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It’s a funny old world sometimes, spinning around in circles day by day while it orbits the Sun. Those inhabiting the world tend to do the same thing – running around in circles as they orbit school, or work, or whatever else consumes their time. Everyone lives blissfully unaware of whatever plans God has for the universe. The occasional priest claims they know what will happen, but they are never right. God’s plans are ineffable.
The humans have always been particularly creative in their ideas of how the world would end. The sun centupling and engulfing the lifeless rock. Giant asteroids speeding through space to knock the Earth out of orbit, freezing the planet and everything on it. A world of flames, where Hell and its demons would rise to tempt the last humans away from God’s grace. No one ever predicted what it would be like if the Sun were destroyed; stolen from those who needed it most. No one ever predicted it, but Crowley knew how it felt.
It felt like dying. It felt like Falling all over again, tumbling out of control through an endless, bottomless void. It felt like an eclipse, but the moon never leaves and keeps the Earth cloaked in darkness for the rest of eternity. It felt like a black hole, sucking in every last bit of emotion and leaving behind a lifeless hull.
No human could fathom the emotional torment of losing their Sun; their light; the subject they orbit; their sole purpose for spinning on, day by day. It was beyond imagining. At least in the humans’ hypotheticals, everything stopped. How kind; how benevolent, even, for the End Times to actually end. It is so much worse when the world has to keep on spinning.
Aziraphale was gone.
They had planned a nice picnic, and Crowley had been ecstatic to share his knowledge of the stars with his angel. Now he sat and drank his weight and more in whiskey, the mere thought of the stars making him sneer and the sharp pain in his chest throb with a new intensity.
Even shooting stars have to crash eventually – no use wishing on a broken piece of rock when not even it can stop the inevitable.
The bartender kept supplying him drinks. He had no choice, for Crowley was influencing everyone in the bar. Don’t look, he told them. Don’t look at what happens when your life loses its light. So they didn’t. They paid the weeping, sobbing mess that used to be a demon no mind. And they kept supplying it drinks.
What happens when a star dies? That depends on the type. They collapse; they expand. They grow hundreds, thousands, millions of times bigger before snapping back; shrinking down and fading into a black dwarf. They crush in on themselves until they explode in a supernova, forming a neutron star, or a black hole. It takes centuries for the light of the stars to reach the Earth. By the time one twinkles into the night sky, it’s already dead.
Bottle after bottle passed through Crowley’s lips, but nothing dulled the pain. No one ever talks about what happens to a planet when it dies. Planets tend not to die. It's hard to prove a hypothesis without data to draw from. There are many ways they could die, though. For gas giants such as Neptune or Jupiter, the gravity could weaken, and the gases slowly escape into the unknown, shrinking the planet into nothingness. The terrestrial planets, like Mars and Venus, have so many possibilities. A wayward collision resulting in mass extinction. The world rolling out of orbit because of a shift in the poles. Their cores overheating, cooking the planet until it burns or explodes. But if the sun dies? If there is no more light? Everything would freeze. No light, no heat, no way to survive. Life dies off of the Earth. The planets become empty, frozen husks, hovering in the sea of space until the black hole at the center of the galaxy finally consumes them. Nothing would have a strong enough gravitational pull for them to move on, to live better lives and flourish again. Without the sun, the solar system would die.
Crowley could never, though. The thought had hardly formed before it’s chased off by the sliver of hope that things could work out; his unshakeable faith that things could get better. He pictures Ligur, his gruesome end by Holy Water, and feels a cold shiver down his spine – he could never do that to himself. He’d never forgive himself if he discorporated either; suffering the tortures of Hell again; possibly leaving Aziraphale to feel the same agony as he is now.
But that’s the thing, isn’t it? A Sun without a planet would keep going. It might notice it’s not pulling as much; not holding as much mass to an orbit, but the Sun would continue with that loss. It does not rely on those planets to spin around it; it simply invites them to. It offers warm smiles and friendly waves and helps everything grow into their full potential. It stands in the center of everything, offering its love to its satellites. It might not even realize how much they rely on that love; how immaterial it is to them. The Sun is a star, through and through, and will die like all the rest, leaving the planets in chaos.
If the roles were reversed, Crowley believed Aziraphale would handle this much better than he is. He could see Aziraphale going down to Hell, flaming sword blazing, celestial eyes everywhere as his true form bursts forth. If Crowley were still there to be found, Aziraphale would pull him from the depths of the deepest pit. And if he was gone… Crowley does not think losing him would hold Aziraphale back. He’d be hurt, maybe even devastated, but he would find a way to move on, to live with Crowley as a cherished memory.
He downed another bottle.
When stars explode, stardust scatters across the vast emptiness of space. These are called nebulas. The humans love to photograph the swirling colors the dead star leaves amid the ocean of stars still intact. To them, it never loses its beauty. The whorls of dust create intricate shapes; catching the light of other stars in its death. Given enough time - millions and millions of years, the nebula separates into clouds swirling around invisible points of gravity; pressing molecules of hydrogen and helium and a million others together, forming a new star. Returning the light.
A hand on his shoulder causes Crowley to jerk away in shock. The bar was long empty, having closed hours ago for everyone but him.
“Crowley?” a voice asks hesitantly.
Crowley turns slowly, reverently, like the Earth who found its orbit again. Aziraphale smiles weakly at him – he’s hurt and disheveled, but he’s back and whole.
The angel stumbles backward as his place in the galaxy returns – as the Sun that planet Crowley has always orbited. He catches Crowley in his arms as the demon cries into his shoulder, clutching Aziraphale tightly to prove to himself he really is back. There would be a time for explanations; a time to figure out what happened. But the universe needs to realign first. So for now, they hold on to each other as the first rays of the morning sun cast through the windows.