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“Once upon a time,” the angel said, letting his voice carry down into the hold of the ship ahead of him as he descended the ladder, “there was another rain. The first rain. And, if memory serves, there was another shelter more freely offered.”
He stepped off the last rung with head held high. He was feeling particularly smug, prepared to give Crawley a good talking to. Really! Sneaking aboard Noah’s ark like a... Well, a snake? The two of them had just spoken earlier in the day! What would Heaven think if they heard Aziraphale had let a demon stow away? Surely Crawley knew their selfish act would put both of them in danger.
But Aziraphale hadn’t prepared for the sight that Crawley made: sungold eyes wide with terror, wine-red hair a wild mess, and face ashen. Nor had the angel expected to see those spindly arms thrown wide, black wings flared and earthly visible to him.
The demon’s face said, I am petrified. The wings said, I will fight you.
Aziraphale craned his neck, trying in the low light of his pinched oil lamp to glimpse what the serpent hid.
“You can’t have them,” they said when they caught him peeking. “Please, Aziraphale, work with me here.”
When he saw the first tear-stained face, the angel gasped. Children! A fair dozen and a half, perhaps more.
“You… How did...” Words failed him.
“I am so very tired,” Crawley said, “but I will be damned again before I let you tossss them overboard just—”
“Crawley...”
“—to appease the Almighty’s—”
“Crawley!”
“—temper tantrum. What?”
“I’m not going to… I’m not going to kill them.”
“You’re not?”
“No!” Aziraphale baulked. The very idea of it! He stepped toward the group but stopped when the demon met him with an answering pace forward. “Are they hurt?”
“Nn… They’re scared.”
“I can help. If you let me?”
The demon hesitated until Aziraphale lifted his eyebrows ever so slightly, demanding a response.
Crawley sighed, bone-weary. “Yeah, all right, fine,” they said, tucking away their black wings from less perceptive mortal eyes.
The angel smiled politely and scooted behind the demon. He hung his lamp on a peg overhead and observed the group. There were no infants, no toddlers, Aziraphale noted. Only those who could run, hand in hand, and keep low to the ground alongside what had surely been a frantic demon.
How many younger siblings had been left behind?
“Hello, dears,” he said, crouching down. “Everything is… Well, everything’s not okay, I know but—”
The youngest child sobbed. Behind the angel, Crawley groaned their frustration.
Aziraphale continued, unperturbed. “But if you lay down just now, you can sleep. No one will hurt you here. Yes?”
It took some shifting around—a little bit of miracling extra hay and healing cuts and ‘finding’ fresh bread and water—but one by one the children made places to sleep. Siblings and cousins, friends and strangers, they piled against each other. A ragged group clutching arms for comfort.
“There, that’s better. Now sleep,” Aziraphale said, sending a miracle across them for comfortable, pleasant, deep sleep. His lips trembled as he took a long breath and returned to the demon who sat on the floor far from the ladder but near to their charges. “They’ll sleep the night through.”
Crawley held their head in their hands, curling fingers into tangling hair. “I didn’t think. I just… I just did.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, chuckling with forced lightness. “Made a mess of things. Good job. Really put me in my place.”
When Crawley shot him a pained look, Aziraphale blanched.
“Oh. You—You weren’t…” He winced. “No, Crawley, you did the right thing.”
That only seemed to make it worse. What was Aziraphale thinking? An angel telling a demon they did the right thing!
His voice rose as he said, “What I mean is, you did what you felt was appropriate. Given the circumstances and your nature—”
“Pl-please. Enough. Aziraphale, just stop.” Crawley turned away from him, tugging their tattered robe close against their rag and bone body.
Aziraphale could only hold himself back for so long. He thought of the best words, playing them on his tongue until their shapes were correct. Nothing assuring, nothing personal.
Gently, he said, “They’ve lost everything. Homes. Family. Faith.”
The demon made a noise of agreement.
Aziraphale continued, “They have no idea why this should happen to them.”
“They didn’t do anything,” Crawley countered, edge still hostile.
“They are innocents,” Aziraphale agreed. “In every sense.”
One yellow eye peered back at the angel. In the low lamplight, the threadbare hope there sliced across Aziraphale’s chest. He worried his hands against each other to keep from squirming out of his skin.
“I, uh, I suppose I should get back to the animals,” he said. “They’ve been so accommodating. It really is a miracle none of them have… attacked each other.”
“Probably know they’re in this together,” Crawley mused, a bit of a frown on their lips as they shifted back toward him. “Nowhere else to go, you know, if they make a mess of things?”
Aziraphale flashed a tight smile. “Yes. Well.”
He stood to leave but stopped with one sandal on the ladder’s lowest rung as Crawley whispered, so softly that Aziraphale almost missed it.
“You can stay. If you like?”
The angel didn’t answer. Too many concerns rushed into the front of his brain for something like answers. He could help children, heal them, give them pleasant dreams and calm them. He could turn away from how the demon had clearly bested him this round. But…
To choose to keep infernal company?
Crawley added, even more gently, “Gotta keep an eye on me, right? Might do sssomething evil?”
Aziraphale released a slow breath and returned to where Crawley was turning a squat barrel of feed onto its side. “It’s going to be a long storm. Rather dangerous, I’d say.” He settled beside the demon, keeping a respectable distance between them. They were still on opposing sides, after all. “So what is it? I am to stay here all night and make sure you don’t switch around the camels and the goats? Start making new breeds of duck?”
Crawley gave a lazy smile. “Keep me entertained and I promise not to go switching goats on you. Tell me a story?”
Aziraphale pondered a moment. He had enjoyed listening to stories over the years. And the humans were very good at telling all sorts of tales. Some of them taught lessons or gave warnings; others kept alive the memory of their short but rushing history. Aziraphale thought Crawley might enjoy one of the stories he had heard of a village trickster, and of clever young people, and the goodness of man.
So he spoke in quiet tones, as not to disturb the children nearby. At his side, the demon fought to keep their eyes open, twisting and turning to get comfortable, half-draped over the round barrel propping them up. Their sharp-angled face slackened against the wooden slats despite their best efforts.
Aziraphale watched as Crawley’s dark eyelashes fell further and further. Finally they fluttered closed entirely, hiding golden eyes from the dim light of the lamp.
“I’m afraid you’re falling asleep, Crawley.”
“Not.”
“Don’t you want to? Sleep, that is?”
“The kids,” was the demon’s answer.
“I can watch after them.”
“Nn,” said Crawley, flicking their wrist dismissively. “Your people wouldn’t like that.”
Aziraphale tilted his head to the side. “Perhaps it would… end up inconspicuously absent. From my official report.”
Through half-lidded eyes, Crawley gazed up at the angel, something unfamiliar in their expression. “Oh?”
“It’s going to be forty days and nights, Crawley,” he said, a smug smile threatening. “I can’t report every little detail. Michael would never assign me another important mission again. Gosh, he might reassign me.”
“Mm. Tragic.”
“Ghastly,” Aziraphale corrected. He didn’t believe those things about Michael, embellishing for the demon’s sake, but the mere thought of leaving Earth for some mundane desk job Upstairs? Perish the thought.
“Your call, angel.” The words were empty of emotion, drawn away with the demon’s receding attention to the waking world.
“Perhaps a little while longer. Would you like me to continue?”
“Mm.”
But he wasn’t much further into his recitation when Crawley’s breath slowed and steadied. “You’re falling asleep again,” Aziraphale said mildly.
“M’not. I’m up.” Crawley blinked, slitted eyes unfocused and overly wide. “I’m wiling.”
Aziraphale chuckled. “I see you’re a very good liar when you’re half-asleep.”
Crawley hissed, relaxing further. The demon didn’t press for the rest of the story and so Aziraphale left it unfinished. He sat there in companionable silence, broken only by the sound of the rain and thunder.
Between the storm sounds, the demon mumbled words indecipherable until Aziraphale heard them say, “Couldn’t save the yun-nn…”
Aziraphale leaned in closer to the demon. “What’s that?”
Crawley breathed, “Unicorn.”
A sad smile graced the angel’s lips. “Ohh.”
Benevolence filled his heart as he bent forward, one hand out. And then he jerked to a halt. What on Earth had he almost done? Aziraphale worried his hands against the too-clean fabric of his robe for something to occupy them other than that which they wanted. Nervous eyes grazed the planks overhead, as though he might see if anyone observed him directly.
Several minutes stretched on before Aziraphale set a firm line to his lips, decision made. He reached across the pile of straw between himself and the demon. He settled a wide strong hand on the jutting point of one shoulder as it rose and fell with Crawley’s steady breathing.
No movement sprang up. No flailing reaction either from being startled at the connection or from Aziraphale’s holiness burning with a touch.
Oh, thank Heaven.
He didn’t know what he would have done if Crawley had awoken in fear or, worse, in pain. Certainly he’d have had no good excuse for the touch. One of the flies landed on you, brushed it off, haha! Go back to sleep, you old serpent.
Freely, he did brush aside a twist of red hair from where it fell across the demon’s face. They looked fitful in their rest; eyelids twitching here, brow creasing there. They’d had a long day, Aziraphale figured, what with all the foiling of the Almighty’s Plan. Gathering up the children—Aziraphale ached to see how many, how few—certainly had taken its toll on the other being.
Once, many centuries before, the demon had comforted him as they stood on a garden wall. Oh, their voice had been impossibly gentle on a day fraught with missteps, you’re an angel. I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.
It was a nice sentiment, one that Aziraphale had mulled over in the intervening time quite often. Angels could do the wrong thing, he was certain. Otherwise, how could the Fallen have happened?
But kindness couldn’t be bad, could it? Certainly not. And he was an angel, a being of love, meant to show love to all of Her creatures. Wasn’t this sleeping demon, who had spared so many children—still too few—also a creature of Her own making? Didn’t they deserve some small kindness for their actions?
Emboldened, the angel whispered, “Sweet dreams, dear.”
As he bent to press his lips to Crawley’s crown, the words carried a true blessing. At once, the demon hummed softly and their twitching slowed.
Though he should not have, Aziraphale breathed deeply as he settled the kiss against the sleeping demon. Their hair was caught with the warm animal smells of the ark but also a lingering smoky note beneath, an otherworldly incense of sharp spice and… What was the green scent at the edge?
Aziraphale drew away. He folded his restless hands against his stomach and counted the rhythm of the storm against the side of the boat while the demon rested.
Overhead the animals slept. The humans slept equally, those blessed by the Almighty and those abandoned by Her. Only an angel stayed awake into that long first night of the flood. He was a guardian whether or not he had a flaming sword to defend with, or a gate or an apple tree to protect.
Oh! Oh, that’s what that smell is, Aziraphale realised with deep fondness. You took a piece of them with you. The apples.