Work Text:
Aziraphale told himself that the people of the cities had deserved it. They had been cruel and unjust, greedy and merciless. But it was hard to believe, fleeing the devastation, that anyone could deserve this. Four cities were gone by divine fiat, swept from the board in one abrupt stroke: it was Armageddon in miniature. With brutal heat at their backs, under a bloody sky that rained sulphurous debris, the angel and his charges struggled on up the road towards refuge in Zoar.
He was grateful, at least, to have no direct part to play in the reckoning – he didn’t want to know whether he could do what was being done behind him. The instructions from on high had been very clear: Lot and his family were to be the only survivors. Everyone else was to die, regardless of age, position or personal actions. They lived in the unforgivable cities and that was reason enough.
The furnace wind blowing across the plain brought with it the sound of screaming. How was there still screaming? Surely Heaven’s soldiers had finished their bloody work by now? Surely there was nothing and nobody left to burn? Aziraphale grimaced and tried not to listen, focused on keeping the others moving. Moving and not looking back. That – as he had been told to inform this one favoured family, supposedly the only one among thousands that deserved to live – was important.
Despite his efforts, Lot’s wife looked back, soon after they left the outskirts of their fallen city. How could she not? Her own family had been left behind in the inferno. She had pleaded for their lives, and Aziraphale had been powerless to save them.
Retribution was swift. The glint in Sandalphon’s eyes and his evident delight in his task seared themselves into Aziraphale’s memory as the woman turned to salt before them all, her tear-stained face turned forever homeward. She was gone in an instant, with no time to cry out, but the screams of her husband and daughters drowned out even the noise of the catastrophe. Aziraphale desperately ushered them onward, reminding them not to look back at her. He did not understand the purpose of this extra cruelty, but it was not his place to question Heaven.
Finally, soot-streaked and grief-stricken and weary, they made it to Zoar. Aziraphale found them shelter and food, which the shattered family picked at despondently, then excused himself and went to find a little solitude.
From the hills above Zoar, Aziraphale could see all four of its condemned sisters in their death throes. Both sea and sky were painted an unholy red, with occasional flaming streaks as Heaven’s artillery pulverised its targets. Ash was falling even here, leaving dirty smudges on his once-pristine robes and tinting his hair grey.
The cities burned like holes in the world, as if Hell itself had reached through the ground and pulled them down – or rather, as if Heaven had pushed them down, and Hell had received them greedily. Between the pyres ran scattered survivors: those who had been outside the cities when the assault began, or were quick enough to escape before the noose tightened. They fled along the roads or cowered in the fields, helpless and doomed either way. Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to watch as his brothers-in-arms cut them down. He turned away and set off back downhill.
As he made his way down the path, leaving guilty footprints in the ash, he found himself thinking of Crawly. He wondered if the demon was around, what cutting remarks he would make this time. He wasn’t sure whether he wanted to see him or not – he was not at all in the mood for defending the Almighty.
He felt tired in a way an angel shouldn’t even be capable of: a weariness of body and mind, leaving him disconnected and distant. He wanted to be alone. At the same time, he longed for company – but not with humans, and certainly not with angels. That only left one sarcastic demon, whose presence was far more enjoyable and comforting than it had any right to be. This was troubling Aziraphale, but he was quite well practiced at locking away troubling thoughts by now, and he had plenty of other things to trouble him at the moment.
Around the next corner, he was surprised to find a small figure standing in the way – a child of no more than eight or so, barefoot and dusty and wearing indoor clothes. The child’s shoulders drooped with disappointment at the sight of him.
“Oh. You’re not the angel.”
“The angel?” Aziraphale said, surprised and fearful. “Which angel?”
“The snake angel,” the child replied. “The angel who saved us.”
Aziraphale knelt down next to the child, so he could talk to them more easily. If his knees had also become a little unreliable all of a sudden, that was nobody else’s business.
“What is your name, my dear?”
“Aram,” the child said.
“Hello Aram,” Aziraphale said gently. “Where are you from? Who is with you?”
“I’m from Gomorrah,” Aram replied. “I’m with my brother and my sister and my friends Elam and Helah and their friends.”
“May I meet them?”
Aram nodded, then led Aziraphale off the path and down into a small tree-shaded hollow. The trees threw disturbing shadows across the ground in the hellish light, but provided a little cover from the falling ash. Sitting or lying on the ground underneath them were around a dozen children, all as dusty as Aram was. Some were bloodied or scorched and all were quiet. One, who couldn’t be older than ten herself, held a baby in filthy swaddling clothes.
Aziraphale looked from face to shell-shocked face and decided not to ask where their parents were. He knew.
“Are you all from Gomorrah?” he asked instead. There were a few dazed nods. “How did you get here?” he added.
“The angel brought us here,” Aram said. “Where is he? He said he would come back.”
“Did he say where he was going?”
“Back to the city to get more people.”
Aziraphale swallowed and tried to ignore the twist in his gut. The ’snake angel’ had to be Crawly. What did he think he was doing, attempting to interfere with this? Going into the cities when they were packed with angels in full fury, smiting anything that moved and burning anything that would burn? The fool could be destroyed here. He might have been destroyed already.
“I’ll see if I can find him for you,” Aziraphale found himself saying. He looked around at the children again, noting the lack of possessions or provisions. “But one other thing first, I think.”
He snapped his fingers. A small pile of jugs and packages materialised on the floor of the hollow, containing bread and water, blankets, and a little dried fruit. A dozen faces looked up at him in awe.
“Are you an angel too?” the girl with the baby asked.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said conspiratorially. “But don’t tell anyone.”
He left the hollow and returned to the hill, getting his bearings for the teleport. His official charges were safe in Zoar now, and he felt quite sure they could manage without him for a little while – how much trouble could they possibly get into, after all? He had to know that Crawly was safe.
Gomorrah had been given much the same treatment as Sodom, with fire raining down from above and slaughter in the streets. Aziraphale materialised on a deserted back street and was immediately forced to stop breathing, the thick choking smoke attacking his eyes and throat. There was debris and ash everywhere, and no living thing to be seen.
Every building was on fire and most were already rubble. Angels were going from house to house looking for anyone who was somehow still alive so they could remedy that. The whole place stank of blood and sulphur, hot stone and burning wood (and worse). Aziraphale caught sight of some of his comrades and ducked down behind a pile of scorched masonry, concentrating on looking for a demonic presence.
He picked up a trace and followed it cautiously, eyes streaming (from the smoke, yes, just from the smoke, certainly not anything else). It was a weak trace, and it barely grew any stronger as he drew nearer – the closer he got, the more worried he became. He desperately hoped that Crawly was merely injured or exhausted, but that hope was fading. There were, he knew, only two real possibilities.
Eventually he found the source and his dread crystallised into horror: there was no demon in this back alley, just the aftermath of a smiting and a small pile of remains.
Aziraphale fell to his knees beside the pile and ran his fingers through it, testing it over and over again, trying to reassure himself. This had been discorporation not destruction. He wrestled with the conflict between grief and relief: Crawly wasn’t gone forever. Merely inconvenienced.
It was still awful – smiting always was, and now there would be Hell to deal with. How long would it take him to return to Earth, how long until Aziraphale would see him again? How would Crawly explain the circumstances of his discorporation to Hell? Would he face any penalty for them? It was surely hard to spin the rescue of children as appropriate demonic activity, however opposed to Heaven’s aims it might be. Crawly always sounded cheerful enough when they met, but they didn’t talk about Hell, and Aziraphale had heard plenty of rumours on top of his briefings from Heaven.
He ran his fingers through the remains again and again, as if unable to let go, wondering how he could ever have been unsure whether he wanted the demon’s company. There was so little left. Aziraphale hadn’t stopped to look at the aftermath of a smiting before, let alone grieve over one. Grief wasn’t meant to be part of his nature. Especially grief over a demon, even one he was now forced to admit he considered a sort of friend.
Suddenly, his fingers brushed against something, an object. He pulled the thing free from the ashes and cleaned it off, then held it gently on his palm for examination. It was a gold bangle, slightly warped from the heat, finely engraved with a beautiful snake design. There were empty settings where the eyes should be. The jewels themselves were lost, but the band itself was intact and very, very Crawly. Aziraphale stared at it dully for a moment, then stowed it carefully in his robes. He got to his feet and walked away.
“You okay angel? You’ve been staring at that bangle for ages.”
Aziraphale snapped out of his ghastly reminiscence with a shudder. “Oh, yes, sorry. Must have drifted off for a bit.” He held out his hand, offering the bangle to Crowley. “I didn’t know you still had this.”
Crowley laid his mascara brush on the dressing table, accepted the bangle, and examined it. “Oh, it’s that one. Thanks for saving it for me. Thought I’d never see it again.” He slipped it elegantly onto his wrist. “What do you think? Goes with the outfit?”
“Perfectly,” Aziraphale said appreciatively. “Though whether it’s advisable to wear five thousand year-old jewellery to the opera, I’m not so sure.”
Crowley laughed. “Have to wear it somewhere or what’s the point? Got it from a queen, you know. Actual gift and everything.” He picked up his brush again and paused, looking almost wistful. “She was quite something. Not that anyone remembers now. That was a long time ago.”
“Yes, it was,” Aziraphale mumbled. He remembered Crowley’s queen too, although he never met her – he and the demon had been among different crowds at the time. She was from before the Flood.
Aziraphale still didn’t understand his superiors’ reasoning – they had expected him to walk among humans for hundreds of years, seeing their lives and loves and struggles and hopes, and yet be untroubled when the will of the Almighty was to end them en masse. Looking back across those times he could see each one as a blow to a wedge, driving him further from Heaven. That he’d finally split away entirely when Armageddon arrived felt, in retrospect, inevitable.
Crowley put the final touches on his make-up, then turned to look at Aziraphale. The angel hadn’t said a word for several minutes, and he was wearing a troubled expression. Crowley caught his eye and smiled gently. “I know what you’re thinking about,” he said softly. “Want to talk about it?”
Aziraphale shook his head. He had been working through a lot of things since their spectacular departure from their respective former sides, but he wasn’t sure he wanted to look at this one at the moment. They were supposed to be getting ready for a nice evening out after all, and he had no wish to spoil it by talking about Heaven first.
“It was a marvellous thing you did that day,” he mumbled, thinking about Crowley instead. “Heroic, even.”
“Pffft,” Crowley replied eloquently, turning back to the dressing table. He started looking through a selection of earrings that many museum curators would happily offer their souls for. “I don’t do heroics, angel. I was just careless. In a rush and not paying enough attention. Don’t even know which of the bastards got me.”
Aziraphale made a small distressed noise. “Careless? At a smiting? You could have been destroyed!”
“I don’t think they even realised I wasn’t human,” Crowley evaded. “Just one more target.” He must have noticed the fragile look on Aziraphale’s face, because he hurriedly moved on. “You weren’t half happy to see me next time we met. Wondered what’d come over you.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t know how you’d fare in Hell,” Aziraphale retorted, a little defensively. “They might have reassigned you to a desk job for all I knew. Seeing you again within a decade was a pleasant surprise.”
Crowley grinned. “They couldn’t get me back out fast enough. Probably couldn’t decide whether to punish me or promote me, so they just told me to sod off.”
“Became something of a theme with you, didn’t it?” Aziraphale teased, weakly. Crowley acknowledged the point with a proud flourish. Aziraphale looked down at his hands, now clasped in his lap, and sighed. “It changed things, that day.”
“How so?” Crowley said curiously.
“I’d known since the Beginning that you weren’t the, um, pitiless monster I’d been told to expect. Obviously.” He saw Crowley roll his eyes in the dressing table mirror and winced a little. “But I think it was the first time I fully appreciated how nice you are. Deep down, I mean. The first time I really accepted that angels could be cruel and demons could be kind.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “‘Objects to the killing of children’ is a pretty low baseline for ‘nice’, angel. Besides, I was thwarting a divine plan. All part of the job.”
“Of course you were,” Aziraphale responded, brightening into an indulgent smile. “It was thoroughly devious.”
Crowley grinned. “It was, wasn’t it?” He stood up, then showed off his evening gown with a perfectly stylish twirl that made Aziraphale feel slightly giddy. “How do I look?”
“Stunning, my dear,” Aziraphale said, looking slightly soppy.
Crowley smiled back, one of the bright unguarded ones he’d been making quite a lot more of since their escape. “Come on then, if we don’t get a move on we’ll miss our pre-theatre reservation. I’m not sitting through a four-hour opera with you if you haven’t eaten first.”
Aziraphale pouted. “Foul fiend.”
“Don’t you forget it,” Crowley replied, amused.
Aziraphale slipped his arms around Crowley’s waist and pulled him close. His eyes glinted mischievously.
“Snake angel.”
Crowley made a face. “Now that’s just rude.”