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Angels aren’t supposed to lie. Lying is a sin, something profoundly forbidden. Angels ought to be truthful at all times.
And yet, Aziraphale finds himself lying again and again.
Some of the lies are for his own protection. Sword? Just put it down somewhere, definitely haven’t lost it. Definitely didn’t give it away.
Other lies are to protect someone else—someone he shouldn’t want to protect. No, no trace of the demon Crawley! Wily, that one, always slipping away right before I can catch him.
Aziraphale doesn’t feel bad about those lies, not really. After all, a Guardian is supposed to protect, and that ought to include himself and others. Or perhaps that justification is just another lie, one he tells himself. It doesn’t trouble him either.
But there is one lie, one lie that he tells over and over, one lie that haunts him in the quiet moments when there’s nothing to distract him from his own thoughts and memories.
“It’s going to be okay,” he tells Eve as she weeps, Abel’s body cradled in her arms. Abel is dead, murdered by his brother. There’s no hope. Aziraphale isn’t allowed to intervene, can’t try to bring him back. “Help will be here soon, I promise. It’ll all be okay.”
---
A few hundred years later, a battlefield outside Hamoukar. A farmer who fought to protect his home writhes in the mud, his body pierced by a spear. An dying inhabitant of a now-conquered city.
Aziraphale kneels down beside the dying man. The man weeps and thrashes, clutches at the gushing wound. “Help me!” he cries, face screwed up with agony. “Please, help me! It hurts!”
Aziraphale has been ordered not to help. Not to help with anything, no matter what, not even to try to ease the pain of the wounded. It’s all part of the Great Plan, this slaughter. Not for an angel to understand.
“Help is coming,” he lies, holding the man’s hand as life fades away. “It’s all going to be okay.”
The man dies in the mud. Others die too, so many others. And no help comes, except an angel who’s been forbidden to interfere.
A demon lurks on the battlefield too, a demon with fiery red hair. But Crawley must simply be here to cause chaos, to encourage battle and slaughter. Not even a demon who seems relatively friendly would help anyone.
---
A famine sweeps through the land, bad crops this year thanks to a drought. Children beg in the streets, parents weep from despair. Weak, barely conscious people struggle to dig graves for their loved ones.
Heaven could solve the troubles in an instant. Aziraphale, on his own, could ease the famine for at least Uruk. It would take a great deal of power, yes, but he could miracle enough food to limp the city through.
But he’s strictly forbidden to interfere in any way.
He’s seen Crawley in the city off and on, usually in the poorest areas. Among the slaves. Crawley must be encouraging dissent, trying to cause an uprising. He certainly wouldn’t feed anyone. After all, demons are evil. Well, in Crawley’s case, more mischievous than evil. But still.
Aziraphale reassures the humans over and over, unable to do anything else without disobeying Heaven. “Help will be here soon,” he tells them as they starve and die. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
---
Floods, famines, fires. Endless conflict between the humans of different areas, battles over land and water and other resources. So much pain and death. This world is suffering terribly, and it breaks Aziraphale’s heart.
Over and over, the humans cry out for help. Over and over, Aziraphale reassures them that help is on the way, that everything will be okay. And yet, Heaven refuses.
Aziraphale doesn’t understand this, although he tries. When he asks why they can’t help the humans more, he’s lectured for questioning God, questioning the Plan. He’s told that angels who question the Plan are bad, that they deserve to Fall.
He stops asking questions. But he doesn’t stop wondering.
And then one day—when he’s still under orders not to interfere, when he’s still supposed to merely bear witness—it becomes too much to bear. There are children dying, the inhabitants of a small settlement that’s been struck by illness.
When Aziraphale reaches the settlement, so many are already dead. But some are still alive. Burning up with fever, crying out in agony, vomiting up all the food and water their heartbroken parents can coax them into accepting.
It’s not just the children who are ill—but it is the children who are dying most. The children, the elderly, those with other health troubles. Gabriel had rolled his eyes when Aziraphale reported it, said that it was part of the Plan, a way to eliminate the weak.
But that can’t possibly be right. Aziraphale is a Guardian, charged with the protection of all in his realm. And he is assigned to this little area of the planet, to Mesopotamia. These people fall within his charge.
And what kind of a Guardian leaves “the weak” to die? They’re the ones who need him most.
“It’s going to be okay,” Aziraphale says, bending over the sickest of the children. “Help is here.”
He lays his hand on the girl’s brow, closes his eyes, and focuses. He channels celestial power and sends a gentle miracle through her body, cleansing it of the illness, restoring her strength. She falls under his protection, and he will not let her die today.
Aziraphale moves on to the next of the children, and the next, and the next. And then to a young man who looks as sick as the children. The man’s lungs don’t work quite right, and the illness is affecting him more strongly than the other adults. Aziraphale heals him of the sickness as well.
An elderly woman, another child. But Aziraphale can hardly breathe himself now, and his hands quake so badly that it’s a challenge to keep them in place long enough to perform a healing. His head pounds, the world going dark around the edges as he tries to call on more power.
He can’t. He slumps against a mud-brick wall, gasping, tremors crashing through him. There’s no strength left in him. He can’t do this. He doesn’t have any power left. He’s used every scrap of it.
And there are still so many sick people. He’s failed them, he’s letting them down. They’re all going to die.
He buries his face in his hands and weeps, raw wrenching sobs that tear through him in waves. He’s too weak. He’s not strong enough to mend the world on his own, no matter how badly he wants to. He can’t do it.
And then a hand settles on his back, rubbing gently. “Aziraphale?” a familiar voice asks, not as light and cheerful as usual. The voice sounds upset this time, deeply concerned. “Aziraphale, what’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
Aziraphale lifts his head, tears still falling. Crawley kneels beside him in the mud, his golden eyes wide with worry. Standing orders are to smite any and all demons—but Aziraphale can never bring himself to do it. Crawley has always been friendly enough, even if he is evil by nature.
“I-I can’t heal them,” Aziraphale sobs, scrubbing futilely at his eyes. “I tried. But I’m all out of power, they’re so sick and they’re going to die. It’s my fault. I’m too weak, too soft. I-I have to try, but I feel so ill…”
The furrows in Crawley’s brow deepen as Aziraphale speaks. The demon sweeps back long red hair and ties it out of his face, shaking his head. “No. No, you did everything you could. Leave the rest to me.”
“What?” Aziraphale tries to wrap his mind around that. Why would a demon help? Aren’t demons supposed to be pure evil, to only cause mischief, suffering, and pain? Perhaps it’s a trick?
But Crawley moves through the crowd, bends over a child, heals the illness with just as much focus and precision as Aziraphale used—perhaps more. The demon moves from person to person, saving them, all the while wearing a look of intense concentration. This is not some capricious whim, not some scheme. There’s a deep, genuine care for the humans here.
And the humans seem to know it too, to appreciate it despite the golden eyes and slit pupils. One of the children hugs him after regaining consciousness, and Crawley hugs her back after a brief moment of frozen tension. He moves on to the next person, and the next, until everyone in the village is cured.
Oh. Oh, goodness. All this time, Aziraphale thought the demon was just stirring up mischief. Moving in and out of battlefields, through towns falling prey to famine, appearing as floods sweep across the area…but there was no mischief, not in those moments. Crawley has been trying to help people. It’s clear now.
Once finished, Crawley collapses as well, sliding to lean against the mud-brick to Aziraphale’s left. Tremors roll through him, waves of shivering, and sweat glistens on pallid skin. He hunches his shoulders, breaths shaky and weak.
Crawley is a demon, the enemy. Defenseless right now, especially beside a principality who has had a chance to rest. Aziraphale could destroy him with a thought.
Instead, Aziraphale slides over and wraps his arm around the narrow shoulders, steadying Crawley as he shakes. “It-it’s all right,” Aziraphale says, hesitant, unsure. Is he doing the wrong thing? It doesn’t feel like the wrong thing. Quite the opposite, in fact. “You’ve done it, Crawley.”
“Y-yeah. Just worn out.” Crawley leans into Aziraphale’s hold, and Aziraphale automatically pulls him closer. “And cold. I’ll take off after I rest for a minute, leave you to it.”
Crawley feels fragile when he’s curled up like this, and Aziraphale’s protective instincts surge to life. Crawley is assigned to Mesopotamia too, after all. And, therefore, he’s Aziraphale’s responsibility as much as these humans. “Nonsense. You’ll stay here with me, at least for the night. You must rest, Crawley.”
“Wot?” Wide golden eyes flick to him, startled.
“That was a great deal of healing. You need time to recover.” Aziraphale draws a shaky breath and rubs his arm. “I-I don’t entirely understand why you’ve helped them, being a demon and all. Or how you intend to justify it to Hell if you’re caught.”
“Well, that’s easy.” Crawley brightens a little as he prepares to explain. “S’ my job to tempt humans, yeah? I can’t very well tempt them if they’re dead. This gives me a chance to, er…encourage evil later. Or something.”
The explanation strikes Aziraphale as similar to his own justification, the same clever use of the rules to his advantage. An angel and a demon, using the same tactics? How very odd.
He shoves those thoughts away. They’re too dangerous, too blasphemous to confront now. Instead, he simply rubs Crawley’s arms in an attempt to warm him. “Well. I quite appreciate the help, regardless of the motive. Thank you, Crawley.”
“Don’t thank me,” Crawley snaps with a sudden rush of anger, more than Aziraphale has ever seen from him. It’s an anger born of pain. “M’ a demon. You don’t thank demons.”
Aziraphale blinks, startled at the outburst. And then he simply rubs Crawley’s arms again. “Well, all right. Am I allowed to share beer with a demon once we’ve recovered a bit?”
And now it’s Crawley’s turn to look startled. He gives a slow nod and a tired smile. “Yeah. Think that’s allowed.”
And so Aziraphale shares beer with Crawley, this odd demon who helped him save so many today. Perhaps they can save more people in the future, each working within the rules of their Sides. And maybe, someday, they can even thank each other for the help.