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It is the Garden of Eden, just after Adam and Eve have been cast out for their newfound knowledge of good and evil. The demon Crawly, who is far too new to being a demon and doesn't yet understand the rules of being one, makes the mistake of approaching an angel afterwards. That is, rather, he makes the mistake of approaching the wrong angel. He tries not the eastern gate, but instead the northern one.
When Crawly approaches, the guardian of the northern gate strikes him down, uncaring, without even saying a word. This is their duty and that is all. They don't feel any sort of way about it. If the demon wanted to be accepted among angels, he shouldn't have Fallen.
The guardian abandons Crawly's collapsed form. His corporation will soon die; there is nothing more that needs to be done. Crawly's corporation is still stubbornly clinging to life despite its inevitable fate -- such a human thing to do. In so much pain he can barely think, he drags himself away, trying to find somewhere quiet and peaceful to die.
Aziraphale is on the eastern gate, fretting about his choice to give away the sword, when he hears the sound of something rustling within the garden. He looks out at the humans he's supposed to keep out of Eden. After a moment, he determines they're not going to come back any time soon and decides to investigate. He flutters down softly, looking around the garden. It's as lush and verdant as always. God had left it standing after the humans were expulsed, perhaps to remind them of what they had lost.
He keeps looking, making his way through the greenery, until he finds the cause of the noise. If he had a heart, it would have caught in his chest at the sight. There's a demon, collapsed and taking shelter in the roots of a tree. He's been wounded by the blade of an angel -- fatal for his corporation, of course. Aziraphale has never seen a wound before, and he feels himself grow sick with revulsion. The demon is still alive on this plane for now, the stuttering rise and fall of his chest betraying life. Whichever guardian did this could have killed him at once, but instead left him to suffer in an echo of the demon's Fall. Aziraphale isn't supposed to think ill of his fellow angels, but all he can think is how utterly cruel this is.
The demon notices him then. His eyes, touched through with yellow in a way Aziraphale has never seen on an angel, latch onto him for a moment before drifting out of focus. "Please," he says. It's little more than a whisper. "Please, please end it. It hurts."
Aziraphale's hand flies up to cover his mouth, which has dropped open in horror. He knows what the demon is asking for. He would give him this small mercy if he could, but he is no longer able to.
"I -- I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," Aziraphale says, voice shaking. "I can't."
"Course you can," the demon says. He's tried for wry, but it comes out as pleading. "'S what you were made for."
Aziraphale looks off to the side, not able to bear the sight in front of him. "I don't have the sword," he confesses. His voice is stuttering now, tongue tripping over syllables. "I gave it away."
The demon barks out a laugh in shock, or tries to. What happens instead is a horrible, awful retching. Aziraphale is pulled into action, his need to offer help overriding his guilt. He goes to the demon, sitting down beside him and adjusting him into a partially upright position. The demon's blood spills from his mouth and his gaping wound onto the rich soil of the garden.
When the demon tries to breathe again, it rattles horribly. Aziraphale doesn't fully understand these corporations yet, but he understands that the demon's body is imminently near death. Aziraphale gently brings him into his lap, trying to offer him what comfort he's able. He can't do any more than this, bound both by his own choices up to this point and by the rules of Heaven.
"... Crawly," the demon manages to say. Aziraphale doesn't know what that means, but the demon had to work through great pain to say it, so it must be important. His eyes look up, blankly, towards the sky.
"Is that your name?" Aziraphale asks. The demon nods, catching his eye in a brief moment of full lucidity.
Crawly, then. He feels a drop of something splash against his skin and looks up. So this must be rain. Aziraphale pulls his wings up to form a protective cocoon over them both. The rain starts falling in earnest, thick and heavy drops that would have torn at Crawly's dying body if it was left exposed. Aziraphale's heart clenches with pain, thinking of the angel who had left Crawly like this. (It will be much, much later when he realizes what it means that his corporation now has a heart.)
Crawly's hand reaches out, weak and trembling. He covers it with his own and strokes it gently, trying to convey all the things he can't say. A tear falls down his face, a single raindrop to accompany the many falling down around them. Some time passes; he feels Crawly's body beneath him still.
Aziraphale looks down at the form nestled against him. It's empty now, a husk of a thing. He knows that this was not the end for the demon, only a temporary retreat back to hell. Crawly is fine, he tells himself, but he can't manage to believe it. He was taught what discorporation was before he was sent down to Earth. He didn't realize it would feel like this, like bile forcing its way up his throat, like an aching void.
He brushes the hair out of Crawly's face -- no, not Crawly's face, the empty body's face -- and gently closes its eyelids. It's then that he realizes who they are. It's the starmaker he had met before everything had gone so horribly wrong. Aziraphale had sensed the stirrings of trouble, though, even then. He had tried to warn them, curse it all! Now this was to be their fate.
Surely, whatever they had done, it could not have warranted this.
Aziraphale feels the stirrings of something very, very dangerous inside him. He does his best to shove it back underneath where it belongs. Thoughts like those simply aren't allowed. He can't fall now. Angels are cruel to demons, and this one will need an angel looking out for his safety.
He vows to himself, then and there, to look out for Crawly if they return to Earth. He will do whatever he can to keep them from ever suffering this pain again.