, burned fingers and maintenance issues to their corporations stretching on for three centuries. Not that he knew that of course. [3]
[3] For Crowley to have realised how far ahead of the hellish curve he was, he would have had to start going around talking to other demons, and no … just no.
There had been times, over the centuries, when Crowley had experienced some pretty serious doubts about the intelligence of Hell, especially its rulers. After all, Crowley had begun taking the credit for so many of the dreadful, evil things that humans did to each other and themselves pretty early on. Nothing wrong with it, after all. Lying was nicely sinful, as was Sloth, and it had the added bonus of Crowley personally doing so much less evil tempting while Aziraphale was around.
The angel had rarely said anything [4] but his eyes would tighten up with suppressed pain and he had a bad tendency to flinch away from Crowley’s demonic presence for a while if the Serpent put forth any real effort while he was around. It was better for everyone if Crowley looked nicely proactive by taking the credit for evil that Hell hadn’t even thought of, and stayed reasonably neutral while he hung out with his angel.
[4] Actually, Aziraphale had said all manner of things about it over the years, but rarely seriously, and never with a view to Taking Steps to put an end to Crowley and his tempting ways.
But what Crowley had not realised was that when he went around just… doing things. Things like pulling clothes from mid-air [5], convincing humans during the French Revolution to execute their own executioner [6], or worked some strange ancient magic on that car of his to the point at which the thing is clearly sentient on some level. [7] And he did it all the time. And if, as an angel would one day say with Crowley’s own lips, he could just do that, what else was he capable of? The Spanish Inquisition seemed by no means a stretch of Hell’s credulity, of which it generally really didn’t have a large supply at all.
[5] What, did Crowley think that Hastur looked like a gangrenous scarecrow for the aesthetic? Really?
[6] Which most certainly did not just happen on its own, after all, no matter what he might have left Aziraphale to believe. Humans, after all, are perfectly capable of understanding that one can change outfits occasionally, hem hem, angel.
[7] Love and cherish an object for too long and it really does come to life – children’s toys are a prime example of this trait, should you wish to study it, although previous scientists who have looked into the matter can all be found these days living in nicely padded room and gibbering a lot.
*
Now, however, things had become rather … different.
“Listen,” Crowley said one evening, while they were tucked away in the back of the bookshop, halfway through their third bottle of wine and completely cutting Aziraphale off mid-sentence as he expounded on the under-explored potential of Biggles.
“Listen,” he said again, waving his arm in a wide sweeping motion causing the wine bottles to duck and the tottering pile of books to lean even further to one side in an effort to avoid the wine, which had – knowing what was good for it – actually put forth a supreme effort to stay in the glass, never mind what physics had to say on the idea.
“Listen,” he said again, and Aziraphale sighed through the fog of alcohol.
“I am listening, darling.” He smiled fondly at the demon on his sofa, “I promise you that I am most certainly listening, you just need to say something.”
Crowley grinned softly back at him, as if in response to a joke only he was aware of. Then his smile dropped in favour of a more concerned expression, and wine or no wine Aziraphale braced himself for a conversational topic he just knew he wouldn’t favour at all.
“Look, have you noticed anything … different, with your powers I mean?” Crowley asked, projecting a cross between enforced nonchalance and actual worry around his sun glasses.
“Different?”
“Yes! Like… are things coming a little easier for you than they used to?”
“I…” Aziraphale sat there for a moment, feeling a little stunned. He hadn’t given the matter much thought until now. “Well… That is to say…”
He sighed and sobered up a bit, the better for thinking.
“I hadn’t especially noticed until you asked me, but I suppose… You know, now that you bring it up, I think I really might be a bit more…”
“Virile?” Crowley suggested – he’d tried to hold the word in, honestly he had, but resisting temptation was not a widely-held demonic skill.
Aziraphale pulled a face at him, then giggled. “Honestly, my dear. I don’t think anyone’s ever used that word in relation to my person!”
Crowley suddenly found his wine glass fantastically interesting. “Oh, I wouldn’t know about that.”
Aziraphale snorted softly, and with barely a flick of his eyes, whopped the foul fiend he had no intention of ever letting go across the head with a cushion.
Crowley spat out a feather and then waved his hands around again, scattering avian shrapnel everywhere.
“See! That’s what I’m talking about! You couldn’t do that before … you know, Before.”
Aziraphale froze. “I … No, you’re quite right, I couldn’t.”
Crowley took a beep breath. “Yesterday, I walked down the street and every car, bus and taxi radio blared Queen for me. I wasn’t even trying.”
They stared at each other, thinking furiously. Aziraphale finally broke the silence.
“If I had given the matter any thought - not that I can say that I had or anything – but if I had, then I would have expected that losing my position in Heaven would have led to my being … powerless? Definitely diminished somehow. Not … whatever this is.”
Crowley nodded.
“And yet …” Aziraphale trailed off, unwilling to voice the thought hovering at the fringes of his mind.
“Yeah.” Crowley murmured.
They stared at the bookshelves, but received no answers from their gloomy, dusty depths.
“Well, given that I very much doubt that either of our former sides has promoted us, and certainly not both, I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see if it wears off?”
Crowley nodded. “Yeah. Or maybe Adam accidentally hopped us up on magic-caffeine when he was putting everything back?”
The angel nodded and took another big gulp of wine, settling his nerves enough to relax. The prospect of having his person messed around with by a stressed eleven year old [8] in a moment of crisis was a bit much to deal with while still mostly-sober.
[8] That is to say, more than it already had been, what with Adam so very thoughtfully giving him his body back post-discorporation and all.
Perhaps Crowley could sense Aziraphale’s unease (Aziraphale certainly wouldn’t have been surprised if he could) because he reached over and slung a casual arm around the angel’s shoulders and spoke reassuringly.
“Look, don’t let’s worry about it, ok? It’s not a bad thing to be a bit stronger than we were, what with all those enemies we made recently and all. Good for security and stuff, yeah? No point borrowing trouble before they give it to us for free.”
Aziraphale leaned into the demon and tilted his head back to give him a tipsy, upside-down smile. “Quite right, my dear. I’m sure nothing will come of it all anyway. Now,” he gestured to the record player which was finished up the LP (Queen was playing, of course), “I realise I may regret saying this, but would you like to pick out the next record?”