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Chapter Text

Crowley’s body arched into the air as pain radiated out from the center of his torso. It discharged into the darkness in bright stabs of lightning from each of his fingers; each of his toes; and each of his feather tips. Everything sizzled and bounced and turned and twisted in the unfathomable energy field surrounding him. His head bent back in an uncontrollable spasm until he thought his neck might break. His lips were frozen into a rictus of disbelief.

And then it stopped.

Still rigid from either dissipating energy or surprise or damage, he began to fall.

He did not hit any solid surface as he expected.

Instead, he accelerated through darkness so black, so senseless that he couldn’t tell if he really was falling or instead held fast in some kind of astral aspic. Held for eternity in a lightless Abyss.

Was this dying? Do you still exist in nothingness after Life? Was he doomed to not be reduced to the cosmic clay that She had formed him from but to linger on, sentient, in the Absence before the Light? Maybe immortality meant living on when there was no point, no hope, no reason. Reduction would have been a kindness. But throwing him, still living and aware, back into the nothingness from which the cosmos had been created – Was he that inconsequential to his Mother that the details of his disposal meant less than nothing?

The ache of that thought, spiced by the fear of the Void, sauced the pain of his synaptic short circuiting. With no distractions, the dying stump ends of the bonds with his siblings and Home and Mother whiplashed random bursts of pain. These were literally the dying gasps of his old life: choking for air, crushing spasms in his chest, skin flayed from his corporation, nerve endings raw and pulsating. This seemed to be his end state – partial deconstruction entombed in emptiness. Alone. Abandoned. Aware.

Abruptly he smashed with unimaginable force into something very solid at twice the speed of light. The enormous kinetic energy released from the crash of his corporeal being transformed the surface of the unknown solid into something extremely viscous yet void-like. Then it snapped back to form but held him fast to its reconstituted surface. Thank – someone – for that as it held his body together as well. Maybe he was a fly to be preserved in either amber or a spider’s web depending on whether he was to be displayed or consumed.

He hung there for a moment. Lay? There was no feeling of directionality. No pull more in one direction than another; just suffocating enfoldment. Crowley wondered how long it would be before he went mad.

Then smell hit him. That was even before the new pain. The smell of something rotting. The reek of whatever was decaying flooded over him like a wet fog. Wisps seeping into every pore; submerging his lungs; scaling his eyes. He could not physically gag but he desperately wanted to. It was the smell of millions upon millions of feathers burnt to cinders underlaid with charred corporations and spiced with the chlorine-like odor of ozone from the power discharge of the Fall.

Finally, he felt himself move and luxuriated in the sensation of agency. Maybe he was not to be forever bound in an invisible, inertial, inescapable firmament. Maybe there was Hope. He rolled to one side and vomited. Even the bile burning his throat and mouth was a Blessed feeling because it was Feeling!

Warmth began to flood his body flowing through every artery and vein, suffusing him with an almost intolerable heat. But it was tolerable. Not like before. Before when he had stood at the Gates.

He remembered the Gates. He remembered suddenly all of what had happened at the Gates. The vision of the Cherubim charging at him. Their swords flashing brightly in the Heavenly Light! Their banners floating proud and high in the Eternal Azure sky. Their Armor and Shields gleaming and their faces alight with the joy of the battle! Soldiers of God performing God’s Work! They sang as they marched.

They had been in their True Forms as were they all at the Gates. The Cherubim were all grinding wheels and bright flame with four faces and multitudes of eyes. Eyes to seek out and destroy the enemies of God. All seeing eyes as befit a Heavenly Soldier. But THESE eyes had all been fixed on him, just an Angel Star Maker in the workshop of Nuriel in the House of Azerbanteth dressed in the robes of his station. He was not a Rebel. He had no weapons. They looked at him and judged him one because he had been listening to Samael speak. But listening is not joining! Oh, Mother please tell them! I just asked questions. Please! Mother!

They had stabbed and slashed at him with their bright clean swords and drove him back as they sang the songs of their regiment. Their eyes flashed in the Heavenly Aura and their power snapped through their weapons. The Time for their True Purpose had arrived, and they were lost in the Glory. They saw, but they did not see for themselves. Those glorious, gifted eyes of all colors and shapes and sizes, all glaring at him with righteous fury were unseeing; uncaring; unshakable. Oh, Mother please help me!

And then it was done. Their swords sliced through him sparking the pain that had driven the memory away.

He had no time suddenly. Although he’d had no time before, but that was an absence of time, an eternity. Now he had no moving living flowing time to remember such things. Other creatures began to emerge on this existential plane lighting this Abyss with the bonfires of their bodies.

They crawled or staggered. Some tried to fly on bent and charred wings. All of them were pulsing and shifting as though their corporeal selves were not yet set. None had open eyes. They could not yet see the horror of themselves and this place. All were crying or screaming or whimpering but the sounds were not angelic. No heavenly choir ever struck these notes. This was new in the cosmos.

Then there was Samael. Suddenly, like everything else that had happened. Suddenly Samael. Crowley wanted to laugh uncontrollably. Yet not Samael. Gone was his Heavenly visage, replaced by – something else. Crowley couldn’t tell what he looked like. He couldn’t bear to look at him. There was a newly created infernal light emanating from him that illumed but somehow hid his visage. It was both bright and dim at the same time as though it hadn’t quite made up its mind. And then Samael Spoke.

“Gather to me! To me!” Samael stood tall and proud and bigger than all of them. He stretched out his arms to the stunned and deformed immortals who opened their eyes simultaneously at the sound of his voice. Samael was the first thing they saw in their new ‘home’. Samael smiled at them. It was a horrible black/white smile like a photographic negative, yet it must have seemed welcoming to those whose first sight was this. He held out his arms to all of them with their suppurating wounds, their mortifying scars, and their agony. “I will heal you! I will restore you! Together we can make a New World! Together we can create our Own Home!”

Samael paused and seemed to look around his audience. “This is our Garden. We can make what we choose to be in it. To demonstrate, all of you can chose a creature to live here! Make it now as I heal you while our creation is still new! Do not fear! All things are possible!”

A pulse spread out through the assemblage from Samael’s center. All were engulfed a cold blue flame which lit smaller blue flames in each of the Fallen. Unbelievably, the broken, deconstructed bodies began to crunch and re-shape themselves. New monstrous forms arose as twisted sinews knotted, rent skin scarred, and severed souls grafted together.

Crowley had no time to reflect. It was happening whether he willed it or not. He writhed, not in pain or physical discomfort but in deep existential crisis, like a snake held by an eagle. And then it was done. Still stunned from everything that had happened but glad that he could move at all, he looked down at himself. He was a long, black, and red snake whose scales gleamed in the light from Samael. They glittered and shown and felt oh so right! Healed and pain free! He was a snake now, not an angel any longer.

Then he looked around. Everyone had become an animal of one kind or another. Crowley realized that it was probably the first animal each of them had thought of. He couldn’t tell if this was a good or bad thing but suddenly (everything seemed to be suddenly as he was totally unprepared for any of it) Samael was laughing.

“WE are the Creatures of the Garden! We, the Fallen, are the Chosen, not some puny, mayfly human. We who were God’s first creations! You are all welcome in my Garden!” And then he glowed even brighter, becoming the Sun around which the Fallen would orbit; the Light from which they would draw power. No one noticed the change from ‘our’ to ‘my’.

“Lucifer, Lightbringer! Lucifer, Lightbringer!” sprang up spontaneously through the crowd as they surged forward. Samael/Lucifer stood even taller in the center with his arms still upraised and his face, his beautiful terrifying face, glowing with the new photographic negative Infernal Light, smiling with sinister sincerity at his followers.

“Gather to me, my Fallen. We will make a New World!”

Crowley wanted to fall back not surge forward. He did not want to be here in this dark, smelly, dank place with the other Fallen who seemed to have been driven insane. He didn’t want to crowd closer to an unhinged Lucifer. He wanted to be back in his workshop, making stars for his Mother’s Universe.

Then, just as happened at the Gates, all eyes seemed to be on him. The new creatures had everything from one to seemingly millions of eyes; some human, some compound, some something else entirely. They had stopped chanting and were all silently glaring at him, the only Fallen backing away. The memory of the flashing swords and the implacable unseeing eyes of the Cherubim overwhelmed him. His feet froze to the new firmament. This was worse than that horrible experience. These eyes were still implacable, but he was very, very seen.

Then Samael/Lucifer turned his head slowly until he too was looking directly at Crowley. Lucifer’s eyes, not that changed from Above outwardly, drilled within him; inverting him inside out like the photo negative light that shone from them; exposing every raw nerve ending to his relentless examination.

“My new little snake. How lovely! I shall call you Crawly,” he gushed with all the sincerity of a campaigning politician.

Although they weren’t physically close, Lucifer reached down and down and down and picked him up. Then he turned him every which way examining the snake’s body. Crowley tried playing dead. “Oh, my little charmer, I see your tricks. You can’t fool me!” And then Lucifer laughed a kind of trilling that sent chills through Crowley making him wish he had hackles to raise. He was lifted until he was looking directly into Lucifer’s intelligent crazed eyes. “I have a job for you little snake. Go up to the Garden and cause trouble.” Then Lucifer pinned him with his eyes and intoned in a soft, ominous voice, “Be sure to impress me Little Crawly. You will not like me when I’m not impressed.”

Then he was thrown back up(?) through the Abyss, through the darkness, the senselessness until he hit another hard surface. But somehow this one was softer. When he pushed at it, he found he had emerged into the Garden, just as Lucifer had said.

For a brief few moments, he just breathed in the pure fresh air of the Garden. It was filled with the aroma of new flowers and warmth on grass. He could hear the hum of insects flitting from blossom to blossom or the butterflies kissing the leaf they settled on. He could hear birds in the distance and an eagle cry from above.

Eagle! Abruptly remembering what he was now, he dove into a thicket to get cover from the sky, his newly made heart pounding. And just in time because Gabriel and a Principality came walking down the path he had just emerged from. Sandalphon and Michael trailed slightly behind.

Sandalphon stopped just as they were passing his hiding spot. He looked around suspiciously. “I smell something Evil.”

Gabriel laughed at him. “In the Garden? Don’t be ridiculous! It’s been guarded day and night. And now the danger is passed since Samael and his followers are all gone. Not lock stock and barrel of course. We still have to decide on the disposal of their assets.” He reached out and put an arm around Sandalphon pulling him back into their walk down the path. “Besides, our new Principality here, Aziraphale, will be most adequate to guard the Eastern Gate. We were satisfied with the Principalities on the other gates, yes?”

Michael snorted agreement and the pushed on. “Let’s get this installation over with. Uriel and the others are already waiting for the Throne. I have a million things to do to get the Host to stand down from War footing. Aziraphale will be fine. There’s no one left to defend against.” She seemed to smile to herself. “We won.”

They all started forward again. Gabriel had dropped his arm from around Sandalphon in order to instruct the new Guardian. “Aziraphale, if you do happen to see a demon. Dispatch him at once! At once! Understood?”

Aziraphale, shorter and slightly plump, mumbled something that sounded like agreement.

“And try to lose the gut.”

And then the four were gone.

So, Crawley reflected. I smell of Evil and am to be killed on sight. The raging ache in his soul from all that had happened was reduced to a low-level ache in his bones that he knew was going to be with him forever. He had had a moment of unarticulated hope that he could go to one of his brethren and tell them that he repented of listening to Samael/Lucifer speak and could he please go back to work as a Star Maker? But that was obviously off the table. They would all kill him on sight. There was no going home ever again. His Mother did not want him; did not forgive his questions.

He felt himself sink into the quicksand of misery as he slunk off to hide. Angels would kill him here and Lucifer, Crowley shuddered, might kill him just for fun. All he had to do to stay alive was ‘make some trouble’ and avoid the kind, lost looking Principality if he stayed near the Eastern Gate.

Suddenly (how many “suddenly” s could happen? Was everything going to be ‘suddenly’ or just this introductory period of the rest of his life? Would any of this become anticipatory?) Crowley felt the entire weight of what had happened land on him. This was his reality now. No more beautiful stars to be made by him. No more certainty of his Mother’s Love. No more companionship of his siblings. His purpose was to be No Good and to Cause Trouble and to avoid Lucifer’s Wrath. Forever.

Even though a snake’s face does not have the musculature for this, Crowley felt his face crumple and deep, silent, body wracking sobs engulf him. He couldn’t understand it. He couldn’t believe his Mother couldn’t just have talked to him. He couldn’t cope with knowing she could just throw him away.

As he heaved and sobbed in silence, Crowley fell into a troubled sleep. He dreamed that he felt a warm, calm hand pick him up and cradle him. He felt safe and loved and wanted again. As though everything would be all right. He knew it was a dream, but he didn’t care. Maybe dreams were all he had left. A Voice whispered to him in the dream, “My son, this is not Punishment. I have always Loved you. I have not thrown you away but set you on the journey for which you were made. You will not be alone. Look for the Throne.”

The voice faded away, but Crowley slept on in the late afternoon warmth, remembering the feeling of love and something about a throne when he woke up.

Chapter Text

Crowley waited nervously in their garden. They had thought about going back to the spot where Aziraphale had made the hole in the Wall for the humans to escape, but it’s now a misery-soaked desert, infested with sporadic armed conflict and entirely too much forced compliance. Reminders of their former Head Offices were not nostalgic.

Instead, they chose their own garden in the South Downs. It was the fruit of Crowley’s love of plants and of Aziraphale’s love of humans. It was definitely not a re-creation of either Eden or of Heaven ‘as they should be’. The clue was in the name: Erewhon Contrarium, which was pretentious and obscure and sounded scientific or vaguely astronomical. [The Angel had always thought Butler’s satirical book, Erewhon, had been under appreciated. The name was backwards (almost) plus the opposite of the Erewhon non-paradise was still a non-paradise.] If pressed about what it all meant, Aziraphale would say something pithy about Lewis Carroll and offer more tea. Crowley enhanced the point by planting deffenbachia. Of course, the plant was warded all around to keep it in its own tropical climate and to prevent accidental ingestion. All the same, the mother-in-law plant was his own statement on pretension.

So, Crowley waited for Aziraphale in their garden. After meeting in Eden, finding each other time again and again over the next 6000 years, and a thwarted Apocalypse, they had come full circle: Her Garden to Their Garden. The final time that he would nervously stand around the appointed spot, faking nonchalance, trying to project that it was of little consequence when, or if, the Angel appeared, but hoping and praying with his every fiber that it would be soon.

Today they were to be wed.

It sounded strange yet made his pulse quicken. Wed. Join. In sickness and in health. All that. Defend. Live with. Sleep with (or around or on top of or under). Not have to go home because he was home.

Silly Angel!!! Let’s get on with it. Pre-nuptial jitters could strike even immortal beings. Wildly he remembered he needed to prune back the brush against the fence. Can’t stand around all day.

The screen door off the kitchen clacked shut. It liked to slam itself no matter how Crowley adjusted it. Sometimes, Crowley thought that the Angel made it slam because Crowley bent over to fiddle with it. Unkind thought possibly, but sometimes Crowley did it himself just to be tempting.

Aziraphale walked through the rose arbor into the joyful atmosphere of Crowley’s wildflowers with sparkling eyes and hands clasped demurely in front of him. The Angel had wanted to honor this journey of Entering into Crowley’s Wildness, just as Crowley had honored his own journey of Entering into Aziraphale’s Domicile when they had both moved into the cottage.

Aziraphale had given Crowley’s reclaimed lectern and outrageous throne chair pride of place in his Victorian coziness. The garden in turn had welcomed the Angel’s sense of order into the midst of its exuberant vitality. The result was a pleasing and harmonious riot of color and texture and fragrance. The Path was lined with brilliant flower encrusted trees and waving oceans of petals as befitting escorts to lead the Angel to where Crowley waited at the center. The sun had broken out from behind the clouds dousing everything in glowing, ethereal light. Even the local songbirds had combined to accompany the Angel down the walkway amid the sea of plants. It was a kind of magic Merlin might have created.

Aziraphale was dressed in the shirt and jacket and waistcoat and trousers that he liked the best. He was all beige and blue and cream and comfortable and familiar. He wanted to reflect giving his normal self to his Demon, not something stuffy and dressed up. In all ways except one, he was as he had been for 200 years. The exception was that today he had on a scarlet bowtie, the outward symbol of joining with his Demon.

Crowley had marked himself too. He was dressed, as usual, in mostly black, impossibly tight trousers and a stylish jacket and shirt except for his skinny tie which was a vision in blue and cream and brown and gold tartan. He was wedding the Angel after all.

Without pausing, Aziraphale came up to Crowley and extended his hands. “My dear,” he smiled and tilted his head slightly. Crowley took his hands and stepped closer until they were touching front to front. Crowley, curse it, knew he was smiling like an idiot. This is what a self-respecting demon had been reduced to by a fluffy haired angel.

Crowley then let go and threw up his hands and stopped time. They needed absolute privacy for this next part.

They stepped back slightly and started to, well, melt. Transform. Release their True Forms. Neither of them had done this since before the Fall. It was a final act of trust to give all of themselves as they really were to each other.

Crowley hadn’t expected too much to change. The few disjointed memories he had of Before were of being an angel in the Star Makers’ workshop. As just an angel, his form should have remained mostly human shaped. Aziraphale had expected that he wouldn’t change all that much either since a Principality also looked much like a human. This was more of an act of trust, of speaking and showing the complete truth between them than any expectation of revelation. They looked into each other’s eyes until the transformation temporarily blinded them.

Crowley felt his body lengthen and his wings unfurl. It felt so good to stretch everything out of the spiritual spanx he’d been in for 6000 years! He hadn’t gone this ‘native’ even when he’d stopped time from them to talk to Adam. He swayed a bit and extended various parts that had not been extended in a very, very, very, long time.

He blinked his eyes open to see Aziraphale. At first, he couldn’t find him. There were no human shapes anywhere around him as he cast about for a glimpse of his Angel. Then it dawned him: Aziraphale looked nothing like Aziraphale.

In absolute awe Crowley took in the glory of his Angel’s heavenly light, his red-gold wheels within red-gold wheels within red-gold wheels all rotating smoothly in differing alignments around a center point, like a gyroscope. Eyes of varying types covered each wheel. There was no direction possible that Aziraphale could not look without moving if he opened them. In the very center of the wheels, the center point for all that motion, was his essence blazing like a star.

Crowley spoke without speaking in the original language of Heaven, “My lord, I am here.” And bowed low to honor the Throne Angel that was before him. He wondered as he did so how he’d ever believed that Aziraphale was a Principality.

The Order of Thrones were wise. They learned new things and applied them. Their purpose was to balance Her unconditional love with truth and justice with mercy. They were the angels of humility, peace, and submission. This was the Aziraphale he had always known. A Principality would have guided and protected nations or groups or institutions not individual humans. But, his spirit wavering, what could a Throne possibly see in a lowly angel who had become a demon?

Then Aziraphale opened his eyes.

“Oh!” he gasped, surprised by the new sensations. “Oh, Crowley, are you here? I don’t understand!”

Crowley straightened and reached out a trembling hand but did not touch Aziraphale in case it frightened him. “Angel. Do not be afraid.”

Aziraphale snorted. Then he blinked. “Isn’t that my line?”

Crowley barked out a laugh, shedding some of his awe. This was still his Angel. Still just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing. “I s’pose so. But I mean it. Do not be afraid. You are the most amazing, wonderful life partner I could ever have imagined! You just aren’t a Principality.”

Aziraphale blinked his eyes. “Not a Principality? Of course, I’m a Principality!”

Crowley didn’t say anything to let Aziraphale understand at his own pace. He watched as the Angel realized that his body was different; his senses were different; he was different than what he had expected. He knew the moment the Angel quit worrying about himself and actually saw Crowley. But the reaction wasn’t what he thought it would be.

“Crowley? Say something, Crowley. I need to know that it’s really you!” A panic seemed to be flickering through the many wheels, making them wobble.

Crowley answered. “I’m right here Angel. I’m still me. Everything is fine.”

Aziraphale was silent for a long moment. “Crowley, look at yourself.”

Unnerved, he did as he was asked and was astonished to find an over abundance of feathers. And there were angles of sight that he had never had before. Muscles twitched and entirely too many wings responded. He pulled his hands back under his wings. “Aziraphale?”

Somehow Aziraphale, the Throne, reached out to Crowley and soothed his essence. The love the Angel felt flowed over the beginnings of panic and calmed him. “You are everything my love.” And then the mighty Throne, tipped his interdimensional wheels forward and bowed low. His eyes all closed in reverence and his central essence flickered in all the colors of any spectrum anywhere. He spoke without speaking in the original language of Heaven. “My lord, I am here.”

Crowley reached with his hands from under all the feathers to physically touch his beloved. “What am I?”

“You are a Seraph, my lord.”

In shock, Crowley realized he could feel his six wings, he could see from many eyes, he could reach out with two hands. He sang without conscious decision “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty.” And it did not burn. On the contrary, a kind of unexpected joy flowed upward from his center to discharge as glowing, pulsing light from each extremity and feather tip engulfing him in a flaming aura.

“How? Aziraphale, how?”

Rising upright through the dimensions Aziraphale replied, “I am starting to remember. She came to me and asked if I would accept a special mission to the humans. I was free to say no, but if I accepted, I would not remember who I was until the right time. I was to care for the humans when they left the Garden. I had no other task, but I would have to find my own way as to how best to do it just as the humans would find their own way. My comfort, She said, was that I would not be alone. I was to look for the snake.”

“Oh!” Crushed, Crowley did not care that he was a Seraph. He did not care about anything other than She had sent Aziraphale a snake. Realization flooded him like acid. It had to be Raphael who healed with his snake-entwined rod. It couldn’t be him, a Fallen Angel who was only transformed into a demon snake named Crawly and who ruined everything he touched. She would not have sent Aziraphale a demon as a comfort. His many wings fluttered in distress. He ceased his praise of his Mother. It wasn’t him. It never had been him.

Crowley felt the tears well up and spill from his many eyes. He shut them tight. He didn’t want Aziraphale to feel bad or uncomfortable. She had sent him someone and he was a Throne, and he was beautiful and fantastic, and Crowley couldn’t bear to have his Angel feel bad just because that someone wasn’t a lowly worthless demon, but instead a fantastic, accomplished healer like Raphael. He pulled his wings over his face and over his feet and wrapped as much of himself as possible around his middle hoping that Aziraphale’s many eyes would not see him.

The warmth of the love of Aziraphale continued to wash over him like a waterfall making him feel like two people. He was the being that Aziraphale loved. A part of him stretched and grew and reached toward that light. But he was also a castaway, a piece of celestial refuse drifting through the burning, hellish desert of the Fallen. He felt himself wither and dry. His feathers fell like snowflakes. His body cracked and his essence seemed to burst outward in a frightening expansion of his perception. Everything was changing except Aziraphale’s love.

He felt the Angel’s words drift over him. “Crowley. Listen to me. I want you to look at yourself. Do it now and tell me what you see.”

He tried. He really tried to catch hold of his breathing, stop the hiccups, and calm enough to at least see. He would do anything for his Angel. This was little to ask although almost impossible to do. But gradually, he gained on it with his Angel’s help. He finally could see without blurred vision.

“Look at yourself, Crowley.”

He complied. His feathers were gone! Something had happened to his hands. He couldn’t feel all his wings! It finally registered that his body had changed once more. The terrifying expansion had been like shedding, except this time he had shed so much more than just his skin. This time when he looked, he could recognize what he was seeing. He was long and elegant. He didn’t need hands. He still burned with a holy flame, but his eyes now felt right. He was a Seraph and he was a winged snake. This, this was his original form, as She had made him!

And then a tidal wave of memories swamped him. As She had done with Aziraphale, she had asked Crowley if he would accept a mission. It would be a difficult, lonely mission to balance the evil that the Fall would bring to the humans. To bring mischief instead of misery. Small transgressions instead of mortal ones. Creativity instead of conformity. And, most importantly, to bring a reminder of Her Love to those that couldn’t recognize it by simply doing what he could. He wouldn’t remember who he had been, but he wouldn’t be alone. She had told this him in his dream as he slept in the Garden after the agony of his Fall. He was to look for the Throne.

“Oh!” Crowley would have fallen again if Aziraphale was not there for balance. Unnamed emotions overwhelmed him. “It was always you! She told me to look for the Throne!”

Aziraphale the Throne had always been his balance, not those stupid chairs he’d collected.

Unbidden, his praise of his Mother swelled again in the background of his mind and he reveled in praising her. This – This was the right time! Their tasks were over, and they were where they were supposed to be. At least for right now, in this moment and in this non-place, Crowley felt no resentment. Only the unconditional love of Aziraphale and of the Mother he thought had abandoned them all.

Slowly Crowley raised his eyes from his own self appraisal and stared into the soft, understanding eyes of his Angel. Aziraphale knew everything now. They were simultaneously what they had been, what they were now, and what they would become. They were at a still point where everything merged into one Truth.

The Right Time.

Tendrils of Aziraphale’s essence reached out and pulled Crowley toward him. Pulled him straight into the whirling turning wheels that made up his body until Crowley was safely seated at his center point, right in the flaming, flickering sun of the Angel’s essence. They glowed together, sealing their love. For the first time since the Fall, both of them experienced the peace that passeth all understanding, and it was enough.

They stayed like that, the demon and the angel, until Crowley’s energy began to wane and time was going to re-assert itself. They slowly separated in body only, their spirits still intertwined. The two had become one.

The world began to turn again around them. Crowley looked at his Angel and did not care if he was a Throne. He was Aziraphale. That’s all that mattered. His Aziraphale, enough of a bastard to be worth knowing.

But Crowley could be one too. “Well, I need to prune the brush back by the fence.”

Aziraphale looked at him with melting affection and with only one set of eyes but he felt all that Crowley felt. “I’ll see about dinner. Mind how you go.”