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Darkness is where it starts; it’s where it has always started. The dawn of time before She breathed life into all of creation. Before She molded the cherubim, seraphim, and archangels, too. Before the sparks of light and darkness met, exploding out in a cataclysm of electrons and neutrons, forming the building blocks of all worlds, of all things.
In the beginning, there was light. That’s something that science and religion can agree on. Though, to be fair, they’re both a bit wrong. The Bang as scientists know it was the shaking of air, the vibrations of motion caused by two hands (what would be known as hands) crashing together in the first ever instance of a clap. It started with a bang, of course it would. She does have a sense of humor, after all.
Science, for all the church’s bluster, gets quite a lot right. The swirling gravitational pull, the blending of elements into bigger and more complex ones. Forming into gasses, then into liquids, compressing into solids. Soon enough, there are planets. There are stars. There are starmakers, spinning the elements in their hands. Compressing and forming these same elements into brilliance. Brilliance that humans will barely comprehend.
Aziraphale loves a starmaker. A starmaker with long and thin fingers who spins elements into infinity and makes them shine. Or at least, he used to do that.
Aziraphale has also, terribly, let his starmaker down.
Darkness, like the beginning, envelopes him. Not his body, oh no, that is long gone. Second one he’d lost to very ridiculous circumstances. If only he were careful, if only he’d paid attention.
He floats in this darkness, one thousand eyes pointing in every direction they can only to be met with void. To be met with nothingness.
There’s a sound, he can’t quite place it. Like a bell ringing but only if you strain your ears. Or, no, like a birdsong perhaps. A birdsong sung by something more creature than bird, like the song had to creep around sharp fangs before it could leave its beak. Possibly an old piece of Bach’s, recorded and rerecorded on vinyl after vinyl until there is nothing left but a whisper of the melody and the vague impression you’ve heard it somewhere before.
Aziraphale tries to focus on it, because of course he does, but it eludes him. He hears his name. Hears it choked out on a breath. He smells whiskey and dried peanut shells and brimstone and cinnamon. Feels the heart he no longer should possess breaking in two.
His planet, his love, the one under his protection. He’s failed him.
Crowley would, of course, not see it that way. No, Crowley has always been one for dramatics and overarching metaphors (despite how much he doesn’t read). Crowley would feel like the one who misstepped, the one at fault. Or at the very least, the one who should have been taken.
But what, really, is a sun without it’s planet? What purpose does it have? When nothing is left to orbit it, all there will be is loneliness. And that one planet, right there just close enough but just too far away - that’s the one that matters the most.
That should know that it matters most.
That has never been told that he matters most.
An oversight, really. Something that he was going to get to eventually. Just like the mountains will eventually crumble, just like when the continents eventually shifted. Always eventually, never the right time.
He’ll sing like a bird about it now.
He’ll sing like a bird about it for the rest of time, if he can.
But he still hears the warbling, getting a bit clearer. More now like a babbling brook but filtered through the noise of an airport runway that’s about 50 clicks away. Tranquility and business warring with each other over who can overpower.
Aziraphale thinks he’s starting to get a headache, without a head to have the ache. He rubs his temple anyway.
Wait, he has hands. He has temples. He pats himself down, he has a body, has his old coat and the well worn waistcoat, his fluffy hair not a lock out of place. He blinks and finds himself amazed to have eyelids. To be able to open his mouth and shout, finding his lungs filled with air.
The noise is louder. A rushing river in a thunderstorm. It calls out to him. It says…
Wake up,
Wake up,
Wake up!
A great gasping of air, filling his lungs with the smog and the fumes of downtown London. Home. He’s home.
He stands and he stumbles, feeling adrift and more than a little sore, but alive — and he’ll take that over all other things. He’s unmoored, a sun without a planet, an angel without…
…an angel without a demon.
It doesn’t take him long, the miasma of Crowley’s grief had been palpable even in the ether. Oh and what Aziraphale wouldn’t give for him to never feel that grief again. To wrap him up, safe and warm in his wings and in his arms. To never leave his side again.
His feet move forward, tracing a trail that he is only vaguely conscious of, to a pub not far from where he woke.
The patrons and the bartender through the window are glassy eyed and slack jawed; it’s well past five in the morning, no one should even be here. The tinges of orange and purple are starting to paint the horizon, the telltale signs of daybreak. Of the sun stretching over the horizon to warm the city.
Crowley sits at the bar, clearly trembling. Countless bottles surround him. His hair, normally so neat and lovely, is disheveled. His glasses are on the bartop, discarded carelessly.
Aziraphale opens the door, as quiet as he can, afraid of what awaits him inside. He had been gone, Crowley had been left alone. He expects anger, maybe fear, maybe just a bit of both.
With a shaky hand, he touches Crowley’s shoulder, the demon jerks away as though burned and Aziraphale’s heart breaks.
“Crowley?” It’s quiet, so quiet. Barely there over the knot in his throat. But Crowley turns around, looks at him like he hasn’t seen him for centuries, like he thought he’d never see him again.
Crowley lunges at him, causing him to stumble. He wraps Crowley up in his arms, holding as tight as he dares, one arm around his waist and one hand buried in his hair. And Aziraphale cries. Crowley cries, too.
“I thought you were gone.”
“I thought I was, too.”
“But you’re here,” Crowley hiccoughs into his shoulder.
“Yes, my dear,” Aziraphale says around a sob, carding his fingers through that shock of red hair, “And I won’t be leaving ever again.”
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Somewhere distant, beyond the moon and planets. Beyond the sun and the Milky Way. At the very edge of the universe, at the edge of all creation. A woman smiles with stardust in her teeth...