Chapter Text
28th of June 1914 Sarajevo
Crowley had woken up in no better a mood than he had fallen asleep in. He’d spent the 13 years since he’d woken up messing with the citizens of Europe, deliberately ignoring London. And if he absolutely had to go to London, he gave Soho a wide berth.
Not that he needed to be there a lot, the tensions in Europe were palpable: The treaties, the nationalism, the imperialism, and the new war technologies had brought everything to the brink. Crowley had specific orders: tip it all over.
It had been easy enough to find the group of people to do it. The ‘Black Hand’ thought they were fighting to ‘Make Serbia Great Again’, but really, they were just the schmucks that Crowley knew were stupid enough to try and assassinate the Archduke of Austria, consequences be damned.
They’d already had the plans in place when Crowley had arrived, posing as a sympathiser with the funds to make their goals a reality. When he explained his plan to Hell they hadn’t been very impressed, but the mention of a war had at least gotten him some approval.
“So,” he’d said at his presentation, “Čubrilović will bomb the motorcade as it passes the Mostar Café, then, once the rubble is clear, all of Europe will go to war.”
“Why doezz one Archduke dying mean war in all of Europe?” Beelzebub had demanded.
“Glad you asked, your dark highness. You’ll like this. So, if an Austrian is killed by a Serbian in Bosnia, then Russia will have to get involved because of their treaty with Serbia, and Austria-Hungary will have to step in because of the deliberate attack in one of their territories.”
“Europe isn’t that small, what about the other countries?” Ligur demanded.
“Alright, I’m getting there, so Austria and Germany have an alliance, so Germany will have to get involved, but if Germany gets involved then they’ll be undefended on their Western side, so they’ll have to invade France and Belgium as well, and since England and Belgium have a treaty, that’ll bring England into the mix. So all of Europe will go to war.”
“You really think they’ll all jump in like that over something as little as an assassination?” Ligur said.
“Ligur, mate, of course they will, I’ve been up there for millennia,” Crowley grinned at the crowd, before swaggering off, back up to Bosnia.
The day of the assassination was at hand and Crowley had used all of his demonic wiles to make sure everything was going to go smoothly. Well, not all of them, but some, definitely some. Ok, one. One demonic wile.
He waited for the explosion from the nearby delicatessen. The members of the Black Hand that weren’t out there blowing things up sat in silence, their ears pricked for any sound. Crowley had always found that humans were unbelievably bad at waiting. It was part of what made his job so easy. But these humans seemed especially terrible at it, all sitting around like meerkats being cornered by jackals. Crowley was beginning to thoroughly enjoy their discomfort when he felt it. A miracle.
It wasn’t any old miracle, it filled Crowley with the smell of brioche and the feeling of his gut being punched. Aziraphale was here. He almost didn’t notice the sound of the bomb going off. After all, it was really just a bomb, nothing more than a catalyst and a fuel coming together in a bit of a boom. Feeling Aziraphale’s presence was so much more than that. Simultaneously the best and worst thing he could ever feel in a moment.
“Fuck!” It wasn’t Crowley who spoke (for once), but a young man (what was his name again? Gav-something), who came racing in from the street. “He bombed the wrong fucking car!”
“How did he fuck up that bad?” Came a chorus of voices from the bar.
“I dunno, we planned everything,” the man said, “it would have taken a fucking miracle for anything to go wrong.”
A miracle, of course. Aziraphale was off trying to stop the inevitable, surely he knew that the gunpowder that was Europe had been building for ages, this was just the spark, a spark Crowley would rather have liked to get credit for. But if it wasn’t this assassination it would be another one, or some ship would accidentally sail into someone else’s territory and they’d all go to war. The cooking pot of Europe was boiling over, regardless of what happened. But if Aziraphale really believed he could stop it from happening, well, they’d just have to see about that, wouldn’t they?
“Get your gun,” he told the man.
“What?”
“Get your gun. Wait outside. When you see him, shoot. Or was that too complicated for you to understand?” Crowley hissed. Running through what was supposed to happen next. The plan was supposed to work, he wasn’t supposed to have to remember the rest of the motorcade’s route. Bless it all.
“No, loud and clear,” the man said, obeying Crowley without hesitation, after all, Crowley had been working with them for over a year now, that was plenty of time to cultivate a fearsome reputation.
The waiting returned. Crowley sat on the roof of the deli and watched to motorcade make its way back. The deli wasn’t technically along the route but, oh will you look at that, the driver seemed to get lost. One wrong turn was all it took.
What happened next was obvious enough. It would be written down forever as the cause of the war that followed. In truth, Crowley didn’t understand exactly what he’d started, he’d slept through an entire century of technological advancement, and he had no idea what he’d just unleashed.
* * *
Aziraphale did not like being pulled away from London. London was safe, it had the Gentlemen’s club, which had definitely seen better days (and he would know, he was there), it had the little cafés and restaurants that he loved but couldn’t go to too often because dining alone he stuck out like a sore thumb. It had St James Park and the ducks which he couldn’t look at without worrying about Crowley. Without worrying that he might have found some other way to get his hands on Holy water.
He just had to keep reminding himself that he was right. He shouldn’t even have been speaking to Crowley in the first place. Their entire Arrangement had been a terrible idea, really. An angel and a demon working together, what had made him think that could ever work?
But he had the bookshop. He had his stories and a place that was just his. Well, just his until Gabriel showed up.
“Aziraphale!” Gabriel said, in his tone that just didn’t quite match normal enthusiasm. Gabriel stretched out his arms and raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘what is this?’.
“Yes Gabriel?” Aziraphale said, feeling his stomach drop. Nothing ever good came from Gabriel making that face.
“We have reliable intel that somethings about to go down in Bosnia, some way to try and start a war or something,” Gabriel gave his tin-like laugh.
“Oh?” Aziraphale said, “What would you like me to do?” This was tricky, Aziraphale always expected Gabriel to tell him to stop wars or floods or natural disasters, but that was seldom the way things actually worked out, all in the name of Her Great Plan.
“The opposition are trying to set it off now. If they want a war to happen then we . . .” Gabriel gestured to Aziraphale like an impatient kindergarten teacher.
“Don’t want it to happen?” Aziraphale offered, wondering how much longer this interaction was going to take.
“Exactly. So close up the shop, and let’s go.” Gabriel said. He only remembered that Aziraphale had to close the shop because last time Gabriel had miracled him anywhere, the shop had been left open and unattended and Aziraphale, who so seldom expressed anger at Gabriel, had explained that leaving the shop unattended like that was incredibly dangerous and could lead to humans discovering far too much.
Aziraphale scrawled a quick note and stuck it to the door, it read, Family emergency, shop closed until further notice. He turned the key in the lock and looked expectantly at Gabriel.
The thing about travelling by miracle is that, as well as it drawing quite a bit of power and therefore attention to oneself, it is also both unpleasant and unreliable, especially over long distances. The unreliability can be rectified in one of two ways: by travelling via the source of the power (Heaven or Hell), as it is a great deal easier to aim from above or below; Or by combining multiple sources of power, for example, two angels or two demons.
Gabriel chose the latter, which left Aziraphale feeling rather drained, not that he would ever complain (at least not to Gabriel’s face).
The slightly higher humidity of Sarajevo compared to London should not have been the detail that Aziraphale latched onto, after all he could hear the hopes and prayers of the people all around him. But millennia of being forced to listen to those hopes and prayers, knowing full well that he couldn’t do a thing about them, had led to Aziraphale becoming rather adept at ignoring them.
Of course, the humidity was also something to focus on that wasn’t Crowley. If he just ignored the way Crowley’s scent enveloped the city like a blanket, spiced apple cider over a fire. So he was alive. Aziraphale wasn’t sure if he ought to be pleased about that. It was something of a relief, certainly, that he hadn’t just run off and crashed the nearest baptism. But he wasn’t supposed to care at all. Gabriel would have handed over Holy water in a second and would have returned to Heaven to happily report one less demon in the world. But then again, Gabriel wouldn’t have let himself get roped into the Arrangement in the first place. Well, that was putting it a tad strongly, he’d participated in the Arrangement as much as Crowley had, but never again. He was on the straight (well, sort of) and narrow.
Aziraphale miraculously managed to find a place on one of the bridges over the Miljacka River and settled in place to watch some kind of procession. One of these days he was going to find a way to make Gabriel give him more specific instructions. He was just beginning to think about looking for Crowley when he heard a prayer from the banks of the river.
Please, God, let this work
He focused on the voice and saw a man toss something at the cars, aiming right for the car that contained the Archduke of Austro-Hungarian Empire. Oh yes, that would set off mayhem. It would be such a shame if someone were to divert the bomb, alerting security to the threat, but without the risk of war. Such a shame indeed.
The bomb went off under the next car, wounding, but not fatally, about 20 people.
Aziraphale was just getting ready to congratulate himself on a job well done. He’d noticed a café selling Burek, a sort of flaky pastry filled with meat, cheese, or other things, and had decided he’d quite like to try it when he felt it, a demonic miracle.
He pushed his way through the streets before remembering he could miraculously clear his path. He could feel something else too, people praying for safety from a merciful God. He hoped She was listening.
He heard it before he saw anything. Humans, with their fast inventions, had created the devices that could bring death with a bang. There were two loud cracks before the shooter was pinned by security.
One car. Two bodies. A chorus of assassins being wrestled to the ground. But it was too late. Aziraphale looked up at the roof of the deli, just in time to see Crowley disappear.
Darn.