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Their first library is in central France. It’s a carefully chosen spot for Aziraphale’s carefully curated collection of books, now settled in long-term storage and blessed to resist mold, insects, and every other destructive force known to afflict the written word.
When even Aziraphale had to agree that another dark age was rapidly approaching, as Crowley had been insisting for the better part of three decades, he began to collect books. Not for himself, this time, but for future generations to access the stories and knowledge of their ancestors once more. He has everything from classic literature and history to clinical anatomy, and knows perfectly well that Crowley snuck a in few extra astronomy books when he thought Aziraphale wasn’t looking.
He desperately hopes – no, he has to believe – that humans will be ready for the tomes again someday. They’ve managed to get through difficult times in the past, these marvelous creatures. Surely they’ll do it again.
Before, he could rely on the assurances of Heaven. Now it is only him, Crowley, and the humans. As far as he and Crowley can tell, both Heaven and Hell have retreated from any involvement in earthly affairs. There hasn’t been a hint of ethereal or occult activity in almost a century (besides his and Crowley’s miracles, which have taken on a more terrestrial feel). For all Aziraphale knows, the sides are busy settling their differences once and for all somewhere else, though Crowley doubts it.
He checks over the books one final time and sighs.
“People will be ready for them again, angel,” says Crowley. “Five, eight hundred years tops.”
“I hope so,” he says.
Crowley starts casting protective miracles, wards, and sigils around. While Aziraphale gathered books, Crowley worked out an elaborate system to keep people away from them. Very soon, humans will be rummaging around looking for food and liable to leave books to rot. The trick of it is, Crowley has designed this security to degrade over time. If something permanent happens to him and Aziraphale, after a millennium or so, humans will be able to stumble upon these books all on their own. They ought to be able to appreciate them by then if they ever will, he reasons.
Crowley has always been the imaginative one. Aziraphale hadn’t thought of such a defense simply because he’d never heard of anything like it. Small details like that are nothing to Crowley, who is able to consider what might be and then devote his considerable energies to making it reality, rather like humans. Aziraphale does so admire that about him.
The world is teetering on the edge of chaos. Climate refugees, food scarcity, and natural disasters come at such a pace governments can’t keep up. Aziraphale and Crowley, who have watched civilizations and empires fall, recognize the signs and are helpless to prevent it from recurring on a global scale.
They’ve never seen it quite like this. All they can do is help humanity rise again in the future.
“There,” says Crowley. “Now it just needs the last patina of evil to keep people away.”
This evil doesn’t feel like it comes from Hell, but from long memories of what humans can do. Aziraphale thinks their powers might come from Earth now. At least, that would explain why their miracles no longer feel the same. Sometimes, when Crowley gets it in his head to sleep for a fortnight, Aziraphale turns ideas over in his mind and thinks the Almighty may have rechanneled them, so to speak.
In any event, Aziraphale considers himself permanently reassigned as a protector of Earth and humans. So does Crowley, though he won’t admit it in anything but the most oblique terms unless he’s quite drunk, and moreover he has a very unique and mischievous take on how to accomplish the duties.[1]
Right now, that role means doing their best to make sure key knowledge isn’t lost forever. They’ve chosen ten spots around the globe for libraries. After Crowley finishes the patina of evil, they’re going to a valley in Hunan Province where they’ll stash books written in Mandarin, thence to the outskirts of Moscow, and so on around the world.
Once they finish they’ll return to England, where Aziraphale’s personal library (and the ever-more conspicuous Bentley, which Aziraphale has taken to miraculously disguising as a less antique electric car) will relocate to their new home in the Cotswolds. Crowley says he’s blessed if he’s going to stay in London because it’s starting to smell rotten and if he’d liked olfactory assault, he’d have stayed in Hell. The truth is somewhat different, Aziraphale knows. London has been their city for centuries now. They went all over the world for assignments until the Apocalypse didn’t happen, of course, but London was home. They’ve seen it rise, and Crowley cannot bear to see it fall.
And it will fall. The sea is beginning to claim it even now.
Crowley is almost done. The malevolence is growing, and humans will not want to tarry here. One angel and one demon, even when they are perhaps growing to be subtly different from what they used to be, can only do so much. This preservation of knowledge, at least, is within their power.
Aziraphale has gifted each stash of books with one volume from his personal collection. For this library, it’s a beautifully leather-bound copy of Le Comte de Monte Cristo. He thinks leaving a well-loved possession will make his blessings even stronger, and if not, it’s an excellent book all the same.
When you’re working on your seventh millennium of life on Earth, you know possessions, like everything else, are ephemeral. Aziraphale had started to forget, these last few centuries. He remembers now. He will doubtless be parted from more books as the next decades roll on, and eventually they will fade to a memory like the scrolls he used to own.
So much will disappear soon.
“Well, that’s it,” Crowley says. “We’ve done all we can here.”
“Yes. I suppose we have.” He takes a last look around. “Do you think they’ll get it a bit closer to right, next time?”
“I’m not sure there is a right,” says Crowley. “Won’t have to worry about the hydrocarbons, though.”
It’s true. There are no so-called fossil fuels left. Crowley has spent the last fifty years claiming he converted the Bentley to run on whatever alternative energy source he feels like naming at the time.
Aziraphale leans in, inviting Crowley to put a hand on his shoulder, which he promptly does. In the decades following the failed apocalypse, Aziraphale gradually accustomed himself to touch, and now finds the warm weight reassuring. It reminds him that whatever comes, he won’t be alone. He suspects Crowley likes to reach out and touch for similar reasons.
“Come on, angel. Let’s find the nearest patisserie.”
“You know, I don’t think I feel like eating,” says Aziraphale.
Crowley frowns. “Really?”
“Let’s just get on with it.”
“China?”
“Yes.” The sooner this is done, the better, not least because Crowley has ambitious plans to amass the world’s most impressive wine cellar, time permitting.
“They’re doing this to themselves, you know. The humans.” For all Crowley tries to sound blasé, the lack of swagger in his stride conveys unhappiness clearly.
“Are they?”
It’s as much as Aziraphale can voice. He still isn’t good with big questions. As the saying goes, old habits die hard, and steadfastly neither asking nor thinking about questions is a very old habit.
Crowley’s custom of inquiry is more ancient still. He gives Aziraphale a proud look for going as far as he did, then takes the idea further. “Maybe Above and Below gave them some nudges,” he admits. “When the Great Plan meant it was all going to be destroyed, wouldn’t have mattered one way or the other. But the rest? Humans aren’t blameless pawns here. They could’ve prevented the worst of this, and they didn’t.”
Aziraphale isn’t sure whether that makes him feel better or worse. He supposes it hardly matters either way.
Eventually this, too, will be a distant memory eased by recent, more pleasant ones. For now, there is his dearest Crowley. Aziraphale finds Crowley’s steady presence more reassuring than Gabriel’s lofty promises ever were.
“Still better than the apocalypse,” he says. There will, at least, be a world of which to speak for the foreseeable future.
“Maybe they’ll see the joke about dinosaur bones, next time around,” says Crowley.
“Perhaps.”
Aziraphale didn’t include any paleontology books in his libraries. He doesn’t want to spread misinformation, as he thinks this particular prank has gotten out of hand. He hasn’t admitted as much out loud, though, because he’s not quite sure who was responsible for the bones. If it was Uriel’s strange sense of challenge, or less probably, one of Gabriel’s misguided ideas to confuse humans into abandoning their quests for answers in favor of blind faith, Aziraphale is comfortable saying the whole thing was a mistake.
Disagreeing with the Almighty is entirely different. Aziraphale places no trust in Heaven or archangels, but he maintains that God is as worthy of his reliance as ever, and points to the failed apocalypse as evidence when pressed by Crowley. If God placed dinosaur bones, well, who is Aziraphale to question omniscience?
“At least they’ve invented bicycles,” says Crowley. He never did like horses, and miracling from place to place isn’t a viable option. Back when it used to be acceptable, the practice led to far too many awkward situations.[2]
Aziraphale remembers the fall of Babylon (among many other lost cities, empires, and civilizations). That one had been entirely on the humans, as most such events were when you got down to it. He and Crowley watched from the sky, using a minor miracle to ensure no one saw them. It was the first time they’d stopped pretending their meeting was at all related to work. Instead they tacitly agreed that no one else on Earth shared their immortal perspective, but no one else Above or Below understood the pain of terrestrial destruction.
After Cyrus took the city, they went their separate ways. Aziraphale didn’t see Crowley again for a hundred and nineteen rather lonely years.
“Crowley, do you remember Babylon?”
“Course I do.”
“When we watched from the sky,” he elaborates. After all, Babylon was a lovely city in its day, and worth recalling for more than its destruction.
“Hard to forget.”
“Yes, well, what I mean is, it’s better this way.” He reaches for Crowley’s hand to clarify his meaning. For all Aziraphale adores written words, he’s ineffective at coming up with his own to express deep emotions. It doesn’t help that humans keep changing their languages just when he’s starting to get a handle on one.
“Yeah,” says Crowley. Then, once the moment inevitably gets to be too much for him, he changes the subject. “Got sent to Scandinavia for fifty years after that. Opportunities among northern pagans, and all. Not a decent drop of wine to be found. No appreciation for satirical snowmen, either.”
“Satirical snowmen?”
Overflowing with affection for Crowley, Aziraphale listens to the ensuing story and makes appreciative noises in all the right places. The details aren’t important. What matters is the two of them, working together to help humanity.
In truth, Aziraphale was never as good a representative of Heaven as he claimed to be, though he still believes he was and is a fine ambassador for the Almighty’s love and grace. Crowley, similarly, was never as good – bad – effective a demon as Hell thought or wanted. This business of being humanity’s guides, though, they handle quite well as a team, if Aziraphale may flatter himself.
It’s distressing to see humans bring themselves so close to destruction. But Aziraphale and Crowley will be there to see them once again triumph over adversity, offering nudges in the right direction along the way.
“Still think the world was worth saving, angel?”
“You know I do,” he says, making sure to sound faintly scandalized. “Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts.”
“Course not.”
“I should hope not.” After all, Earth is the only place they can be together, and Crowley has been quite clear that’s his priority.
“Never,” says Crowley.
The Earth keeps turning, civilization edges closer to collapse, and one angel and one demon prepare for a more hopeful day in the future. However distant that day may be, Aziraphale and Crowley will be waiting for it. Together.
[1] Crowley is a firm believer in negative reinforcement. He has a great deal of fun inconveniencing and frustrating humans out of whatever course of action he doesn’t want them to take.
[2] Aziraphale ruined a perfectly good body by miracling himself to Sumer on a small hill where, unbeknownst to him, a large tree had grown since his last visit. This was how he learned corporations couldn’t survive sharing the same space as a tree trunk. After that, Gabriel had instituted a ‘no miracling yourself around the Earth’ policy, and even now Aziraphale agrees it’s for the best.
Earlier still there was an unpleasant misunderstanding when he transported himself very close to a sheep, so close his robes were over said animal, but Aziraphale prefers not to think about it.