Chapter Text
There were seven of them. Seven, in Biblical terms, is a rather important number. There are seven heavenly virtues, balanced by seven deadly sins. Creation itself took place over seven days. The number is referenced several times throughout the Bible – although most angels would advise humans to take the Bible with a grain of salt, owing to all the mistranslations and rewritings[1] – and it is a number that indicates completeness in the fullest sense.
It is also rather a large number of children to have, even if the parents are an angel and a demon. The upside of being nonhuman and dealing with seven infants who require both food and sleep is that the parents require neither, which eliminates two of the biggest inconveniences that new parents often face. The downside is that they still only have four hands. For Crowley and Aziraphale, this would have been true regardless of whether they were in their human form or their truest metaphysical shape; in the latter, Aziraphale had four hands and Crowley had zero, which still averaged out the same as when they had two apiece.
The children were a week old. The colucumbra, as Aziraphale had dubbed them, were behaving roughly the same as human children at that age, although admittedly Aziraphale did not have much of a frame of reference. They slept a lot, and woke up every few hours to be fed, and liked to be held whenever possible. The last bit applied especially to Ephraim, who after a week had accepted that they could not be held at all times without crying, but also to Phinehas, who was fond of batting at Crowley’s face and tugging at Aziraphale’s curls.
Aziraphale liked to read to them. There had been a brief debate between him and Crowley as to whether or not the Bible was appropriate reading material, which had concluded with the point that it was perhaps not the best idea to read to the children a book which discussed the unholiness of one of their fathers, and which blatantly rooted for a side that would, in all probability, want to do something horrible to them if they were discovered.
At the moment, Aziraphale had Ophelia tucked in the crook of one arm and Tolkien’s The Fellowship of the Ring in the opposite hand. He was in the middle of the passage introducing the council of Elrond when Crowley poked his head into the nursery.
“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, “but we’ve got company.”
Company also came in sevens; seven highly concerned friends, who had last seen Aziraphale pass out when labour pains overtook him – save Adam, who has last seen Aziraphale asleep after the birth – waited in the entry hall, snow dusting their hair and melting in puddles around their boots. Through the application of Brian’s baby shower gift – the slings, not the children’s books, which Aziraphale had tucked politely into a drawer in the nursery and not looked at again – they managed to bring down all seven children at once.
Brian looked delighted. Anathema looked caught between relief and curiosity. Newt and Wensleydale looked intrigued. Pepper still looked nervous. Adam and Damian did not resign themselves to looking, but greeted Crowley and Aziraphale cheerfully. Adam scooped Phinehas into his arms, and the baby instantly went for his mop of shaggy hair, while Damian graciously accepted the much better behaved Athaliah.
“They’re so small,” Damian said, and smiled at Aziraphale. “I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Thank you, Damian.” Aziraphale smiled back, and gave in to Brian’s clamouring to hold a baby too. He reached initially for Ephraim, who put up such a fuss the moment Brian’s hand touched them that Aziraphale took the child back, and was instead given Percival, who gurgled peacefully.
“They look human,” Anathema commented. She had her arms folded across her chest, hesitant about touching, although Newt had no such reservations and allowed Crowley to pass him Ophelia. “I thought…I don’t know,” Anathema continued. “I thought they might be a little more…”
“Angelic?” Aziraphale suggested.
“Demonic?” Crowley added, with a touch more malice.
Anathema blushed. “Well…yes.”
“It’s not as if we look particularly inhuman,” Aziraphale pointed out. Crowley resisted the urge to reach for a pair of sunglasses. He didn’t have any on him; they were upstairs somewhere. He’d gotten used to not wearing them.
“Do they have wings?” Adam wanted to know. He’d turned Phinehas this way and that, aided by the child’s natural predisposition to squirm, and been disappointed. “I thought they’d have wings.”
“I suspect they do,” said Aziraphale, who hadn’t bothered to check. “It’s just that they haven’t manifested yet. They are only a week old, after all.”
“Their auras are unreal,” Anathema said. She’d finally given in to curiosity and was now holding Lysander, peering at the baby intently. “They’re so bright, so colourful. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Well, naturally,” said Crowley. “There’s never been anything like them before.”
“I’ve been thinking about what you could call them,” Adam said, brightening up. “I was thinking-“
“Actually, we’re calling them colucumbra,” Aziraphale interrupted him gently. “Sorry.”
“It’s a nice word,” said Newt. “What’s it mean?”
“It’s Latin. Light and shade together. I thought it was appropriate.”
“It certainly gives you an idea where they came from,” said Anathema, who was a little put out she hadn’t come up with it first. Adam didn’t say anything. It was a lot better than his suggestion, and he was glad Aziraphale had cut him off.
Crowley made a gesture towards the living room. “Why doesn’t everyone sit down? No sense standing when there’s a sofa around.”
They resettled in the living room. Aziraphale brought up the rear, apologizing to Pepper. “I’m terribly sorry, my dear,” he said. “I hope Elizabeth wasn’t too badly frightened.”
Pepper grimaced. “She had some questions. Mostly about Crowley. I didn’t really know how to explain, so I sort of…told her everything.”
“I’m sorry. I know you didn’t want to.”
Pepper shrugged, perching on the edge of the sofa. Aziraphale sat next to her. “She’s not speaking to me,” Pepper said softly. “I don’t know if she thinks it was a joke or if it was too much for her or what. But I haven’t heard from her since Christmas.”
Were it anyone but Pepper, Aziraphale might have embraced them. He put a comforting hand on her shoulder. “I’m sure she’ll come back. You two seemed very good together.”
“Yeah, well.” Pepper shrugged. “Things don’t always work out.” She knocked Aziraphale’s knee gently. “I don’t blame you two, just so you know. I don’t know if that’s something you were worried about, but it’s not your fault.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Aziraphale, who had in fact been harbouring concerns along those lines. “If we weren’t-“
“Yeah, but you can’t help it.” She nudged him again, a little harder. “It’s just who you are. And I wouldn’t give up having you two in my life for anything. You’re fun. You come to more of my matches than my parents do.” That was true. Aziraphale had come to many of the early ones, before Pepper had met Elizabeth, although he’d decided privately that as proud as he was of the young woman for channelling her rage into productive avenues, roller derby was not for him. Crowley had come to some of the more recent matches, lurking in the background and grinning every time someone got shoved. He hadn’t ever spoken to Pepper on those occasions, but she’d known he was there.
Aziraphale accepted the explanation for what it was. Pepper was not one to express her affection blatantly, but Aziraphale understood the familial love beneath the words. He’d gotten quite good at understanding her and the rest of the Them over the years.
While Aziraphale and Pepper had been speaking, the other Them had been preoccupied with bothering Crowley. Bothering was perhaps not their intent, but it was the result, although Crowley put up with it graciously. They had a lot of questions about the children, what their abilities might be, the sort of thing that Aziraphale would be much better suited to answer. Crowley hadn’t managed to catch the angel’s eye, however, and had resorted to shrugging passively. He could feel Anathema’s stare boring into him, and he avoided looking at her. He hoped she wouldn’t ask him about the book.
Instead, he looked at Damian, who had been mostly quiet. Damian was cradling Athaliah with surprising tenderness for someone so large, and he was bouncing her with the semi-practiced ease of someone who has held a younger cousin with some frequency. It occurred to him that Damian had never seen him with his glasses off, save for the tail end of the pre-Christmas party, but he hadn’t seemed all that bothered by it. “Alright?” Crowley asked him. “You’ve been quiet.”
The chattering questions dropped off, and Damian looked up. He seemed surprised to be addressed. “I’m fine,” he said. “What about you?”
“Me?”
Damian nodded. His eyes flicked to Aziraphale and then back to Crowley. “I know everything’s alright now. Crisis averted, the kids are fine, Aziraphale’s alright. But I know you thought for a while there that you were going to lose him. So I was just wondering if you were okay.”
Crowley glanced at Aziraphale. The angel was silent, looking back. The same question, with an extra tinge of guilt for not being the one to have asked it, was written across his face. Crowley cleared his throat. He hadn’t anticipated being put on the spot. “Er, I’m alright. I’m fine.” When Damian just blinked at him, he tensed and snapped, “It was the worst few days of my life, alright? But they’re over and everything’s fine and I don’t want to think about it.”
In his arms, Isidora whimpered at the harshness of his voice, and shame washed over Crowley. He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring squeeze, and sighed. “Sorry. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to talk about it.”
Damian nodded, and gave Crowley a reassuring half-smile. Anathema cleared her throat, breaking the tension. “So, Aziraphale. The book.”
Aziraphale blinked. “Book? Oh. The book.”
“Yes.”
He gave a guilty shrug. “I think Agnes thought we could use a bit of advice. I don’t blame her. We do have a history of being remarkably incompetent.” He shared a private, insider smile with Crowley. “But you know how she is. Her prophecies have a tendency to be confusing, until you read them in hindsight. Many of them make little sense at all, but I’ve done my best.”
The guests stayed for another few hours before they began to admit that they really must be off, be it to work or school or simply home before the snow started coming down again. They did help Crowley and Aziraphale bring all the children back upstairs while Brian remarked, with a knowing look, that they really could use more hands, and reminded them that he was available anytime. They smiled, and graciously escorted him and the rest of their friends to the door.
When it closed behind them, Crowley said, “I really thought Anathema was going to ask you if she could have a copy of your book.”
“I thought so too,” Aziraphale admitted. “But I was pleasantly surprised when she didn’t. But that’s humans for you. They grow in magnificent ways.”
“Not just humans.”
Aziraphale looked at him. “Did you mean it?”
“Mean what?”
“When you thought I was dead. That the labour was killing me. Were those really the worst days of your life? You’ve had rather a lot of them.”
Crowley swallowed hard and didn’t meet Aziraphale’s eyes. “Yeah. I meant it.”
“More than Falling?” Aziraphale’s voice was tentative; he knew how Crowley felt about him broaching that subject.
Crowley opened his mouth and then shut it again. After a minute, he said, “Yeah. More than Falling. At least when I was Falling I knew where I’d land. Thinking I might be without you…it was like that, except I didn’t know. It was like falling and falling and falling and not knowing if I was ever going to reach the bottom. That was worse than Hell by a longshot.”
“Oh.”
“Did you know?”
It was Aziraphale’s turn to avoid Crowley’s eyes as the demon turned them onto him. “Did I know what?”
“When you asked me to promise you that I wouldn’t abandon our kids if you died, did you know? With the stupid prophecies and what-have-you, did you think you were going to die?”
“I-“ Aziraphale started, and then stopped. He hung his head. “I had a suspicion. Half a suspicion, really, more an inkling. Not even-“
“Aziraphale.”
His mouth snapped shut. Slowly, he met Crowley’s eyes. “I knew it was a possibility. Likely, even.”
“You should have told me.”
“I should have. And I’m sorry I didn’t.”
“Apology accepted.” Crowley glanced up the stairs. “We should go check on the kids.”
“In a moment,” Aziraphale said. “I wanted to ask you something, where they wouldn’t hear.”
“Oh?”
“It’s about…well, about Hell. And Heaven.”
Crowley studied the tiled floor. “What about them?”
“We won’t be able to keep the children cooped up in the house forever. Eventually they’ll want to go out, and anyway I don’t want to spend forever afraid to go beyond the gate. Do you think…I mean, if the children throw off an energy that makes them difficult to track, and if we benefit by extension…do you think we should still be concerned?”
There were a few scratched tiles. Crowley suspected Dog was to blame. Eventually, he said, “I think we’re always going to be concerned. We’re always going to be looking over our shoulders. I don’t think…I think we should avoid miracles, and I think we should tell the children too, even if they can’t be tracked, but I don’t want to hide forever either, and I don’t want them to feel like prisoners in their home. When they’re a little older, we’ll take them out.” He gave Aziraphale a small smile. “Unless, of course, you like the idea of pushing a massive pram around.”
“We should wait until they’re stroller-sized at least,” Aziraphale agreed.
There was a loud thud upstairs, and both angel and demon tensed. They exchanged looks, and then bolted for the stairs. At the landing, they paused. Aziraphale frowned. “Does that sound like…”
The proceeded with slightly more caution towards the nursery. The sound, which grew progressively louder as they approached, became distinct. “So it was that Frodo saw her whom few mortals had yet seen; Arwen, daughter of Elrond, in whom it was said that the likeness of Luthien had come on earth again; and she was called Undumiel, for she was the Evenstar of her people.”
Crowley pushed the nursery door open. On the carpet, next to the overturned rocking chair, seven pairs of eyes turned to look at them. Ophelia, who was holding the book and who now, like their siblings, looked much closer to a three-year-old than to a newborn, spoke again, crisply and far more eloquently than the average three-year-old, and with a hint of guilt in their voice, “We wanted to know what happened next.”
Aziraphale and Crowley exchanged another look. If they’d been human, they might have fainted in surprise. Well, Aziraphale might have. If Crowley had been human, he would not have been the sort of human to faint in surprise at much of anything. He did, however, goggle. Aziraphale recovered first and cleared his throat. “Well,” he said. “One more chapter, I think, and then I believe we need to have a talk.”
[1] Actually, most angels would not advise humans of anything, because angels on the whole do not see much use for the world other than as a piece of the ineffable plan, most likely the gameboard on which it will be played out, and have a tendency to regard Earth and its inhabitants the way humans often regard modern art: as something to be smiled politely over in a museum in recognition of the artist’s work, but which they privately reflect is not all that impressive anyway, and they could probably do just as well if they’d attempted it themselves. They are also resistant to the use of idioms.