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Chapter Text

“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Aziraphale whispered. Perach was a tropical country, and warm even after sundown but he put his arm around Crowley’s shoulders and drew him in close anyway. “Across all this time and all this space, still people remember.”

Crowley leaned against him. “People are still people, thank someone. Everyone likes a holiday.”

Of course, it wasn’t quite the same ritual as it was the last time he’d celebrated Chanukah, much less the same as the first. Queen Shulamit was using a sort of enchanted torch as a shammus, and as the crowd crooned the blessings (“Baruch atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melek ha’olam…”) she made her way over to the right-most spout. As the last Amein faded from the square, she lit the first flame, and the square erupted in cheers and applause.

“Thank you,” Queen Shulamit said, and the applause died off. She was a young woman, not yet thirty, but it was obvious that she had the respect of her people. “This has been a year of many blessings: my daughter and heir Naomi has begun her education, my daughter Ilana has learned to talk, my son Aram has learned to walk, my wife is pregnant, and negotiations with the City of Red Clay have finally yielded an agreement to allow archeologists to search for the ruins of the city of Shushan!”  

The square erupted into applause again.

“Should we tell them?” Crowley muttered.

“That Persia was on another planet entirely? No, let’s not ruin their fun.”

“Should we make sure there’s something to find?”

“No. Why would we do that?”

“Because it’s funny.”

“It is not.”

“Yeah it is. Funniest thing since the dinosaurs.”

Aziraphale sighed. “Oh hush, you.” After a moment, though, he added “Where would we even get the requisite artifacts? You know the miracled stuff doesn’t quite stand up to close scrutiny.”

“Do they have the technology for close scrutiny? This place is very tropical al-Andalus- it’s not like they have carbon dating or anything like that.”

“No, but they do have magic,” Aziraphale pointed out. “There are more witches and wizards and who even knows what than I’ve ever seen in any human population since before the Flood. Who knows what sort of things they’ve figured out how to do with that?”

“Good point,” Crowley said. “So we’ll have to do some research first then. Might even have to go to the library.”

“I… wouldn’t be opposed.,” Aziraphale said, which was so obviously a massive understatement that the words seemed to blush and offer to show themselves out. “Queen Shulamit is supposed to have a rather fine one.”

“Got your heart set on the Royal Library right out of the gate, angel?”

“If you’ve got your heart set of fabricating archeological evidence that never even existed on this planet, then yes, you’d better take me to the Royal Library.”

Crowley laughed. “You drive a hard bargain, angel. But sure, why not?”

Chapter Text

When it came to building their human identities (their humansonas, as Crowley insisted on calling them, mostly because it made Aziraphale huff and roll his eyes) they had long found that it was best to let people make their assumptions, and then reject, amend, or accept them as necessary.

So, without much work at all, Aziraphale and Crowley found that they were from the northern valleys, the same place that the captain of the Queen’s Guard was from- and, much like Riv Maror and his lover, that they’d come to escape the dual clutches of a society that demanded celibacy from magic uses, and heteronormativity from all its citizens.

“The more things change, nu, angel?” Crowley murmured.

“Well, there’s no sense in keeping everything the same,” Aziraphale replied. Though he remained standing next to him, hand in hand as they listened to the innkeeper assure them that Perach was much more accepting of such things, Crowley could feel him mentally rolling up his sleeves, ready to take on the mantal of Principality of Queers once more.

But that was a project for after the holidays. They’d come here on vacation, and Crowley was determined that they actually have a vacation. To that end, they joined the crowd of people- smaller now that it was the second night- to watch as the Queen lit the second spout.

Local custom dictated that denizens of Perach could join the Queen on stage, and give thanks for the blessings they’d received and miracles they’d witnessed in the past year. An old, wisened woman in turmeric-yellow robes- one of the Bnot Bruriah, a monastic order of holy women- named Tamar made her slow way to the stage and thanked God for the unusually large number of initiates, and a generous donation from the Queen.

“What do you think? Would they let me on stage if I stood on line?” Crowley asked.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale said. “Why? What are you thinking?”

“Oh nothing,” Crowley said, far too innocently. “Just that it’s been a while since I really went all out on making sure everyone knew how lucky I am.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said, blushing too hard to make it much of an admonishment.

“I’m going to try it,” Crowley said.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale said, catching him by the wrist before Crowley could slip away.

“What?’ Crowley asked.

“Perhaps I should be the one who does the gushing,” he suggested.

“You’re going to gush about yourself?”

“No, don’t be ridiculous, I just- well… it might be better if I went up to tell people how lucky we’ve been.”

Crowley followed his gaze up to the stage, before it clicked. The menorah was a holy object, and while Jewish blessings tended to ward against evil intent, rather than evil natures, there was no guarantee that he would be unaffected.

“Oh go on then,” Crowley said. “But don’t you go making me sound nice or anything.”

“I’ll make sure you know you’re positively wicked, darling.”

Tamar had left the stage, and someone else was speaking now. Crowley kept his attention on Aziraphale as he wound his careful polite way through the crowd and over to the queue.

“Have you been together long?”

“What?” Crowley asked, a little annoyed at being spoken to.

The speaker was a northener, or so Crowley would guess from his coloring and size: nearly as tall as he was and sporting a large beard. “Have you been together long?” the man repeated.

“Oh yeah,” Crowley told him. “For forever. Or, well. We’ve been in love for forever. It took a while before we were safe enough to actually act on it.”

“I can imagine,” the man replied. “It’s no simple thing to be two men in love in the north. It’s not necessarily simple down here either, but things are getting better.”

“That’s what I’ve heard. And everyone’s been quite welcoming, thus far.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it,” the man replied.

They stood in silence for a time, watching Aziraphale strike up polite conversation with the person ahead of him.

“So, how did you meet, if you don’t mind me asking?” the man said.

“Oh, I’m sure he’s going to tell the story in a minute,” Crowley said vaguely. They hadn’t ironed out all the details of their story, and he didn’t want to contradict anything his husband was about to say. “It was all very dramatic. Our families hated one another. Hated us too, even before they found out about us.”

“Feuding families?”

“They might as well have been Gog and Magog ushering the endtimes for how seriously they took it all,” Crowley said. “And neither one of them was especially good at their job.”

“I assume that’s why the wizards got involved?”

Crowley looked at him sharply. The man looked back, unafraid.

“Home City is quite large,” the man said, which was laughable when said to a demon who had spent quite a few years living in New Manchester- a city comprised of forty billion people squished together on a not-quite-overly-large-enough asteroid- though the statement was true enough by the standards of the planet and time they were currently inhabiting. “But not quite large enough for me to not hear that there was another shifter in town.”

“Oh?”

“Yes,” the man replied. “I do reptiles, mainly lizards. Sometimes snakes.”

“I do snakes,” Crowley said after a moment. “Well. I do a snake, really, one that’s black with a red belly, I just vary the size.”

“And you keep the eyes when human.”

“I’m stuck with the eyes, really,” Crowley said. “I was shit at my job. Good thing all around that I decided to desert and then retire when you think about it.”

“Still,” the man said. “There are laws about such thing. If you intend to stay in Perach, you have to register as a magic user.”

As annoyed by the way his attention was being divided from Aziraphale as anything else, Crowley glared at him. Though somewhere in the back of his brain, his primordial monkey must be screeching in fear, he didn’t budge. “You know, I don’t really like the idea of putting people’s names on listssss,” he said. “It doesn’t seem like it will end well.”

“No one sees the list unless there’s been a crime of a magical nature- and even then, only the Queen and one of her advisors will see it in its entirety,” the man said.

“You trust your Queen a lot,” Crowley remarked. “Her advisors, too.”

“It comes with the territory,” the man replied. “Seeing as I am the advisor she’ll most likely call upon in such an event.”

“Oh,” Crowley realized. “You’re Isaac Maror.”

The man- Isaac- laughed. “Yes, yes I am.”

“Don’t you turn into a dragon?” he asked.

“A dragon’s a lizard,” Isaac said swiftly.

“Is it though?”

“Yes.”

“Well, if you say so,” Crowley said. “Is there a time limit on that whole registration thingy? Can I just enjoy the holiday first?”

“By all means. But if you’re still in Home City by the end of Tevet, I expect to see the paperwork to put your name on that list,” Isaac said.

Crowley nodded.

“By the way: what is your name?”

“Crowley,” Crowley replied. “Anschel J Crowley.”

Aziraphale didn’t end up going up on stage that night- there were too many people, but he ended up with some kind of bamboo chip to reserve his spot in line.

“I’ll probably make it up there tomorrow night,” he told him, beaming. Then he frowned. “Are you all right, Crowley? Did something happen?”

“Nah. I just had a talk with a fellow snake,” Crowley replied. “Who’s also a lizard. And a dragon, which really, that just isn’t fair.”

Chapter Text

It was not merely fear of what proximity to holiness might mean for Crowley that caused Aziraphale to head for the stage, though that was certainly on his mind. It was the flames.

Crowley had a terrible history with fire. First and foremost form the Fall, of course, and then Armageddon had given him three new sources of nightmares: thinking that Aziraphale had died during the bookshop fire, driving through the M25 while it was a ring of hellfire, and then facing down Aziraphale’s execution for him.

Not that Aziraphale hadn’t had his share of bad fires: the Library of Alexandria, the London Blitz, the wildfires that burned in every unlikely corner of the Earth a century after Heaven and Hell had planned it to end- to say nothing of his long-gone sword. But fire had never signified an End for him the way it had for Crowley, and his husband was correspondingly jumpier around it as a result.

He didn’t particularly like the idea of his husband being in distress. Besides, this was their first chance to catch the Queen’s attention, and since Aziraphale would like a peek in her library and Crowley would like a chance to pull off his archeological pranks, they needed to make a better impression than being jumpy.  

There wasn’t any kind of pat-down on the way up the stage, but the spot they were expected to stand was some distance from the Queen and her family (her wife Aviva, her Prince Consort Kaveh and the Prince Consort’s Husband Farzin, and the three children the four of them collectively parented) and in between those two spots was the Queen’s bodyguard, Riv.

It occurred to him once it was nearly time for him to ascend to the stage, that he might take this opportunity to learn a bit more about the man who was supposed to be his most famous fellow countryman in the area.

Taking a moment, he reached out to his mind.

Her mind, or so he quickly realized. Assigned female at birth, even: she’d begun presenting male in order to be taken seriously as a warrior, and now many years on with several young women flourishing in the guard under her tutelage she wasn’t sure how to deal with the potential fallout for having lied all these past years, however necessary those lies had once been.  

Show me where you’re from, he whispered in her mind, and perhaps because she looked at him and saw a fellow northerner, he saw everything.

A lonely childhood, as the illegitimate daughter of the baron’s sister and a gardener, too large and aggressive and forthright to fit in even without that. Secret lessons, finally learning about tactics and military history and how to use a sword- how to be a knight, as she had always yearned to be. She had hoped that she might find a husband who would appreciate her for who she was, who would consider her his partner and equal. Those hopes had eventually been realized with Isaac, but not without pain.

Not without withstanding a fire of her own, without thinking that she’d lost him to fighting with…

Apple Valley. The land of her birth was bordered by- and had previously been in a state of perpetual warfare with- a land called Apple Valley.

Oh, well. If that wasn’t a sign, what was?

Ezra Fayvel of Apple Valley. That had a nice ring to it, didn’t it? Quite attention getting, even.