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Crowley sat heavily upon the bench in St. James’ Park, slumping against the wooden back as the sun shone down from high above his head. He shifted uncomfortably underneath all of Aziraphale’s layers, tugging sharply at the bowtie until it came unraveled under his fingers and fell flat against his collar. Crowley sighed, pointedly not thinking about what Aziraphale would say if he had been there to witness Crowley’s disregard for the angel’s antique clothing. But Aziraphale wasn’t there, and that, Crowley thought to himself, is rather the problem, isn’t it.
Crowley had survived heaven. The hellfire hadn’t wounded him, the holiness of heaven had only just singed the tips of his wings, and the angels were properly frightened of him—or rather, of Aziraphale. Everything had gone exactly to plan. But now that he had done it Crowley, sat alone under the wrathful glare of the afternoon sun, could spare hardly a thought for Gabriel’s shocked expression or the glee with which he had spat hellfire in the body of an angel. Because he was still in the body of said angel. Because Aziraphale was still in hell.
Crowley hated to think of it. Despite the fact that they had switched bodies, Crowley couldn’t help but picture the soft, smiling angel, golden hair flickering like a halo in the dim fluorescence that passed for light in hell, surrounded by people who would be as happy to torture the body’s current inhabitant as they were the demon whom they thought they had apprehended. In heaven Crowley could, if he closed his eyes, briefly imagine that it was still where he belonged, relish the feeling of heat on his demon’s wings, pretending it was the tender warmth of divine love and not the blinding scorch of Her wrath, instead.
But Aziraphale could never belong in hell. Hell was torment, hell was pain and suffering and suspicion, and for being like Aziraphale, all kindness and optimism and faith, it would be like drowning, like struggling for air before being pulled under again. Crowley should know. He was aware, of course, that switching places was the only way for them both to survive, but now that he had returned safely from heaven, the thought of Aziraphale suffering in hell—and suffering for him, of all the stupid things to be suffering for—was making Crowley feel sick.
Crowley pulled the angel’s golden pocket watch from Aziraphale’s waistcoat, scowling at the minute hand as it marked ten minutes, thirty, sixty, ninety… The sun arced across the sky like a meteor; Crowley watched brokenly as it dipped beneath the hazy London horizon and his head fell heavily into his hands.
Aziraphale had not come. Aziraphale was not coming.
He had sent his angel into hell alone, and now his angel was not coming back. Had Beelzebub and the other demons figured it out immediately? Had Aziraphale nearly made it out, only to be discovered at the eleventh hour and dragged back to Hell’s waiting executioners? Had it been only a mistake, hellfire summoned for some other reason and the angel caught in the crossfire? Had Aziraphale seen it coming, or had it been a terrible surprise? Had he faced the fires of Hell with stubbornness and that soft courage he had always possessed, or had he allowed his fear to show on his face? Had he begged, had he screamed, had he cried out for the absent mercy of God? Had the angel died with Crowley’s name on his lips?
Crowley lurched to his feet like a man possessed, tears clinging to the lashes around his golden eyes as he shuddered and slouched down the path, a bottle of amber liquid that hadn’t been there before dangling precariously from his nearly limp fingers. He brought it, trembling, to his lips and took a long drink, the heat of it settling like a stone in his stomach as he stumbled toward his apartment.
Where else was there to go? What else was there to do? He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think, the haze of grief and alcohol casting black shadows over everything, he was groping blindly through the darkness for the only point of light he had known since he had been thrown from heaven, except now it was gone—
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil for You are with me…
Crowley barked out a bitter laugh as the verse came unbidden into his head, startling a small group of doves.
“Bullshit!” he scoffed, at no one in particular, watching as the doves flew into the lavender twilight. “Wasn’t ever ‘evil’ that was to be feared anyway, was it?!” he slurred, taking another long swig from the bottle in his hand that never seemed to get any emptier no matter how much he drank.
“I tried to reason with You,” Crowley continued, gesturing vaguely towards the dim evening sky. “Thought maybe—maybe after you didn’t test them to—to destruction after all that You—that we—but apparently I was wrong!”
Crowley laughed again, a twisted, mangled thing that escaped him more like a cry. He kicked a stone down the street, watching it with indifferent dissatisfaction as it tumbled across the pavement and landed harmlessly in a gutter.
“Look, I get it—you cast me out, you made your point, you don’t want to take my call, if you even did before—I just have one question.” He paused, as though expecting a response, and shrugged as though the silence gave him permission when none came.
“Are you fucking done?” he roared, sending a group of students walking on the other side of the street scattering as he shouted.
“Are you—are you fucking satisfied? Is this your idea of justice? To take the last good thing in my—in heaven, and destroy it, just to punish me? Because it can’t have been to punish him—he was only ever good! Can the Divine be so cruel, so vindictive, as to destroy such a shining piece of Herself?” He paused, wearing an expression that would have been thoughtful were it not so marred by drunkenness and grief as another verse crossed his mind.
What man can live and not see Death? Can save himself from the clutches of Sheol? O God, where is Your mercy now?
“What’s the point?” he continued quietly, brokenly. “I thought maybe, when we stopped Armageddon…maybe You had decided not to test them after all, maybe You were showing them—showing me—just a little bit of mercy. Loving-kindness and all that Avinu Malkeinu shit.” Crowley stopped, angrily wiping tears from his face as he entered his building.
“I see now,” he continued, his voice broken and venomous, torn between fury and heartbreak, “that I was wrong. If You can’t even summon even the tiniest bit of Divine mercy for an angel, the best damned angel, an angel whose only sin was to forgive, to love, eventhe cursed and miserable thing that You made me into—if You can find no mercy for him, there isn’t any for anyone.”
As Crowley opened the door and stumbled into his apartment he thought again of Aziraphale, thought of the tender smile he had worn when he had walked into Crowley’s apartment the night after the End of the World—and how he would never see that smile again, despite wearing the angel’s face for the rest of his wretched eternity. Rage welled like the tide in his chest, and he hurled the bottle in his hand to the floor, watching as glass scattered across the marble floor like the shattered crowns of light at the beginning of the world.
“If You won’t be persuaded by love,” he cried brokenly, standing amongst the shards of his bottle and feeling like the first Darkness to enter creation, “what about wrath?”
“I asked a question and you cast me out,” Crowley whispered solemnly, almost as if he were praying. “You threw me down, burned my wings and damned me for eternity—and it hurt, oh,God, it hurt—but You can do it again. Do it a thousand more times, do it every day, every hour, from now until the fucking end of time—but don’t—don’t take him. I—please.”
Crowley didn’t know how long he stood there, frozen amongst the wreckage of the end of his world, but his reverie was broken when he heard his own voice call to him from the doorway behind him.
“Crowley?”
The demon whirled around and found himself staring at his own face standing nervously at his door, hands wrung anxiously as he stared at Crowley.
“Az—Azira…” he trailed off as he watched the angel furrow his own brow and take tentative steps toward him, one hand outstretched.
“Crowley, my dear, thank goodness you’re here, I went to the park and you were gone, so I hoped perhaps you had come here because I had taken such a dreadfully long time—”
“You’re—you can’t, you aren’t—” Crowley stuttered, at a loss for words. Aziraphale seemed to misunderstand the expression and reached for Crowley’s hand.
“Ah, yes,” the angel muttered, “I’m sure you’re wanting to get back, let me just—”
Crowley felt a dizzying rush of heat and then found himself suddenly staring into Aziraphale’s concerned face instead of his own. The angel released Crowley’s hand and smoothed his waistcoat primly, then offered Crowley a shy smile.
“That’s better, isn’t it,” he said, looking down at his newly returned body and then back up at Crowley. But the satisfaction on the angel’s face evaporated when he saw Crowley stumbling away from him, face contorted in terror and grief.
“This can’t—you can’t really be—” Crowley slurred, shaking his head to clear the haze of alcohol, his eyes squeezed shut. When he opened them again and still found Aziraphale standing in the dim but sober light of his apartment, he started so violently that he tumbled backwards onto the floor, landing crumpled amongst the broken glass.
“Crowley!” the angel cried, rushing forward to catch him, but just a moment too late. With a snap of his fingers the glass was gone from the floor, and he knelt beside Crowley, who was watching the angel with an implacable expression somewhere between fear and awe.
“Aziraphale,” he breathed reverently, lifting his hands toward the angel, only dimly aware of the blood dripping down his wrists from the glass wedged into his palms. Aziraphale seemed unaware of Crowley’s revelation, however, his attention caught instead by the wounds on the demon’s hands.
“Oh, Crowley, what have you done,” he muttered, reaching for the demon’s hands, “let me just—”
“Aziraphale—” Crowley repeated hoarsely, his eyes still fixed on the angel’s face.
“—heal these right up, poor dear, and then I—”
“Angel,” Crowley tried again, his voice firmer this time but no less reverent. The angel seemed still not to hear him; he had healed one of Crowley’s hands and had just barely gotten hold of the other when Crowley abruptly yanked his arm away from Aziraphale’s gentle grip.
“Leave it!” the demon barked angrily, hating himself the instant the rebuke left his lips as the angel let his hand drop, fear flashing in his blue eyes.
“Aziraphale, please,” Crowley pleaded, not knowing what he was asking but asking nonetheless. He lifted a bloodied hand slowly, gently, to cradle Aziraphale’s face. Aziraphale grimaced at Crowley’s wounds but said nothing, watching with wide eyes as Crowley caressed his cheek, streaks of bright crimson trailing behind his feather-light touch.
“Oh, angel,” Crowley said weakly, tears glittering in his eyes, “I thought you were dead.”
This soft confession seemed to be all that was holding Crowley up, having let it out he collapsed forward like a puppet whose strings had been cut. But instead of crashing into the unforgiving marble of his apartment floor he found himself pressed against something soft and warm, his tears falling into soft cream-colored linen as he sobbed into Aziraphale’s shoulder.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured brokenly, cradling the demon’s head with one hand and tenderly rubbing his back with the other. “I’m so sorry, they took so long to decide what to do with me, made such a fuss out of bringing the holy water—I was starting to think they might never let me out, that they were going to—”
A muffled but anguished whine from Crowley reminded Aziraphale that this was perhaps not the time to tell him about these anxieties, so he shushed the demon gently and ran gentle fingers through his hair instead.
“I’m here, Crowley,” Aziraphale said after a moment. “I’m here now, my dear, and you’re here, and it’s going to be alright.”
Crowley didn’t answer but tightened his grip on Aziraphale, fingers twisting themselves fiercely into the fabric of the angel’s jacket. Aziraphale shushed the demon again and pulled back just slightly, just enough to gently pry Crowley’s injured hand from where it was tangled in the now blood-stained linen, brushing a hand over the gashes and leaving soft and pink new skin everywhere they touched. Crowley watched his ministrations silently, trying to control the tremors wracking his body that he knew the angel could feel.
“I think I prayed,” Crowley blurted suddenly, just as the last of the gashes on his hand were healed. Aziraphale’s head snapped up to meet Crowley’s eyes and he pulled away to better see the expression on Crowley’s face.
“To whom?” the angel asked softly, thinking perhaps Crowley didn’t mean what Aziraphale thought he did. “To—”
“Yes,” Crowley interrupted, anticipating Aziraphale’s question. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
Aziraphale studied him for a long moment and opened and closed his mouth a few times, clearly debating what he should say next.
“What did you pray for?” Aziraphale asked tentatively, clearly not sure if this was a question he was permitted to ask. His blue eyes were fixed on Crowley’s and the demon shifted and looked at his own hands instead, twisting them in his lap as he answered the angel’s question.
“Mercy, I s’pose,” Crowley muttered, not meeting Aziraphale’s eyes. “Not for me—I told Her I didn’t think it was right, punishing me by…by taking you.” Aziraphale sucked in a soft gasp, but Crowley ignored him, eyes fixed resolutely on his hands in his lap. “I told Her,” Crowley continued quietly, “—I asked Her to make it me instead. That if She was still set on that ‘giveth and taketh away’ rubbish, that it should have been me and not you.”
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale sighed. Crowley still didn’t look up, but he could picture the heartbreak he knew was on the angel’s face just from the sound of his voice. “You know that She doesn’t—that it doesn’t work like that.”
“I don’tknow that!” Crowley snapped, suddenly angry. He finally looked up at the angel, whose mouth had fallen open in surprise. “I don’t know that it doesn’t work like that, because no one knows anything about how it does or doesn’t work!”
“We aren’t meant to,” Aziraphale replied softly, clearly stricken.
“And isn’t that convenient?!” Crowley shot back hotly, tears welling in his golden eyes. “Saying that none of us will ever know what it means is just another way of saying that it doesn’t mean anything.” He wiped his face angrily with the back of his palm, still staring at Aziraphale, who looked devastated.
“Maybe it doesn’t,” the angel conceded softly, lip quivering dangerously as he watched Crowley. “Mean anything, that is—maybe it doesn’t.”
“That’s blasphemy, angel,” Crowley replied flatly.
“But it isn’t,” Aziraphale said, his voice quiet but firm. “Why does it have to mean something? She never said it did. There didn’t have to be a universe at all, She could have stayed in wherever She was before there was anywhere or anything to be, could have kept Herself whole and infinite instead of…” He trailed off, seeming as though he were trying to remember something, and Crowley busied himself picking nonexistent fluff from the hem of his jacket.
“I met a young man in Castile once, around 1280, I believe,” Aziraphale announced thoughtfully, a nostalgic smile on his face.
“Good for you,” Crowley replied flatly, thinking to himself that he finally understood how Aziraphale felt when he took a turn too fast in the Bentley. Aziraphale sighed quietly and then drew in a deep breath to continue, and when Crowley noticed the fierce determination in the angel’s eyes he knew he had best let Aziraphale steer the conversation to wherever strange place that he so desperately wanted to go.
“He was a bright young man, a Rabbi, and he was writing a book—or maybe just compiling it...I was never quite clear on that point, my Ladino wasn’t quite up to my later standards—but the book was a new interpretation of scripture, and—”
“We were there, angel,” Crowley interrupted, attempting to be impatient but unable to keep the bewilderment from his voice. “What interpretation of events that we witnessed ourselvescould you possibly need?” Aziraphale smiled at him and Crowley’s heart skipped an (unnecessary to begin with) beat.
“We could all do with a fresh perspective now and again, couldn’t we?” the angel said mildly. “That’s what I am trying to tell you, dear.”
“Well try harder,” Crowley retorted, with no real heat in his voice. Aziraphale’s lip quirked up again into a small smile.
“Where was I…” Aziraphale mused, tapping a finger to his mouth as he had once seen humans do. “…Ah, yes! New interpretation of scripture. Meant to be read not literally, not even as parable or fable, but entirely symbolically. He called the book Zohar—it means ‘radiance,’ in Hebrew.”
“I remember,” Crowley said quietly, suddenly transfixed by Aziraphale’s strange tale.
“In the beginning,” Aziraphale continued, “at least according to this book, there was only God, a being of divine radiance and She was everything and infinite and perfect, her Spirit stored in vessels, called ‘crowns’ made of pure light. The universe was created when the vessels were shattered, letting darkness mix with the light, and it all coalesced to create—everything. Divine light was scattered across the world, eventually animating the creatures She made to fill her creation. That’s what we all are: shards of divine light from the beginning of the world.”
There was a heavy, thoughtful pause which hung in the air like fog—until it, too, was shattered.
“There isn’t anything divine about me, angel,” Crowley murmured, so quietly that it was barely more than a sigh.
“You don’t know that, Crowley,” Aziraphale replied, his voice trembling. Crowley glared at him.
“Have you been paying any attention at all for the last six thousand years?” Crowley shot back hotly. “Last I checked ‘divine’ and ‘demonic’ weren’t getting on too well.” He chanced a look at the angel and then immediately went back to staring at the hem of his jacket—Aziraphale was crying.
“Heaven doesn’t have a monopoly on divinity,” Aziraphale said softly. “There have been divine humans, you know, the saints or the tzadikim—and I daresay there are angels—not fallen angels, the ones still in Heaven—who are not all that divine.”
Crowley thought of what Gabriel had said to him when he was posing as Aziraphale and nodded minutely as the angel paused to pull out his handkerchief and dab at his cheeks.
“See? It’s all been rather…mixed-up since the beginning. That’s why I told you about my acquaintance who wrote the Zohar. The creation of the universe was dependent on imperfection, on shattering and shadow, and the union of the infinite and undying with the finite and mortal. In such a creation, can that which is imperfect fail to be holy?”
Crowley stared at Aziraphale blankly, stunned by the angel’s impassioned plea on a demon’s behalf.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale said imploringly, reaching for the demon’s hand and cradling it tightly between both of his own. “Listen to me, please. I don’t understand it, I don’t know how it works or what it means—but I do know that we are here, together, the day after the end of the world.”
“Angel,” Crowley murmured, grappling with a swell of emotions he didn’t understand, pain and love and fear and joy and grief and hope all crashing over him like a tidal wave.
“I don’t claim to know what is good or evil, what we are meant to do, or how it is all meant to end,” Aziraphale continued, squeezing Crowley’s hand tenderly. “I am certain only of one thing.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley said again, voice soft and reverent. His breath caught in his throat as the angel pulled Crowley’s hand up with both of his so he could lean forward and brush a gentle kiss to Crowley’s knuckles.
“Crowley, my dear,” Aziraphale said, his tear-filled eyes fixed on their entwined fingers. “If Her light is really in all things, if the universe really is made of shards of Divinity which catch and reflect the best of Creation back at Her—I never saw it until I saw you.” Blue eyes met yellow ones and a deep blush painted Aziraphale’s cheeks as he looked at Crowley’s stunned expression, the light from the rising sun outside turning Crowley’s wild red hair into a gleaming halo of fire.
“Aziraphale,” he breathed, the name a nervous benediction on his lips. “Keep that up and I’ll start to think you’re sweet on me.”
The angel stared at him oddly for a moment and then burst into laughter, his chest shaking with joy as he released Crowley’s hands to throw his arms around the demon’s neck instead. Crowley grinned back at him, catching the angel easily when he threw himself into his arms.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured as their laughter died down, pulling back slightly so he could meet he demon’s eyes. “Can I kiss you?"
With a tangle of sweet nothings caught in his throat, Crowley found it impossible to answer and nodded once at the angel instead, and before he could blink Aziraphale had taken his face in his hands and kissed him with so much tenderness that it made Crowley’s chest ache.
“Angel,” Crowley whispered when they parted. “I think you’ve just sinned.” Aziraphale laughed again, the sound of it brighter than the beam of early morning sunlight streaming through the gap in the curtains, and then kissed Crowley again.
“Oh, dearest,” Aziraphale said, running his fingers through Crowley’s hair as the demon buried his face in his neck, delighted and overwhelmed. He pressed another kiss to the warm sunlit hair at the top of Crowley’s head.
“Love is not a sin.”