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The first drops of rain struck, heavy and slow, then disappeared into Aziraphale’s robe and the dust around his feet. He glanced around at the crowd; half of them were peering up into the clouds and grumbling, the other half gathering their children and starting to disperse.
“Well, I suppose that’s the start of that,” Aziraphale mumbled, more to himself than to Crawley.
“Suppose it is,” Crawley agreed. “You going to wait it out Above, I take it?”
Aziraphale blinked as a particularly fat raindrop splashed across the bridge of his nose. “My official assignment is to close the door of the ark once Noah and his boys have the entire menagerie safely onboard,” he said. “I hadn’t thought much past that.” Immediately he felt stupid; what if the demon decided to foil him by taking the door off, or something similarly devious?
Crawley trailed a toe through the rapidly dampening dust. “Right,” he said, looking back at the now more rapidly scattering crowd. “Probably best if I leave too, then.” He blinked at a particularly bright flash of lightning, then searched Aziraphale’s face. “This is the epicenter, yeah? Flood starts here and works outwards?”
“I suspect so,” Azirapahle answered cautiously. “I wasn’t briefed on the whole plan.” He pulled his eyes away from the demon and watched Japheth round up a particularly excitable pair of antelope.
“Figured.” Crawley made a gesture that might have been a wave goodbye as he stalked back off towards the village.
Noah’s boys, it turned out, were running behind schedule. By the time Aziraphale had helped them corner the last hyena and fastened the door behind them, the rain was coming down in sheets and the ground around the ark had been churned first to mud, then to a slurry, by a stampede’s worth of hooves and paws. When the angel slid the last two boards in place and nailed them down, he realized one extra reason this task had been assigned to one of the heavenly host; for a human, it was already nearly too dark to see.
He was searching for a place to stow the hammer when an even darker figure loomed out of the storm. “Aziraphale!” Crawley hissed suddenly in his ear. “Please, I need your help!”
“Why on Earth would I help you?” Aziraphale wondered aloud. “I thought you were leaving!” He shifted the hammer in his hand; he had the vague notion that he should make it clear he was armed, despite having no inclination to try fighting the demon.
“I did,” Crawley confessed. “I came back. Look, angel - the kids. I know you can’t go against orders and save them, but right now - I checked up both the Tigris and the Euphrates, and it’s raining just as hard upriver. It may take forty days and forty nights to flood all of Sumer, but it’s only going to take one day of this to fill this valley, and these are all mud-brick houses. They’re going to collapse once the foundations soak through.” He waved a hand in the direction of the village. “And it’s coming down warm, not cold. They’re not going to succumb to hypothermia first; these kids are going to die trapped and screaming, angel. They’re going to be stuck under their own roof-beams watching the water rise up their bodies until it closes over their heads.”
Aziraphale shivered, despite Crawley being right about the rain being fairly warm. “I can’t do anything about it,” he shouted over another roll of thunder. “I told you - I don’t make policy, Crawley.” His lack of authority rolled into a ball in his stomach and sat there like a ball of hot lead.
“I thought of something I can do that I think I can justify to my superiors,” Crawley shouted back. Water sheeted down his face; he was taking the brunt of the wind between them. “As, you know, thwarting God’s intent. But I imagine you could probably justify it too, to your higher-ups, as a final act of mercy. If you want to try.”
“If you’re asking me to kill them now and put them out of their misery,” Aziraphale shrieked as the wind picked up, “I am absolutely not going to do that. Out of the question.” The lump in his innards sank. It might be kinder, but even if he wasn’t pretty sure the Archangels would fail to draw the distinction between mercy killing and murder, he didn’t particularly relish having to find out whether he was capable of the deed or not. He remembered the hammer in his hand, and pitched it frantically over his shoulder into the muck.
“No!” Crawley recoiled like a snake drawing back to strike. “Nothing that drastic, angel. I’m going to put as many of them - all of them, kids and adults too - to sleep. They’ll just never wake up.” His eyes bored into Aziraphale’s, golden and hypnotic. “But that’s a lot of miracles, angel. I can’t get them all, not before enough of them realize what’s going on and start a panic. I need help. I need your help!”
“I-” Aziraphale considered that while a gust flattened the fence they’d been leaning on. The ground was already turning to mush. “Yes,” he said, softer, almost too quiet to hear over the wind. “That I can do.” Gabriel would ask why, but he could justify it as a precaution for Noah’s sake, in case they tried to rush the ark and break into it before it was fully afloat.
It was still heartbreaking work, as they went from hut to hut, easing weeping children and villagers staring terrified at the churning sky into calm slumber. Small miracles, but tricky ones, coaxing pounding hearts to slow and reddened eyes to close. By the time they got to the end of the village, Aziraphale was exhausted.
“I should be getting back to make sure the ark is holding up,” he said, leaning into Crawley. Rainwater the exact temperature of a nice bath dripped from the demon’s hair into his own.
Crawley wiped his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Check up on all the wee beasties; they’re going to be panicking, too, without a few miracles.”
“You’re probably right about that,” Aziraphale agreed. “Don’t - don’t feel like you need to stay around to make sure they stay asleep; I’ll check on them once before I leave.”
“Will you now?” Crawley seemed surprised at that. “I might be around a little longer, might not. Depends on how fast the water rises.”
“That’s all right, then,” Aziraphale said, trying to sound cheerful. That was probably a lost cause, given that ‘cheerful’ was not in the top fifty things he was feeling, but he felt like letting a member of the Other Side know exactly how conflicted he was at the moment was a Bad Idea. He spread his wings and sprang into the air; the wind was swift and strong enough he barely had to beat them twice, just keep a tight grip on what direction he was flying.
The ark smelled of dry hay and wet fur, and sounded like nothing Aziraphale could remember, with all the bleating and the buzzing and the roaring and the lowing and so many other noises rattling around the decks and echoing off the walls. It was so loud he could barely hear the thunder. Shem’s wife was already in tears at the cacophony, and possibly also the smell, although to be honest it wasn’t that bad yet - manure was as yet only an undertone.
Aziraphale made the rounds from deck to deck, patting a muzzle here, letting a bird perch on his shoulder there, and by the time he’d made his way back to the top deck the menagerie was much calmer, although saying it was much quieter would be stretching things. At least the prey animals weren’t screaming in terror at their predators’ scent being constantly up their noses anymore. He promised Naamah he’d be back at least once before ascending to the heavens, and stepped out onto the top of the ark.
The valley was already ankle-deep in water, or at least mud that was so thin it was flowing. The scaffolding that braced the ark was listing in places, as the ground underneath became too fluid to keep it steady. The rain coming down was still bath-warm and filled the air; if Aziraphale had needed to breathe, he might have found it difficult.
In the middle of the village, on what had once been the dirt track that served as the main road and was now a babbling creek, a shadowed figure piled a bundle onto a wagon.
Aziraphale bristled. Looters? Had they missed someone, and they’d decided to try to make off with everyone’s worldly goods while they slept? The lead ball in his stomach bubbled into anger; Aziraphale spread his wings again and swooped down to dissuade the thief. Not that anyone was going to make it out of this valley with any of their material possessions, but it was the principle of the thing. He vaguely wished he hadn’t thrown the hammer away.
He dropped into the road in front of the cart and immediately sank up to his ankles in the mud. Drawing up to his full height anyway, he flared his wings. “Halt!” he shouted, as the dark figure reappeared out of the next hut.
“Shush, angel,” Crawley growled. “You’ll wake them back up again, and then we’ll be back at square one.”
Aziraphale blinked the rain out of his eyes and scanned the wagon. It was hitched to a mismatched pair of draft animals, one an elderly-looking donkey, the other the unicorn Shem had lost earlier, and it was piled with sleeping children, stacked like cordwood. Crawley added the bundle in his arms to the pile and turned away again. Silently, Aziraphale watched Crawley fetch three more unconscious forms, a gangly teenager and two toddlers, from the last two huts on the street as the angel’s feet sank deeper and deeper into the mud.
He waited until Crawley climbed up onto the wooden slat that served the cart for a driver’s perch. “What are you doing?” Aziraphale asked, still not moving.
“I’m taking them somewhere else,” Crowley said simply. “As far away as possible, and hoping your team doesn’t notice they’re missing when they do their body count. Assuming they even bother with that.” He gathered up the dripping reins. “I was thinking the highlands of New Guinea might be nice this time of year.”
Azirapahle nodded. “Very likely,” he said. “Plenty of little islands out of the way in that general vicinity, too.” The anger in his throat settled back down into something heavy, but not quite so lumpy as before.
An ominous grinding noise emanated from one of the huts; the reed thatching trembled as a corner settled a few inches into the mud.
Crawley speared Aziraphale with a glare. “I’m leaving, angel,” he growled, “and I’m taking them with me. These sinners don’t drown here tonight.”
The rain can’t be too holy, if he’s still out here in it. The thought seemed incongruous; Azirapahle shook his head to clear it. “I don’t intend to stop you,” he said, holding his hands out, palms open and turned upwards. “I have the ark to look after, after all. I can’t spend valuable time chasing you around out in this storm.” He looked up at another flash of lightning; for a moment, his and Crawley’s faces were both perfectly illuminated.
Aziraphale was only slightly surprised to see that they were both crying.
“Go in peace,” he said, lowering his hands.
“Not bloody likely,” Crawley replied, but his expression softened. The reins flicked in his hands; the cart wheels slowly sucked themselves out of the mud and churned down the stream-bed that had once been a road. The donkey and the unicorn surged forward in their mismatched harnesses, hooves churning at the muck beneath them. The cargo mumbled in its sleep.
Aziraphale attempted to take a step back and discovered that he was now calf-deep in the mud, with the water nearly to his knees. He grabbed at the wall of the hut behind him; half a brick crumbled in his hands. Struggling against the increasing current, he worked his feet out of the muck; neither sandal came with them. Oh, well. He hadn’t been all that fond of that pair, anyway.
“Hiyah!” Crawley flared his wings and snapped the reins smartly. The old burro redoubled its efforts, straining to get traction and somehow finding just enough to keep the cart rolling forward, gaining speed despite everything. The unicorn tossed its mane, still marble-white despite the rain and mud; its horn glowed, then flared, then for a bare second outshone the lightning.
As the glare died down, the cart was gone, muddy rivulets swirling into the ruts where its wheels had been.
Aziraphale hadn’t known unicorns could do that. Perhaps they only could with a demon at the reins. He wondered whether this one spooking on Shem earlier was a coincidence; Crawley had noticed it first, after all.
The west wall of one of the huts turned into a landslide in miniature. Aziraphale noticed a pair of wings the exact shade of the midnight sky flicker at the corner of his eye, and turned away. He was more than willing to let the expert handle that part.
He didn’t exactly feel like flying, though. Silt ran between his toes as he trudged through knee-high water back to the ark, to protect those who had been chosen.
Perhaps, assuming that neither Aariel nor Gabriel put him on paperwork duty for this, he could check up on Crawley later. Certainly he would have his hands full, finding foster parents for an entire wagon of children. And Aziraphale had never seen New Guinea before. And someone should make sure that all these children who had been cruelly kidnapped by a demon were all right. Surely no one could object to that, even if the children had been doomed and marked for death.
Yes. Aziraphale would just have to pop round at some point and make sure they all found homes. It was the least non-merciful thing an angel could do.