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9 November 1965, Berwick Street, London
There is a demon standing in the wine shop.
They are a very powerful demon. They are dressed like a human, small and thin in a black dress and thick overcoat and good, sturdy shoes. In the middle of the wine shop, they look at Crowley, who had sensed their presence as two blocks away and had detoured to head them off here.
“Are you the angel who calls themself ‘Crowley’?”
When they speak through thin, almost purple lips, their teeth are too sharp and too thick, grouped close and in many rows. The flow of time in the shop is outside of the space, and there’s a distinct tangibility of demonic miasma. Crowley, hand on their Spear disguised as a walking cane, knows that this is Duke of Hell.
“Yes,” Crowley says, standing with their back to the door. “I recognise you, Beelzebub.”
“Ugh, really?” Beelzebub says, face twisting and scrunching with displeasure. “I thought I looked pretty normal.”
Crowley blinks. Beelzebub scowls, oddly petulant. They stand across from each other for a long moment, time moving like molasses around them.
“Why are you here?” Crowley asks, hand on their Spear flexing.
Beelzebub eyes the motion before looking back at Crowley. They are a fairly small demon, but that tends to be the case with the most powerful. Despite their oppressive miasma, they do not appear threatening.
They look back at Crowley, the skin around their mouth thinning.
“The boy,” they say, and it is full of dead flies, corpses slipping out over their tongue and pooling in the collar of their overcoat. “Adam. He’s sick.”
Crowley clenches their fist on the Spear. Beelzebub stands tall and brave, but they are a demon, and it is not a natural stance without the fuel of anger or excessive pride. Crowley blinks and Looks. There is a faint mark of divinity on the curve of their left cheek and striped unmistakably down where a human would have a heart.
The thin, injured place inside of Crowley aches.
They open their mouth.
“Let’s not talk here,” they say because Crowley learned courage before bravery. “Come. My car is outside.”
Beelzebub doesn’t immediately get into the passenger seat of the Bentley. Crowley watches them examine the door and the handle, peering at their reflection in the window glass and the mirror. It reveals their true form, an amalgamation of biting flies. It’s only after a long, disconcerting moment that they open the door and sit down, gingerly placing their feet on the floor and not quite settling back against the seat.
Crowley watches them through the rearview mirror.
“You named the boy ‘Adam’?”
Beelzebub grimaces. “Gabriel named him,” they say, watching Crowley from the side of their eyes.
Crowley taps the top of their Spear, laid across their lap. “Better than ‘Job’ or ‘Jesus’, I guess,” they mutter before they force themself to get back on track with: “How long has the boy been sick?”
“Two weeks,” Beelzebub says, and their hands curl into fists on their lap as their eyes flick back and forth. “Gabriel can’t heal him.”
Gabriel can barely use full-blown miracles to heal. Crowley looks out onto the road. The merchants in the street market are finishing up for the evening. The days are growing ever shorter. He had been about to go by the bookshop and see if Davies had heard anything from Aziraphale, who has not called or written in nearly eight months.
“He didn’t tell me to come,” Beelzebub says, mistaking Crowley’s silence for reticence; they can feel the coiling pull of their demonic attempt at temptation. “You are not easy to find, Crowley.”
“Stop,” Crowley says, and the Spear is warm beneath his palm, nails notched into the disguise’s handle. “You do not need to tempt me, and I dislike the implication of your effort.”
The air is very clean. Beelzebub stares straight ahead. Their skin tone is ashen, more so than it was in the shop or when observing the Bentley. Crowley forces their hold on the Spear to ease. It pulses, warm and alert.
“We do not know each other,” Crowley says, and they look at Beelzebub and find that their eyes are brown and green and very focused, “so do not assume I am like my siblings, and I do not presume anything aside from the obvious about you. If this is agreeable, then we may speak.”
Beelzebub frowns. Not angry or petulant. Simply a frown. A natural, almost neutral expression.
“Yes,” they say, and they observe Crowley with less trepidation than before.
“Alright,” Crowley says, and they start the Bentley, their Spear shifting to replace the specialty fly-off. “I am going to start driving. Tell me where Adam currently is, what has happened, how long he has been ill, and as much as you know of the illness—symptoms, presentation, whatever. Try to refrain from screaming.”
“Scream?” Beelzebub starts.
Crowley pulls onto the road and drives.
Beelzebub screams.
Most of the initial trip out of London is on M6 before Crowley transfers onto rural motorways to drive without disturbance at night. The Bentley does not need gasoline, and Crowley does not need to sleep, so they drive straight and fast. Beelzebub stops screaming after the initial outburst, although they clearly do not enjoy every time Crowley increases speed to pass another car or drive on the shoulder to get around a lorry. Crowley watches the road and speeds forward, steady and sure.
“Why didn’t you take him to a hospital?” they ask, thirty minutes out of London.
Beelzebub is quiet. Crowley drives, conscious of their still and cold presence in the passenger seat.
“We did,” they say, like a black hole. “They said there is nothing they could do.”
Crowley stares forward. They think of how Aziraphale swaddled Adam and brought him to Crowley in the wicker picnic basket. If Crowley was a different angel, they might have been able to help Aziraphale raise a child. They might not have been good at it, but they would have been able to try with enough parenting advice and from watching over humanity for six thousand years.
But Crowley knows just as well as Aziraphale that they’re full of sharp and jagged edges, kept together by their Purpose, alcohol, and the overwhelming feeling that if they don’t keep trying, it’ll all be for naught.
“That’s bullshit,” Crowley says, and they feel the way Beelzebub flinches at their tone; the Bentley hums loudly. “The boy is still alive. They have a duty.”
“Duty is not the same for humans,” Beelzebub says, a fly’s buzzing.
Crowley flexes their hands on the wheel. The Bentley hums, steady and loud.
Aziraphale would know the right words.
Aziraphale is not here.
Crowley has no idea where Aziraphale is, and they feel like they’re going spare.
“It is not,” they agree, the darkness outside lit only by the Bentley’s headlights. “But they can also transcend their duties. They have the capacity to choose.”
It is quiet. They are approaching the southern border of Kirkby Lonsdale. Crowley blinks and lets themself look at St Mary’s Church. For a time in the fourteenth century, Crowley lived in the town. The bones of their friends from those days have long turned to dust beneath the stone.
In the passenger seat, Beelzebub shifts.
“Early in our acquaintance,” they say, the soft shifting of thin fly wings, “Gabriel told me that you’ve always chosen Earth over Heaven. I told him you were smarter to do so, even though humanity naturally lives in sin.”
The church is behind them.
“Humanity has a choice,” Beelzebub says, soft and full of decay and growth.
A thin rain patters over the Bentley.
Crowley drives.
10 November 1965, Anniesland, Glasgow
In the Beginning:
The Earth was formless and empty.
Crowley does not remember this. By the time they joined Lucifer, Michael, and Gabriel, there were forms of mountains and sky and stars and infant galaxies made of the first Lights, and there were the senses of sight and sound. Lucifer, in the last moments that Crowley remembers them being close, had spoken of how it had felt, coming into existence among nothing but a few concepts and Her.
“It was so quiet,” Lucifer said, watching Crowley lift kelp from the seabed, gazing about at the dense forests deep beneath the ocean surface. “I will be the only being aside from Her to ever know that.”
“I think it’s wonderful,” Crowley said, holding out a handful of kelp for Lucifer to inspect. “You were Created first after all.”
“I was, wasn’t I?” Lucifer said, very softly.
Now:
Crowley sits next to Adam in the small bed. The boy is pallid, cheeks sunken and eyes too bright when Crowley opens the lids. He shivers as if freezing, and he burns with fever. His hands are cold, nails purple-blue.
Behind them, Gabriel and Beelzebub are having a whispering argument.
“– been a week!”
“Crowley is not easy to find!”
“I didn’t ask you to –”
“Will the two of you shut up,” Crowley grits out, harsher than likely is needed, but they’re not in a good mood in the first place. “It’s not easy doing this without alerting the Powers That Be.”
“Can I help?” Gabriel asks as Crowley rests their fingertips on Adam’s brow.
“No,” Crowley says, and Looks.
A supernova is beneath their hand. It is the type of power that brought the Great Flood and parted the Red Sea. It is the type of power that Made the whale that swallowed Jonah, that destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah.
It is the Antichrist, great and terrible, and there, at the juncture of the boy’s heart, is a tiny fissure. A thin, meager thing. A whimper of love. A whisper of humanity.
Crowley Looks, and the Fissure looks back.
The old cleaving wound from Lucifer’s hellfire axe awakes.
Crowley yanks their hand back. The scream in their throat is choked off. They jerk back, instinctively pulling their wings into the physical realm and reaching back to the howling left wing only to find –
“Shit!”
The wound has reopened fully, blood soaking through their undershirt and already staining their shirt and vest. Crowley swears, digging their fingers into the wing to keep it still and shifting their entire concentration to turning the nerves and blood vessels off. There’s some yelling. Crowley ignores it and begs their corporation to stop stop stop stop –
“Raphael –”
“My name is Crowley!” Crowley says, or howls, or sobs; the blood is stopped, but the pain is making them feel like they’re insane. “It’s been over a thousand years, Gabriel, fuck –”
Silence. Crowley uses the moment to tamp down on their nerves until the most they can feel is the dull shape of their wing under their hands. They’re going to end up moulting again after this, which is going to be an absolute pain. They’ve moulted more often in the last fifty years than the previous five hundred.
“Crowley,” Beelzebub’s voice filters through, “did Adam hurt you?”
“Yes, but he couldn’t help it,” Crowley says, groping around in their vest for their handkerchief; they wipe blood from their hands, sweat dripping into their eyes. “He’s the Antichrist.”
Silence again. Crowley unbuttons their vest and untucks their shirt, using the tails to wipe their face. It’s ruined anyways with the wings tearing through it and all the blood. They sit back on their heels. They feel exhausted.
“There’s a fissure in him,” they say, reaching up and touching their forefinger over the boy’s heart before drawing their hand back to scrub their hair out of their face. “It’s like a bone fracture but in his nature. You two have shown him a lot of love.”
More silence. Crowley looks at their knees. Hands. The rug. It’s a sweet yellow and red thing, washed enough times to go soft. Despite Adam’s long illness, the bedding is all clean and sweet-smelling. The bedroom smells like the morning rather than sickness and decay.
“Crowley,” Gabriel says.
He sounds like he did, eons and ages ago back on Maffei 2. Crowley forces themself to look up in time to see Gabriel kneel down next to them, the clean cream of his trouser knees in Crowley’s blood splatter. Gabriel looks at them, and there are tears in his eyes.
“Can you heal him?”
Heal the Antichrist. It should seem like an absurd request. But Gabriel walked away from Heaven for a Duke of Hell, and Crowley chose humanity over Heaven. They never lost their faith in Her, but She is not the same as what Heaven would like to believe.
Crowley begged Her for Aziraphale’s life, and She answered.
“I will try,” Crowley says because they have led the forlorn children down the path of the glorious dead and have dug graves with their hands until they had no nails or skin left.
“Let me help,” Beelzebub says, at Crowley’s back.
There is a buzzing. A swarm of flies with an infinite number of eyes. Crowley reaches out. They hold Adam’s cold hand and feels the weak pulse.
He thinks of Aziraphale, smiling at Crowley, as they paddled in Hampstead Heath swimming ponds.
“Are you still able to find demons wherever they may be?”
A long buzzing. “Yes.”
Crowley closes his eyes.
“Please find the demon Aziraphale,” they say as Adam’s life unfolds in their hand, a billion pockets of hellfire and a single blossoming Light:
“Tell him I love him and that I want to go swimming again.”
In the… Beginning?
The boy looks at them.
“Who are you?”
Raphael –
No. Their name is –
“I’m Crowley,” they say.
“Crowley,” the boy repeats, thoughtful and serious. “Like a crow?”
Crowley smiles. “Yes,” they say, crouching down to the boy’s height so he doesn’t have to crane his neck. “Like a crow. What’s your name?”
“I’m Adam Young,” Adam says, and he smiles, pointing at just over Crowley’s left shoulder. “You have white wings, though. Shouldn’t they be black, if you’re like a crow?”
Adam Young. Adam the Younger. Crowley wonders if Beelzebub is as bad at naming as Gabriel.
“I chose my name because it made me feel more like myself,” Crowley says, which they’ve never said to anyone else before. “I can’t change what my wings are like, though.”
Adam nods because this seems logical. He’s quiet for a long moment, observing Crowley with a child’s sharp curiosity. Crowley lets him, watching as his brows slowly draw together. Adam frowns.
“You’re hurt.”
Crowley tilts their head. “Am I?”
Adam nods. He lifts his hand and points not at Crowley’s wing but instead at their chest. Over their heart.
“Here,” he says with the simplicity of a child and the graveness of an adult. “Your heart doesn’t beat, like Pappy and Dad, but theirs glow like big fireworks. Yours looks like it’s been cut in half.”
Crowley opens their mouth. Finds there are too many competing questions. Closes it. Opens it again.
“I am hurt,” Crowley says, also something they’ve never said aloud; it comes out shaky and more than a little injured, but Adam just looks at them with thoughtful, childish eyes; it allows Crowley to admit: “I don’t know if I can heal, but I’m okay with that. Do you understand?”
Adam thinks, serious and careful. Crowley watches as the boy mulls over the conundrum of hurt and not knowing and being okay with this reality. He definitely does not understand, but he’s a child, and he’s used to not understanding.
Slowly, Adam steps forward. He reaches out and Crowley accepts his hands. He looks at Crowley and sees them.
“Sometimes I hurt people,” he says, and Crowley can see how much it bothers Adam from the worried set of his mouth and sadness in his eyes. “I get mad, and even Pappy and Dad will get burnt. I don’t mean to. I wish I wasn’t able to make the scary fire or, or, or change things. I don’t even know why I do it. I just get mad.”
“You are young and have big emotions,” Crowley says, and they don’t attempt to be reassuring; they look at Adam and see the poetics and the cherubs and the thousands upon thousands of troops they’ve led over the top. “It is difficult, learning how to manage them.”
Adam sniffs. He doesn’t cry exactly. He looks at Crowley and holds their hands, and Crowley lets him.
“I just want to be good,” Adam says, very, very small.
“I understand,” Crowley says because they do; despite everything, they really, really do. “But nothing is simply good or bad. You have to have some of both or you can’t tell the difference anymore.”
“I want Dad and Pappy,” Adam says, eyes filling with tears.
Crowley smiles. They stand and Adam keeps hold of their right hand. Looking up:
“Do you trust me, Adam Young?”
Adam swallows. Blinks furiously.
“Yes.”
Crowley nods. Turns. Adam moves with them, holding on tight to Crowley’s hand.
Around them, the hellfire burns.
They stand in the Light.
“Follow me.”
31 December 1965, Anniesland, Glasgow
Crowley wakes in increments.
When they resolutely went to sleep in 1837 for the next seventy-odd years, they woke up only because Aziraphale had showed up directly in their house or because of the Metatron bearing a message specifically for them. There was sleeping, which was all Crowley had wanted to do until Armageddon came and the world was made anew, and waking, which Crowley wanted done with as quickly and efficiently as possible. They drank themselves through all the hours they absolutely had to be awake to mute as much of it as possible.
What was the point of being awake simply to wait for humanity to be destroyed and the world to end?
Looking back, from the haze of 1917 and lying with Aziraphale in the overly decadent bed at the Ritz, Crowley had the sinking realisation that they had been trying to run away as much as they ever could run from their Purpose and Her. The things that the Metatron and their siblings were asking made Crowley feel completely unhinged, and they started dreaming, which wasn’t something angels should be able to do, that it wasn’t happening, that the Garden had never been defiled, and they were trapped as Raphael and only ever Raphael, and everything after the Garden and Aziraphale had never existed.
It had left Crowley desperate. They didn’t know what to do because it felt like their Purpose would inevitably lead them to standing in the carnage, clutching the remnants of what they cared for the most. They saw Death more regularly than they saw anyone besides Aziraphale and later Davies, and they didn’t want it to be this way, but it was. It felt certain:
Armageddon would come, and Crowley would stand beside Death at the end of it all.
And Crowley would do it. They would do whatever they had to do to eek out a bit more time. They would beg Her mercy over and over until She finally rejected them. They wouldn’t Fall, but they’d be left to clean up the deleterious, the meek, sick, and dying, and there would be no more love, no more touch, no more joy. Crowley would witness it and accept it because that is what they were Created for:
Not for criticism but for faith.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale’s voice is soft and very, very gentle, “I think you’re having a nightmare.”
It’s difficult to wake. Everything feels fuzzy and heavy, like they’d gotten blown up by a machine gun again. Crowley cannot count the number of times that has happened, and they’ve had to drag their corporation back upright as it spat out bullets and shrapnel and healed in messy, horrible waves. It is very difficult for human technology to discorporate an archangel, although Crowley suspects a nuclear blast could do it if aimed correctly.
“Do you think,” Crowley is saying, or slurring; they aren’t sure how long they’ve been asleep, and based on how they feel, they were probably buggered before, “a nuke would be able to blow up an archangel? Or a Duke of Hell?”
Silence. Crowley shifts to try to sit up and finds their wings in the way, oily and gross and numb as all shit. They over-balance and end up face flat in a bed that smells way too clean to be somewhere Crowley willingly went to sleep.
“Where am I?”
“Uh,” Aziraphale says, and he reaches over, navigating the mess of Crowley’s wings to free their face from the tyranny of their hair; he looks pinched and fairly stressed. “This is Gabriel and Beelzebub’s… house.”
Crowley remembers.
“Adam –”
“He’s well,” Aziraphale says, hastily reassuring. “He woke up not long after Beelzebub and I arrived.”
“I’m sorry,” Crowley says, rubbing furiously at their face to try and clear the mud from their brain. “That must have been a shock.”
“Yeah,” Aziraphale says, unhappy and tight. “You were really messed up.”
“I feel awful,” Crowley says because they do.
“Your brother wasn’t sure if you were going to wake up,” Aziraphale says, tighter.
“Gabriel knows shit,” Crowley groans, gathering themself together enough to roll over and push themself into a sitting position, wings muzzily moving along with them; the bed is excruciating clean and the cream bedspread tangled around Crowley’s legs looks like it was custom-made from a department store. “I acted within the scope of my Purpose; healing the Antichrist was just a lot of work.”
“The boy’s entire room was up in Hellfire,” Aziraphale says with barely contained frustration and no little anger, “and Beelzebub dragged me in from the Himalayas, raving about you wanting to go swimming –”
“Zira –”
“Don’t,” and it’s quiet and low and hurt, Aziraphale fingers threading over Crowley’s secondary coverts and dislodging the moulting down and feathers. “I thought you were dead.”
They’re quiet for a long time, Crowley sitting and gradually reorienting themself, Aziraphale grooming Crowley’s wings. Crowley doesn’t attempt to chase the anger from Aziraphale’s face nor the tension from his shoulders. If it had been Crowley in Aziraphale's shoes with Gabriel retrieving them, Crowley isn’t sure what they would have done. Possibly attempted to discorporate Gabriel. Angels are a violent and disagreeable lot.
“You really need a bath,” Aziraphale murmurs, wiping oil and wax-covered fingers on the bedspread.
“Ugh,” Crowley starts just as the door opens and Adam peers in.
“Hello,” he says, holding the door knob and looking shy and very hopeful. “Are you awake?”
“I’m awake,” Crowley says as Aziraphale stares at the boy with an expression somewhere between wary and soft. “You may come in.”
“I didn’t know people like you could sleep,” Adam says with the same curiosity and seriousness that Crowley remembers as he releases the door knob and moves to stand at the foot of the bed.
“It’s Crowley’s special ability,” Aziraphale says, deadpan.
“Dad said their special ability is to heal the sick and injured,” Adam says, frowning at Aziraphale.
Crowley hears themself bark out a laugh before they can stop it. “My apologies,” they say as both Aziraphale and Adam look at them with consternation. “I am not used to my brother being a father.”
Adam considers this as Aziraphale rolls his eyes. “Dad said he has a lot of siblings, but you’re the first one I’ve met,” he says, like he’s trying to work out a puzzle. “Pappy said Dad doesn’t get along with his siblings, but he seems happier with you around.”
“Ah, well,” Crowley says, very awkwardly, “Gabriel and I are the closest in age.”
“I would like to have siblings,” Adam says, very seriously.
“Ah,” Crowley says, even more awkwardly.
“My friends all have siblings,” Adam explains as Aziraphale turns to Crowley with the most shit-eating grin. “I know how humans make them, but I don’t think angels and demons work the same.”
Aziraphale looks like he might die, trying not to laugh. Crowley, completely stumped, picks at their cuticles, which are, in an exceedingly rare turn of events, in perfect condition.
“We do not have the prerequisite biology to procreate,” they say as Aziraphale hunches over to stifle his laughter, “as both angels and demons precede the Creation of reproduction.”
Aziraphale nearly chokes himself, tears appearing at the edges of his eyes. “Crowley –”
“What is going on?” Gabriel says, standing in the doorway and looking around the room with an air of disapproval when he sees the down and feathers scattered about.
“Crowley was explaining biology to me, Dad,” Adam says, with his characteristic seriousness.
“Oh,” Gabriel says, seeming to deflate, or soften; it’s very bizarre. “Because of the moulting?”
Adam opens his mouth, seems to think better of whatever he was about to say, and says, “Yes.”
Gabriel frowns, clearly not trusting that but not sure how to call Adam out. He shifts his attention back to Crowley, who is suddenly very aware that Aziraphale is tucked up against them and Gabriel has likely drawn his conclusions already as their relationship. Their Arrangement has met its end: Adam’s nature is known, and Crowley has considered forgiving Gabriel for their fight over Noah.
Crowley opens their mouth.
“We can talk later,” Gabriel says, all in a rush.
Crowley’s mouth is still open. They shut it with a click. Against their side, Aziraphale is very still.
“It’s Hogmanay,” Gabriel says, and Adam beams, bouncing on his toes. “If you are feeling well enough, you may join us to watch the festivities.”
A billion questions present themselves. Aziraphale looks at Crowley like his entire perception of the universe has just been forcefully reoriented. Crowley opens their mouth.
“Do you have clothes that would fit me?”
This is how Crowley ends up at a cèilidh at one of Gabriel and Beelzebub’s neighbours with their Spear in use as a walking cane and Aziraphale supporting them with a constant hand on their right elbow. Adam is running about with his friends, a gaggle of children of indeterminate age before puberty.
“Lucky that B. prefers baggy clothes,” Crowley says as they navigate around the edge of the large drawing room.
“Good thing your brother is so obsessed with cleanliness, or you’d smell like them,” Aziraphale mutters, vaguely disgruntled.
“It’s a nice dress, isn’t it?” Crowley says because they like the faint purple accents in the sleeves. “I like the wool shawl, too.”
Aziraphale grunts, glancing at them in a way that tells them exactly what he’d like to be doing under the skirt that ends just above Crowley’s knees. Normally, Crowley would humour him, but they don’t have the energy to shift their form to be comfortable, and they’re still moulting, so the most they’d be able to offer is a variation of lying on their stomach and making Aziraphale do all the work. It’s not either of their preference: sex in a dress is for gymnastics against a wall with a mirror.
“I’m still mad,” he says as they find themselves a safe distance from Gabriel and Beelzebub, who are talking with a group of adults about their children. “No matter what I do or how I know you love me, I know you have to choose the lives of others over yourself.”
Crowley sits down on a spare chair. Aziraphale rests his hand on their shoulder, possessive and jealous, and he makes Crowley feel loved and wanted and treasured in ways that they do not have the capacity to describe.
“Do you remember the first time we kissed?”
Aziraphale swallows. Around them, the party is well underway. There’s music on the radio, and the lights have a sparkling glow to them in their fancy glass covers. If Crowley had the energy, they would want Aziraphale to dance with them, wine and scotch glasses in hand.
“In the grass, in the Karawanks,” Aziraphale says, soft and slightly uneven. “You teased me with edelweiss.”
“I was very happy,” Crowley says because they were; they look up at Aziraphale, who looks down, and smiles. “When I’m with you, I am happy.”
Aziraphale breathes out. Leans down. He kisses Crowley’s cheek and sighs.
Across the room, Adam laughs and races up the stairs in a game.
“I’m going back with you to London,” Aziraphale says, low and secret and full of all the shrapnel and jagged edges they have cobbled together to protect themselves against all the forces that would hurt them for their love. “I’m not going to face Armageddon without you.”
Crowley breathes in. The room is warm and bright, full of the smell of perfume and sugar. The radio is playing “The Sound of Silence” by Simon and Garfunkel. They are surrounded by light, and dancing, and laughter.
Not in criticism but in faith:
“You never know,” Crowley says as Adam drags Beelzebub onto the dance floor, Gabriel looking on with a smile. “Humans are very surprising.”
Hand squeezing their shoulder, Aziraphale laughs, a low, throaty noise.
“That they are,” he says, very amused.
Crowley smiles.
They wonder if She is watching. If She looks upon the party, full of humans, including the Antichrist, and sees how happy they are.
If Crowley could do one thing before the End:
They would beg Her to remember how She loves them.