Chapter Text
“I suppose you had something to do with this?”
Part of Crawly resented Aziraphale’s implication. The other, more compassionate part of him understood that it was easier for the angel to blame a demon than acknowledge the horrors of which humans were capable all on their own.
That didn’t mean he liked it, and demons weren’t supposed to be forgiving or sympathetic, so he went with the resentment. Besides, he hadn’t been involved at all. At the time of Abel’s murder Crawly had been asleep.
He’d watched the humans sleep and thought, ‘That might be worth a try. Seems to refresh them, and if nothing else, it’s a good way to make the boring bits pass faster.’
Crawly therefore became the first demon to sleep. If Beelzebub asked, he could always point out that it was most definitely sloth, and therefore he was practicing a sin. Demons were expected to sin regularly now that a formal list had been established, and Crawly was trying out different ones to find his favorite. Sloth was, so far, a real contender.
Anyway, he’d gotten slightly carried away with his nap. It turned out that demons, unlike humans, didn’t necessarily wake up after some hours had passed, and Crawly slept for a month on his first attempt. This was an extremely promising way to skip the boring bits, just as soon as he worked out a few details like making sure he woke up to do his job. The last thing Crawly wanted was to be recalled to Hell, and he couldn’t coast on tempting Eve forever.[1]
So no, he’d not been party to Cain’s crime. He had been awoken by a strong feeling of hatred, which he followed to the scene of the killing, but he wasn’t about to tell his Adversary that he had in fact slept through the world’s first murder.
“Not my doing,” he said, though he was already thinking he might not want to mention that to Beelzebub. She was very keen on corrupting humans.
“You mean to tell me Cain thought of this all by himself?” asked Aziraphale.
“She created them with potential for good and evil, didn’t She?”
“Well,” said Aziraphale huffily, “yes, but why would Cain do such a thing?”
“He picked evil. Obviously.”
This did not satisfy the angel. “Just because the Almighty preferred Abel’s offering…”
“What?”
Aziraphale looked at him with surprise. “You really don’t know?”
“I was busy elsewhere,” said Crawly.[2]
“She liked Abel’s offering. Cain’s displeased Her.”
Crawly considered this new information and concluded, “She’s at least as much to blame as Cain, then.”
Scandalized, Aziraphale hastened to counter, “No, no. That’s the entire point of this free will business.”
“Sounds like a double standard to me. You want to blame me for influencing them to evil, but when She does it, the evil is all their fault.”
“We’ve discussed this, Crawly. Her plans are ineffable.”
Crawly decided not to point out his painful firsthand knowledge of this fact. You either accepted ineffability, or you had your Grace ripped out and took a freefall into boiling sulphur. He wasn’t yet sure which was more stifling, in the long run.
“Right,” he said. “Well, I’ve got a report to make, so… now what’s this?”
Cain was changing. Into what, Crawly couldn’t say, but it didn’t look Heavenly, so he expected his superiors would be well pleased.
“Oh, dear,” said Aziraphale. “This is what the memo meant.”
“What memo?”
Before the angel could reply, Her voice boomed. “Now you are under a curse. You will be a restless wanderer on the Earth all the days of man.”
Cain, shaking, said, “My punishment is more than I can bear.”
“Should’ve thought of that before you killed your brother,” muttered Crawly.
“I will be a restless wanderer on the Earth, and whoever finds me will kill me,” continued Cain.
“Not so,” She said. “For you are no longer Cain. You brought death, and Death you shall become.”
Not going to Hell, then. No, Cain was wasting away from his human body and becoming something new in all the universe. It was a twisted kind of immortality, as She didn’t believe in going lightly when it came to punishments. Crawly would know.
“The memo about the horsepersons,” said Aziraphale. “Didn’t you get one?”
“It’s not like Heaven sends updates Below.”
“I’m sure I read that the Metatron and Lucifer had the broad outline of a Great Plan.”
Crawly realized he had to give some thought to the potential drawbacks of extended sleeping, if this was the kind of news he missed. “Doesn’t mean the rest of us have been clued in. What’s a horseperson?”
“I probably shouldn’t tell you,” said Aziraphale. “But we’ve just seen the first of them. Death.”
“First of them? How many are there going to be? She’s really stacking the deck against the humans, here.”
“I will not stand by and listen to your blasphemy, Crawly.”
“Fine, fine. I’ve got a report to make, anyway. See you around.” And with that, Crawly descended into Hell.
On the way down, he spared a moment to think about this peculiar angel. Aziraphale was a young one, or so Crawly thought. Loads more interesting than your average angel, and undoubtedly the most compassionate of the lot, but stubbornly unwilling to ask questions. Well, Crawly couldn’t really blame his caution there.
He only hoped that, since it seemed he and Aziraphale would continue to meet for the foreseeable future, the angel would stop asking if every bit of bad news was Crawly’s doing. A demon should want that precise assumption, of course, but Crawly wasn’t a typical demon, and he’d rather not have the reminder of both his eternal role as evil incarnate and his failure to be a proper demon. (It was a personal sore spot for Crawly that he didn’t fit into Hell any better than he had Heaven.)
Besides, Aziraphale needed to open his eyes and accept that God’s favored creations were very, very flawed all on their own. It wasn’t like Crawly had forced Eve to eat that apple. She’d wanted to, was the thing. That was how temptation worked: he urged a human to do what they already wished to, deep down.
He sternly reminded himself that it didn’t matter what an angel thought of him. He had bigger issues, like finding figuring out what this Great Plan was all about. It sounded like the kind of thing he should investigate.
[1] Crawly had not yet realized that he would be able to coast on the evil humans thought up all by themselves, though looking at Eve wailing over her son’s dead body, he started to get an inkling that his job would continue to be easy.
[2] Specifically, curled up in serpent form under a pleasant-smelling bush, dutifully advancing his mastery of sloth.