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“You’re leaving?” Aziraphale blurted, the dismay slipping out before he could catch it. He took a breath and moderated his tone. “That is to say… where are you going?”
“Britannia.” Crowley grimaced. “Some godf— some dreary island in the middle of the Atlantic. Apparently there’s a rebellion or something coming up and Hell wants me there for it. Dagon said to say hi to War.”
“Oh dear.” Aziraphale winced in sympathy. “I see.”
“Reassignment, what can you do?” Crowley sighed, gloomy and resigned. “So. Well. That’s that. Off I go, I guess.”
There was a long silence. Aziraphale wished he dared say something.
“Anyway,” Crowley said finally. “Just thought I’d tell you. So you know. Won’t be as many wiles around this area for a while. Not sure how long I’ll be over there, probably be a few decades at least. But, uh. Bye.”
He cleared his throat, and made as if to walk away.
“Crowley,” said Aziraphale, without consciously deciding to do so.
“Hm?” The demon turned back. Aziraphale regretted, not for the first time, that those newfound dark glasses of his made Crowley’s expressions so difficult to read.
Aziraphale bit his lip. Words stuck in his throat.
I’ll miss you, he might have said. Please be safe on that island, he might have said. I wish you didn’t have to go, he might have said.
But of course, he couldn’t really say any of those things.
Crowley was still looking at him, eyebrows raised quizzically. Waiting.
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale said carefully, tasting the words for both accuracy and ambiguity before letting them flow past his tongue, “that you won’t be here so I can thwart you.”
The demon gave him a tiny, sad smile. “So am I,” Crowley said softly.
Then he turned and left in earnest. Aziraphale watched him out of sight.
~ ~ ~
“My surveillance indicates that the demon Crowley is relocating.”
“Oh? Is he?” Gabriel sounded mildly annoyed with Aziraphale for prolonging his report unnecessarily. “Well, great surveilling, congratulations. Virtue is ever-vigilant, that’s what I always say. Keep up the good work.”
“Right.” Aziraphale forcibly stilled his anxious hands. “I… it is possible that this may be a deliberate move, on the part of the Enemy.”
“Okay. Makes sense. Good deduction. Now—”
Aziraphale grit his teeth. “It is possible that this may be a wile, meant to… to evade the eye of Heaven. If I were to… to relocate after him… I could potentially be in a position to thwart it.”
“Ah,” said Gabriel, and finally he seemed to be listening rather than simply waiting for Aziraphale to go away already. “Where, exactly, does your surveillance indicate the demon Crowley is going?”
~ ~ ~
Six months and a few hundred pages of paperwork later, Aziraphale arrived in the town of Londinium. The sky was grey, and it was raining.
With a spring in his step, he set out to track down the adversary. And perhaps, once he’d done so, to discover what sorts of beverages Britannia had to offer.