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Slowly, ever so slowly, Crowley became aware of his surroundings. His grip on the Bentley’s steering wheel was painful. The world sped by, but he’d been driving on autopilot. Or maybe the Bentley had taken control? He felt numb. Shock, he supposed, though his mind veered away from the source of that shock and pain. He wasn’t ready to think about it yet. Numb was good, numb was definitely better.
His muscles cramped and ached, as if he’d been in the same position for days while the Bentley drove laps around the UK. He wondered how long they’d been on the road, how long since… Nope, not going there. Not yet.
He spotted a small pub and snorted softly at the name, Devil’s Dyke. Wondering if he wanted coffee or Talisker, he went inside. He almost walked out again when he saw the tartan carpet, but ordered and sat alone at a table, willing the patrons and waitstaff to leave him the hell alone.
He hadn’t even realized he was staring at the tv behind the counter until his mental fog was pierced by a news story about the latest images from the James Webb space telescope. He recognized the nebula with two bright stars in the foreground, it was from a quadrant he had worked on a long time ago.
But he choked on his drink as they zoomed in on a barely visible collection of galaxies, or maybe nebulae, shaped like a question mark. Not his work, though had he known the future he might have snuck it into his designs as a defiant bit of celestial graffiti. “Crowley was here”, Ha!
He supposed he could always miracle himself out for a closer look. There was nothing holding him to Earth. Not anymore, he thought as he ruthlessly suppressed the reason why. But he didn’t want to go. He didn’t want to abandon Earth. He was as fiercely protective of the life on this planet as the angel originally assigned that job had been.
He did feel a need to get a good look at the night sky without the interference of London’s lights. He realized that the Bentley had brought him to the South Downs Dark Sky Reserve, and that seemed as good a place as any to be tonight.
It was only a short drive to Bignor Hill in the remote part of the reserve. He parked the Bentley as the sun neared the horizon and climbed until he came across a slab of rock still warm from the day. Lying on it, the sky filled his sight. He watched the colors shift, then fade to an inky darkness pierced by infinite stars, the achingly beautiful Milky Way a vast arch overhead.
This sky had been a constant the whole of his time on Earth, a view only recently lost to much of humanity. But his familiarity with the heavens predated them; as an angel he’d worked on the star maker team. He’d created so many celestial bodies that he still couldn’t look at the night sky without feeling things.
He knew his amber eyes couldn’t see the way his ethereal ones had, but he stared at the speck of sky where he knew the question mark was. It wouldn’t even look like a question mark from any other angle in space, just a collection of galaxies. You had to be right here, right now - relatively, to see it as a question mark… and what might that mean? Probably nothing. He was getting as bad as the humans finding meaning in random patterns. It was all meaningless now.
Even the familiar ache at being limited to the small slice of the heavens visible from Earth was nothing compared to the ache that threatened to consume him.
And there it was. All those feelings he’d been trying to lock away hit him at once, and tears rolled down his cheeks as Crowley silently wept for his angel. He missed him, he was furious with him, and he was profoundly afraid for him… but what could he do? He was utterly helpless, unable to reach, let alone protect the angel.
Crowley inhales sharply, aware of a Presence. Not his angel, he hasn’t felt this since before he fell. A fleeting sense of grace, approval and love. The faintest whisper of touch, there and gone again so quickly that Crowley is half afraid he imagined it. And wasn’t that just like Her? Even Her reassurances had to include enough doubt to bring faith into play.
He doesn’t understand exactly what it means, and he’s still as confused and lost as he was moments ago. But he stares up into the Milky Way and shifts his gaze to that tiny speck of sky and feels, for the first time since he watched those elevator doors close, a tiny, painful flicker of hope.