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Because Aziraphale had never done this before. He had never been put in a position where he had to choose, at least not like this. This was hurting Crowley in order to keep him safe, this was a betrayal of the highest order to keep him out of harm's way. It was giving up everything he loved and found comfort in, his bookshop, his friends, his neighbors, his life. It was looking Crowley in the eyes and telling him that he couldn’t love him and then letting him walk away.
Aziraphale had always hated lying.
And it hurt, more than anything had ever hurt him before, watching the pain on Crowley’s face, watching his retreating figure. Aziraphale wanted nothing more than to scream at him, to make him turn around, tell him that he doesn’t mean any of it, but he can’t. He can’t do anything because these are the sacrifices he has to make.
He had to act like Crowley hadn’t just offered him the only thing he had ever really wanted, like the weight of Crowley’s eyes on him wouldn’t linger in his chest for the rest of time and the feeling of his lips wouldn’t haunt his every thought.
What is it that humans always say? What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? There’s nobody stronger than Crowley, Aziraphale thinks to himself. He’ll have the whole world now, he never really needed Aziraphale anyway, he had been doing just fine before they’d become friends and Aziraphale was certain he’d do just fine again.
Because this was the ultimate sacrifice, wasn’t it? Let Crowley hate him, no matter how sick the thought made him, set him free. Anger was always easier to manage than heartbreak. Make sure Crowley would never want to see him again so he’d stay safely away, far enough that the forces of heaven could never get him. Then he’d finally have the one thing he’d always wanted, freedom….
After all, Aziraphale had loved him, for all of their existence. They had been two things tangled up and woven together, bound to cross paths again and again. Aziraphale had always assumed that’s how it would be, they’d always find each other somehow, to the point he’d never even considered that this was how it could end, walking their separate ways, slowly drawing further and further apart in the same way that brought them together to begin with.
—
“I forgive you.”
Just like that the foundation of the universe seemed to crack, a jagged edge ripped through the center of the room, tearing the carefully crafted life he’d built for himself clean down the middle.
After the fall, Crowley had been forced to build a new life up around him from the rubble he had been buried in. Ripped from any comfort and love he had ever felt. Until that point, he had never known anything but love, now suddenly there was a gaping void where it used to exist.
Sometimes, Crowley thought that if you reached inside his chest, you wouldn’t be able to find anything. Like a spot on the wall where a painting used to hang, the wallpaper around it discolored over time. He was the wall, his life before was the painting. Missing, a shadow of something he used to know.
And the feeling never left him, it wasn’t something he just got used to. He learned how to ignore the feeling of emptiness like one ignores the sound of a fly that got trapped in your room. Incessant in its subtlety. Easy to pretend it’s not there unless you think about it, and then it’s all you can focus on.
For a very long time, Crowley had thought this would be the rest of his eternity, he would continue to change with the time but this emptiness would remain constant. It was a steep learning curve, but eventually, he had learned how to be okay with that, resigned to never experiencing love in any form ever again.
And then he does. It’s just a flickering at first, so quiet he doesn’t even really notice it for a while until it grows. Slowly but surely, watching as it becomes a sort of tangible thing. Suddenly the void isn’t empty anymore. It’s far from filled but it’s something, which is a whole lot more than he thought he’d get ever again.
At first, he assumed it was all that excess love from the Angel rubbing off on him. That’s the point, isn’t it? Good and light just sort of radiate off of them in the same way misery radiates from hell.
The more time he spends with the Angel, the more this thing inside of him grows.
He tries to sleep it off around the 14th century, —with the bonus effect of simply missing the entire century because, well, Crowley is quite fond of Earth but that was a bad time for everyone— only, when he wakes up it’s still there.
It was sometime in the early 17th century when he could hold this thing in his hands. This thing that resembles hope, love.
It still took a very great deal of time before he allowed himself to acknowledge this feeling for what it was, but when he did, he simply couldn’t ignore it anymore.
And then they began to grow closer. Crowley sitting in his shades of grey and Aziraphale in his shades of light. Their arrangement brought them together more as time went on and human life became more complicated. A convenient hand turned into a simple favor which turned into a not-so-unfriendly lunch. Soon enough they weren’t so much colleagues as they were companions and Crowley had developed a deep sort of fondness for his Angel.
After all, 6000 years spent as the only consistent companion to one another was sort of bound to lead to friendship. All the things Crowley had once thought annoying or lame were endearing and sentimental. The bookstore which before Crowley wouldn’t have been caught dead in had become a second home to him and their meet-ups for dinner or lunch were things he actively looked forward to.
The cavern in his chest that he had for so long thought would be drowning in darkness was now full again. Maybe even more so now than it was before he had lost it all. He loved Aziraphale in any way a person could love another. All consuming but never suffocating, and he was content to stay like this until the end of time, which, unfortunately, seemed to be rapidly approaching.
Finally, he was happy and he was going to lose all of it in eleven years. For someone who’s existed since before the beginning that wasn’t a very long time. It was simply to be expected though, Crowley would never get what he wanted if the universe had anything to say about it.
And then the world didn’t end. That isn’t to say it didn’t try but after it all, everything remained as it was. They were on their side now. That was all he ever needed.
Crowley had been around since the day the earth began, he’d been literally everywhere and seen literally everything. This is to say he would give up every bit of it if it meant Aziraphale was with him.
Finally, he thought, finally we can do that. We can be together for the rest of forever and nothing else would ever have to matter because we would be alongside each other like we had been for time immemorial.
And then they weren’t.
Crowley tried to not let himself be hopeful, not since the fall. The world was too cruel for that. Involve your feelings, bare yourself to anyone and it’ll only be used against you. But this was Aziraphale, the one person he thought would never hurt him. The only person he ever truly trusted. That light and comfort, that love he had grown so used to was draining out of him like a rip in a bag of sand. The cut was clean, he’ll give the Angel that, but it still caused an unimaginable hurt. How could he be this stupid? Had he not learned from the past? This is what always happened. Demons don’t deserve love, that’s the point, so his had to be cruelly ripped from his grasp before he got too comfortable. This is what always happened and what, he knew, always would happen.
“Don’t bother.”
And perhaps he’d hoped Aziraphale would change his mind. That he’d run out after him because he realized he’d made a mistake, but he didn’t.
Perhaps he’d half expected Aziraphale to turn back to him before he left and choose for once to stay. Maybe, just maybe, what they had would be more important than picking a side, because it always had been to Crowley, even before everything. Aziraphale had always been the most important.
As the Angel enters the elevator Crowley realizes he’s looking at a stranger.
That night there were no nightingales anywhere near Berkeley Square, and even though the Ritz was overbooked until closing, one table remained completely empty for some, what one might say, ineffable reason.
—
There’s not really a clear answer to when his side became our side. Maybe it was that day on the beach, the realization they were in the same boat, going along with heaven or hell, respectively, as far as they could. Finding each other among the fog of various grays. Maybe it was in that tartan thermos, handled so delicately, like it was more than just holy water, like it was the Angel’s trust, given to Crowley after all their time together. Perhaps it came around with Armageddon, growing alongside the anti-Christ.
Anyways, that’s not the point.
Because no matter where or when it started it was very clear where it ended. With that Crowley had to learn how to be lonely again.
He had grown so accustomed to the Angel’s constant presence in his life that losing it was like losing a limb. Losing his other half. There was simply no other way to put it.
Poking and prodding at the hole in his chest, sore at the seams where it’d been ripped open, Crowley rolled his grief into a ball and settled it in the pitted cavern under the ghost of Aziraphale’s love. His loneliness coiled like a snake around his heart, squeezing and constricting in the most painfully divine way. because that’s what he deserves, isn’t it? divine pain at the hands of his angel?
He wasn’t even mad, not really. He knew it was coming, good things never last and Crowley knew that, he was just stupid enough to hope that this might be different. The Angel was right, nothing lasts forever, no matter how much you want it to.
Crowley can live with this hurt, with this tear in his chest because it reminds him it was real, that he had loved.
And as much as it hurt, the betrayal and ruin, he knew he’d do it all again, he’d bear this pain a thousand times over, if it meant he had his Angel, even if only for a while, even if he was always going to lose him in the end.