Chapter Text
County of Savoy - 1348
In a pub amidst the death and plague, a demon and an angel sat across from each other. In front of them, two cups of mead were on the table, untouched. Even with the windows of the pub shut tightly, and the cracks wedged with perfume-doused cloth, the miasma of the sick and suffering permeated the air.
The demon had an elbow on the table and propped his head against his hand. His red hair, normally fashionable coiffed, was in disarray from running his fingers through them repeatedly. Behind his dark glasses, weariness consumed his eyes.
The angel, on the other hand, had worry etched onto his plump and gentle features. He had been watching his companion in silence for nearly half an hour, but could not find the words of comfort that couldn’t be mistaken by the demon for patronizing. At this time, he had finally opted for distraction instead.
“Aziraphale isn’t really my name, you know,” the angel said, eyes turning the other way.
Crowley turned his head a few degrees to the side, staring out of his onyx glasses. “What?” He grunted.
“Uh…” Aziraphale said, suddenly unsure of the tactic. But he decided to march onwards. “It wasn’t the name I was given. Everybody just calls me that,” Aziraphale said, pulling the cream colored cowl tighter over his face as if meaning to hide behind it.
“Then pray tell, what was your name?”
“Azi—” the rest of it became high pitched static. Crowley winced, his ears ringing. For a moment he panicked, thinking the Upstairs had made an appearance in their Divine form. But when he opened his eyes, Aziraphale was still looking the other way, lips moving, making no reaction to the noise.
Oh. It was that name.
“... didn’t seem like they wanted to remember his name,” Crowley could finally hear Aziraphale saying. “Even now no one likes to say it. I suspect they were mourning. And the newer ones didn’t seem to know how to pronounce it. So I just stopped correcting them, and I suppose it… caught on? Now nobody calls me Azi—”
Another stab of static. This time his vision blurred as well, and something pounded against his head.
“... owley? Crowley. Are you alright?”
“Fine. Just the mead.” Blinking furiously, he willed his vision to come back, only to be pleasantly startled by a pair of warm blue eyes.
“You haven’t drunk the mead.”
“Maybe not while you were here.”
Aziraphale scrunched his eyebrows, concern watering his features. Then he leaned back and cleared his throat. “I don’t mean to sound, you know, worried . I mean, you’re— you know. And there’s absolutely no reason I should think of your wellbeing. I am simply… putting a statement… out. But it’s just that, well, you seem melancholic.”
“Yeah,” Crowley said through gritted teeth. “I should be happy amidst all this misery. And death . Since I am, you know, what I am.”
“You know that’s not what I meant…”
It wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault. It really wasn’t. The anger and frustration from his inability to do anything while men, women, and children suffered had been building for years. It had been stewing inside of his belly, waiting to be regurgitated and spat out. And there was an angel, part of the lot that should be helping, doing something , but pointedly not doing anything . Given orders, in fact, not to interfere with the ongoing plague.
It wasn’t Aziraphale’s fault, but Crowley still said those words and still hurt his angel. His friend’s pained look was enough to rally what little shame Crowley had left into forming a revolt.
“I’m sorry, angel,” he said, because over five thousand years together had earned his friend the right to apologies, “tell me more about your… ” he began, but thought better. But it was too late to take back the words.
“About my name? Oh um, that’s it, really…” Aziraphale said, eyes shifting around the room. His gaze landed on a mother and daughter seated nearby. The girl cried, clutching at her mother. The woman held her, but made no moves to comfort, only stared blankly at the table. There were clean streaks of dried tears on the woman’s otherwise dirty face. Aziraphale’s voice turned into a whisper. “It’s just that at times like these, I often think of him .”
“You didn’t know him,” Crowley said a little too quickly. On the outside he had an eyebrow raised questioningly, but on the inside he was wincing. If Aziraphale had been listening with suspicion, or even had the seed of a certain idea already planted in his mind, he would have been surprised with Crowley’s confident tone. But the angel was too busy blushing and stuttering. Bless him.
“W-well, yes, but you know. I was, uh, in a way, named after him… so of course I’ve thought about him. Time to time. Like during these times.”
“Thought about him?”
“I came into existence not long before the Fall, when he disappeared. So I never really… got the chance.”
Regret briefly made an appearance in Crowley’s mind, but then he banished it. It was probably better this is how things turned out. Probably.
“Anyway,” Aziraphale continued, “I don’t like to speculate what happened, and the unofficial-official story is that he died somewhere in the battle. But I like to draw strength thinking that if he were still around, there would be no way he wouldn’t be doing something.” Crowley inwardly recoiled. “He is the angel of healing .” Aziraphale frowned. “Or at least, he was supposed to be.”
Crowley frowned. “Right.”
Pedantic, Heaven is, Crowley couldn’t help thinking. Telling someone who they’re supposed to be.
Shut up , a voice retorted. You’re just upset that you aren’t doing anything about it. You’re useless . Pathetic.
“Maybe he’s just a big coward,” Crowley ended up saying. He drank mead from the cup in an attempt to hide his grimace. He sorely regretted it. “Or maybe,” he said, voice hoarse, “maybe he’s still around, skipped heaven, and just decided he didn’t give a shit about humanity.”
“Crowley. I forbid you to say such things—”
“Forbid me. Ha! You can’t forbid a demon . And you don’t know who he i sss ,” Crowley said, hisses slipping into his words. Rage began to bubble, boiling over. “Maybe you never met him because he didn’t want to be met. He hated you and the rest of the angelic lot,” Aziraphale looked slapped, “and he was plotting a way out. Then came the Fall and there it wa sss — his opportunity. And he took it. And he ran, abandoning everyone and everything. Like a great. Big. Bloody. Coward .”
The already nearly empty pub seemed to go silent. Or maybe he imagined it. Even the little girl stopped crying.
Crowley sighed. “Maybe you shouldn’t put your faith in something as insignificant and unreliable as another being, Aziraphale. Especially an angel who’s disappeared to only-God-knows-where. And God isn’t going to tell us where, anytime soon.”
Aziraphale stood, his chair scratched so heavily against the wooden floors that Crowley winced. He glowered down at the demon.
“I don’t know what’s gotten into you,” he said. “I came here to– to–” he straightened and took a deep breath, looking dignified. “To comfort a friend. But obviously, he doesn’t want the company.”
He left. And then it was just Crowley, alone. With a sigh, he downed the rest of the cup, the other cup, and placed his head in his arms on the table.
Somewhere between drowning self-loathing and drowning in alcohol, Crowley turned his head, and through the crook of his elbow, accidentally caught the eyes of the little girl. The girl stared and stared with large round eyes through the dark ringlets of her hair. He couldn’t help but notice just how blue her eyes were. Then she reached up and scratched at her face, pulling down the cowl with a blackened finger to reveal the equally blackened tip of her nose.
The girl’s mother suddenly got up. Crowley also sat up, in surprise. But the woman hadn’t even looked at him, and instead, walked out the door, carrying her daughter who didn’t look away.
A sudden panic came over him. The woman’s glazed eyes and unmoving expression haunted him with familiarity. A look he’s seen too many times in his line of work. The look of someone who’s lost meaning and hope. The look of being dead inside.
“Fuck it,” Crowley muttered under his breath. Then he leapt out of his seat and ran after them.