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I don’t own anything Good Omens.
…
Edinburgh October 1827
.
“Woo! Laudanum! Never again! Where are you?”
“I’m here," his angel reassured him. "Oh, I hope you don’t get into trouble.”
A nauseous wave stopped their feet and Crowley was having difficulty stringing the events together. He was huge, and singing. Small, and screaming. It was dark, except when blue eyes were looking towards him and he saw stars. Aziraphale was talking to him, worried about him, keeping his balance. His hands were on him, then they weren’t.
Then he sank into the ground.
Claustrophobic pressure enveloped him as grave dirt filled his mouth. He tried to scramble back up without success. Gritty earth raked across his skin and the smell of decay permeated his being. It was just a moment, it lasted forever. Then, he hit the slimy floor of Hell. The fall had been worse than the landing, but he knew that already.
“You aren’t getting out of this one,” a random, husky demon threatened.
Another joined the choir. “Can’t twist the story this time, snake.”
The poison was still in his system and there were stars in his eyes. “Um, what’s that?”
“You denied our master a soul. A body-snatching, unremorseful damned soul.” This accusation came from a big, ugly and twisted demon who pushed through the others. “She was a young one, too. The young ones always suffer more, don’t they?”
Crowley tried to keep his eyes open, but it was too bright in hell. The slits of his eyes must be dilated to almost perfect halos.
“What’zz wrong with him?”
“What isn’t?” the Big One said. “Shall we discorporate him.”
“No." As they spoke about him, he hoped, not prayed, that the room would stop spinning. “Make him wish you would, though, and try to find out why.”
The group grumbled, then a Husky One asked, “Why he would want to be discorporated?”
“No, you idiotzz. Why he saved the girl. I need a motive for formal punishment.”
“Is this,” Crowley wavered, “not formal then?”
Footsteps approached him, then he could feel a presence kneeling at his side. “Formal is more final,” the buzzing voice said. He knew that voice, at least, he remembered he was supposed to be scared of it. “This will take a while.”
They stopped directly addressing Crowley and spoke to the room instead. “Get me a motive, but don’t ask him questionzz for a while. Wait a week, a month… yearzz. Take your time.”
Eager, the other demon asked, “Does this mean I can get my overtime approved?”
He will never understand why he did it, but Crowley laughed.
.
They did take their time. The laudanum had worn off ages ago, but the hangover remained through their continuous torture. He tried to think of better things, but could only think of Aziraphale to the point where each searing stabbing pain reminded him of a flaming sword.
“You ready to start answering our questions, then?”
“You… you don’t understand. You can’t see it yet.”
The disorienting effect of his consciousness waving in and out heightened his nausea. One moment, Crowley was chained up hanging from the rafters of Hell. The next, he was at a beach. They had just saved children, heard the voice of God, and his Angel was crying.
“You’re not taking me to Hell?”
“No,” he says out loud in the present, and was slapped for it.
The demon overseeing his questioning grips his chin, lifting his face towards a blinding fluorescent light. “No?”
In his memory, Aziraphale still had tears in his eyes. “Why?”
He responded, “Cause I don’t think you’d like it.”
A clawed finger raked down his cheek. “This can end, Crowley. Just tell us why you saved that dirty little urchin.”
“But I’m a fallen angel!,” Aziraphale quietly cried, with his white curls and sad blue eyes. It twisted his gut to see them sad. “I lied to thwart the Will of God.”
“I won’t tell anybody, will you?”
It’s another temptation and he can see the conflict in Aziraphale. As an angel and agent of God, he should put himself at the mercy of Gabriel. However, he came to him.
Crowley smirked. “Then nothing has to change.”
If he was to tell now, both sides would go after the angel next. He could not let that happen.
An idea cleared its way through the haze of pain and poison. With Elspeth, Crowley honestly thought he was doing good, though was not fully in control of his actions. He was showing off to his angel, showing them that morality is more than black and white. He thought that dramatically changing that girl’s life would save her. However, he was a demon. He might not be able to save anyone, after all.
That’s the thing about humans. They get to choose right or wrong, but mostly they aren’t thinking about morality through the lens of out-of-touch celestial bastards. The consequences determined by their actions aren’t always fair. Who was he kidding? They rarely are. He couldn’t fully see it yet, and he could not tell how long he had been down here already, but there had to be consequences to giving a poor, depressed girl a fortune.
If the consequences were good, he would be destroyed. If they were bad, he could be saved. He could accept either fate knowing Aziraphale would not be next.
“Stop, just wait,” he almost begged. “The girl… are you still tracking her?”
A long pause followed. The break in the pain allowed Crowley to take a full breath.
“What,” the Husky One asked. “Why would we?”
“You want to know why I did it?” It took all his strength, but he lifted his nose to stare down the Big One and snarled, “Track the girl.”
Another blessed pause. “You,” the Big One commanded. “Track the girl. And you, get a confession ready.”
Crowley almost blissfully passed out. He felt sea breezes on his burning skin and was reminded of how lonely it was to be on your own side. Then he was slammed in the gut.
Lights were flickering. The grime on the floor seeped into his clothes and hair. There was a commotion and they were angry, but he could not piece anything together.
The Big One growled, “Bring him!”
They threw him on the floor of Beelzebub’s office, laughing under their breaths. Crowley slowly got to his knees.
“I’m waiting,” their leader tested him.
“Of course,” Crowley said, trying to brush the clumped hair from his bruised eyes. He settled back on his heels and lifted his chin to the Lord of the Flies.
“Right, sorry about all that. This all could have been avoided if your work was a little more straight-forward, but it was a highly effective temptation regardless.”
He thought of poor Elspeth’s smile as he made her promise to be properly good. “Still damned, is she?”
“Oh yes.” Beelzebub leaned forward to rest their elbows on their knees. Deep, dark pits of eyes stared at him. “And brought nearly a whole block of street rats with her.”
“Oh that’s… That’s that then.”
“Your work is complicated, but effective.” Their smile stretched wide, revealing the dark stains of their teeth and allowed a few flies to escape. “Giving her a small fortune to tempt those around her into theft and violence, and have them kill her before she can clear her soul of body-snatching. You always do work in scale; kind of a 50 for 1 deal.
“I hereby reinstate you to Earthly duty, but I expect more detailed reports from you. Get it all in writing and all that.”
He was free, but his knees felt welded to the floor. “Right. Scale.” Crowley sniffed back a tear before it could betray him.
Beelzebub’s smile vanished. “Well, up you go! I got places to be.”
Moments later, he was pushed up again, right where he was pulled down, and found himself lying on the dark earth of Edinburgh’s cemetery. Gabriel’s statue was haloed by sunlight. A strangled swear helped him stand up and he cursed the whole damnable world. He did not know how much time had passed, or where his angel was. However, if he was to keep all of this up, he did need one thing.
He needed insurance.
…