Chapter Text
The bookshop "A.Z. Fell and Co" in Soho was open again.
It stood dark and silent for many years, and it was really a miracle no one got interested enough in such a property, but now it opened its doors for customers once again – as reluctantly as ever, with the same bizarre working hours nobody could ever remember or comprehend. And mister Fell was there again.
Another mister Fell, of course, and some old residents would say it was high time for another descendant of this respected family to come and take care of his fathers' business. Although the more sharp-tongued ones could ask where any of those descendants really came from considering all men in this family to be obviously as blue as the tropical sky. Others would discuss the degree of family likeness between the supposed father and son and find it spectacular.
But in several days it was just natural to have the bookshop working and its nice owner gently talking to his customers about literature without selling anything. And most of the neighbours were quite sure that it was always the case.
There was something off about mister Fell though. Well, he was kind and friendly as ever, polite and gentle, and not caring about profits as a Fell had ever been. And people felt better and lighter in his presence and sought his advice sometimes, which was anything but new, again. But there was some strange air of sadness around him.
And he was always alone in his bookshop. Customers, yes. Friends or family? - No.
"It's always hard, darling, to lose them," Mrs Bells considered herself old enough not to dance around some topics, so after some visits to the bookshop she decided to give the owner a piece of her mind. She always liked the shop and mister Fell, even when she was a little girl and laughed posting his working hours on Instagram. Who could say she would return to this place in her old age and find it the same, but full of melancholy.
She pushed her wheelchair a bit closer and patted mister Fell's hand lightly.
"The loved ones. They make us whole and then go and leave us bleeding and lacking again."
The bookseller startled at her words and looked at her bewildered.
"Oh my, dear woman, what do you..."
"Don't give me this bullshit, mister Fell, I remember him well, your friend. Stunning, he was, and this gait..."
Mister Fell hesitated a moment and nodded slowly:
"Oh, yes, he was. I didn't realise you would have any memory of ..."
"We all remember our young years," she gave a small laugh, then sighed sympathetically. "So what I wanted to say. I lost my Mark a dozen years ago. I was truly lost myself after that, for a long time. But the wheel still turns, and there is no good in always mourning, darling. There comes time to let go and embrace life again and not to refuse God's gifts."
Mister Fell looked at her gently and said, clearly choosing his words very carefully:
"Thank you, my dear woman; your words are wise indeed."
He steered her gently to the front door, and so Mrs Bells left, and the angel gave out a long shaking breath in the silent bookshop.
It was silent in a very wrong way. It wasn't cosy. It wasn't librarish. It was graveyard. It was the silence of damped feelings too sharp to bear. The silence of not expecting anyone. The stifling silence of loneliness.
Aziraphale hated that he got used to it. But sometimes life just doesn't give you options.
He fled this kind of silence when it took over the cottage – it was unthinkable to stay there, it made him mad, and he hoped vaguely that his bookshop would make some difference. He sure had been alone here for long periods of time. It had been his home for nearly two centuries, and he had spent most part of them pretty much alone, and...
It didn't help. The silence came with him. As if it could not. This new silence came with him and chased away the former one, that homey and warm one which promised new books, and lunches, and forgiveness after arguments. Which was always a bit expectant of the sound of steps, of snake hissing and "Hello, angel". The new one did just say he'd never come. Because there was no one to come anymore. There was nothing but a blood pool and black slim on the stones that he had found as he had come - too late.
He was at a book fair - "sure you go, angel, just remember to come back eventually, or let me pick you up?" - when some strange feeling of unease rose in his chest, tugging him away. He was worried, he was... last time he felt this way he found Crowley hurt and surrounded by armed demons, so he dropped the deal in making and rushed out leaving another antiquarian amazed and disappointed. Aziraphale would make it up for him with some tiny miracle, but at the moment he was too busy worrying and barely had enough patience to get away from the human sight to miracle himself home into the cottage.
Which was empty. And no one answered his call.
Aziraphale stretched his senses and searched - only to find an emptiness that frightened him as nothing in his life before. Emptiness in the place where Crowley should be.
There was half-empty cup of coffee on the kitchen table - it would stay there for the next couple of weeks - and the mobile phone.
The back door stood slightly ajar. The fence door in their garden was left open.
He never got to know how they had lured Crowley out. Was it a child hostage? Or just something for the demon's curiosity?
He went out of the garden and saw it - blood on the paved road. Blood that cried to him, because it was Crowley's, he knew it as certain as he knew his friends voice.
And there was black slime dissolving on the ground - of the kind that a demonic body, ferociously destroyed, would left behind.
Aziraphale felt sick, his knees buckling.
No no no no no no no no no no
It could be another demon. Someone Crowley had killed in self-defence. He was strong enough to do it. They both were pretty mighty now, with their powers rising in the years after the Not-Apocalypse.
Crowley wasn't a fighter. And there was definitely no fair fight here.
Aziraphale closed his eyes trying to steady himself and searched again. He looked through the surroundings, than through the county, the country, through the continent, the Earth.
No sign of Crowley. Nothing that would say, "your dearest brilliant demon is here". Nothing at all. Crowley was gone.
No.
There were all kinds of bad scenarios. It shouldn't have been the worst.
Crowley couldn't sense him when he had been to Heaven. Now Aziraphale knew exactly how his friend had felt that day and what wouldn't he do now to make this up for him.
So. They could have taken him to Hell. Or Heaven. Aziraphale would say there were traces of demonic presence all over the place, but he couldn't dismiss another possibility. Heaven had already worked with Hell once trying to destroy them.
He had to go back to the house and start searching at big scale.
He couldn't. He couldn't move, sitting on the ground next to the drying blood stain and shaking.
Crowley was gone.
The house was bereaved. As if the life was sucked out of it.
Crowley's shirt hung messily upon a chair. Crowley's coffee stood on the table. Crowley's phone chimed scornfully with messages. Crowley's sunglasses glinted from the mantelpiece. Crowley was everywhere in the cottage - but he wasn't there.
After a while the phone got silent - the demon wasn't there to believe it had power.
Aziraphale didn't answer his own phone too - at least not to his human friends. He couldn't bear the idea to tell Adam, Pepper or Anathema (who was still sharp and brave despite her old age) that he had let Crowley disappear. They loved the demon, they would get worried and frightened. It was bad enough that he had to admit it to their other friends.
Farael came first - she didn't even like Crowley, just started to tolerate his presence a decade ago, but here she was, frowning and asking pointed questions. As the Heaven's Emissary on Earth she felt responsible whatever side's operation it might have been and had the right to openly ask for explanations.
Noel was shocked and crying and of little use. Some other angels joined their "Teekränzchen", as Crowley had called it with a smirk, during the last years. Now Aziraphale asked them to make some quiet inquiries. To his surprise, two of the three agreed without too much hesitation.
There was also a couple of demons who proved themselves to be friendly and trust-worthy enough in the recent time, so Aziraphale asked them and most of his expectation were on them, to be honest, which could be foolish, but Aziraphale grew very much used to put aside the prejudices about demons.
Those first days of feverish activity intermitted with just waiting, trapped in his own fears and hopes, were torture. No better were the answers.
Hell didn't celebrate it with any kind of big announcements, but the official and unofficial party lines both were "the traitor was destroyed".
Heaven claimed to know nothing at first, then joined Hell saying that the notorious demon was finally purged from the existence.
But this was, surely, what they wanted him to hear.
So Aziraphale tried other methods. He finally told the truth to humans, which resulted in pain, tears and swearing, but Anathema agreed to use her craft for searching. She asked him a lot of terrible questions about that day and place and wasn't at all hopeful, though. "I don’t' know, Aziraphale," the old witch said after a while of trying to locate the missing demon, "what could I find. The beings like you don't leave a lingering spirit behind as humans do, or... But there's nothing, Aziraphale. Nothing at al. We must assume he is dead."
The angel tried summoning circles. A dozen of different random demons appeared in their house, trapped inside a carefully crafted pentagram. All denying any knowledge or any rumours that the demon Crowley was, in fact, not dead but imprisoned or something.
Perhaps, he wasn't lucky enough to catch the right witness.
There was one being who could dispel all doubts, but he was hard to meet and leave unscathed. Not that Aziraphale really cared about the last part by that moment, but if Crowley was alive and needed his help, he had to be able to aid him, so he had to be here himself.
Aziraphale went to the Royal London Hospital and made sure that no creature, human or otherwise, died there for nine days.
It wasn't easy to make Death come for just a conversation, but the angel managed to get his attention, even if he was shaky with tiredness.
The talk was far from pleasant.
"YOU PRIDED IN MY DEFEAT THE OTHER DAY, PRINCIPALITY. NOW YOU WANT TO GET COMFORT FROM ME. THIS ISN'T LIKELY."
"Just tell me if Crowley is dead, please, and you can gloat as much as you like. But I won't care about any other of your words and I will save from your hands anyone here until you answer."
"YOU OVERSTEP YOUR LIMITS, PRINCIPALITY. THESE LIVES ARE MEANT TO END, THAT IS HOW THE UNIVERSE WORKS. THAT IS WHAT GOD WILLS."
The angel shut his eyes closed tiresomely and shook his head.
"Then God will see to it, but until that I.. " He didn't finish the sentence focusing once again on fixing the heart rate of an elderly woman.
"YOU ARE JUST BEING CRUEL, GIVING THEM ALL THIS FALCE HOPE." The looming presence of Death moved closer, making it harder to concentrate. To be. "AND YOU ARE EXHAUSTING YOURSELF. I AM BUT NOT ORDERED NOR PERMITTED TO REAP YOU YET. SO I SAY: IT WOULD GIVE ME SOME SATISFACTION TO SEE YOUR FRIEND OUT, BUT I HAVE NOT. THERE ARE THOUGH OTHER WAYS TO BE EXTINGUISHED FOR A DEMON THAT NOT DEMAND MY PRESENCE. LESS HONOURABLE ONES. AND HE IS NO MORE."
That said, Death snapped the threads of powers linking to the humans out of Aziraphale's fingers, and the angel stumbled. He couldn't fight now, not any more. His vision got blurry, his head was swimming. He felt lives fading around him, vanishing, crumbling, nurses and doctors pointlessly rushing to fix things, but he didn't have any strength left to help them. In the beginning havoc no one seemed to notice the blonde middle-age man nearly fainting in the lobby, and Aziraphale was quietly thankful for that. He barely managed to call Pepper and ask her to pick him up.
"I don't know what do you think you're doing," she said, making her way through the London traffic, "but it's really time to face the truth, Aziraphale..."
And so he was back in the cottage again. Alone with a coffee cup and the long-dead phone. Fabric of the shirt slowly dissipated during the days - it was, of course, conjured, not bought, as was always Crowley's custom, and now the angel was too tired and too weak to keep all such things in place... so they vanished.
Aziraphale went absent-mindedly through the house to find something to drink and took the cup to wash finally, and then it hit him.
He was no more.
Crowley was ripped not only out of his life, leaving it empty and shredded. He was ripped out of the life itself.
Killed. Murdered. By the sight of the crime scene, slaughtered.
And he wasn't even there. Not to protect Crowley. Not to say goodbye.
The cup slid down from the angel's hand and shattered.
Aziraphale slowly sank down to the floor and wept.
If the first weeks of denial and hopes could be described as torture, then what would one call the next ones? Hell?
Crowley could offer his expert opinion on the matter, but he wasn't there.
Gone, gone, gone, gone.
Aziraphale was so over-exhausted that night after speaking with Death, that after hours of crying he dozed off, and the waking up was a nightmare. Because in his dream they were walking together, smiling and chatting, gardens and rivers under their feet, and Crowley was alive, and well, and his usual witty and wily self, and Aziraphale woke up – to find the demon wasn't there.
So, sleep was now not an option – luckily, Aziraphale never was really fond of it. But it left so many empty hours with no escape from them. Hours filled with memories and regrets, and with questions.
How could She let that happen? How could She let Crowley perish, Crowley, brave, cunning and so in love with Her world that he protected it even when everything had seemed lost? How could She let this unique and brilliant being survive Hell for thousands years and now get butchered by some demon brutes?.. How did She dare to give them a false hope of safety and then to let down so harsh?.. Were they just pawns to Her, used and needless now, expandable after they'd served Her purpose? Was She still that cruel and capricious?..
And if She condemned him to Hell for these question, so be it, it wasn't even funny anymore, this old threat. He couldn't care less.
She didn't answer, but he didn't Fall either. And sitting in the midst of human lives and their everyday tragedies, how could he blame Her for not indulging him? For not looking after them particularly when it was always Her custom to let Her creatures live and die, and choose, and be free, not just guarded puppets?
How could he blame Her after She had given him so many second chances, so many shots to put things right.
How could he blame Her when it was all his fault. He didn't come when he was needed. He let this happen. He let Crowley be killed.
And what stopped those who had done it from finishing the business? Two traitors would make a more exceptional achievement for anyone. Or at least Heaven could envy Hell at that matter and make a move.
NOT YET, Death had said, which could mean he was waiting to get his permission pretty soon.
Aziraphale didn't doubt whoever came get him, they would come prepared – but he really looked forward to the possibility to face them and destroy at least a couple before his own demise. Revenge was a shallow thing, but still the prospect awoke a bleak grim joy in his heart.
Crowley wouldn't like this. But he wasn't here, he'd gone and couldn't tell the angel what to do or what's like him or not. He'd left. How could he be so careless? How could he, the old serpent, let himself be tricked and cornered so easily? How could he do this to Aziraphale?
No one came, and violent thoughts died in the angel's soul again, leaving place only for sorrow.
The acute pain of loss seemed to get duller after a while. But always here, always aching, always ready to sting anew when a sudden word, or sight, or sound provoked it. And the world was full of words, sight, sounds that meant Crowley. That all told what Aziraphale had lost, how his own world was forever robbed.
One day he moved back to London, to his old bookshop. He considered for a while to run away from every reminder – but truth to be told, there was nearly no place on Earth which wouldn't hold a kind of memory. And even lack of it would become only a new reason for contemplation.
So, Aziraphale was back in the bookshop. He had spent a lot of time here alone, He had spent a lot of time alone before it, centuries upon centuries upon centuries when he and Crowley hadn't yet been close or when they hadn't met for decades. But even then Aziraphale wondered about his Adversary more than reason. And later the time apart meant collecting - things, words, tastes, stories - to share when they met. The habit to notice things that could make other happier was by now unbreakable.
Well, perhaps, one day Aziraphale would be able to find such a thing, or a wine, or a phrase in a book and not to feel pain, only remember his friend with a smile and gratitude for that companionship. Perhaps, the stars wouldn't have enough time to cool till then.
Which the angel seriously doubted.