Chapter Text
After all, the end of the world had included no demon or angel or God. No divine or infernal interference had been needed; everything had run its natural course.
The humans had been first to wipe themselves off the face of the planet. With the rise of the ocean level, more and more islands and coasts had become uninhabitable, and the thousands of people who had lived on, and off, that land had fled, had pushed, further inward. The people living in the hearts of these great landmasses had defended themselves and their livelihoods – as one would. Walls and gates had been put up and staunchly defended, blood had been shed, and so, the coming ice age had been ushered in by war on a global scale. (One could only assume that Famine and War, one driving humanity into the other’s arms, had rejoiced at the very sight.)
Around the same time, a cult formed, or merely came to light; a cult following, worshipping, and pleading to the ocean monsters of old that they may feast on the prayers’ enemies, leaving themselves alive, maybe even helping them ascend. They didn’t flee or curse the rising masses of saltwater; quite contrarily, they welcomed them, hoping in them to find a sort of salvation, or at least hope of survival. The ocean creatures would inherit this Earth, so much was clear; perhaps it would be a good idea to assure them as soon as possible of one’s continuing support.
Around the pulsing centre of this cult, eagerly welcoming the rising tides, Duke of the fallen Hastur was suspiciously often found, silent and gruesome, but rallying the human believers on with his mere presence. It was soon time, he suggested the susceptible; soon his half-brother Cthulhu would lift out of the waves, and with him, the day of reckoning would begin. Even his companion Duke Ligur, by all means the more sociable and world-wise of the two demons, had to admit he shivered in the light of his fellow Duke’s cool complacency and creeping determination of what was to come.
As Cthulhu, a fearsome man-squid-hybrid with hateful, black, beady eyes, finally rose out of the waters, all prayers, all the help the cultists had given him was forfeit; none remained standing. None but Hastur, the monster’s half-brother, and Ligur, who Hastur claimed was a true and cherished friend and couldn’t come to any harm.
“Not ‘im,” Hastur reasoned with Cthulhu, in a language that the other demon couldn’t understand while standing by in a shiver. “’e’s a friend. Been wi’ me for much of the time since we brought you ‘ere, he was. Saved me countless times.”
Ligur gargled. He felt as a fish being gutted as the six eyes on the Elder God measured him, and he couldn’t help but fear being found wanting.
The Duke of Hell was passed over; Ligur found himself greatly afraid; a sensation that he hadn’t known all his prior existence. Yet he remained with his fellow Duke and the Elder God, for what else was he to do, really?
Others, however, didn’t have the same luck. Those that weren’t killed by Cthulhu’s ascent had had their minds torn to shambles; these incurably insane survivors existed, furthermore, on cities of rafts that floated the ocean for the express purpose of being tormented by the Elder Beings, having their mental capacities siphoned off in order to feed these creatures, or being picked off by Leviathan or Dagon, the new queens of this ocean world. Being killed by them was a merciful fate in comparison to what Hastur and Cthulhu, and their foul entourage, had in store for them.
Only a pale shadow of the sheer numbers and greatness that humanity had once exhibited were still around as the final shot had been fired, as the weapons finally fell silent again; in the end, one was bound to wonder how many people had been killed by the struggles and how many were taken by the plummeting temperatures and food shortages that were a result thereof.
It was a long, uncertain time, it was a messy, brutal time, and the survivors’ society was dysfunctional. The rich drew back into forts, swimming or viciously walled off, keeping themselves apart from the rest of the world as long as they could; in the end, however, as their resources ran out and not much beside worthless paper and coins persisted, even they needed to learn that they couldn’t keep separate forever, and ruefully joined the bigger groups – that was, if they were accepted. They, highly specialized creatures, had had to learn the skills needed to survive from new, and they hardly had anything left to learn from, and with; most of them perished in their new, glazed-over world in which crops had hardly any chance of thriving and animals were few and far between.
This also was the time around which most of the supernaturals turned the physical world their backs. The horsepeople simply had no-one left to feed off – they faded into nothingness, all except, perhaps, Death; the demons slowly grew bored of ineffectual human suffering; the angels, however, felt their task was accomplished, and nothing was left to be done on barren Earth. Even the demon Crowley left, saying that it was all too much, that he couldn’t stomach it, the frozen and shattered remains of monuments, the silence and howling, piercing wind where once busy life had bloomed, the bones, the multitudes of memories – his memories as well as humanity’s. The angel Aziraphale heard it with a downcast smile and a glimmer of tears in his eyes, and he nodded in understanding and mourning, but turned back toward Earth.
Aziraphale was there as the last human being breathed their last. They weren’t aware of it, but the angel was there, watching over them, and as he turned away from the corpse, he felt something inside him crystallize, too. He became something of a hunter-gatherer after this moment; he drifted over the icy plains and snowy dunes, walking, trudging, stumbling wherever the wind took him, ice was caked in his hair and eyelashes, and he picked up and preserved whatever remains of human civilisation he found, warming himself with his celestial powers, and with his memories. Sometimes he turned up something he thought Crowley might have liked, something that reminded him of a certain human he had known better, or things that brought to mind Michael, Uriel, Asael their child and their ill-fated odd friendship, and it brought a smile onto his frostbitten lips.
What might they be doing up there, in Heaven, or up in space, while he was on his solitary wake?
This went on for uncounted years, maybe millennia; time meant nothing in this lifeless abyss. It only ended as the sun had reached the end of its life cycle and collapsed first onto itself only to expand into a gaseous Red Giant, a process in which it obliterated every planet within its reach. Aziraphale, though numb and feel-less from the cold, felt as it happened, felt how he was pushed out into space, felt how his physical coil fell away and was obliterated, and he would almost have liked to laugh. It was a relief of sorts – not only the physical weight crumbling away, but also the knowledge that it was over, his days of wandering, of homelessness, of worrying were over, and She, She finally called all of them home.
Crowley… Crowley would be there.
He pressed his eyes close and resolved to only open them as soon as he felt heavenly peace flowing back into his bones.
“I hope you are proud of yourself, and your charges,” was the first thing he heard as things around him grew calmer.
In irritation, Aziraphale quickly opened his eyes. It was definitely him, though he also had been stripped of his mortal coil, and creatures of a lesser holiness could only look upon a Cherub in pain; his voice was more ethereal than his underling knew it, sounded fourfold as he spoke (human mouth, eagle beak, ox muzzle, lion snout), irritating to the ears, but his piercing violet eyes were the same. His wings, bright white and laden with unending eyes upon eyes, gently swayed in a breeze that Aziraphale couldn’t feel.
“Were they worth it, I wonder? After all you two braindead monkeys did to preserve them, they managed to give themselves a slow, painful, violent death without any help from us. We would at least have been quick and efficient about it…”
“Oh shut up, Gabe.”
Crowley’s voice was much more of a reassurance than Gabriel’s, nevermind how flat and pressured it sounded. The demon’s presence reassured the angel; still, Aziraphale couldn’t breathe easy. He felt watched. Felt watched by a multitude of eyes out of every possible direction – or, more accurately, one enormous pair of eyes that was able to take him in from any possible angle. It was warm around here, warm and thick with a suffocating pressure, the air felt light and dry, there was a sensation, a hue of gold all around them, and…
“Don’t you dare addrezzing my brother like that.”
Could that be…?
Beelzebub, too, stood there without their body; their Cherubic form, however, was drastically changed. Its wings were insectoid, not feathered, instead of arms it had appendages that were reminiscent of a mantis, and whereas Gabriel stood on a solid pair of ox legs, Beelzebub's spirit form was supported by four thin, knubby ant legs. Their scowl, however, was as ill-pleased as ever. “Answer the question,” they grumbled. “I, too, would be interezzted to hear what you traitors think of your chosen tribe now that they took the proverbial axe to their own livelihoodzz.”
Crowley, standing close to Aziraphale, looking much like he had always done, albeit a little scalier down the neck, huffed. “So we’re cool with the whole sibling thing now, are we?”
Gabriel snorted. “In a way, I guess we’ve never been a…”
His turn was rudely interrupted by a gravelly shriek – a sound that seemed to want to be, to have to be, high-pitched, but that tragically was hampered by the throat it issued from. A throat that had been made to lead choruses of angels in hymns to their Creator. Aziraphale whipped his head around, and had he had a body and a physical face these very moments, he’d have blanched.
The source of the scream was unmistakably Lucifer – but it was the reason for the scream which made Aziraphale’s non-existent blood run cold. Lucifer too was a mere Seraph now, without physical flesh, just wings and arms and Aziraphale shuddered to think what else, but his arms and claws were wrapped around Lilith – beloved, darling Lilith. The demon monarchess convulsed in his grip, unresponsive, foaming at the mouth, her breath rattling, her limbs twisted, her eyeballs rolling wildly, her head lolling around on her neck, directionless, with utter disregard for the laws of physics. It was clear that she was dying, violently fading, and fought the happening tooth and claw.
Lucifer, who pressed her against him in a desperate attempt to not have to let her go, to not have to lose her, was tearful and feral in his helplessness, and despite all the things he might have done, all the death and desolation he might have wrought, in these moments, Aziraphale couldn’t but feel bilious sympathy for the Ruler of Hell.
And Lilith… oh, would that he could do anything for Lilith.
He felt how Crowley shivered next to him – Crowley who once had loved her, who perhaps may have never stopped loving her – and Duke Ligur who had appeared in the far-off with Duke Hastur and Dagon ran closer, but…
“DO SOMETHING!” the first rebel suddenly roared at nothing in particular, sharply above everyone’s heads. “Save her, you pathetic, good-for-nothing sad sack of a deity!”
Aziraphale trembled under the sensation of awakening – of awareness that now gradually seemed to envelop them all. He couldn’t see anything changing – here was nothing save a flimsy, saffron-yellow light – but it felt as if a giant, encompassing all of them with its arms, had risen above them, lovingly smiling down on them. Its glance was like a searchlight, its breath sweet, its very presence felt weirdly, unexplainably homely. The Principality could feel his brain knotting while he attempted to make sense of this – but one thing he knew without a doubt: that it momentarily focused on the poor, convulsing monarchess.
“Lilith,” a booming, though whispering voice rang out, thin and still powerful like fluid gold.
Lilith groaned and lay still.
Lucifer dared take a calming breath.
Then she combusted.
Aziraphale gasped.
“Lotus Flower,” Crowley muttered, his fingertips touched to his cheek and lips. “Oh Hea… oh somebody, no.”
Ligur froze in his tracks with a sound as if someone had punched him in the stomach, appeared for a moment uncertain whether he should cry or vomit, and then turned to return to Hastur’s side. (Duke Hastur, indeed, was the only one who seemed to be genuinely amused by the goings-on.)
Only through his looking around to observe the infernal Duke’s reaction, Aziraphale noticed that Michael and Uriel, Chamuel and their child, all without a scrap of physical coil upon them, hovered in mid-distance, seemingly taking inventory of each other and their sustained injuries, if any at all. They were joined, beside this, by any number of angels and demons, some alone, some in loose groups, some in huge bunches. They filled the scenery horizon to horizon, and possibly even beyond that, and all of them exuded a sense of complete lack of orientation.
Everyone, Aziraphale knew instinctively. Everyone was here, had returned to Her arms…
Lucifer shrieked as his beloved disintegrated, leaving nothing but dust on his palms. “What have you DONE?” he thundered into nowhere.
The voice didn’t sound upset as it continued, “Ah, Lilith, daughter… I missed you for so long. Now be still, my human child, you are finally home.”
“What… have you… done,” Lucifer reiterated, under audible strain to keep himself controlled. Aziraphale sensed his fury, and his fingers curled into fists at his sides. Crowley gave a strangled sound of apprehension.
The Almighty was unmoved, was a pillar, was sure-footed and callous as She graced Lucifer’s questions with an answer – so, She was everything Aziraphale had ever known Her to be. “She was human. I returned her to the clay that was used to craft everything mortal, where she belongs. Fear not for her, Lucifer – I know how much you loved her.” The Morningstar made as if to bristle against that, but She didn’t let him get out a word. “Do not contest it; you loved her enough to let her fly free where with anyone else, you would have clipped their wings. And just think if it had been any different… if you had been unattached, unaccompanied in your wrath… perish the thought.”
Lucifer said no more, only closed his fists around the dust his Queen had left and sobbed, dry-eyed.
“And yet, think of how cold and static creation would have been without your fire, Lucifer.”
Silence.
“Lilith is with her brothers and sisters now,” She finally ventured, addressing all. It was a message to everyone: fret not, I am benevolent with her, I will be benevolent with you. “And all of you, dearly beloved, are here. One more remains to be banished… then we shall be among our own.”