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“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
- Circe, Madeline Miller
Greece, 1250 BCE: Crowley
By tomorrow, Hector will be a dead man.
There’s no need for insight into God’s Divine Plan to foresee this - there’s hardly any need for any foresight at all to tell this. The moment his spear implants itself on that boy’s ( “Patroclus, Crawley” ) chest, his fate is all but sealed by the stars themselves.
It’s in the minutes, maybe, he isn’t sure. Time is ever-flowing, fluid in the eternal life, blending seamlessly until you forget when seconds become minutes and minutes become hours and hours become days. He can count the moments left until Achilles finally finds him, and until the tides of the war turn once more.
“He loved him, you know.” Aziraphale says this right next to him. Technically, they were on opposite sides ( both in the physical battle and the evangelical one ), but Achilles is angry and mourning and the war will shift again. Arrows rain and spears fly, battle formations are broken and blood is shed. One single man tears through the battlefield. “I have heard them talk sometimes, to themselves and in secret. He loved him.”
He spares a glance at the angel. “Hector?” He knows who. He's known for quite awhile.
“Achilles and Patroclus. I think they loved each other very much.” There’s a sound in the angel’s voice - as if something stuck to his throat. Aziraphale stares at the scene before them, and though he wears one of the sides’ helmets, he can guess the expression on his face. Grim, like he’s struggling to swallow. It’s one of the rare times he hears the angel like this, with more deference for human tragedy than the rest of them (Gabriel is the first to come to mind in this comparison, then Michael).
“Humanity is always eager to damn themselves for anything, angel.” Love and war - didn’t that explain their current situation? A pretty woman stolen away by a panicked boy, and now a city’s doomed to fall to fire and brimstone. And they barely had anything to do with it too. The only real contribution Crawley had in this was looking pretty and brushing up the boy’s confidence a bit. Apparently that was enough to get him to steal away a king’s wife. He didn't think it would lead to this - and yet here it was. “That is part of their job description."
Aziraphale is silent. The armies thin. Achilles still stands there, facing off against more men than one could account for. Hector is much the same, only on the other end of the field. By tomorrow, he will be dead. Crawley knew where to keep his bets.
“And humanity is always eager for companionship,” he finally replies. “There are so many like them.”
When he looks at him again, Aziraphale holds the helmet in his hands, looking at him this time, and not the scene. Eyes wide, with hope and anguish intertwined. Do all angels feel the weight of the world on their shoulders, or was it just this one?
He can vaguely remember. Falling does that sometimes. He cares in bits and pieces. But Aziraphale is looking at him, and there’s something in his gaze that - heaven - he can’t look away. It is drawing, in the same way one looks at firelight.
“Then give them a monument, if you would like,” is all Crawley can say in reply. The words sound foreign in his tongue. It is a consideration he would have made long ago. “May be nice. Something lasting past death and all. Intertwined souls and what other things they all believe.”
In front of them, the war continues.
But Aziraphale smiles, ever-so-slightly, with his eyes crinkled and the edge of his lips tilted to the faintest, kindest smile. “I think that would be called a miracle.”
( When Achilles falls, an arrow to his heel, days after Hector’s passing, someone buries his ashes together with the one gone first; a man named Patroclus. Later stories would tell of how they found their peace. )
Egypt, 48 BC: Crowley
The tragedy of humanity, Aziraphale may believe, comes in its ephemeral reality. No one, certainly no one mortal, could have predicted what would become of the Great Library of Alexandria. The testament of what made humanity so… humane, as the angel had put it, falling now by the hands of fire and brimstone.
He knows of art - they have made stars and planets and galaxies with their immortal hands. Crowley should know what it was like, to leave a piece of your soul in the crafting of something lasting. He has pulled dust and gas and light themselves to form planets and nebulas. He knows what it is like to pour yourself into creation, and to bring to light something anew.
In the same way, solar systems are masterpieces - each and every celestial body orbiting are the words to a novel forever being written.
The difference, of course, is in the transience.
The Great Library of Alexandria burns, thousands of parchments and scrolls and knowledge poured into art turn to cinders and ashes. He can smell the smoke.
“The books,” the angel - no, Aziraphale - mourns. “ Oh, all the books! Millennia of knowledge and text!” It reminds him of Eden, and the matter of the flaming sword - granted it to the human race. Ironic that the thing he would gift them would lead to the destruction of something he had - what, loved ?
He shouldn’t know this, he shouldn’t have memorized what it is Aziraphale found so special - the books, and their stories, and their knowledge and mortal art and creativity itself . The Great Library served to be all those things and more.
Aziraphale loved it.
Aziraphale obsessed over it.
On the rare - he would emphasize that word - moments they had met each other in this period, the topic of Alexandria would always find its way in each conversation. “Have you visited Alexandria, Crowley? I dare say the library they have is simply remarkable - a marvel. Do you know how many books they have stored there? How long dated the texts could be?”
Like a fool, he had gone there. A number of times, in fact. It was simply recommendation. And he could be fond of art, sometimes - he knew what it felt to create such, after all.
“Do you think this was in the Divine Plan?” Crowley ends up saying later on, while the smoke is still strong; while the sensation should burn, suffocate, had they been mortal instead. He regrets it soon after, because Aziraphale doesn’t answer, and questions like that remind him of why he stands he now, at the aftermath of sauntering vaguely downwards. “Burning it all down to ash - it all feels a bit excessive. Like Noah. I mean, don’t get me wrong, angel, I wouldn’t put it past Caesar, but the Divine Plan?”
Still, there is no answer, but he assumes he wonders the same thing.
Eventually, Aziraphale sighs. “You know we do not question the Almighty’s will, Crowley.”
The end of conversation. He doesn’t need to hear a goodbye to know it. But there’s something in his voice - the defeated, tired tone of it all that tears inside him. It is not Aziraphale, not in the centuries he’s known him. It doesn’t feel like him at all.
This was not the angel he knew, the same one who’d given Adam and Eve his flaming sword on the notion that they needed it more. It’s too beaten, in a sense. But, at the same time, another part of him thinks that this is very much the Aziraphale he knows - so in love with humanity and what it creates that it hurts when they hurt. It’s so caring . It’s the culmination of so many Aziraphale things and not-so-Aziraphale things that what’s next to him now is both foreign and not.
Maybe he could tempt him to oysters this time.
Crowley turns away instead. He isn’t quite sure what Aziraphale needs this time, or if he would be in the mood for such tempting. The Great Library burns, its knowledge dies, and maybe the angel needs time. He may be a demon, but he’s not insensitive .
( He would remember the books and the burning and the tragic, broken expression on Aziraphale’s face. If it happens again, he decides, he could spin a miracle of his own. Again, he’s not insensitive. )
France, 1429: Aziraphale
“God’s will is done,” a girl clad in armor tells her king, weeping.
It’s a scene that feels like it belongs to a painting, perhaps one of Masaccio’s. The world has shifted once more, and now Jeanne d’Arc, a young maiden, is a military general. A hero , truthfully, and Aziraphale watches her bow and whisper reverence proudly. The war may just be won, with Jeanne fulfilling her role in the Almighty’s Divine Plan.
When he looks at her there, before the newly-crowned King Charles VII, she looks beautiful. He knows her face - he’s granted her miracles and aid in every turn of the war. She is radiant , like ichor and starlight.
“What was that about her and voices?” Crowley whispers beside him suddenly. It makes him jump, ever-so-slightly, in the crowd. He’d found his way next to him again - that tends to happen a lot, he’s noticed. They never truly intend on it, but it happens, the same way surprises do: unexpected, unwarranted, yet not... entirely unwelcome.
“Visions, actually. They are visions.” His fingers fiddle together as the coronation continues on. “Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret, mostly.” There’s this need to explain, an urge to tell Crowley of all he’s done and all Jeanne has accomplished. As she had said - it was done, and she had triumphed, and he’s seen her work this far.
Pride wells inside him, intertwined so heavily with awe and warmth. Angels are beings of love, he knows, and he knows he loves her, as much as Aziraphale believes he is capable of. She is the hope of Adam and Eve, the echoes of Achilles and Patroclus’ memory, what is left of Alexandria’s Great Library, the oysters of Rome. Jeanne d’Arc is the prime example of all these things and more - so inherently human and he is bound to her through vision and voice, as the Divine Plan may will it.
When he looks at her now, he sees flashes of the maiden from Orléans, daughter in a history that may forget her, to be wed in a story that never changes.
She is not that anymore - now she was a soldier of a centuries-long war, hope of the people, salvation for France.
“Ah.”
Where would he even begin to tell her story?
He doesn’t have to decide. Crowley does. “So, what did Saint Catherine and Saint Margaret tell the girl to get her before the king?” Did he detect the smallest bit of… curiosity? “Grab that man’s pants and take up a sword sounds too direct for them, I would wager.”
“Choose your love. Take up arms. Fight to be free.” All for the liberation of France, all to change the story. There are far too many of women forced before an altar and a covenant their hearts do not belong to. There are far too many of wars fought and invasions succeeding. He does not believe that it is meant to be, sometimes.
“Do you think this was in the Divine Plan?” Crowley once asked him, centuries ago.
He still cannot answer that question - it leaves his mouth tied, his throat dry. The answer is not simple, none of it is. He knows this, but he follows, but and but and but.
This, Jeanne standing there, is part of it.
This, Crowley beside him as they bear witness to the bow of her crescendo, he does not know.
He thinks of the words he had just told him - choose your love, take up arms, fight to be free. These are what the Almighty intends in her story, and in the fate of the world.
Nothing is planned.
Everything is.
“Fight for your love, essentially? That sounds rather romantic, doesn't it?” Crowley laughs, a faint exhale of one. It is more subdued than what he’s heard from him, and maybe even he recognizes the gravitas of this moment. Aziraphale glances back at him, staring at the king and the girl-soldier this time, while the window’s light gleams over, painting him in a soft sunlit glow.
Not for the first time, he sees the image of Raphael, flashing for a single brief millisecond. But he knows that it is Crowley who stands next to him now, lashes fluttering above his eyes, incandescence on his skin, and Aziraphale is a being of love, certain that time and choice can give brand new light.
He’s a bit fond of the demon now, though Aziraphale would admit this only to the shadows of the crowd that hide them. It is a dangerous confession.
( It is still true. )
Mexico, 1693: Aziraphale
What becomes of those who question and those who criticize the ways of the world?
Some falter and some fall. The lengths one may go through to preserve their philosophies is something Aziraphale has grown rather accustomed to now. It was a political attack, he’d heard the priests claim, of the nun who had written her dues. As a result, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s works are to be taken by the church - confiscated.
Like many he’s known, her crime was only to fight for a kinder world, a better future. He’s heard her speak in the courts, witnessed her writings and poetry discussed; for the education of each and every woman, so they may not have to learn in the shadows of their fathers and brothers, without the fear of a touch they do not ask for, without the claim of sin and temptation in their blood for simply being alive.
What remains of some words are found hidden in the convent of the Hieronymites. These were the legacies left behind, carved into ink and parchment. A part of Aziraphale shakes when he touches them, his eyes settling on a single document signed with her name. The final letter - the last reprise.
- Yo, la Peor de Todas. -
It is with these words and more that Sor Juana hopes to change the world, ardently. Tear down the old and recreate it once more, in many ways a phoenix in its rebirth. He knows that this will be how history remembers her. He, shamefully, knows little of the language in which she has written.
But he knows enough to translate.
- I, the worst of all women. -
“She’s rather decent - quite the fighter,” Crowley says later, when Aziraphale leaves the convent and sees him standing there. There’s dust scattered on his cheeks, and he’s found a cover for his serpent eyes. “I’ve read some of her material. Oh, don’t look at me like that, angel. She’s passionate. They come to life. What was her crime?”
“Criticizing the Archbishop,” he mutters as they walk.
“A woman after my own heart.” He follows in stride. This is a common thing now - it shouldn’t be, for the sake of heaven and hell. But the eternal life gets lonely sometimes. It’s a sudden jolt through your chest, wrapping around you when you least expect it. He’s spent centuries alone, even side by side with the human race. It is a room full of static with no means to stop the noise.
Divinity is a border that of which you cannot destroy. Crowley repels the static. Crowley makes the eternal not-so-unending. He wonders if it is the same for him, because he knows little of how the demons truly operate. He barely knows of Hastur and Beelzebub outside of what’s been spread and in angel warnings.
“Redondilla 91.”
Aziraphale flicks his head up at him. “What?”
He shrugs his shoulders elaborately, without a single care in the world. “I told you I’ve read some of her material. Redondilla 91.” Oh, and he feels stupid. It makes sense, but he barely knows Spanish, maybe less so than he does French.
Still, the idea of Crowley reading Sor Juana’s works… There’s an image in his head - the demon next to him lounged above a couch, scanning through a Mexican’s sister’s poetry, his shades settled above his head, complimenting moussed auburn hair. His cape - black - sprawls across his shoulders and torso.
It’s fluffy.
“You’re smiling, angel.” Crowley isn’t even looking at him. He waves a hand back and forth through the air, wind blowing past them. “Rendondilla 91. Have you read it?”
He hasn’t. “I will.”
His companion is quiet this time, and the stillness stretches between them. Somewhere, Sor Juana watches as her legacies are taken from her. Somewhere, she chooses silence instead of words. In that somewhere and in this one, it proves to be the more powerful.
The wind blows, and it feels like an omen for a storm.
“I was asking because it reminds me of…”
Another gust of wind rushes past them, leaves falling from the trees above. Despite himself, Aziraphale laughs. Crowley says nothing, only staring at him, jaw slightly ajar and Aziraphale realizes he's stopped him mid-conversation.
The weather’s strong today, more so than either of them had expected for what was meant to be a lovely stroll for clearing his head. Sor Juana’s words still ring. I, the worst of all women, written in blood and ink. He’s collected a number of her works - all he could carry, really, but even that may never be enough.
“Right. Well.” Crowley coughs, as if he’s woken up from a trance, then nudges his head to the side. “Where to now, angel? Craving Japanese, maybe?”
He needs moments like these, and he is grateful that Crowley seems to understand it. Perhaps it comes with the territory, what happens when you’ve known each other for a time that feels longer than eternity itself. The parchments and letters of Sor Juana feel heavy. He held her love, her belief, her earnesty - everything that she ever stood for and everything she would damn herself for. The very nature and essence of a person hides between their written words, and it is heavy in his hand.
She questioned. She criticized. She looked beyond the administered teachings, the rules and the demands. And her only reprieve for all of it comes in the taking of what matters most. In a way, she reminds him of the person next to him now. Raphael. Crowley. Two halves of a whole, two sides of a coin.
He’s almost envious because they can choose. Almost.
Theirs are battles always fought. They are the men swimming against waves during the storm. They are Adam and Eve, Achilles and Patroclus, Jeanne d’Arc, in a thousand different waves. He cares for them - spreads his wings for their cover. He wants to harbor them to shore, like a pathway leading home.
“As much as I would like that, Crowley, there’s still Sor Juana.” Aziraphale stands a little taller, gripping on to one of the parchments tighter. “It would be a shame if her legacy dies with those confiscated books.” He knows he’s changing the topic, he knows he’s dulling the conversation with business, but Crowley said it himself. She was passionate. It felt wrong to have that fire smothered so easily.
“Fine, fine.” He’s muttering, mostly incomprehensible, with hand gestures that are so wholly Crowley it brings a smile to his face. “Japanese later, then. I’ll just - fine.”
There’s good in him, Aziraphale knows. He would reach for that knowledge and keep it close, bottle it up like the finest wine and hold it selfishly like a drunkard.
Aziraphale pockets the recommendation of Redondilla 91, promising to himself he would find it - he would read it, and understand whatever Sor Juana wished to convey. Whatever it was that struck him so deeply; it would be another step closer to understanding Crowley, with all this perpetuity between them. It only seems fair.
Suddenly, Crowley steps closer, pressing something into his empty palm. “But consider this my part in your new miracle, then.” He says this as a whisper, a secret murmured into the dark. The air between them is heavy, heavier than it was before. He tries to not look up.
His hands are warm, for a demon’s. And then they are gone.
When he unfurls the paper, he is greeted with scribbled handwriting that looks distinctly like those in the other papers he holds:
- Y si es culpable mi intento,
será mi afecto precito,
porque es amarte un delito
de que nunca me arrepiento.
Esto en mis afectos hallo,
y más, que explicar no sé;
mas tú, de lo que callé,
inferirás lo que callo. -
“Just in case the last two stanzas are never preserved, you know? Such a shame if history forgets one of the more interesting additions to poetry.”
( Centuries after the death of Sor Juana, a man named Octavio Paz stumbles upon her writings. Just like the world she had sought to create, her works are given new life, and the world murmurs her name as The Tenth Muse. )
America, 1920: Crowley
In an old proverb, it is written: forbidden fruit tastes all the sweeter.
In America, so-called Land of the Free, they take it to heart.
Around him, people drink from cups and dance around the room. A heavyset woman named Gladys Bentley is dressed in a white tuxedo and hat, singing a crass tune, fingers rippling across piano keys as her low, classically rough, voice echoes throughout. In here, the world is shrouded in rust and sepia; two-tone colors in an amber scene burning brighter than an Italian painting. (This is one of the few reasons, he thinks, the prohibition may be one of his favorites.)
And then, there’s him, wandering through the crowd, draped in garments painted ivory .
“Crowley!”
He lifts his glass of whiskey in the air. The music’s loud - not loud enough, Crowley believes, Gladys hasn’t taken to shouting her words quite yet - and the alcohol sets a warm feeling in his throat. The forbidden fruit tastes all the sweeter, and the prohibition makes the most out of it.
He doesn’t need to call his name a second time. He’s heard him. Aziraphale rushes forward, eyes shining and a grin on his face so lovely it almost seems out of place to him, in this crowd, in this corner of the Earth. He mouths something - his name again, Crowley assumes, he’s long since memorized how it looks when he says it.
Not that he had been looking, of course.
(Of course he has, and he always does, but in a way one can’t help but look at the sun itself. It’s always accidental, but he can memorize the way his lips curl like someone can remember how rocks and gas in the skies gleam, no matter the ultraviolet. People memorize their favorite songs this way, with a single, unexpected curiosity that sparks into unyielding, accidental obsession.)
Aziraphale doesn’t walk so much as he glides to his booth, or maybe he’s a bit too tipsy to tell the difference between the two. One second, it feels as if they are seas apart - separated by the crowd, the music and the space that makes everything feel far more alone - and the next, he’s in front of him, readjusting the lapels of his coat.
There’s no un-noticing of the novel hanging between his arm and chest. His head cocks to the side, and he lifts a brow curiously. “No intention of doing the gavotte, angel?”
“The gavotte is for 1870, and apparently, dreadfully out of fashion now.”
“Perhaps it’s because of the geography.”
He sets the glass on the table, whiskey on his lips, and he lounges back in his seat. For a moment, he allows Gladys’ song to fill his head, flood his ears. It’s something of a contradiction, of secret lovers and a women’s romance, but told so crudely it may be a mockery of the original work. It makes him chuckle -
Or it should, if he’s forgotten his company. He hasn’t.
Aziraphale’s presence is all-consuming in this sense, the only recognizable thing in a world ever-changing. But this is a speakeasy, and it is the prohibition, and rather than let himself succumb to the song of the woman in white, Crowley finds himself wondering why an angel would resort to such company.
So he does.
“Dare I ask what brings you here?” He extends his arms, gesturing around the copper scenery. It reeks of cognac, beer, rum, and a variety of other types of alcohol he can’t quite name at this moment. “Harry Hansberry's Clam House,” he tries the name in his tongue - though it comes off all slushed and slurred, “I daresay this would be a pit of damnation for you, Aziraphale!” He grins, eager, drunk, and a little bit giddy.
The angel before him clears his throat and tries to settle himself in his seat. He puts the book - The Picture of Dorian Gray, Crowley catches - right next to the whiskey glass. “I’m here for one of the sponsors of this establishment. Very big Oscar Wilde fan.”
He gives a noncommittal hum, maybe an “mn”, as he leans forward to take the novel before Aziraphale can protest. The booth is too small, far too compact to possibly maintain some form of personal space.
“Of course they are. Another miracle, then?” His fingers touch a random page, opening the book with a surprising amount of delicacy and care.
“It is his 20th anniversary,” Aziraphale points out.
“Wilde’s or your friend’s?”
It’s all words and words - which, should only be the case, it is a novel. His eyes scan through the paragraphs, as if they would unearth some sort of mystery he doesn’t know. He’s met Wilde himself, to no one’s surprise, and it resulted in a night of debauchery and hedonism because that should only be the case when you meet one Oscar Wilde. But he hasn’t seen the fruit of the man’s labours, not even decades after his passing.
Well, they do say that an artist’s work reaches its prime long past the artist has reached theirs.
He is acutely aware of the eyes staring at him as he glances through a dead man’s words, just as he is acutely aware of the scent of him . A poet would tell you that angels smell of lilac and incense, or flowers growing near a spring stream, or the aftermath of drowning embers with water. Romantics believe that they would smell of warmth, if it ever had a scent, perfumed and packaged for human senses.
Aziraphale reminds him of Irish tea by the bay, raw and intoxicating intermingled with seawater. He’s already forgotten when he’s started noticing this fact.
Perhaps it is a coincidence that it is then, once the sense registers, his eyes finally settle on a line.
- The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold. -
The sentence implodes inside of him, loud and leering. He keeps his mouth shut, keeps his lips in what he hopes is a firm, unimpressed line. Outside their booth, a woman sings sweetly, with her voice like velvet.
“I remember - you have met Wilde, haven’t you? Good chap.”
It is a mockery. It is a dagger. He feels himself exhale as Aziraphale continues to talk, still staring at the page. There are no words, no quips he can come up with, just the lingering feeling of being seen and being known in a way deeply ingrained in your heart.
If you ask him when this matter of Aziraphale had begun, he isn’t quite sure either. All he knows is that it happened , without warning or signal. It happened, like a crashing meteorite - he is the meteorite in this metaphor, falling without warning, landing sooner than he could control its impact.
Notice turns to curiosity, and curiosity turns to care, and care turns to understanding, which leads to something more than all those abstract infinities combined. It is a word you cannot say, lest it become more true than it already was; a sketch given colour, clay given form.
- The curves of your lips rewrite history. -
It is the nail on the cross. Everything seems still, but the world is in motion - he knows it is. Perhaps it is the whiskey taking over, but he remembers Wilde, and the euphoria spent with him. He is a demon, and so he knows how to live a life more than existence. Temptation is his virtue, just as allay his vice. That is why he is remembered as the serpent of Eden.
He remembers drunken conversation, and murmured secrets; understanding painted between two individuals looking for remembrance. The stark, sudden, honest realization of his reality, and that he is not alone in this feeling that claws deep within, suffocating him whole.
He remembers admission and confession; his lips whispering quietly that of which he’d never dare say, while the memories of Aziraphale burn in his mind. Alcohol is the key to a lock you never want opened, truth be told. He’d said these things and more to a man, just as damned and just as fallen as he. The only difference came in the literals.
Crowley settles the book down with a sigh. Aziraphale picks it up, and before he can so much as say, “no, angel, just enjoy a drink with me”, he’s also flickering through the pages. His heartbeat rings loud in his ears - drums that drown any song Gladys can sing.
“The world is changed because you are made of ivory and gold,” Aziraphale reads aloud, before looking up from the page to raise a brow at him. It feels like a jab to his chest - what more do you want? He’d already given him Sor Juana, with her poetry for Maria Luisa. He’d already tried to purge the want. He’d tried to give a sign. He’d tried confession, and it didn’t quite stick as well as he had dared hope.
“The curves of your lips rewrite history,” he finishes, just a bit more dramatically, before Aziraphale can say it himself. It feels dangerous to say aloud, and part of him is more thankful now for the shades that hide his eyes. This way, no one has to see the quick glance his makes, as if it make certain the words ring true.
(They do.)
The silence suffocates him, and it isn’t even quiet. Around them are people, around them is noise. Everything moves too quickly, everything just can’t seem to start. He takes another sip of whiskey.
“If I remember right, that may have been for Bosie.”
Aziraphale glows when he smiles. Even if he wasn’t a literal angel, he would have thought him ethereal either way.
( Maybe there is no difference. )
Italy, 1979: Aziraphale
When humans love, they do it with a soul-consuming, encompassing fervor, Aziraphale believes. He has no reason to see differently.
In Fall of 1979, hundreds of Italians gather and walk the streets of Pisa, waving signs and banners. He feels their desire, their drive, their dreams, their anger and their hopes washing over him like a tidal wave. It is everything that makes them human, everything that makes them alive. Men, women and people march down the streets, demanding for pardon and demanding for justice.
The year before that - the same month, a different part of the world - a man named Harvey Milk is found dead in his office. Days later, a recording sweeps America of the man himself, saying the words: “If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet close every closet door.”
The summer of this year, they tell the stories of two men killed in Livorno, all for the price of loving another.
So, when they demand, it is for their right to love.
As a being of love, he is drawn to everything about this. He walks alongside them with their banners raised high. He hears them shout, sees them cry. He can taste the salt of their tears on his lips without moving a single pace.
He can feel their human heartbeats pounding in their chests to a song only they can sing.
And all of them, gathered together, in a scene such as this - well. It makes him think of Crowley, and what he would make of such a spectacle.
The matter of Crowley is a growing seed; a nurtured flower. He can pinpoint the moment it is planted, and from then on when it starts to spread, somewhere deep in his too-angel heart.
(When one describes his as too-angel, it is not because of what he is; it is because of who. He is an angel who feels, who ascribes everything that humans do, he has walked through history with them, and because of that there may be no one else who understands the life of which they walk, emotions welling over in every single action and reaction and consequence. He has never separated from them, not once in thousands of years, and so he is the only one who knows this feeling in his chest.
Or maybe not the only one.)
The thing about Crowley is that he appears even when you do not will for him to do so. He sees him in the passerbys who swagger across the field. He sees him in the strangers who lean against benches with their heads lifted up to the sun. He sees him in the shades and colours of black and grey and auburn and gold. He sees him even more after that eve of 1941, when they stand on the rubble of consecrated ground and he holds on to books remembered.
Again, loving Crowley is a growing seed. He can pinpoint the moment when it starts to spread. He can take the nanosecond of it in his hand, bask in the single moment and see the flashes of everything before, with every clue and every hint and every possibility. It’s terrifying to see nurtured, and yet he can’t quite bring himself to stop.
This was why, on a single cold Soho night, he chooses to break his own heart. He could see the eventualities if he didn’t - Crowley, tied in blessed chains; Crowley, drowning in holy water; Crowley, more damned than he could ever already be.
In every possibility, what he thinks of is Crowley. Only Crowley.
( Does that make him fallen too? )
“Well, angel, fancy seeing you here.”
Aziraphale jolts his head up, as if waking from a stupor, only to see the demon himself, spinning a chain of keys around his index. Crowley flashes him a grin as he stands on the other side, behind a protestor waving a green signage.
For an angel and a demon, twelve years may as well be less than a nanosecond. Their last exchange - back inside an automobile in the London of 1967 - hangs before him like a noose and a warning. He doesn’t take a step forward. He can feel his hands shaking, as if he’s still holding on to a tumbler of holy water for him ( a suicide pill ), and he’s certain there’s something lumped in his throat.
You go too fast for me, Crowley.
But here are people, hundreds of humans, choosing their heart - damning the consequences so there may no longer be any for love. He wants to soak up their bravery, intoxicate himself on their pride and ardor. He wants to take back that Soho night, rewrite it with his own two hands.
On his shoulder blades, the weight of wings hangs heavier, digs deep into his skin.
He is here for a miracle to be done.
He is here to revel in humanity’s hoping and wishing.
He is here.
Crowley is here.
There are wars to be fought and battles to be won, but time is something they have plenty of. There are sides to be kept, lines drawn at the ground. There are so many considerations and too many consequences.
But right now, in the streets of Pisa, surrounded by hundreds, Crowley is here, waving him hello.
“Crowley,” and it feels like a prayer on his lips. Something about saying it aloud brings holy fire to his fingertips.
But he takes a step forward, regardless.
( This is how mending starts. )
England, 2019: Crowley
They’ve survived Armageddon. That’s the important part.
They’ve picked their sides; it was not on opposite ends. That’s the scarier part.
On a cold London night, Crowley decides that English weather was not one of his best work. He’s a demon, for someone’s sake. Chilling winds and dark skies should be agreeable for him.
“Oh, Crowley! You’re shivering.”
It is not a state he enjoys having Aziraphale see him in - especially after such a lovely dinner in the Ritz, which was happening to become a monthly ritual. More so than it already was.
“It’s called global warming, angel. I’m not immune to that part of the equation.” He’s prepared to go on an entire tirade, pepper in the side-effects of such to ducks, no less. But when he opens his mouth, something lands above his shoulders. His neck is warm.
“Angel?” Crowley murmurs, half-delirious at the feeling. His fingers trace the edges of the cloth - Aziraphale’s coat.
Sure enough, when he angles his head to the side, ever-so-slightly, he is greeted with Aziraphale, smiling above his shoulders. Distinctly coatless.
Against his better judgment, heat rushes to his cheeks.
It’s been six-thousand years, for someone's sake. How is it that even the slightest provocation affects him so?
It’s a mystery Crowley doesn’t wish to admit the answer to. He already has in his sleep, and while drunk. The general quips pile up in his throat: you know that white doesn’t suit me; you realize that i’ve been under worse conditions; you’re cold yourself, angel; do not do this to me, please.
Instead, all he says is, “It has your smell,” and he shoves his hands into Aziraphale’s coat’s pockets, swaggering on through the streets as if this was nothing at all.
Technically, that’s how it should be.
Something is buried in those pockets: a flat, rough, vaguely crumbled thing. Technically, he should ignore it. It’s probably a list of books for the shop, after all, and he has little to do with that. But as they talk on through the night, Crowley finds himself fiddling with the object.
And he stops, pulling it out.
“--ope that Madame Tracy is alright. Possession is a very sordid affair - Crowley? Crowley.”
He’s nodding. Listening. Vaguely.
The object turns out to be a piece of paper, folded into four. Most likely a book list, then.
But, maybe because it was already out, maybe because of abject curiosity, he may as well open it. Aziraphale says nothing - but he’s already certain he’s seen what’s on his hands.
It’s an old piece of paper, in fact, torn from parchment. When Crowley scans through it, it strikes him as familiar, like the echo of a song you’ve heard in the radio. But he knows the handwriting, and he knows the words, and suddenly, his hands shake.
- Y si es culpable mi intento,
será mi afecto precito,
porque es amarte un delito
de que nunca me arrepiento.
Esto en mis afectos hallo,
y más, que explicar no sé;
mas tú, de lo que callé,
inferirás lo que callo. -
“You’ve kept it.” There’s awe and surprise in his voice that he can’t hide. The last time he’s seen this was more than centuries ago, on the streets of Mexico, during a windy afternoon.
Redondilla 91.
“I’ve read it.” Aziraphale takes a step forward, and his heart lurches in his chest. It was a risky, dumb, idiotic idea he had thought ingenious at the time. “I’ve actually read it, Crowley,” he says, quieter this time.
When he meets Aziraphale’s eyes underneath the moonlight, all that sinks is the staggering feeling in his chest. He tries for a laugh and a smile, prepares himself to say some sort of quip or another. Something, anything, to bury this behind them.
“She wrote it for Maria Luisa.”
“I’m aware of that.”
Silence.
They’ve braved Lucifer and the angels. They’ve stood beside the Antichrist, hand in hand. They’ve contributed to the prevention of Armageddon itself. Yet the space between them now feels like the loudest thing Crowley’s witnessed.
“I’m not going to ask you about the why, Crowley.” There’s understanding in Aziraphale’s eyes before he turns around. And perhaps that’s the breaking point.
He doesn’t know anymore.
But he knows he doesn’t want to keep this space.
He knows he doesn’t want to lose their before.
What is it everyone says about time? How long it stays and how quickly it goes?
Time should be everlasting for them, yet it feels like it isn’t. There’s a number to their un-numbered days, a countdown before the next sordid eventuality.
So, when he opens his mouth, it is with the words of a translation long since overdue.
“Let my love be ever doomed,” he walks after him, coat still on his shoulders, “if guilty in its intent.”
He thinks of Adam and Eve, and the quiet simplicity of how Aziraphale decides to give them that flaming sword. He thinks of Achilles and Patroclus, in love even during the battlefield, and the empathy he has for them even after death.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale chides. He doesn’t turn around.
You go too fast for me, Crowley.
“For loving you is a crime,” his mouth operates on its own now, the words spilling over as he follows after Aziraphale, “of which I will never repent.”
He thinks of the ark and the unicorn, and how easily he accepts the idea of him changing his name. He thinks of the oysters in Rome, and how he doesn’t hesitate to offer them and try to tempt the demon.
Run away with me.
“This much I descry in my feelings,” he grabs on to his sleeve, and Aziraphale turns to look at him, stunned and worried and a myriad of other emotions he does not want to take more time deciphering, “and more that I cannot explain.”
He thinks of the books in Alexandria, and the broken look in his eyes. He even thinks of Jesus on the cross, and the curiosity that strikes him when he says he knew him.
I ( - thought I - ) lost my best friend.
“But -” He’s desperate and honest and it’s running away to Alpha Centauri all over again. Aziraphale doesn’t move, doesn’t say a word. He thinks of him and his love of Jeanne d’Arc, of William Shakespeare, of Sor Juana. He thinks of the worry and the stinging way he says fraternization as if it were a curse itself. He thinks of that moment in Harry’s Clam House, while he’s drunk and Gladys Bentley sings, and he allows himself to mourn Oscar Wilde and drink in the understanding that this - this is what they speak of in the poems and songs. He thinks of the sinking feeling of knowing where he’s gone in 1941, and the pride that wells when he shows him the books. He thinks of the fact that Aziraphale is the only one he can count on, and all the concern and fear this angel has for a demon that’s fallen. He thinks of that day in Italy, when everything begins anew.
He thinks of all these things and more.
To the world.
“But, you may infer what words won’t contain.”
When Aziraphale laughs, it’s the most deafening sound in the world.
“But you, from what I’ve not said, may infer what words won’t contain,” Aziraphale says, a tear sliding down his cheek and sparkles in his eyes. “The final words are: But you, from what I’ve not said, may infer what words won’t contain. ”
Despite himself, Crowley clicks his tongue to a 'tut'. “Is now really the time to correct a translation of centuries old poetry, angel?”
His chest is lighter now, somehow, and he’s certainly not crying, but he’s smiling and underneath this moonlight, he swears he’s never seen an angel this beautiful.
Or anything, really.
“You felt that way even then?”
“Even then,” he nods, “would you like me to offer flashbacks?”
And instead of an answer, he takes his shades, and it is Aziraphale who pulls him close. It is Aziraphale who drags him down to his gravity. Fingers comb through his hair, and his arms are around an angel’s, and he’s stunned and drunk in this feeling and memorizing every angle and detail. It is Aziraphale who is with him now. It is Aziraphale who he kisses under the moonlight of a London sky, still wearing his coat.
( Somewhere, a nightingale sings. )
Epilogue
It should be easy to say of what happens after Armageddon, once the first war is done. It should be easy to talk about soft epilogues and quiet mornings and kind afternoons and hopeful evenings.
If anything, that is what begets those who have spent years fighting in wars and hiding in shadows.
It should be easy to tell you of the postlude of an angel and a demon in the aftermath of the end of the world. It should be easy to recount the retirement.
There is a small cottage, tucked away somewhere in the South Downs, where two strange gentlemen stay.
On rare occasions, they get visits from a young woman and a young man. In those days, there tends to be little electricity. There are picnics instead.
On even rarer occasions, a child and his dog come over, if only for a moment. He likes to steal apples from garden trees.
Sometimes, there are even letters that hail from a London apartment. The mailman doesn’t quite understand what the gaudy medium courtesan and her loud husband have to do with the just-as idiosyncratic couple by the sea.
They do as couples do - they laugh together and eat together. They share kisses while they read on couches. They sleep in the same bed. They dance in the kitchen before dusk rises. There’s not much to say on this account, really.
But to ask of when it all begins?
That’s the longer story.