Chapter Text
The world was a place full of problems.
Relative to mankind, some were small and inconsequential. Not necessarily small in size, so to speak (although indeed, sometimes they could be), but just trifling enough that the likes of you and me might just think nothing of them, or much worse, simply ignore them.
Other problems were extraordinary in their need for corrective haste. Overwhelming and immediate, devastating in their consequences. Problems large enough, in fact, that the likes of you and me might just think nothing of them, or much worse, simply ignore them.
There were two Problems in particular worth mentioning, one of each ilk. The first, Problem One, was grand in size and malignant possibilities. It existed within a world or realm unseen to the living and the Unholy. This was a thing created by intelligent, vengeful hands under the guise of building a solution to another of its kind: Problem Two.
Problem Two was small in size, though was a notable example of how ignoring an issue might eventually lead it to become the second kind of problem. This small-in-stature malevolence was safely tucked away in a bookshop where nobody suspected a thing. It was a bookshop in Soho, London, a space that was somehow chaotic and organised in one fell swoop; a perfect place to hide, (largely) unbeknownst to the shop’s long-lived owner and his frequent guest. For a little while, anyway.
Problem One and Problem Two considered the angel and demon pair a problem in of themselves, and soon enough, the feeling would be quite mutual, as per the natural evolution of threats and reality itself, something which even celestial entities were slaves to in the end.
After all, it would be foolish to believe that any period of peace could last forever, as much as one might have wanted to.
Principality Aziraphale, Angel of the Flaming Sword, Guardian of the Eastern Gate, sat in companionable silence within his Soho shop, a flute of Dom Pérignon in one hand and a signed copy of Troilus and Criseyde in the other. He owned the sort of name that would sound extraordinary hailed by the angelic choirs of cathedrals across the globe, though in truth, his Official titles preceded him; he was by no means a grand kind of angel, and his name would never be hailed by anyone. He had been a mere step above the bottom rung of Celestial Society when it happened, and now he could only be further from Heaven’s graces if he had Fallen.
Aziraphale was content. If he didn’t think too hard.
Demon Crowley, no Official titles to his name aside from the odd Serpent thing and what he concocted for himself in the occasional fantastical thought, lounged nearby in a dusty armchair not doing anything in particular, merely stroking his pointed chin and watching Aziraphale through the dark lenses of his sunglasses. He, too, was about as far from his native abode as a demon could be, and there was a time in recent history where he desired to go much, much further to maybe find a nice little planet orbiting an ancient star system and, for lack of a better word, retire. However, he had since come to the conclusion that maybe the Earth was not so bad, after all.
Crowley was also content. Though not really.
That was when Problem Two came into the picture.
Crowley thought he heard the soft jingle of a tiny bell from upstairs. Disturbed from his reverie, he briefly glanced between the door that led to the stairs and Aziraphale, though the other made no reasonable movement in response to a sound that probably should not have sounded at all. Instead, Troilus and Criseyde was very carefully lowered down to the desk so that an old, leathery page could be painstakingly turned.
About to stand up and investigate (after all, he was well within his rights to be suspicious of just about anything, at present), he found that there was no need. There came a solid but soft thumping down the crickety wooden staircase, and then the door was opened mysteriously from the other side … by a little fuzzy white paw.
“What,” Crowley began, as a large and extremely fluffy white cat in a pink collar sauntered into the shop floor, “is that?”
The creature was, by and large, about as suspicious as a grown cat could be at all, which was to say: fairly. More suspicious, or at the very least confusing, was the way it sat down on its impossibly fluffy rump and stared at the demon with big, golden eyes. It continued staring at him, even as it began to lick innocently at its own paw. Such a gesture might have been perceived as a threat - nay, a dare, and then Crowley remembered that it was just a cat, and that any perceived goading was entirely fictional.
Aziraphale glanced up from his book and made a sudden sound of delight, excitedly abandoning his champagne and making his way towards the cat, which leaned away from him in apparent aversion.
“Oh, yes! I completely forgot! How scatterbrained I can be. Crowley, this is Oscar! Isn’t she absolutely gorgeous?” Aziraphale cooed, bending down and very cautiously attempting to pet Oscar on the head, only laughing with affection (and nervousness) when he was met with a few hard swipes in return.
“You got a cat?” Crowley pushed, observing the scene over the top rim of his sunglasses.
“Yes, well … I didn’t get her in so much as she just kind of wandered in a few days ago and doesn’t seem to want to leave. I put up posters around the area -“
“You know how to use a printer?”
Aziraphale shifted a little, twisting the gold ring on his little finger this way and that.
“Well, I …. Well, no, actually, I just sort of … drew her and then used my finest calligraphy to detail just where she might be found.”
“Oh, I see,” Crowley replied, nodding in mock satisfaction. “I know for a fact that your calligraphy is impossible to read and I will also make a fairly educated guess that your instructions are about as easy to make sense of as your opening times. Is that right?”
“I don’t think I entirely know what you’re implying. All the more, Crowley, she could have been lost or even abandoned and I have done absolutely nothing, um, morally ambiguous in not encouraging her to leave.”
The demon slowly stood and made his way to the desk where various books lay open and strewn about. Shifting a particular hefty copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes, he discovered one of these hastily made posters which featured a cat that had been drawn more to resemble the odd beasts medieval mankind considered felines on their tapestries of Olde. Underneath, the passage read thus:
A catte of a cloudly exterior was dyscovered this daye of Tues within a particular book shoppe of note. Of lengthe it is perhaps a foote, perhaps two, or hence a measuremente betweeneth the two, maybe or maybe notte including the candyflosse white taile. The catte, which coulde be a dogge undercover, does notte answer to any of thy typicalle catte naymes, including Snowballe, Tigger, Felix, nor even Shadowe. Any enquiries, aske at the aforementioned shoppe.
Raising his eyebrows, Crowley took off his sunglasses and looked at Aziraphale, who mysteriously appeared somewhat uncomfortable.
“Why’s it written in Middle English, then?” Crowley asked, and then his gaze skirted over the open pages of Troilus and Criseyde. “Ah! I see Chaucer’s been helping you find Oscar’s home. Did you forget what century it is? Nobody is going to find their cat if it’s written like this, you know.”
“Don’t poke fun,” Aziraphale reprimanded guiltily. “Sometimes, I do just find myself drawn into those worlds.” Scratching idly at his blonde curls, he stared at his friend a moment longer before relenting dramatically with a sigh. “All right, Crowley, I will find Oscar’s home, even if it takes a thousand years, which is probably how long it will take to figure out a computer.”
“Well, I can help you there,” Crowley offered with a casual air, his lips turned upwards in a somewhat fond half-smile. “Cats don’t tend to live for a thousand years, so we’d best get a shifty on, eh?”
The angel pouted slightly in response and bent to pick up Oscar, who had been silently tolerating the presence of the two men about as easily as a feline might appreciate the company of a particularly yappy dog. She seemed shocked to suddenly be within Aziraphale’s arms and allowed him a moment of false hope before she aggressively stretched her back legs to push his arm as far away from her as possible, clawing at his sleeve. With another sigh, Aziraphale put her back down and turned his attentions back to his friend.
“I suppose you are less inclined for mischief now, hm?” He asked with a slight twitch of his eyebrows.
“Well, that, and also ‘cause I know you couldn’t live with the thought of some kid missing their favourite pet, Shnookums or whatever cursed thing they’ve named it, and I can’t go around causing trouble if you’re too upset to thwart it, so …”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right.” Aziraphale sniffed. “Well, what are you up to today, then?”
Crowley thought for a moment.
“Fancy the zoo?”
The bright smile he received in response solidified the day’s plans.
It happened the same way every morning. Since the Anticlimactic Apocalypse, that is. For various reasons, the pair had found themselves in a position where it seemed more beneficial to them both to wade through the mire of uncertainty together. There was no telling what laid beyond every corner - sometimes a figure all in black, peering over the top of a newspaper in their direction, sometimes a figure in a pastel suit with a permanent expression of distaste. Sometimes, apparently, it was a cat with a pink collar, which took to brushing up against Crowley’s legs while his friend was off getting ready for the day.
Leaning down, he picked up the creature and held it level to his face, peering into those big, golden eyes. It did not seem to mind his proximity as much as it had minded Aziraphale’s.
“Oscar, was it?” Crowley asked the cat gruffly. “You’d better start being nice to him, or you’re going from Persian to Sphinx with a pair of blunt scissors, my friend.”
It wasn’t as easy to rattle a cat as it was a plant.
Once the cat was safely locked away back in the bookshop, Crowley led the way out into the hot Summer day. The blistering heat currently baking London did not bother him as much as it seemed to bother everybody else, particularly, though he had long since learnt from the natives to complain about it at every ample opportunity if only for the purposes of not drawing suspicion.
“Bloody hot, innit?” he announced, opening the passenger side door for Aziraphale before making his way around to the driver’s seat. By the grace of a miracle, entering the car was like sliding into the contained chill of an Autumn day, his hair even shifting a little in a cool breeze that certainly did not persist on the outside. With a small nod of acknowledgement towards his friend, who was fanning away the light sheen of perspiration on his face, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a brand spanking new Samsung Galaxy.
In his peripheral vision, he saw Aziraphale stop fanning himself with the crossword magazine that had somehow found its way into the dashboard storage.
“What is that?” They both said in unison, Aziraphale out of shock and Crowley rather terribly imitating said shock.
“Don’t make fun!” They both said in unison again.
“It’s a mobile phone, angel. Obviously,” Crowley explained, reaching around towards the backseat.
“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve been drawn into all -“
“Look, I picked you up a white one, see? I even set it up and everything!” Tossing a white box into his friend’s lap, he watched him expectantly. “I know that your limit technology wise doesn’t surpass 1950-whatever, but I can’t rely on you being in your bookshop when I need to get hold of you, right, so you’re gonna have to suck it up, I’m afraid. Just don’t forget to charge it. It’s like taking care of, uh … of an animal,” Crowley suggested with a casual air, trying to lessen the impact of the information. “Only you can talk to me with it and do all kinds of other useful stuff. See?”
Turning on his phone’s front camera, he leaned towards Aziraphale and held it up, smiling a beatific and toothy smile while the angel appeared intense and perplexed beside him. Aziraphale jumped slightly at the resultant snap of the picture being taken.
“Look, look at this, I can make it my wallpaper - like a background - like this -“
“I have never seen you smile like that,” Aziraphale managed, an expression of concern overriding his previous confusion. “ Ever. Look, why would you - no, no, absolutely not, you must take it again! I look terrible, and I’m not even looking at you - Crowley!! Stop it at once,” he insisted upon finding the camera now thrust towards his face, and he laughed awkwardly. “Oh, all right, fine! So long as it’s both of us looking like utter fools.”
The resultant photo was anything but foolish. With an approving nod, Crowley decided to save it and reached for the wire dangling from the recently miraculously modified dashboard, plugging it in. Pursing his lips with momentary concentration, he found the new playlist that he liked and started it up, interrupting Aziraphale’s poking and prodding of his own phone.
“It plays music, too? Without a rec- CD?”
“Yup,” Crowley answered proudly. “Got nearly the whole of Earth’s discography right here at our fingertips. What do you fancy, angel?”
There was a brief pause as Crowley started up the car and set them on their way to a catchy pop-rock tune that befitted the bright, sunny day.
“Oh, well, I think that this will do quite nicely,” Aziraphale responded contentedly. “Sometimes, you really can be quite k-“
“Say it and I’ll drive us into the next building, inevitably discorporating us both.”
“Well,” the angel huffed lightly, “I think you know that will lead to something of an awkward conversation for both of us and our respective peers.”
Much to the dismay of the zookeepers, the animals decided that they would behave particularly oddly that day. The people, in their ignorance, put it down to utter vexation towards the unnatural heat blazing down upon wet, mild London, perhaps forgetting that many of the creatures present would call such tropical conditions home. The truth was that animals had more eyes to see than most humans did, and could sense that an angel and demon were strolling past their enclosures, though they could not fully understand just what an angel and a demon were. They only understood how it made them feel, and that was, for lack of a better term, strange .
Said angel and demon made their way towards one enclosure in particular, one holding a steadily dripping ice cream and the other a red ice lolly that was drooping in the heat. The two of them had abandoned their respective jackets in the car, and Aziraphale had even rolled up the usually neatly pressed sleeves of his shirt to his elbows. He was starting to get to grips with the camera on his brand new phone and was taking pictures of anything of interest - which in London Zoo was literally everything.
“Angel, that phone, like most things, has a limited capacity, you might find,” Crowley informed him, “though I’m impressed that you’re so open to it.”
“Well, I’m still not sure that I understand entirely,” his friend admitted, sucking the melted remnants of his ice lolly from its wooden stick and dropping it into a bin as they passed. “I suppose humans are so, what’s the word … trapped by the knowledge of their own mortality that it seems important to capture every passing moment to immortalise it in some way.”
“Looks like you’ve taken that idea and run with it.”
The pair entered a forested enclosure with a short walk-way. Inside, the animals within were hollering deafeningly, screaming at the tops of their little lungs. Their keeper was peering up into the trees, scratching her head, apparently at a loss for just what had gotten into the troupe of monkeys bounding spiritedly through the branches.
“Looks like they’ve got the devil in them today,” Crowley called to her from the other side of the walk-way fence, and then he waved at her when she turned to shoot him an entirely unimpressed look.
The monkeys, specifically black-capped squirrel monkeys, certainly seemed excitable, especially now that the causes of their excitement were stood inside the make-shift rainforest. It wasn’t often that celestial entities stopped by to say hello, or even stopped by to do anything in particular.
“Did you do something, Crowley?” Aziraphale asked pointedly. Crowley seemed wounded by the accusation.
“Wasn’t me,” he insisted. “I’d have found it funnier if it was.”
They moved on a little way, deeper into the rainforest. Monkeys weren’t the only denizens of this particular enclosure; there was the occasional sloth hanging up in the trees, too. Crowley smirked up at their fuzzy backs. He liked sloths, he found them quite amusing for some reason, though the continuous screeching of the monkeys served to distract him somewhat. Aziraphale seemed similarly affected, and the demon caught his friend glancing at him every now and again. It usually meant that there were words to be spoken but it didn’t quite seem the right time to do it.
“What?” Crowley insisted. “I can shut them up if you want, but it wasn’t me -“
“No,” Aziraphale answered, startled. “No, no, it’s not that.”
“Then what?”
“Well, I was just … Why did you get me the mobile phone, exactly? So that you can get hold of me? Preserve some memories in digital form?” The angel stopped suddenly, his eyes widening a little in apparent dismay, though he seemed to try and collect himself as quickly as he could. “Oh, I see. Are you … going somewhere, then?” Aziraphale attempted a botched smile. “How lovely. Some sort of holiday? Of the beach kind or the more, um … celestial kind?”
Crowley’s eyebrows almost met his hairline. He turned, peering at his friend over his sunglasses.
“Why? What’re you scared of?”
The monkeys insisted on howling even louder than before. Their hoots and hollers seemed to be getting closer.
“I’m not scared, Crowley. I’m just wondering, that’s all.”
The statement hung for a moment.
“You are scared,” the demon pointed out brazenly. “What you’re scared of is the reason I got you the phone. You don’t have to rely on that old, dodgy little telephone anymore, do you?”
“You seem to be worryingly sure that something is going to happen!”
Crowley stared hard at the earthy ground, counting all of the twigs and dead leaves and bugs crawling happily about the soil. Over their heads, the shrieking of the monkeys mysteriously ceased, much to his relief. The demon rubbed at the inside of his ear as he chanced a glance up, and he found Aziraphale with his eyes closed in concentration.
It wasn’t only the monkeys that felt the pulse of Serenity from below. The zookeeper nearby felt a sudden shift in her mood, and resumed her day whistling an inane little tune, walking off to prepare the monkeys’ food. The bats felt it, the bugs in the mud, and the sloths felt it enough that one of them relaxed so much it simply dropped from the branch it had been hanging onto (by some miracle, it landed safely onto a bed of leaves that certainly had not been there moments ago).
Crowley felt it, too, though was less able to be affected by it than God’s mere beasts. It simply felt like a warmth brushing at his skin and seeking entry, one significantly more pleasant than the sunlight streaming mercilessly down from above.
“Nothing’s going to happen. It’s just …”
“Insurance?” Aziraphale offered morosely, opening his eyes.
“Right. Uh, speaking of which …”
If there was anything Crowley could sense, it would probably be disappointment.
The calmed black-capped squirrel monkeys quietly made their way down the tree trunks nearby and ambled lithely up to the pair. A few of them sat around Crowley’s ankles and stared up at him with prehistoric curiosity, scratching at their little pink chins. The others, greater in number, flocked to Aziraphale and began to climb upon his person, much to his evident dismay, though the angel simply refused to move as about ten of the monkeys decided he would be a good place to sit and relax. Two of them groomed at his pale hair, another pulled at his ear as if to see if it would pry off, and if not for the prior conversation, Crowley would have been creased up with laughter.
The demon fought not to smirk, trying to stay on the topic at hand.
“You want holy water,” Aziraphale said, his voice steadily increasing in pitch as tiny monkey feet pulled and grabbed at his clothes. “Is that what this is all about?”
“You know that we’re being watched, so it’s hardly a bad idea, is it? I can splash some demons with holy water, and you can get a hold of me more easily so I can come and … and blast some angels with hellfire, or something. I can help you like you’re helping me, ‘cause that holy water, it really did save my life that time, you know.”
Aziraphale sighed, and the monkey hugging his neck sighed, too.
“All right, Crowley, I’ll do what I can. Just … be careful with it, or I shan’t forgive you.”
Surprised by the outcome, the demon’s snake-like eyes lit up somewhat, and he smiled at his friend in gratitude.
“Oh. Thanks, man.”
“Don’t mention it. Really. I can hardly bear the thought of you carrying something like that around.”
“No, I know.” Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Crowley snapped a picture of the poor, disgruntled angel before him covered head to toe in curious mammals. “D’you think they’re attracted to your holiness or something? Maybe there’s some ancestral memory of you in the Garden of Eden?”
“Whatever it is, it’s beside the point,” Aziraphale insisted grumpily, moving to stand next to a tree in the vain hope that the monkeys might abandon him for it. “I’d rather like to go home now. It’s too hot.”
Crowley pouted in an attempt to conceal any trace of guilt that might have made itself manifest on his exterior.
“You know I’m not about sizzling myself out of existence with your holy juice, right?”
With a snap of his fingers, he miracled other Ideas into the minds of the monkeys, and just like that, they all clambered down from their angelic perch and scuttled away to do whatever it was that monkeys did to occupy their time. Aziraphale brushed himself down somewhat sheepishly.
“I know. I trust you, Crowley. I just need some time to make you water of the sort of potency that might destroy such a thing as a demon lord. Not that … not that it’s going to come to that.”
“It’s not,” Crowley agreed.
The trip back to the car was quiet.
Every part of the country had its own unique brand of weird. Weird persisted, in some form, within the very earth, the rains that fell upon the land. Some places, however, were weirder than others; perhaps it was a certain disposition of its people, the things they said and how they said them, or perhaps it was the way the landscape never looked the same for any two days, trees and rocks moving about of their own accord when no eyes were set upon them. Sometimes it was the mysterious and undocumented creatures that popped up uninvited.
Sometimes, it was all of those things at once.
Somewhere along the south coast of England was an island. There were many islands along the coast, but this was the one known as the Island. It was fairly small, dotted with higgledy-piggledy villages with their higgledy-piggledy houses, with the occasional crumbling castle overlooking the English Channel. Shadows haunted every nook, every bunny-hole of the island, and that was the way the locals liked it.
Some of them had never even left. They had everything they needed there on that small spit of limestone, and anyone in a vague direction northwards was considered too far away and not worth knowing.
On the bill of this island sat a lonely lighthouse. It was tall and white with a red stripe painted across its girth. This lighthouse, lonely as it was out there among flattened green fields and rugged cliff-faces, was very important.
In the depths of night, a man sat in his car in the car park nearby. The lighthouse was some distance away, but the blue-ish white beam of light stretching out across the eternally tumultuous waters was as bright as the moon itself. Beside him, a little girl of about seven yawned and rested her head on her elbow, blearily following the rapturous gaze of her father towards the point of the island.
“What’s it for?” She asked, indulging her father in his late night trip to bring her to see the lighthouse in all its glory. She already knew what it was for, of course.
“That, my girl, is the beating heart of this place. It’s light cuts clean through the darkness, doesn’t it? You see, out there ‘neath the waves is a danger that has taken the lives of many good men. It’s called the Shambles. You can’t see it, but as soon as the tide drops … boom! Shipwrecked and drowned. The sea is a deceptive and cruel mistress.”
“Why’s the sea a lady?” The girl asked. Her father blanked and cleared his throat.
“The sea is deceptive and cruel. Look at how the waves climb the cliffs without end, crashing into each other. It’s because there are opposing tides out there, one’s going one way and the other’s going … the other. It’s like an eternal battle the sea fights with itself. Can you hear it?”
The girl couldn’t hear it, but she had heard it some of the other times her father had brought her to the Bill to tell her the very same story. She nodded reactively, watching a herring gull strut past her window.
“While there’s people on this planet, that lighthouse can never go out at night. Its light protects all the brave souls out there driving Her Majesty’s ships. Aye, and what a beautiful sight it is,” the man sighed. “Well, best get you to back bed so you’re not missing school tomorrow, eh?”
“Can we go to the pirate graveyard after school tomorrow?” His daughter asked, perking up a great deal. “Find a pirate ghost?”
“Yeah, yeah, we can find a pirate ghost. And we’ll run him through with his own decapitated leg, arrrr!”
Out there on the Bill, the lighthouse shone and shone and shone.