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”Does that hurt?” Aziraphale asks, thoughtlessly, and in front of him, Crowley freezes. Crowley who had just gotten lashed in defence of a child, Crowley who would probably need to request a new corporation once this one had bled out – all because he owed the angel a favour.
“Of course not,” Crowley lies through his teeth, not even once considering telling Aziraphale the truth of the matter – that yes, it did hurt, it hurt almost as much as falling had, not physically but at another plane of existence.
No child should ever be whipped.
---
“Does that hurt?” the angel asks, hand hovering just above the scars on Crowley’s back, the pale white marks crisscrossing underneath fresher ones, some of them infected and on the verge of cracking again.
Crowley, on his stomach in front of the hearth, because even thinking of lying on his back is enough to make him gasp for air, tenses, the slight motion cracking the scabs just that little bit more.
“Of course not,” he lies again, the déjà vu hitting him heavily. He can’t tell the angel that sometimes, most times, he wishes he had never fallen; not because he enjoyed being an angel ever so much more than he enjoyed being a demon, but because a demon does not heal.
A demon does not heal, not from wounds inflicted by mortals nor from wounds inflicted by other celestials, and Crowley would carry the scars earned in defence of a child for the rest of eternity.
To protect a child, he did not mind.
---
“Does that hurt?” Warlock asks innocently of his Nanny, once. With a child’s curiosity, he reaches out to touch, to poke, one small finger tracing daintily across the mass of thin scars crisscrossing her shoulders.
He is the first to ever touch them, apart from Crowley herself, and it surprises her how sensitive the scar tissue is, the light touch making every nerve ending close to the scars light up in almost-agony. It is with an effort even Crowley is surprised at that she manages to stifle her gasp and prevent her knees from buckling.
“Yes,” she admits, spinning on her heel to catch the child around the waist, lifting him up and continuing the spin. Warlock’s peals of laughter ring out in the room, the child happier than ever now that the only one whose attention he has to bear is his nanny’s.
“I’m sorry,” Warlock says, and then, “Kiss better?” with all the sincerity of a child who doesn’t really know what’s going on, but knows that someone they love is hurting – and kisses help with the little pains and all Warlock wants is for his nanny to be not hurting.
This darling child.
---
“Does that hurt?” Aziraphale asks once again, not long after the apocawasn’t. The scars from the whippings, centuries upon centuries ago, remain on Crowley’s skin, but now they are hidden beneath large burn marks from where he had not managed to avoid falling bookshelves, from where he had kept the flaming Bentley going with sheer grit and miracles.
The bookshop hasn’t been burnt, it doesn’t look like, but Crowley has, and some things not even Adam can heal it seems.
“Not anymore,” says Crowley in response to the angel, turning his head to smile over his shoulder at him.
Maybe Adam burnt the infection out of him, maybe he gave him back a touch of celestial power to heal himself, or perhaps She had just decided that Crowley didn’t need extra pain what with how much he punished himself already.
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale says, coming up behind Crowley, absently kissing his shoulder and wrapping his arm around the demon’s waist.
“I’m not – they are earned in saving lives, and I would have carried the pain longer still had I needed to,” he replies, tone matter of fact.
It had hurt, the scars had pained him for centuries, but no one short of Her could have healed him – so why tell Aziraphale, who would only beat himself up about it?
Crowley had done it to save the children, but he would never damn Aziraphale.