Chapter Text
“Because you don’t know
what it means to me”
He was falling. That was all he knew at that moment. He was falling. And he was burning . For all of his existence, he never had felt something that agonizing; he felt his eardrums bursting with his own screams, and the pressure of too many kilometers of freezing, then parching, atmosphere ripping out his skin and flesh and bones. He felt as becoming immaterial, flying ashes across the ether, and maybe that was his destiny instead of simply being exiled from Heaven: to become nothing and everything at the same time, to be scattered in the world as dust, omnipresent to the existence of all things but unable to do anything, to think anything. He was an angel. He could have flown. He should have flown. But he wasn’t doing that. Why wasn't he doing that? To soar in the air was the most natural, absolutely natural thing he could do. As easily as humans could breathe, he flew. And he forged galaxies. That was the whole point of his existence, and now he was falling, incapable of using his wings, incapable of feeling his wings and in fact to feel anything but that unbearable pain that now was the entirety of his essence. He wouldn’t have known anything but that agony. That torment was now his name.
Space and time seemed to have never existed and he wouldn’t be able to define for how long he had been falling. His own senses couldn’t seize anything but colorful spots and diamond shimmering flashes, deafening rustles, irrepressible winds and countless blades scratching every inch of his skin, reaching his exposed bones. Then, it suddenly ended. He felt his lungs - or what was left of them - filling with boiling fluids, sensed the substance he was drowning in pushing and burning all over his open wounds; he tried to shout at the top of his lungs as to exorcise that torture, but his screams were muffled, mere bubbles in the thick black liquid surrounding him. The pain he was feeling was so unbearable he wondered how the hell he was still alive and conscious; nonetheless, the most glaring thing he recorded in his mind was the acid and acrid smell of sulfur. He had arrived. To Hell. And he was blind .
Crowley opened his eyes wide. He suddenly stood up and started to violently beat his hands on his chest, ferociously touching asmany centimeters of his own body he could reach; he only stopped when he was sure that all of his cells in the right place. He freed himself from the black linen - which was, in fact, not liquid sulfur - and got out of his bed, a growing anger in his chest, and started to blame himself for learning how to sleep like humans do. Stupid, stupid, stupid idea. He silently promised to never ever fall asleep again - after all, he had once slept for an entire century, that should have been enough. Yet that time he hadn’t relived every single detail of his Fall; that time he didn’t have too many things to be worried about as well. Crowley wiped the sweat off his neck, dripping onto his chest and creating little pools between his collarbones where - as much as he could pretend otherwise - it was meddling with the tears he cried during those many hours of sleep. He glanced at the digital clock on the end table beside his bed. Tears he cried during those many weeks of sleep, he corrected himself. «Fuck», he said. And he started to repeat that until the word completely lost its meaning.
«M’kay. Last time. Yeah» he mumbled. Then he started to wander inside his old Mayfair apartment, which still showed its last undesirable tenant's presence. There were brightly colored objects scattered all over those rooms that a few years later were religiously minimalistic. The design choices were clearly made by someone who was absolutely unaware of human fashion trends. Crowley stopped by a questionable painting - a sort of a Pollock’s piece in too many shocking-pink nuances - that was hammered on the wall with a big nail right in the center of the canvas. The painting was near a dalmatian shaped coat-hanger, with several colorful scarves and hats hanging on it. Crowley stared at the painting for a few seconds, wondering how he hadn’t noticed it when he first arrived in the apartment. The answer to that question was a punch right in his diaphragm, so violently it took his breath away - not that he needed to breathe, but that wasn't something for his brain to decide, whether to breathe or not. He grabbed the frame by its lower corners with surgical steadiness, then he started to push the painting downwards with meticulous violence, letting the nail slowly rip the canvas. Pieces of fabric and paint fell on a yellow runner-carpet which he hadn’t noticed before and suddenly that was too much. He tugged the painting with force until the frame broke in two pieces, releasing wood splinters everywhere. That didn’t satisfy his anger, which started to grow further, even when he had thrown the painting pieces against a wall, even when he had torn apart the many hats and scarves with his bare hands, even when he had stabbed the dalmatian in the eye with the nail, even when he had set on fire that yellow carpet; and his anger couldn’t stop growing because the reason why he hadn’t noticed all those changes in his Mayfair apartment as soon as he returned, was that Aziraphale had looked him dead in the eyes and betrayed him after six thousands years of… what? Friendship? Trust? All those years had burned away in front of his eyes like a damned in Hell (how ironic) and he couldn’t bear to stay awake a second longer. How stupid of him, really, how stupid of him to think that he could get rid of those… emotions just by sleeping and pretending they never existed. And he was one of the bad guys , wasn’t he? Therefore, he souldn't be allowed to feel in the first place. To feel emotions, that was.
He screamed. They started as loud random words, quickly turning into straight shouts that would scratch and inflame his throat. He coughed. Then he looked at - without actually seeing it - the hole left by the nail on the wall. He stared at it for a few seconds. Then he extinguished the fire with a finger snatch. And almost as he was answering to an instinct of some sort, as if he was an automaton, Crowley started to move all of Shax’s things by the front door. He could have performed a miracle and let all that stuff disappear in a blink of an eye, but an annoying voice in his head told him “ I would always know that it was there. Underneath, I mean ” and to get rid of all those things by himself seemed the best way to sanitize his apartment. He dragged armchairs, strange shaped tables, a plethora of, even for a demon, excessive clothes, art pieces he would never payed attention to in any other circumstances. After several hours of work, the front door was rendered completely inaccessible by a high barricade of furniture and ornaments which filled most of the living room.
«Mmh» he grumbled to the pile. «Where the fuck do I put you know?».
He leaned to the wall behind him, crossed his arms on his chest and tried to shut out his thoughts. He snapped his fingers and switched on the television on a music tv-channel. They were broadcasting a classical music concert (Shostakovich’s, but he would have never known that) which painfully brought him back to a gramophone by a dusty old armchair, to dancing fingers foolishly directing an invisible orchestra and moving away dust grains scattered in the sunlight, to a room bearing the scent of old books and expensive wine. He stopped breathing for a few seconds, just enough to allow the orchestra to gather decency for starting to play a Queen song. And on the notes of “Love of my life”, Crowley started to move once again all of Shax's things in order to obtain a passageway to the exit. Then he began making trips inside and outside, bringing a couple of things at a time and carelessly throwing them on the street, enjoying the noises of broken wooden fibers, exploding ceramics, glass shattering on the cobbled alley. After all, destruction was what he was the best at (even though someone had recently been more clever than him).
He rubbed his hands together while proudly looking at his work. If some neighbor had noticed the chaos, they wouldn’t tell. To be fair, humans are usually deaf and blind when faced with the occult. At least most of the times.
Crowley went back to his apartment with a few nervous strides and when he placed his hand on the door knob (once again) he noticed for the first time the pile of letters on the rug. He bent over to collect them and to look at who had sent them. The majority of those were just bills and advertisements, as he imagined, but the others were blank. He threw the formers inside the umbrella holder; then he entered the house looking with curiosity - and a little of apprehension - at the latters. He sat on his chair, put his feet on the table, and started to open the anonymous letters. Each of them contained a card, and each card had a few sentences on it, written in a strange calligraphy: thin and elegant, but with something childish. None of the letters had a date on it, so Crowley started to read them in a random order. And his heart skipped a few beats as soon as he read the first one.
“ Dear Mr. Crowley,
Since I didn’t get any answer, I decided to follow my instinct: I sold two books to a very old lady. I felt very sorry for her! She was insisting so much!
Best regards,
Muriel, 37th degree recording Angel scrivener.”