Chapter Text
Picture this — the snaking crawl of London traffic, and a coffee shop gripped by rush hour's hand, shaking with caffeine withdrawals. The kind of holdup that happened every day, though the Metatron was unused to such inconveniences. When he arrived at the bookstore, it was empty. The furniture was tipped over, including an entire shelf. There was a scorch mark in the middle of the floor like an enraged demon had nearly burnt his way out of there.
Meanwhile, Michael stood at a pedestal in Heaven. On it was a book, floating slightly above the surface. It was hard to look directly at it. In Michael's peripheral vision, the book was unfathomably large, and it glowed such a bright purple it made the lights of Heaven seem dim in comparison. But when they looked straight at it, it was a regular, if very old, book. Something a certain bookseller would have stocked. But despite all its normalcy, the sight of it gave them a pulsing headache. It felt like the book had its claws in their head.
In front of them stood Crowley's best and only friend with his head bowed. Their grip tightened on their quill, and the golden feather twitched. When the tip touched the paper, it started to burn. The name was written in flames, and then the entire page went up in smoke. It burned too quickly, and in a second it was ash.
Meanwhile still, Crowley shrieked until his throat was raw. He was vaguely aware of being chained up, and guarded by angels. Most of it dulled into the background, and all he could feel was the black hole in his chest. He screamed about his friend, his best friend, his —
Silence.
But, dear reader, it's understandable if that was hard to picture. Crowley didn't have any friends, let alone a best one.
He wasn't chained up in Heaven. He was in his flat. He'd never left. He didn't have much of a reason to go out, anyway.
Crowley was alone.
Crowley was the only one on the wall that surrounded Eden that nice day. His wings still ached from the flames that had licked at them, and the charred blackness of them hadn't cleaned up as well as he'd hoped. Nevermind. It wasn't fitting for a demon to be vain. Or maybe it was. It was a sin, so it had to be.
"That went down like a lead balloon," he mused to himself. No answer.
There really should've been somebody guarding the greyish stretch of bricks. There were angels positioned at the northern, western and southern gates, but not the eastern. Like a compass She had forgotten to finish. But the Almighty always finished what She started; it was the entire reason he was here.
He watched as the humans ventured out into the desert, unarmed. A lion ran up the same dune crest as them, roaring. Adam got in front of Eve, a move driven by some strange instinct Crowley had never quite figured out.
The lion dove for him, and Crowley felt the roar more than he heard it. Adam wielded a large stick he'd snatched from the Tree of Knowledge. It went for his throat, but its teeth only grazed his arm. He got it in the jaw.
It left them alone when it decided a zebra would be less trouble. Adam had already turned the golden sand red. Eve embraced him and helped him away. It'd be a miracle if they survived out there.
What was so wrong about it, anyway? It was only good and evil. They deserved to ask questions about the nature of their existence. But, well, he'd certainly caused trouble. Beelzebub would be pleased.
He squinted into the blue sky as it turned grey. It started to rain in slow, fat tears. He held up a wing to shield himself. The raindrops dripped down his feathers. It was cold.
He waited for the rain to slow. When it finally did, he slithered down the wall to discover all he could about the world. The vines crept out from Eden and followed him. Greenery spread to the edges of the first homes of humanity.
He discovered all that was good about Earth: food, wine, and storytelling around fireplaces. He watched as humans learned how to love and how to embrace each other against the frozen desert nights.
He also discovered all that was bad about God.
It began with the flood. As he lay in a tree, watching the waters rise up the trunk, he tried to convince himself he wasn't that surprised. The Almighty's unconditional love had its limits. Limits he'd reached. It was only a matter of time before humanity tested Her too much.
But, for Satan's sake, the children.
It was worse, somehow, when it was Job. This was not humanity paying for their sins. This was Crowley paying for God's sins.
So he turned the goats into birds and begged them not to bleat too loudly. He turned the children into lizards and kept them hidden away somewhere safe. He watched Job grow sick and afraid. He watched Sitis feel the same pain he had when God cast him out into Hellfire.
But it was fine. He was a professional midwife/cobbler. He could make it right.
"Reach into your husband's robes — er, higher — yes, and pull out three of his ribs."
She did, with a crunch that made Michael raise their eyebrows. He told them to embrace, and their children miraculously sprung forth.
The angels watched on, only half-convinced that this was how the whole childbirth thing worked. They clapped politely as if someone had won a game rather than narrowly avoided the death of their children and the painful birth of seven new ones. They muttered amongst themselves, whilst Job, Sitis and Crowley all insisted that these were very new children.
"Michael, are these his new children?" asked Gabriel, leaning in close to the other angel. Michael narrowed their eyes.
"They ought to be," said Michael. "They seem to be his old ones."
Crowley looked to the crowd of angels and was briefly convinced one of them would back him up. They did not.
"Are you really from Shua?" Gabriel stepped forward to meet Crowley.
"Certainly," said Crowley, cheerily.
"It's just, I don't believe you are," said Michael. They approached him, slowly. "I believe you're from somewhere much further... South."
They closed the distance between them in a flash. They wrenched Crowley's sunglasses off his face before he could stop them. He stumbled back and looked over them all. His eyes were startlingly yellow against the gloom of Job's wrecked life. The angels all gasped.
"I knew it." Michael dropped his sunglasses into the dirt and broke their lenses with a well-placed stomp.
"Demon." Gabriel got closer to him. He was surrounded on all sides by angels.
"Let's not be too hasty," he said, trying to keep an eye on all of them at once. "I mean, really, wasn't this whole thing God's plan? You can't blame a demon for going against God's plan."
"You have disobeyed," said Gabriel, "both Heaven and Hell."
"They'll want a word with you about this," said Michael.
They both smiled sweetly as the ground caved in and Hell's jaws swallowed him.
The demon who approached him about his little trick with Job had teeth that were too white and a grin that didn't reach their eyes. They informed him that they'd invented something new, just for him.
He was chained and surrounded by demons. His body filled with blood for the first time. He could feel it sloshing around awkwardly without the guidance of a heart. Then every drop was bloodlet by a thousand starved leeches. It returned, and the cycle repeated anew. Meanwhile, the demons cheered and placed bets on when he'd break and cry, and who he'd curse first: God or Satan.
Years passed like days for Crowley. He was immortal; it was part of the package. But that year he spent in the deepest pits of Hell felt exactly like a year.
Crowley had survived an apocalypse. How, he didn't know. He received the Antichrist in a basket and dropped him off with the Satanic nuns. He came up with a brilliant plan; to convince a gardener to read the Bible to the child near-constantly, and a nanny to sing lullabies full of death. They'd balance each other out, surely. Then came his eleventh birthday. No Hellhound.
After that, he realised he'd lost track of the Antichrist.
He buried his head in books of prophecy, and desperately hunted for some kind of thread. There were no records. The monastery burned. He wished his damned — blessed — he wished his books would burn, too. He'd never been much of a reader. It would've been more accurate to say he hated it. Now, films, now those were art. But the location of the Antichrist wasn't going to show itself on TV.
"There should be somebody else," he blurted out.
He looked over at Lucy. Lucy was one of his plants. He'd glued a pair of large googly eyes to her pot so he'd have someone to monologue to. She sat on her own small throne in the middle of his flat. She was the only one he hadn't threatened with destruction. But, well, she'd probably overheard. She kept her leaves nice and green, and he expected no less from her. She watched him passively as he spoke and her leaves shrugged.
"Somebody other than you," he clarified. He strolled around his flat, shoving books aside with his foot as he walked. There was an emptiness in his ribcage. There was no meat, no warmth, only the spaces between his bones, and the emptiness ached. "Someone who likes books enough to do all this without wanting to jump out that window."
The phone rang. He startled back from it, then approached. He picked it up, but there was nobody on the other end.
He stood for a long while with the phone up to his ear, breathing into the dead line. There should be somebody else. He wanted to hear a voice, and if he strained he almost could. After a long moment, he realised it was Freddie Mercury singing Somebody to Love. He put down the receiver and walked to the window so he could get a good view of the Bentley, which was parked outside. He glared at it.
He shook his head. It was the stress, that was it. He'd spent the past week muttering about the great bloody plan and cursing God all the while. Now She was playing tricks on him.
He never did find any leads or his someone else. So that was it. He was doomed to a war. After that, no Earth. An eternity in Hell. His lungs ached with his first memory after the Fall. He'd landed in a grassy field, and for a moment he'd thought he was on Earth. But then he fell through the grass and landed in a cold building of stone. All his bones had jolted out of place, and then back together. The nearest demon kicked him in the ribs and demanded he pick up a weapon.
He'd pulled off an expert heist, back in the 60s. All he'd gotten from it was a bottle of holy water. Exactly what he'd wanted. It was only insurance.
A swig of it was starting to seem inviting.
He went to bed one night, hazy, drunk and certain he'd wake up in Hell. He could picture Beelzebub standing over him with his weapon in their arms. He closed his eyes and waited patiently for the end. Patience, oh someone, patience was a virtue. That had always been his problem when it came to Hell. He had too many virtues.
Instead, he woke up a week later, when it was all over. But something had changed. The sky was clearer and bluer, and reality had shifted a few inches to the left. Subtly out of line, but it was better now. Earth was very, very loved, he realised. It was loved by someone outside of himself, in the way only the occult could love.
Those brilliant humans. That perfect Antichrist. They'd sorted it all out themselves.
He sobered up just to make that evening's drunkenness even more stark. He watched all his favourite movies in a boozy haze and admired the work of humanity from afar. Love, Actually came on and he snuggled in under an incredibly fuzzy blanket he kept in a closet for his longer naps.
He fell asleep again after that, and then he slept for four years.