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“Be funny if we both got it wrong, eh? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?”
As an angel Aziraphale is tasked with guiding human souls down the path of righteousness, encouraging goodness, and thwarting demonic attempts to lead them astray. The thing is, sometime in the last few thousand years humans have gotten a bit hazy on the concept of what is Right. Once you start sacrificing virgins because you’ve convinced yourself it will protect your village from evil spirits it all starts to go downhill. Aziraphale tells himself that people generally have the best intentions, but what was that saying about the road to Hell and what it’s paved with?
The rules used to be simple: Don’t murder, respect your parents, give thanks for what you’ve been given, etc. But the humans have been making up their own rules for so long they’ve lost track of what’s real. So every now and then, Aziraphale sees someone caught up in the thrill of power, the misplaced sense that the Almighty is on their side, about to cause harm to another for no good reason, and intervenes.
Huge, timeline-shifting miracles are off the table, as they draw the attention of the head office and would probably be undone in short order. Certainly the Spanish Inquisition was a nasty business that Aziraphale would have gladly avoided. Still, throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries more than one old spinster living alone found herself in receipt of a letter urgently summoning her to the deathbed of a distant, dying relative, leaving her house vacant mere hours before a group of rough types showed up intent on sticking her full of pins. It wouldn’t do, he tells himself, for humans to go around thinking they have all the answers.
For instance, one summer in the first decade of the twenty-first century Aziraphale got wind that a local church was planning on disrupting the London Pride Parade to the best of their abilities with a large and angry protest. But, if the deviled eggs served at that week’s prayer meeting happened to have gone off, and all the members of said group spent the weekend confined to their bathrooms with a stomach bug, who’s to say it wasn’t random chance? Being told they were going to hell never stopped anyone being who they were, one might argue, and in any case cruelty to one’s neighbors did not qualify as an act of righteousness in Aziraphale’s book.
Thus we may gaze down upon the festivities and see not a single picket sign concerning hell and who is going there. Instead we pan over the rainbow-bedecked crowd and zoom in on a halo of white curls to find Aziraphale, munching on candy floss with a beatific smile on his face. He sighs in contentment. Although head office does, if pressed, have some very specific things to say about homosexuality, Aziraphale is still a being of love. He can't resist the draw of a huge group of people gathered to celebrate love, all united with their joy pointing in the same direction. It's intoxicating. Perhaps that's why his peripheral awareness is slightly dimmed and he collides with a fair-haired young woman who is crossing in front of him. Their feet become entangled and they both end up sprawled on the ground.
"Oh shit, oh, I'm so sorry!" The girl scrambles to her feet and turns to help a startled but unharmed Aziraphale up. "Are you alright sir?"
"No harm done at all, my dear. Not a scratch on either of us." And if that wasn't true a moment ago, it is now. The girl looks as if she's about to cry and Aziraphale searches for something reassuring to say. "It's too joyous of a day to get upset over small things." This seems to miss the mark as she only grimaces.
"Sorry, it's just that I've lost my wallet and now I'm all out of sorts."
The angel realizes his mistake and shifts tack. "Oh goodness, what a shame. Do you know where you last had it?"
"I think at the coffee shop up the road; that's where I was headed just now in such a hurry."
"Well then don't let me detain you. I do hope you find it, and that you enjoy the rest of the festival!"
"Thank you sir, you as well," she says, and dashes off into the crowd.
Aziraphale straightens his jacket, looks forlornly at his now trampled candy floss, and glances up at the girl's disappearing back. With a blink of his eyes he knows that her wallet is lying in a gutter some blocks in the other direction, and with another blink he now knows that it is tucked safely behind the counter of the cafe she is about to enter. Perhaps it’s a bit mundane for a miracle. But Aziraphale is glad to add in some small way to the general pool of love that today softens the edges of an often sharp and uncaring city.
+++
As a demon it’s Crowley’s job to lead humans astray and tempt them to sin, and most of the time he finds it all too easy. Hardly enough of a challenge to be fun. Humans invented rape, the Holocaust, and caffeine-free diet cola all on their own. Watching all this chaos unfold from close up, but with the long view of millenia, Crowley can’t help but be impressed. Impressed, and sometimes unsettled. Some of these things the humans come up with are simply too much, even by demonic standards. Sometimes he sees an act of cruelty and thinks to himself, ‘That’s not in the spirit of the game. Hell was made to shift the status quo, not hammer it into place. Evil is a necessary by-product of chaos, not the reason for it.’
In short, the most human demon in the world can’t stand some things that crawl from the depths of human imagination. And so every once in a while, he meddles. Subtly, of course. No parting of seas or rains of manna from hea-- from the sky, but he has been known to gently bend the arc of an event so that it leads, if not exactly to a pot of gold, at least to a lower average level of innocent suffering. Perhaps one night in a war-torn country a number of civilian families all have similar foreboding dreams that inspire them to pack up and leave town just before a group of armed insurgents arrives. A child’s life cut needlessly short will send their soul straight to heaven by default, Crowley reasons, so it actually behooves the demonic hosts to allow more of them to grow up and develop their natural tendencies towards either sin or righteousness. Informed choice and all that. And heaven loves a martyr, so if events transpire so that there are fewer martyrs, well, so much the better.
Late one evening in the second decade of the twenty-first century we find Crowley skulking about Soho vaguely searching for an opportunity to cause mischief, but finding the market rather saturated. London is already a den of iniquity without his help and he is contemplating going home and sleeping for a few days when two young women, one fair and one dark, stumble out of a bar holding hands. Crowley doesn’t spare them a thought until he overhears a few drunken male voices muttering things like “S’not right… bloody indecent… ought to be taught a lesson…” and realizes the night is about to get interesting. ‘Oh, no you don’t, that’s just unsporting,’ he thinks. Nothing rebellious about taking your frustrations out on innocent people.
Crowley watches the young couple turn down a side street, hoping he had misread the situation, but is unsurprised when a pair of the lads stumble after them. He simply groans and undrapes himself from the lamppost to follow. Around the corner the girls are giggling, gently bumping into each other as they walk. The boys are trailing behind but creeping ever closer, until Crowley steps out of the shadows into their path.
“Oi, either of you gents got a light?” he asks.
“Bugger off,” the taller boy replies, and attempts to shoulder past, but finds Crowley’s outstretched arm quite immobile.
“Honestly, there’s no cause to be rude. Seems like you two have had a bit too much, maybe you ought to be getting home?” The girls have taken notice and stopped to see what the fuss is about.
“What gives you the right--” the other boy stops short when Crowley holds open his jacket as if to flash a badge. There is no badge of course, but it’s so very easy to make drunk people believe they see what you want them to see. Hardly even counts as a miracle. And just like that both boys seem to shrink, all bluster gone as they back away stammering about having things to do early in the morning. Crowley sighs dramatically and turns to see that the girls are still standing there watching him.
“Well?” he asks accusingly, as if they had inconvenienced him.
“Were they following us?”
“Got it in one!” He accompanies his answer with finger guns.
“Oh my god, I-- thanks, I guess? I mean, thanks so much!”
“Yeah, sure, fine. Just.” Another sigh, less dramatic. “Just look after each other, alright?”
The Good Book is distinctly mum on the subject of what two women might get up to in the privacy of their own chambers, but considering what it says about two gentlemen sharing company one might well assume it was a sin. And we can’t have bigoted morons potentially scare people into not sinning, can we? That would be entirely counterproductive. Best let them continue to sin, really let it build up in their systems until their time of judgement. At least this is what Crowley tells himself, as he personally feels that who people hold hands with is the business of nobody at all, including the Almighty.
+++
Now if one afternoon in the third decade of the twenty-first century a fair-haired young woman should wander into A. Z Fell And Co., looking as if she doesn’t entirely know how she got there, well, maybe this time it really is just a coincidence. The bell rings and the bookseller appears, slightly ruffled, from the back room to greet his patron.
“Welcome, my dear, what brings you here today?”
“Funniest thing really,” the young woman replies, “This place feels so familiar but I don’t think I’ve ever been in before? Only I must’ve been down this block an hundred times and just now noticed the place.”
“Happens more often than you’d think, people overlooking us for years until one day they find themselves in need of a book. Anything in particular you’re looking for?”
The young woman blinks a few times and seems to suddenly remember why she’s here. “Well, I want to propose to my girlfriend but I’m stumped on how to do it, have you got any, I dunno, romantic books? For inspiration?” Aziraphale’s smile, which until that moment had seemed a bit forced, grows warmer.
“That’s far from our specialty here, though I do have a few things you might like to peruse,” he says, indicating a small shelf in the corner. “However, if I may offer a few words of personal advice?” He pauses, then continues after her nod of interest, “The asking itself matters very little in the grand scheme of things. I had this elaborate game cooked up for my husband, with riddles and clues and all that, and he beat me to it by asking while we stood in line at the patisserie. If it’s meant to be, you’ll end up just as married either way.” His patron breathes out a shaky laugh.
“Thanks, that’s… That’s actually really reassuring. I know it’s really not what you say, it’s who you say it to. I will take a look at those books all the same though.”
“Certainly. Do let me know if--” Aziraphale starts to reply but is interrupted by an inhuman yet triumphant screech from the back room.
“Angel! Seventeen down was axiom , not adage ! Hah! I told you!” Aziraphale can only smile bemusedly, a faint pink touching his cheeks.
“Do give a shout if you need anything, I’ll just be in the back tending to some, ah, paperwork.”
This time no ethereal or occult powers are employed to help the fair-haired woman. Aziraphale can sense that she has found her own miracle already, just as he has found his.