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The wave had caught Aziraphale suddenly, as they so often did — caught him in a way that felt in one sense like a blast out of nowhere and in another like the inevitable, overdue culmination of a long, long buildup. The wave caught him, and shook him, and flung him back hard into his desk chair, sitting and shaking as the endless litany of his faults began to loop once again in his head.
Bad angel, the litany began, as it had for millennia, though it was self-updating and continued now into more recent new territory. Pathetic. Traitorous angel — and pathetic excuse for a traitor at that. Blindly, cowardly following orders, orders, right up until it inconveniences your own selfish self. And even then, stupid, stupid, trusting the wrong and doubting the right and unable to make your own mind until it should have been too late.
Weak, weak, weak … couldn’t even protect your own corporation, your own shop, let alone the world you claim to love and guard. Pathetic excuse for a principality. Betraying your side, but only after betraying your best and only friend.
Friend. As if you deserve a friend after pulling away so many times. As if you have anything to offer. As if any friend or side or anything else wouldn’t be better off without you. Cruel, clumsy, frivolous, disgusting, pathetic excuse for a—
“Angel?”
The voice was sharp as the undertones were gentle, the face that accompanied it etched with concern as it loomed over Aziraphale.
Still quivering, Aziraphale forced himself to lift his head, to meet those intent snake eyes. He only managed to hold the visual contact for a moment before he felt his gaze dropping. Weak and cowardly as ever, he thought bitterly. Can’t even look the person you care for most in the eyes.
“Aziraphale.” Lowering himself to a knee so that they were more or less a level, Crowley put a gentle hand to his cheek, which was how Aziraphale discovered he must have been crying; the demon’s fingers touched wetness. Disgusting, he thought again, tiredly, though Crowley didn’t recoil in repulsion. Strange, really, that after so long he still never had. Perhaps he would come to his senses this time. “Aziraphale,” the demon repeated. “What’s the matter?”
Aziraphale blinked. It was an odd question; the answer was obvious. “Me,” he said, and then winced at the worried confusion in Crowley’s eyes. He sighed, breath shaking along with the rest of him. Well, if Crowley had somehow missed what a pathetic excuse for an anything Aziraphale was, the least he deserved was an explanation.
So Aziraphale gave it to him. Opened his mouth, and the litany cycling inside his head poured its way down his throat and out his lips, out to the ears of the quiet, listening demon whose thumb was still resting tenderly on his cheek.
The recitation took a long time.
When he was done, he heard Crowley sigh, very softly and very sadly.
Making your best friend sad, Aziraphale added to the list of his offenses.
“I could argue with you, you know,” said Crowley, and his thumb finally came away from the cheek, but only so both hands could relocate to stroke the angel’s arms instead. “Tell you why half of what you’re saying is dead wrong and the other half is far exaggerated or else was justified at the time. And I could tell you all the other things about you, all the good, strong, kind, beautiful, amazing things that you seem to have forgotten to mention… there are so many, you know. It’d be easy. Because it’s all true. I’d love to do that.”
Aziraphale closed his eyes.
“But that wouldn’t really help right now, would it?” Crowley sounded unhappy about it.
Aziraphale shook his head. It wouldn’t, that much was true. It would just make him hate himself more, to think that he was so very pitiful as to make Crowley come up with undeserved compliments.
“Oh, angel.” Crowley lifted a hand again, back to caressing the side of Aziraphale’s face. “You’re so good at forgiving other people. I wish you could grant yourself forgiveness so easily.”
“Forgiveness?” Aziraphale stared. “That’s not— that has nothing— but—” He stammered to a halt.
“‘Unforgivable, that’s what I am,’” Crowley quoted himself in a murmur, wryly. “What a pair we are.”
Aziraphale swallowed, inexplicably shaken. Forgiveness. He hadn’t… he hadn’t thought about it that way before. Hadn’t drawn any connection. Surely there was no connection. Was there?
“I forgive you,” the demon went on. “Easily. I mean, there’s very little that actually needs me to forgive it, but I forgive what there is and if there was more I’d forgive that too.”
There were tears in Aziraphale’s eyes again, welling up and spilling over quite without his consent.
Such a bad angel you can’t even manage to forgive, the wave suggested, but it seemed a trifle unsure of himself. The wave was, perhaps, beginning to retreat.
Perhaps. Or perhaps not. It was difficult to tell yet.
Aziraphale exhaled, and reached to lay his own hand over the back of Crowley’s. Crowley’s other hand came up, then, layering itself on the other side of Aziraphale’s.
They sat like that for a minute, hands stacked together against the angel’s cheek, breathing.
“I’ll try,” Aziraphale whispered at last, very quietly. Quietly, but with intent. “I will try.”