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London was grey, as if it had never changed.
Crowley set aside some time before stepping outside his apartment, because after the last event’s nature-bending, he’d needed a nap.
First, though, he compulsively staked out Aziraphale before approaching. Like he should. Like always.
His Angel had company, the kind that’s built a blackboard to solve some complex rhetoric. Aziraphale, always enthused to be helpful, engaged with him. Doesn’t know that he’s brilliant because his company is consistently excited by his responses; this other being, his company, doesn’t normally react so positively unless what he sees is brilliant.
Nobody’s around. Crowley braces himself for the encounter.
The Demon appeared inside, and leaned on the archway to the transformed sitting area. Both occupants turned to look, one surprised and one in joy.
Crowley stared at the blackboard and quickly saw the problem with it. “Whatcha got there, kid?”
“Crowley!” Aziraphale about gushed. “I’m so glad you’re home. This is The Doctor, remember from Pompeii?”
That wasn’t the only time Crowley crossed paths with The Doctor, but it was the last for Aziraphale.
The Doctor must’ve liked this particular form, at some point, to regenerate into it. Crowley knew it was the same man, because it was a lot harder for The Doctor to shapeshift than for himself or Aziraphale. But then, The Doctor’s species was a hybrid. There was a chart somewhere…
“Hey.”
The Doctor smiled knowingly and gestured to the board. “It’s time-space dilation based on a nursery rhyme, but you knew that. Oh, how are the plants?”
“Fine.”
The Demon’s hips carried a particular swing, Aziraphale caught, as he approached the board and picked up a piece of chalk. Then, he wrote some lines of math above the corresponding rhymes.
It’s uncharacteristic, but Crowley says, “In this genre of syntax, you need ancient Greek translation rules. I get the Etruscan, but older Greeks just /think/ more accurately on the subject.” He stepped back and let The Doctor examine it.
A little cultural analysis and a bit of math was all Crowley was willing to contribute, because keeping up with The Doctor was a chore in and of itself. More than that, if his mission was to be better than his opposition, what or whoever it was at the time, he’d better bring out his wit if he wanted things to go smoothly. In other words, Crowley knew how to sprint, but he didn’t much like it.
“Ooohhhh, I see it now! There’s a nice advantage about doing things the long way around.” The Time Lord resumes writing furiously on the board.
“Right. Hello, angel.” Turning toward Aziraphale, Crowley smirked, just enough to let the Angel know he was glad to see him.
“Good show, dear. We’ve only been here for a minute-“
“Three hours.” The Doctor didn’t pause his notation.
“-For a minute, but-“
“Don’t tell me something’s about to happen, ‘cause I literally just got back from a nearly disastrous, super cosmic thing on the other side of the planet, and I like to go at my own pace if you don’t mind.”
The Doctor stopped and smiled at him. “The Taming of Cerberus, that was you! I was just reading about it, nice one!”
“Nuh, I-I was just in town.”
“Happens all the time. No, this is something I need to work out on the TARDIS. After the last takeoff, she broke down and landed here! There’s a piece of code she showed me, this rhyme. It seems to be damaging her. And good, too, Aziraphale has an inspiring perspective!”
Crowley’s grin is wide and mischievous. “It’s not like you to find inspiration in Aziraphale’s Divine Platitudes, Doctor.” He winked at Aziraphale, who was about to say something.
The Doctor stopped a beat to think, but said, “What? Yes! But I needed an extra bouncy wall, helps me think faster, with an added bonus of… you know, helping.”
“Ah, see? Thank you, Doctor.” The Angel is very proud of himself, for absolutely pure reasons.
Crowley sighs lovingly at Aziraphale, and then manifests a bottle of wine, a soda, and three wine glasses.
An Angel and a Demon toast and imbibe.
The Doctor sipped his soda and froze. It’s plain soda, except there’s a hint of a spice he thought he’d long forgotten. It seemed impossible.
“How did you do that? Put that in a soda?” Some inexplicable emotion washed over him. He’d never divulge it, but The Doctor was still trying to figure Crowley and Aziraphale out, but what he had found so far gave him a feeling of something he’d always been looking for.
“S’miracle, kid, take it.”
The Doctor sipped again, careful this time to really let it affect him. The incredibly rare and ancient spice is from deep in his memory— it wasn’t the exact spice itself, per se, but the taste. It brings him immediately back to the Academy, and by a long shot probability, The Doctor remembers the relative moment he figures out this exact problem. His teachers, then, said he was stupid for being more involved in random dreams than a basic TARDIS Manual, but The Doctor couldn’t let it go until he solved it.
He gazed at the board for a few beats, then hauled the whole thing down the hall. Aziraphale peered in the darkened corridor, but The Doctor turns a corner. They hear the TARDIS doors shut, and then the ship phase out of its place.
Crowley and Aziraphale exchanged glances.
“Well, he was in a hurry…” Aziraphale sounded a bit hurt.
Crowley shrugs. “Kid’s going places, angel. I wouldn’t worry about him.” He starts to enjoy his first good drink of wine since he’d returned.
“Oh, well, not to hinder him. Crowley, why do you keep calling him ‘kid’?”
“Hm?” He almost choked, but managed not to. Foolish to waste good wine like that.
Phasing sounds began to reverberate through the sitting room, while papers flew off the open desk, their hair momentarily caught by the releasing of dimensional pressure.
The TARDIS stabilizes, and her doors open.
“I just realized, you both have never been inside! Let me show you what I found! C’mon.” The Doctor makes off into the TARDIS’ depths.
The two left in the room glance at each other, then rush for the box.
Aziraphale steps politely in first, because he’s closer, and adapts quickly to the air. His eyes flit around, delighted by everything he sees, and everything he feels. I’s as if his senses were keeping an eye on a million galaxies at once, and they were doing so in return. It wasn’t a bad feeling. In fact, he eased into stillness.
The doors close and lock themselves when Crowley passed Aziraphale on his way to the main floor. Dimensional feats aren’t that astounding to him, but he’s standing around with a surprise that he couldn’t hold back on his face. So much was… alive.
“Um, well-w.. n-nice place you got here…”
But The Doctor was disarmingly stepping towards Aziraphale. Crowley examines his angel, and what he finds hits him in the gut.
To say it in Aziraphale’s own jargon, he looked absolutely blessed just to be standing there, but he was still deeply conflicted. This may not end well, because the Angel that had always felt so cast out was now feeling so very—
“Aziraphale?”
“Right now, you’re adjusting to the TARDIS information channels, and it can be overwhelming for some, I should have told you… I apologize…”
The Angel starts sniffing. He retrieves a handkerchief from his pocket. Crowley moves closer.
Continuing, The Doctor says, “But listen, and this is important. There’s a word that’s building up in you, and you have to say it out loud. Please, just once. For me.”
One look at Crowley and Aziraphale said weakly, “Seen.” He dabbed at his eyes and chuckled at himself for being so silly. He knew that Crowley is Fallen, but he didn't know exactly what that meant for him. Nonetheless, Aziraphale sees complete understanding written all over his demon.
Crowley consciously kept breathing, because he did feel exactly what Aziraphale did. The TARDIS could see under his glamour, could feel every tangle in every oppressed pocket of his light. She could hear his countenance grinding, his skeleton burning. He steadied himself.
“By her nature, the TARDIS measures every point in time and space that she can, in order to travel, and identify landmarks. Some people she doesn’t like, but she seems alright with the both of you.” The Doctor brightened up at a better thought, “Her name is Idris!” A sweeping gesture brought the Angel out of his cycling thoughts. “Aziraphale, meet my TARDIS! It stands for Time And Relative Dimensions In Space! Nifty, huh?”
Aziraphale calmed, and smiled lovingly. “Well, hello Idris. Lovely room. I’m sure the rest of you is just as beautiful.” The TARDIS made a noise in appreciation, which set him at ease, though unperfected.
Crowley exhaled a breath that he didn’t know he held.
“Ah, yes, what I found!” The Doctor carried himself up a flight of steps, and fishes out a long box. “It’s from some centuries in the future, just sitting around in a vault! Then I read the directions and so I brought it here.”
“What-what directions?” Something piqued Crowley’s mind, and it started with ‘some centuries in the future’.
“Ohh,” The Doctor smoothly jaunted back over to them, self-satisfied grin shining. “The tag said ‘salvage’, so I did. And by the report on it, it’s yours. Go on, open it.”
Two human shaped beings creaked open a dusty box the Time Lord had offered.
“Oh!” Aziraphale’s hands fly to his mouth. He slowly removed his old sword from its bedding. It felt unnecessarily older than he remembered.
Crowley raises his eyebrow. “Well… There you go, angel. Why are you giving us, uh, a flaming sword from the future, again?”
While The Doctor put the box to the side, Aziraphale briefly unsheathes his gift, just to check. It was definitely his, except more war-torn than he could believe. It was knowledgable, and about much more than he expected. He needed a bit of time to study it, he decided.
“I told you, it was just going to sit there. What a waste! Oh, just as long as no one uses it for um,” he checks his watch, “twelve years.”
“Twelve years?”
“Yep, to this day. So I suggest you hide it really well until then.” He tries to smile.
Aziraphale thinks he understands— it was a thought that vexed him to the core, though, so he said quickly, “Right, then. Thank you.”
“Angel, make us a cuppa?” Crowley moved in front of Aziraphale and scanned his eyes. Scared. That wouldn’t do. Crowley forgot himself for a second and kissed his angel's forehead.
“Yes, that sounds lovely. Please, feel free to join us, Doctor.” The Angel left, carefully checking the room out of the TARDIS doors before going to stash the sword. His pulse jammed through him, and he forced himself to calm it, desperately needing to remain unnoticed. Then… Tea. He should make tea.
About a whole minute after Aziraphale left, Crowley turned around, slowly pivoting on one foot. He stared, piercing golden eyes at The Doctor.
“When?” Crowley demanded.
“I’m honestly trying to help, Crowley.”
“When? Hm?” A step closer would be unnerving to most, but the Time Lord turned soft out of experience.
“I can’t tell you now, I just gave you a sword. Don’t tell anyone I did that, by the way, I have a reputation.” He began to press buttons and flip switches, but then paused. “I can’t tell you… or anyone, Crowley, because I’ve just gone and changed it and now it’s up to you.… But I can, in fact, tell you that you’d better get a move on.” A heavy moment passes.
Crowley gets it. War. He’s working on his own complex rhetoric, now. But he’d better go, his angel’s gonna need someone to be with, shortly. A nod completes his resignation.
It didn’t stop his mind from working, though, and that’s when he caught the new scent. He looks at The Doctor more closely, and like a snake, he moves up to the Time Lord, encircles him. He smells better the fumes of madness, tied into an impossible age, like integrating an eon of suffering and then breaking bits off. This wasn’t the Doctor that spent three hours trying to fix his TARDIS with Aziraphale.
His senses were still counting that age when Crowley asked, “What happened to you?”
“You’re gonna have to be more specific. I’m fine. Really. Okay look, it was just a bump in the road, if you’re that curious.”
“Your own people, huh? C’mon, I know the look.”
The Doctor saw the dark parts of Crowley’s entire life, just then. He returned to his console. “You better, y’know, go hug your boyfriend before he gets too upset. And I wouldn’t blame him, I don’t like walking around with an atomic weapon, either.”
Crowley had to go then, it’s true. But he must have still been forgetting himself, because the only thing the always-burning Demon could do before he snapped was lay exactly one hand on The Doctor’s shoulder, and gently kiss his cheek. He doesn’t know when they’ll cross paths again, but he’s going to avoid it, just this once.
The Doctor didn’t need to see Crowley’s true form, then.
But now, there was nothing more the Demon wanted than success. But he had to time it right, make sure he’s out of suspicion.
Crowley made himself back off from the decidedly undemonic display of pure affection, and put his hands in his pockets.
“Look after yourself, kid.” He turns on his heels and closes the blue doors behind him, for the last time in a long time.
Alone, The Doctor smiled, as hope for Earth blossomed in his chest. He’s closer to sure that he made the right choice to return than when he landed.
With the same rancorous noise she appeared by, the TARDIS fades from the flat.
“Oh. Always in a rush, that man. I’m almost tempted to call it rude.” Aziraphale stood at the kitchen archway with a tea tray.
“You’ve no idea, angel.”
“You say that like you know him more than I thought you did.”
Crowley turned. First things first. “I do.”
“Hm? How’s that?” The Angel poured tea. He’s still thinking about the sword, but welcoming the conversation. Maybe they’d be okay.
“Pompeii wasn’t the only time I ran into him. You know he has a track record— in London, specifically— right?”
“Oh? No, I didn’t. You never told me.”
“Yeah, well, by the time it, uh, got easier, it was just a memory, so,” he sighs, “I just wanted to forget about it.”
“My dear, are you alright? Come, I locked up for the night.”
Crowley moodily rounded the coffee table and sunk into the couch next to Aziraphale.
“D’you know the Vampires call him The Oncoming Storm?”
“No? When did you talk to Vampires?”
“Oh, some place in California, couple weeks back. Nice town. And you wouldn’t believe what happened there if I told you, angel. Any of it.”
“Well, there’s the wine. We’ve got all night, my love.”
“Y-w- I mean, if you insist..”
Aziraphale put his tea cup down and kissed Crowley properly, something that truly said, ‘Welcome home.’
He made a surprised, but agreeable noise.
“Yes, I do.” Aziraphale picked up his tea, much more comfortable, then.
“Alright. Good. Yeah, so. California.” Crowley poured another glass of wine, and took a long, steadying breath.