Chapter Text
The Garden of Eden, 4004 B.C.
The Angel of the Eastern Gate was…fascinating. That was the word. Crawly was fascinated. Sure, the angel gave off a bit of an overall "apple-polisher" vibe, but that was a fairly typical angelic trait. No, the fascinating part was how much the angel seemed to doubt things. Doubt wasn't supposed to be the sort of thing an angel was allowed to get away with. It wasn't even the sort of thing an angel was supposed to be capable of. He should know, his own doubt saw him plunged into the Pit before he'd even realized what he'd done wrong.
And yet, the Angel of the Eastern Gate stood at his post, day after day, holding that fiery sword aloft and wearing a decidedly concerned expression. Not concerned as in, "This is my job and I take it seriously," but rather, concerned as in, "I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing, and whether what I'm doing is what I should be doing, and whether what I should be doing is, in fact, the right thing to be doing." Doubt, and the ensuing anxiety over that doubt, absolutely radiated from him. It differentiated him from any other angel Crawly had ever encountered, that he could remember, of course.1 It made him interesting.
So once the whole Paradise thing had been well and truly spoiled (by him, unsettlingly enough, though he really hadn't meant to stir up such a fuss), he couldn't really resist sidling up to the angel and striking up a conversation. And of course, his suspicions had been correct. The angel was exceedingly interesting. Gave away his sword? His holy, flaming weapon entrusted to him by the Almighty Herself? To the very creatures who had just fallen out of said Almighty's Good Graces?
This, Crawly decided, was a creature he wanted to know.
And then it started to rain, and he flinched from the unfamiliar sensation of water falling from the sky, and an instinctive apprehension that such water might be somewhat innately Holy. And immediately, unthinkingly, the angel extended his wing, sheltered him from the storm.
"Oh," Crawly said, "Er. Thanks?"
"No sense both of us getting soaked," the angel said, off-handedly, "I'd imagine you must get rather cold, what with the whole, er-"
"Snake thing?"
"Quite."
"Yeah, well…cheers!"
It was such a small gesture, so easily dismissed, and yet Crawly couldn't help but feel immensely touched by it. This being of Righteousness had concerned itself with his Enemy's comfort, not for any sort of gain that he could discern, but simply because it seemed the right thing to do in the moment. For all the angel's apparent doubt, when it came down to it, his first instinct was goodness, kindness, a reflex toward protection. Oh, but this angel was fascinating.
Crawly smiled. He'd been smiling quite a lot just now, he realized. His heart beat a bit faster, as well. 'Fascination' might not be a strong enough word for whatever this was. He was going to have to keep an eye out for this angel, going forward.
Noah's Ark, 3004 B.C.
Aziraphale was mucking out the elephant stall when he heard the baby crying. It was soft, and he ignored it at first, assuming it was Ham's youngest, seasick again. But it continued for a long time, and eventually he started to become concerned. It didn't sound like it was coming from the upper decks. It sounded like it was below him, and that didn't make any sense. The only things below this deck were cargo crates and animal feed. So he grabbed a torch and went down to investigate.
He thought he imagined the first one he saw, the little legs disappearing behind a crate, vanished when he caught up and checked. Perhaps it was his mind playing tricks after five days at "sea". But he could still hear the crying, and it was getting louder, so he kept walking. He walked for what felt like an hour - the ark was, after all, the size of a moderate city. And he began to hear other noises. High voices talking in low whispers, quiet giggles, the patter of little feet. Finally, he passed around a wall of hay with an obvious glow behind it, and there he was. There they were.
The hay had been arranged in a sort of common room, complete with braziers, bedrolls, even a small table. Near the center, Crawly sat on a hay bale, looking a bit harried and miserable. He was awkwardly holding a crying baby who couldn't have been more than a few months old. He looked as though he didn't quite know what to do with her, and was currently trying to coax her into eating a handful of dry oats. She clearly had no intention of complying. They were surrounded by at least twenty other children of varying ages and genders, none seemingly any older than twelve or thirteen. Some children played quiet games, some slept, some munched on dried fruit or drank from a bucket of clear, fresh water, clearly more suited for actual human consumption. A few of the older children held younger ones, babies too young to sit on their own.
Aziraphale hadn't been noticed yet. He stood by the wall, his own torchlight melding with that of the makeshift-room, taking in the scene, not sure what he should be feeling. The demon had saved some of the children. Smuggled them in as stowaways, set up a little room for them down here in the dark. He had disobeyed the Lord's command, kept alive a handful of the humans doomed to perish. Protected the smallest, and most vulnerable, and most innocent among them.
Aziraphale thought he ought to be shocked. He ought to be relieved. He ought to be angry. He ought to be afraid.
He was none of these things. He was certainly confused. Aside from that, he wasn't quite sure what he felt.
He half-considered walking away, keeping mum and pretending he hadn't seen anything, leaving Crawly to avoid discovery on his own. But then a little boy looked up from his counting game and saw him. He gasped and pointed, and the other children took notice. They all froze, then immediately dashed to get nearer to Crawly. Most cowered behind him, or behind each other, while some of the braver children stood defiantly in front of the rest, ready to protect their friends. Crawly looked up at him, showing no surprise whatsoever in his being discovered, stood, and sighed. He gestured at the baby in his arms.
"I don't suppose you know what it is they eat in the larval stage? I haven't managed to work it out."
Aziraphale scoffed, feelings finally settling on 'annoyed at Crawly' which was rapidly becoming a familiar, comfortable state of being after a millennium of random, unexpected encounters.
"Oh, honestly, a thousand years among them and you've never once noticed how they feed their young?"
"Eeh, I don't really think about food much. Always seemed a bit of a hassle, really."
"You've seen mothers breastfeed before, hundreds of times! We watched Eve do it for three days! The other mammals do it all the time!"
"Oh!" Crawly knocked the heel of the hand not holding the baby against his forehead, rolled his eyes at himself, "Obviously, I'm an idiot! Breast milk, of course! Honestly, with all the muddle I haven't had a proper lie-down in days, I think I'm getting a bit addled, forgot all about milking things. Well," he shrugged and looked down at his chest, "breasts are easy enough, I suppose."
Within moments he'd grown the necessary appendages, pulled his robe aside, and managed to coax the rapidly calming baby into latching. When she did, he made several different, disconcerted faces at once.
"Whoo! That's a new one, gonna' have to get used to that."
He waved at an older girl holding another baby, "Here, Sara, hand him over, no good wasting the other one."
The girl handed him the baby, somewhat warily, and went back to staring at Aziraphale in mute shock. The other children seemed no more assured by Crawly's calm demeanor, still huddled away from the stranger and toward their savior. Crawly sat back down and got himself settled again. He seemed to notice the cluster of frightened children for the first time.
"Oh, don't worry about him, Aziraphale's all right, he's a big softy," he watched the angel steadily, his expression significantly more serious and threatening than his voice, "He's not going to hurt you."
Aziraphale rolled his eyes, "Well, of course not!"
The children seemed mollified by this and slowly returned to their former activities. Aziraphale sat beside Crawly and sighed.
"You could have asked the other children, you know," he said, pointing out the obvious, "Plenty of them know precisely what babies eat."
"Good point, hadn't thought of that. Although, I haven't managed to get more than a word or two out of most of them. I think the whole 'shape-shifter with the bright yellow eyes who smells vaguely of sulfur and can move people great distances in an instant' thing has them a bit spooked, really."
"I'm going to get a good talking-to about this," Aziraphale grumbled, "The plan was very clear. I'm responsible for ensuring that everything on board is correct and accounted-for, and the ship's manifest most certainly did not include two-dozen bootleg children."
"Oh 'bootleg', don't be such a drama queen," Crawly wrinkled his nose at him, but then looked away, suddenly seeming a bit embarrassed, "...And it's just about four dozen, actually, the rest are on a supply run, port side. 'S as many as I could manage before anyone started to notice."
"Why?" Aziraphale demanded, "What are you proving, exactly? That the Lord's plans can be thwarted? How does this benefit your side? Planning on claiming these poor children's souls, are you?"
Crawly looked legitimately offended. He stared at Aziraphale for a long moment, with an expression that said he didn't quite understand what the angel didn't understand.
"…They're kids," he said in a quiet voice, tinged with genuine outrage, "They were going to drown."
Seeing the hurt, baffled, somewhat angry expression on the demon's face, Aziraphale suddenly understood. This wasn't some sort of infernal plot, some manipulation of fate. This wasn't a demonic political statement. This was simply an individual attempting to right something he saw as an injustice. This was Crawly working, on his own behalf, to save a handful of innocent children from a horrible death.
He had no idea how to process that. He simply stared back at the demon (a demon, he was a demon for goodness' sake, what was he doing having compassion?!) and blinked a few times. Aziraphale hadn't liked the plan from the beginning, really. It seemed overly cruel, flooding them out like garden pests. At one point, he'd actually thought that if he had to choose between half the animals on the decks above and some of the more agreeable humans he'd met, he'd take the humans. He hadn't thought it very loudly, of course. But he had thought it. And it seemed Crawly thought quite the same.
Aziraphale set his torch aside, ensuring it was doused before putting it down, and sighed again. He turned to another of the older children and gestured for them to hand him the baby they held.
"Well, you've bested me this time, foul serpent," he said, with more than a hint of gratitude in his voice, "I suppose I have no choice but to help you care for them, now they're here."
He glanced at Crawly, who grinned at him, and he felt his stomach do a little dive. He wasn't sure he disliked the sudden, fluttering sensation that grin was producing, and he thought that was probably not the best of signs.
1. Had he been able to remember, this would still be true. The simple fact is, Aziraphale was far and away the most different angel in the entire Host. This, consequently, also made him the only angel worth knowing in the whole lot. [Back]