Chapter Text
Aziraphale hadn’t meant to offend an oracle.
Things had been much simpler when he’d first come down to Earth. One flaming sword, one garden, two humans, and one serpentine demon who occasionally seemed to forget that he was supposed to be Aziraphale’s enemy. One gate, one wall, one simple order. Protect and guard. But then the humans had left, and he had given his sword away, and before he knew it he was… well, he didn’t like to think of himself as lying to God, because that wouldn’t be very angelic, but he certainly had fudged the truth a bit. And then there had been twenty humans, then two hundred, then suddenly there were hundreds of thousands of them, millions spreading out across the globe, building cities and growing stronger and believing in all sorts of things.
When he had first come to the earth there had been one God, and one garden, and a handful of angels and demons. Now, there were many gods – note the lowercase. The problem that none of them had anticipated was that humans thought, and humans believed, and most worryingly, if enough of them believed hard enough then the lines between reality and not-reality started to blur, and things became.
Those things were gods.
And then you ended up pissing one of them off.
“I am terribly sorry,” Aziraphale said. “Honestly, I didn’t know I was doing anything wrong. I certainly didn’t know that, um, Apollo would take quite as much offence. I wasn’t going to take the tripod anywhere. I just wanted a look at it.”
The priests did not seem convinced. Perhaps part of it was the fact that Aziraphale’s ancient Greek was tinged with a very British accent, which was deeply confusing because neither the nation nor the language existed yet. Certainly they were not willing to change their minds on their ruling: twelve labours to the intruder who had dared to try and steal Apollo’s tripod from his most sacred sanctuary. He was to go around the great Kingdoms of the Hellenic world and convince the various Kings to let him fix a series of problems that they were facing. Only when he had succeeded at twelve of these tasks, all pre-chosen by the priests and handily listed on a scroll, would Apollo forgive his crimes. Aziraphale was slightly concerned that the scroll had already been written and ready, pulled from a worryingly large box that seemed to contain hundreds of other scrolls.
Now of course, Aziraphale was a divine representative of God (note the uppercase). Theoretically, the whims of any other god would not have bothered him unduly. In reality, however, other gods could make an angel’s life – well, hell, if it wasn’t too blasphemous a thought. And the god whose temple he was currently standing in was well known to be a little bit of a bitch.
The priests might not have been able to see him, but Aziraphale could feel the prickling on the back of his neck from the weight of Apollo’s glare. He tried a tentative wave in the god’s direction, but quickly surmised that was a bad idea from the look of complete disgust the god gave him in return.
In front of him, the oracle sat on her tripod, looking rather bored. It was a little disappointing to learn that all the smoke, inhalations, drugs, raving and poetry was a literary illusion with no basis in reality – at the very least, Aziraphale had hoped for a snappy bit of hexameter verse.
“Apollo isn’t happy,” the oracle told him.
“Well, I figured as much,” Aziraphale replied, neglecting to mention that the god in question was currently hovering by the altar, pouting.
“You have been corrupted by your treachery and impiety,” the oracle continued, as if he hadn’t spoken. Aziraphale pulled his shoulders back, his currently non-corporeal wings fluttering in offence. Rather out of order, that. Angels knew a thing or two about corruption (second-hand, obviously) and he was sure he would have noticed if he had been corrupted.
“To cleanse yourself of these crimes,” the oracle intoned. “You must complete twelve labours, great and mighty deeds.”
From behind him, Aziraphale could hear the sudden mumble of the assembled priests.
“Bloody oracle-”
“Why does this one always do labours?”
“Does she even-”
But Apollo was nodding emphatically, the gold from his sun-kissed hair lighting up the room and catching Aziraphale’s eyes irritatingly. Her work apparently done, the oracle jumped down from the tripod, looking quite a bit younger and less interested in proceedings now, and wandered off out of the temple. He turned instead to the priests, who had all adopted a look of great focus and piety, and were nodding very seriously at him.
“So the gods speak, so it must be done, or else a curse will follow your and your children until the destruction of your family line!”
Well, fat chance he’d ever procreate, but curses were irritating things to get rid of once they had latched on, and he had been meaning to take a bit of a break from the whole holy inspirations scene for a while now. Homer had been a right bastard to work with, and Aziraphale had met a fair few. He supposed he could manage wandering around Greece for a while, fixing the odd wall and curing plagues here and there. He could even write it off with Upstairs as divine deeds, and no one had to know he was only doing it to avoid the wrath of Apollo.
“Alrighty then,” he said. “Any idea where to start?”
One of the priests pulled a scroll from the inside of their robes.
“We’ve got a recommended twelve for you here,” he said. “We had to start compiling them, everyone is getting sent to do labours these days and it got a bit awkward. Multiple heroes turning up to try and sort out the same problem. Lots of arguments.”
“Lovely,” Aziraphale said, unrolling it with the practised ease of someone that has spent an awful amount of time reading.
He stared at the list.
“Oh, bugger,” he said to himself.
The King of Lerna was pretty happy with a hero turning up and promising to fix the biggest problem the kingdom currently had for free. Of course, he was less convinced when he actually saw the hero, who was holding his sword somewhat doubtfully and who looked like he would rather sit down with a nice scroll and a cup of wine, but the promise of free labour was hard to turn down. Kings in particular needed to be fiscally responsible if they wanted to go and have any fun wars without bankrupting the royal treasury.
It helped, of course, that this Kingdom had been bothered of late by a monster that had been living for a few decades at the swamp that bordered their lands, and the King was more than a little desperate to get rid of it.
“It is a mighty, fell-creature,” the King boomed at Aziraphale, a little unnecessarily given that the room they were in wasn’t particularly large. “Every one of my most noble warriors has failed to destroy it! They only managed to escape with great speed and cunning, otherwise no doubt they would have all been eaten.”
Aziraphale gulped, not really adding to King’s lack of confidence in him.
He couldn’t blame the King, he thought to himself as he left the palace. When he had read ‘slay the Lernaean Hydra’ listed as his first labour, he had felt rather discomforted. Even fell-creatures deserved life, as far as he was concerned, and though he hoped to reason with it and try and convince it to toodle off somewhere else, he was concerned that the beast would not respond well to reason. And the many stories he had been told since arriving in the Kingdom had only served to make him feel mildly nauseous. The Hydra was apparently a great serpent with many heads, sitting on the mouth to the Underworld, impossible to slay, invulnerable to magic and ritual, murderous and cruel. No one was quite sure what it looked like, since no one had ever managed to get a good luck at it before they ran away, but as Aziraphale approached the swamp where it apparently lived he had a sneaking suspicion that it probably wasn’t going to appreciate the arrival of an angel on a mission.
The swamp steamed, the stench of rot and decay around him, his feet – well, not actually sinking into the mud, because Aziraphale didn’t go in for that sort of thing, but if he had been a human then they definitely would have done. The mists seemed to swallow him as he approached the centre, where the Hydra was said to wait for its victims, and sure enough, as he got closer he could see the great hulking shape of the monster. His nerve frayed, almost enough to make him turn and flee, but he stepped closer still.
The form of the beast was growing clearer to him through the heavy air, towering above him, the hiss of its thousand mouths echoing around him like the languorous breath of death. Through the mist moved the sinuous shape of the dread Hydra, its breath hot on the cool air, coming closer and-
“Crowley, is that you?”
The mist cleared, and Aziraphale found himself looking at a familiar snake. Not huge at all, as it turned out – just sitting on a rock. The snake looked at him, flicking its tongue. The so-called monster had a vague sense of affront, as if offended that Aziraphale hadn’t recognised him instantly.
“Of course it’s bloody me. What the hell do you want?”
“What are you doing here?”
Crowley-snake stared at him. It was always rather disconcerting when he did this. He needed to blink a lot less in this form, which meant that he always won their unspoken staring contests. Aziraphale was definitely mature and sensible enough that this should not have bothered him, though somehow it still did.
“Trying to nap.”
Aziraphale’s mouth was a tight line. “In a swamp?”
“No, on a catamaran,” the demon replied, his voice the driest thing around for miles (although that wasn’t hard given the terrain). “Yes, in a swamp, I’m a big scary snake. I’m supposed to live in dark, grimy places. That’s what everyone thinks, so that’s where I am.”
This was added with a certain note of petulance that was probably not befitting one of the most successful demons of Hell, but that suited the snake currently curled up on itself.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale started, rubbing at the end of his nose. It was impressive how much sarcastic venom the snake form managed to put out into the universe considering that he couldn’t properly pronounce several letters. It always managed to distract Aziraphale from his irritation, and today was no exception.
Crowley continued to watch him for a moment before retreating back into the coils of his body, tucking his head on top of himself.
“Look, I decided to have a bit of a time out. I’m fed up with humans. They’re exhausting.”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow, and Crowley made a rather disgruntled noise. “Every time you want to go and tempt them to do something terrible, it turns out they’ve done something far worse! You want them to play a simple prank and it turns out they’ve already pushed their father off a cliff. Honestly, it’s enough to make a demon feel redundant.”
Aziraphale frowned.
“But they said you had been here for fifty years?” No matter how irritated Crowley was, at heart he had always loved the world and its remarkable developments – he was the only other being Aziraphale had ever met that seemed to appreciate them the same way that the angel did. Now he thought about it, it was a bit odd that it had been so long since they had run into each other – he hadn’t thought too much about it because he’d been a bit distracted with that whole Gilgamesh affair. Fifty years was far too long for Crowley to have cut himself off from everything. If nothing else, Aziraphale was well aware that he got incredibly bored with the limited diet of a snake.
It was also remarkably difficult to order wine as a reptile.
“Well, yes. Alright, so I may have made a bit of a mistake,” Crowley said, yellow eyes flicking around the place.
“Shocking,” Aziraphale countered. He settled back onto a rock of his own, which rather suddenly found itself devoid of even a speck of dirt. The rock, which had been cultivating a particular patch of lichen for twelve years, made sure to be as uncomfortable as possible just to get back at him.
“You know, I swear you used to be more polite,” Crowley told him.
“You’re misremembering,” Aziraphale replied, vaguely, wondering if it would be possible to procure a beverage of some kind in the middle of a swamp – a nice wine would go down a treat right about now. Probably not. Oh well. “What happened?”
Crowley looked away.
“Nothing.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale replied, with just enough warning in his tone to get the snake to coil tighter in on itself.
“I’m stuck this way, alright. Can’t turn back. And I didn’t feel like wandering around the earth as a snake. Too prone to getting stepped on, no matter how big and scary I make myself.”
Aziraphale snorted. It wasn’t very elegant for a being made of celestial light and stardust, but the only person around to see him was Crowley, and the demon always looked vaguely proud of himself whenever Aziraphale laughed at him like that.
“And how did you get stuck?” Aziraphale managed, after he had composed himself. Crowley flicked his tongue at him.
“A god trapped me.”
“What did you do?” Aziraphale asked. Wine might have been out of the question, he thought, but that didn’t mean a nice snack couldn’t corporate itself into existence.
“Why do you assume that I did something wrong?” Crowley said, right as a pear appeared in Aziraphale’s hands. The angel just looked at him with something vaguely approaching disapproval until Crowley was forced to relent under the weight of it.
“Alright, I accidentally ate one of her sacred dogs,” he hissed. If it made anyone feel better (it didn’t) he looked rather sheepish about it.
“How did you manage that?”
Crowley stared at him. “Big jaw.”
Aziraphale levelled a look at him that could have destroyed cities had it been so inclined. No doubt the goddess had been less than pleased with Crowley’s appetite and had responded within reason, and it probably would have served Crowley a good lesson to be stuck that way for a few centuries longer… but it was rather difficult conversing with a snake, and Aziraphale much preferred it when Crowley could pronounce his ‘s’ sounds properly. He waved a hand, something intangible and undeniably powerful glimmering briefly in the air between them for a moment. The snake seemed to sigh, before it stretched and morphed in that visually confusing way that Aziraphale preferred not to look at, and it was just regular Crowley again, dressed all in black, albeit with his hair quite a bit messier than normal.
“That feels a lot better,” he said as he rolled his shoulders (and, rather more alarmingly, his hips). Aziraphale resisted the urge to pull a face at him, but only by staring with sudden great interest at the ground.
“You could say thank you.”
Crowley performed a dramatic and mocking bow in his direction. “Thank you for freeing me from this god-ordained curse of thirty years.”
“I thought you’d been here for fifty years?” Aziraphale shot back, frowning. Crowley sent him an annoyingly winning smile in return.
“Yeah, the first twenty years was deliberate. I really was sick of humans.”
Which was not only highly relatable but was understandable too. Aziraphale was almost willing to let this whole episode go – if it had been anyone other than Crowley he probably would have done. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at the demon.
“Is this really an entrance to the Underworld, like everyone seems to believe?”
Crowley scoffed. “Of course not. Honestly angel, you’d have thought you’d never lied to anyone before.”
“They said that you were impossible to kill, I suppose that wasn’t true either?”
Crowley stared at him as if he was stupid. “I’m a demon. What, you think a basic bronze sword could discorporate me?”
“But what about the whole cutting off your head, growing back two more thing?” Aziraphale was aware that his lower lip was probably jutting out right now, but deep down he had been a little bit excited to meet a real-life monster, and finding out that it was just Crowley and a load of tricks was just a little bit disappointing. Albeit also a relief – at least now he wasn’t going to have to kill anything.
“Illusions.” Crowley snapped back, then scoffed as Aziraphale’s expression. “Oh, don’t look so disapproving. How else was I supposed to explain all this away? And none of this really explains the actual question here, which is why the hell are you in my swamp with a great big sword in the first place? Trying to woo a princess?”
“Hysterical,” Aziraphale replied. “Obviously not. I’m on a series of heroic quests actually, and you were supposed to be my first, though now you have ruined that. Slaying the Hydra would have been a wonderful way to start this off, and now I’m going to have to go back to that darn king and say, ‘oh very sorry Your Highness, but it turned out that big monster was actually an old colleague, too bad, how awkward, see you later’. I can’t see that going down well at all, can you?”
To Aziraphale’s dismay, Crowley had taken a seat on a much more comfortable rock, and seemed to have acquired a cup of wine from somewhere. He looked, a little forlorn, at the remnants of his pear, most of which he had managed to eat without even noticing.
“Maybe you could just give me some of your sheddings, and I could tell them I killed you?”
Crowley looked at him with complete horror, as if Aziraphale had just asked for a pair of his underwear. “You’re an absolute idiot.”
Aziraphale sniffed. He could smell that wine now. “I think it’s a rather good idea, actually.”
Crowley waved his hands – at first Aziraphale thought it was just for emphasis, but then another cup appeared, hovering above the ground in between them, clearly meant for Aziraphale. Crowley didn’t say anything about it, but he also didn’t say anything when Aziraphale took it, which the angel read as a very good sign.
“Angel, I’m a demon, not a real snake. I don’t grow, so I certainly don’t shed.”
Aziraphale felt a momentary hope disappear. “Oh.”
“Exactly,” Crowley said, looking more than a little regretful. “Don’t pout, if I did shed I’d give you enough skin to make a thousand tasteless handbags, but what can you do?”
Aziraphale looked forlornly into his cup.
“I honestly thought an apology would do. I really didn’t think I would have to go on all these quests. I was only looking at the tripod, I have no idea why they thought I was going to run off with it like some common criminal. I was just appreciating the art.”
“Argh, alright,” Crowley said, and waved his hand in the air. A tall, glass bottle appeared, held carefully between his fingers. He brought the open mouth of it to his lips and spat into it. Aziraphale winced.
“What are you doing, Crowley?”
“Hang on a minute,” he replied, impatiently, frowning a little. A stopper appeared in the neck of the bottle, and then Crowley shook it. The liquid rolled inside, thickening, growing, turning a viscous red.
“There you go,” Crowley said, once the bottle was full. “The blood of the Lernaean Hydra. Sort of. Close enough, anyway. Bodily fluids, what’s the difference when it comes down to it?”
Aziraphale creased up his nose. “I suspect there is rather a lot of difference, my dear. But that doesn’t explain what on earth you’re expecting me to do with that?”
Crowley shrugged. “Tell them it’ll heal something. They’ll be so impressed they won’t ask for any further details, and you can just wander off, mission accomplished, et cetera et cetera.”
“Will it heal anything?” Aziraphale asked, dubious, as he took it from Crowley with the ends of his fingers, not exactly all that keen to touch it.
Crowley shrugged, languorous. “You really are rubbish at this supernatural business, aren’t you?”
Aziraphale scowled.
“Sure it will,” Crowley relented. “If you want it to, it’ll do anything, angel. That is sort of the whole point of us and our spooky powers. What do you want it to do?”
“Oh, um…”
“Kids,” Crowley said, almost immediately. “It can cure kids of any disease. Just smudge a bit on their forehead. Perfect.”
He glared at the bottled.
“It’ll work every time,” he said, somewhat threateningly. The contents of the bottle shivered, as if in terrified agreement.
Aziraphale sighed, rolling the bottle – now suspiciously sparkly, as if trying to impress. “I don’t know if that will be enough to convince them.”
“You’re an angel,” Crowley deadpanned.
“You say that like it makes anything possible.”
Their cups filled up. Crowley lounged back against his soggy rock as if it were a velvet couch, looking effortlessly comfortable even in the middle of this god-forsaken swamp. “The problem with you is that you lack imagination.”
It may have been a little bit true, which was why Aziraphale’s responding glare lacked punch. “The problem with you is that you have too much.”
Crowley grinned. “I’ll come back with you, talk to the King. Help out.”
The demon stood up, stretching his arms upwards. Aziraphale’s eyes followed him without quite meaning to. Crowley looked slightly out of proportion from this perspective, tall enough that he could touch the sky, his hair the burning nebulas of galaxies hidden from view. These thoughts were strange and uncomfortable though, so Aziraphale tucked them away in the little box at the back of his mind that he never opened.
Crowley’s hair grew longer, falling in waves around a waist that seemed to have shifted shape ever so slightly. He was still grinning, though there was some subtle difference in the line of his jaw that made him look a little unfamiliar.
“I’ll be the innocent maiden the monster was keeping in his lair. I’ll vouch for you, say you managed to slay the mighty beast and save me.”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “You don’t look much like an innocent maiden.”
Crowley put a finger to the corner of her mouth, her smile turning into something coquettish, a thousand characters all rolled into one. “Are you flirting with me, Aziraphale?”
“Heavens,” Aziraphale replied, his voice dry as sand. “How could you tell?”
Crowley stuck out her tongue, before looking back down at her body. She frowned at it until it finished changing, her clothes twisting and moving around him until they better fit the era’s standards for women’s clothes, albeit quite a bit skimpier than may have been necessary.
“How about that, any better?” she asked.
Aziraphale sighed. “For this, yes. But for the record, I preferred you the other way.”
Crowley fluffed her hair. “You old flatterer.”
“This is all very well, but they’re going to realise that we lied eventually, when they come back here and you’re still lying on a rock. And if the Hydra’s still here, I haven’t actually completed a labour, have I?”
“Oh, I’m not sticking around,” Crowley said, reaching a hand out to pull Aziraphale to his feet. She frowned at him before adjusting the pin on Aziraphale’s cloak a little. “That’s quite enough swamp time for me.”
Oh, well, of course. That was probably a bit silly of him, wasn’t it? Aziraphale had freed Crowley from a curse after all – no doubt there were many places the demon had been waiting for decades to visit or revisit.
“Where are you heading to then?” he asked, trying hard to not let his disappointment show in his voice. It had been quite pleasant to see Crowley – although the demon would not have appreciated that description. It would have been quite nice to know where Crowley was based for a bit, just so he had somewhere definitive to stop by now and again to see how the old demon was doing. Not that he was particularly invested in Crowley, of course. But there weren’t many representatives of either side living on Earth, and none of the others made for interesting company.
“Oh, I’m going with you, of course,” Crowley said, slinging an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders. Normally the angel would have shrugged it off, but he was surprised enough to let it stay, to let Crowley begin to lead him out of the swamp,
“What?” he said, sounding far less intelligent than he knew he actually was. Crowley was beaming, her free hand patting at her clothes, looking for something – ah, of course. From an indeterminate place within the folds of fabric, Crowley withdrew a pair of those odd things she had invented a number of decades back, the dark-tinted sliced crystals that covered those yellow eyes to hide them from the attentions of mortals.
“Eleven more labours?” Crowley said, looking unaccountably pleased with herself. “This will be fantastic.”
Much to Aziraphale’s consternation, the King of Lerna had indeed believed them implicitly, and declared Aziraphale’s first trial complete. Annoyingly, he also seemed rather taken with Crowley, and propositioned her several times, trying very hard to convince the demon to stay and become his Queen (much to the aggravation of the actual Queen, who Aziraphale had to charm to the best of his abilities to keep them out of any trouble). Eventually, however, they extracted themselves from what was turning into a very awkward situation and headed north through the Peloponnese to Nemea, the location of the second of Aziraphale’s listed labours.
“What on earth is a lion doing in Greece anyway?” Crowley complained as they went, having shifted back into his more conventional male form. “Pretty sure that’s not a part of the natural ecosystem, angel. Think someone Upstairs is having a laugh at your expense?”
“I’d be more likely to assume that one of your lot was responsible,” Aziraphale retorted, though without much conviction – the destroyed settlements and abandoned farmsteads were making him feel a bit uncomfortable, and were not very reassuring. “Oh, look, smoke!” he called as he caught sight of it over the treeline.
Crowley rolled his eyes. “Not sure that lions have grasped the concept of ovens yet.”
Aziraphale ignored that, rather deliberately, and led them in that direction, hoping there might be someone around who could explain exactly what it was they were supposed to do, and where they might find the next fell-beast on his list. Through the trees they found a small village, tucked away and out of sight. Near the outskirts a young boy appeared to be collecting firewood, and Aziraphale approached him immediately.
“Oh, do excuse me,” he said, as the boy caught sight of them. “Tell me, what is this place?”
“Kleonai,” the boy replied. “Who wants to know?”
“Oh, just two travellers out for a wander, nothing to worry about, nothing suspicious here at all,” he said, thinking he sounded convincing until he caught sight of Crowley’s exasperated expression.
“Are you gods?” the boy asked, narrowing his eyes at them with great suspicion. “You don’t talk like any humans I’ve ever met, and Mum says there are all kinds of wild things living in the woods these days.”
“Absolutely,” Crowley cut across before Aziraphale did anything stupid like tell the truth. “Lovely gods, that’s us. Full of godly… ness. Now, we’ve been told you’re having something of a lion problem?”
The boy’s eyes went wide.
“The Nemean Lion!” he gasped. “Are you really here to get rid of it? Only they say it cannot be slain.”
“Lots of people say that sort of thing,” Crowley grinning. “Doesn’t make it true.”
“But the Nemean Lion is a terrible creature,” the boy said. “They say it is the offspring of the serpent beasts Typhon and Echidna-”
“Definitely not true,” Crowley muttered to Aziraphale. “Can tell you that now – I’m both of them, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never self-impregnated then popped out a lion. It’s the kind of thing you’d remember.”
“Are you every snake in mythology?” Aziraphale snapped back. “Honestly Crowley, pick an identity and stick with it.”
The little boy was still going, oblivious to them.
“Its golden fur is impervious to attack, its claws are sharp enough to cut through any armour! It snatches children from its bed, and eats alive any man that tries to kill it!”
“Yes, yes,” Crowley said. “Brrrr, terrifying. Now, know where it likes to lurk? Every monster has a good lurking place. Quiet cave somewhere, maybe?”
“Will you truly kill it?”
For some reason the boy was staring right at Aziraphale, but it was still Crowley that replied.
“Oh, we’ll sort it right out, don’t you worry.”
“If you do, I’ll see that the town sacrifices a bull to Zeus in your honour-“
“Terrific,” Crowley interrupted, sounding bored now.
“And if you don’t, I’ll throw myself on a pyre, divine masters. I’ve had quite enough of living in fear, better to be an offering to a god than lion-food. If other gods can’t kill the lion, then nothing can, and I’d rather die myself.”
“Wait, what?”
But the boy skipped away to the village, arms loaded with firewood.
“Well, thanks ever so, Crowley, now we have to sort this lion out or a child dies. I do hope you’re happy. What on earth were you doing, telling him we were gods?”
But Crowley was staring after the child, looking just a little lost, and Aziraphale remembered suddenly the demon’s affront at the Great Flood, the look of horror in his face when Aziraphale had confirmed that children too would die. Aziraphale looked away, but it wasn’t enough to stop himself remembering that night: storms lashing the sides of the ark, rolling in a sea that seemed cursed, the flashes of lightning through the hatch the only light as Aziraphale smuggled water down to a room he had ensured Noah wouldn’t notice, where Crowley sang quiet songs to the children he had smuggled aboard.
Demons always ran terribly hot to the touch, but it was useful, those long nights in the cold hull of the ark. The children had huddled around him, all those he had managed to convince to come with him.
Aziraphale probably shouldn’t have helped him. It was a direct middle finger to the Grand Plan, after all – those children were supposed to die. But there was no way he could have said no without tarnishing his own soul, not really.
Besides, he wasn’t really sure how Noah’s family were supposed to repopulate the earth without some major inbreeding issues, so it all worked out in the end.
“Oh, don’t worry,” he said, awkwardly reaching out to pat Crowley’s shoulder. “Knowing our luck, it’ll be another darn demon hiding out and we can convince them to go elsewhere.”
Before he could continue with his awkward attempt to make Crowley feel better, there came a tremendous roar, making the leaves above them shake. It was monstrous and terrible and quite definitely that of a lion – one rapidly approaching. His initial instinct was to flee immediately in the opposite direction, but Crowley already had a look of steely-eyed determination that stopped him short. It would be unfair to leave Crowley to deal with all this when it was his fault they’d ended up here in the first place, after all.
Aziraphale looked down at the sword in his hand, and swallowed.
“I’m not a big fan of killing things, you know,” he mumbled.
“Pity,” Crowley replied. “I’m not sure this lion has the same scruples.”
Through the trees burst the monstrous shape of the lion – and what a lion it was. Three times larger than any lion that had ever lived, its fur did indeed gleam with an ethereal beauty, its claws leaving great rends in the earth in its wake. It charged towards them, and Crowley immediately disappeared. Aziraphale said something that was definitely not a swear word and leapt out of the way as the lion charged at them.
“Crowley!”
“Well, you’re in a right old pickle now, aren’t you?” the demon said. Aziraphale looked around only to find Crowley’s snake form hanging from a branch next to him, looking unimpressed with the whole affair.
“You are not being very helpful,” the angel retorted as the lion turned on them once again, its hot breath steaming in the air as it pawed at the ground, preparing to attack again.
“Yes, yes. Now this one, I can promise you, isn’t actually an old friend in disguise.”
“I gathered that,” Aziraphale snapped.
“Are you going to kill it?” Crowley asked, and despite what he had been considering Aziraphale knew the answer.
“I don’t think I can, my dear,” he shook his head, and Crowley’s human form reappeared on the branch, balancing with surprising elegance.
“Well, we have to do something, I’m not having that kid on my conscience.”
The lion roared its fury again, and began to charge, but before it could take even a couple of steps Crowley snapped his fingers, and the lion seemed to… disappear. As did Crowley’s clothes.
“I didn’t know you had a conscience,” Aziraphale managed, rather bewildered. It lacked the punch of their normal banter, but in his defence, he was a little thrown. It took him a moment to realise that Crowley’s clothes were not gone, merely draped across one arm, and that the lion too was still there – only now it seemed to be occupying a smaller, sleeping form.
“You turned it into a cat?” Aziraphale asked, as Crowley jumped down from the branch.
“Couldn’t think of a better idea. It’ll have all the anger and assuredness of the lion it once was, but luckily everyone expects that of a cat anyway, so no one should notice. I’m sure it will be adopted by a well-meaning old woman who thinks it’s a darling almost immediately, and it will be uncommonly good at catching vermin.”
“Crowley, you’re naked,” Aziraphale said through gritted teeth. Crowley grinned at him, and Aziraphale could have sworn he was shaking his hips far more than necessary as he wandered over to the unconscious house cat, nudging it very gently with this tip of his foot.
“Has anyone ever told you that you have excellent observational skills?” he said, seemingly satisfied with the cat. He turned instead to the clothes thrown over his arm, shaking them out carefully until they transformed into a great lion skin, the exact colour of the lion-turned-cat’s fur.
“There,” he said, with some satisfaction. “Honestly Aziraphale, you’re going to have to start sorting out your own proof, I can’t keep finding ways to convince people you finished the jobs, you know. I can’t fix everything for you all the time. Now we just pop to the village, show off the lion skin, tell them all that they will be bothered by this beast no more, see if anyone wants to adopt a cat – complete coincidence, just found it wandering around outside, seems very friendly – and job done.”
Aziraphale scowled. “I’m certain we could have used my cloak for that, rather than all your clothes.”
Crowley tossed his hair over his shoulder, looking unsurprisingly unconcerned.
“The sacrifices I make, darling.”