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Azazel never really meant to Fall. He just hung around the wrong people.
Person, really.
One could say it was a matter of timing, a collision of meteors arcing along a converging path, trails of dust in their wakes as bursting bits of rock lodged themselves into the void of nothingness. One takes the brunt, hurtling itself into the sun so the other can continue its course, hardly affected.
Perhaps he should have known better, but in an ironic twist of fate, Aziraphale never thought to question the Starmaker laid before him as he twisted nebulas into existence. Everything about the Starmaker was dangerous and beautiful, a cloaked dagger inset with gems – akin to the holy light of Her that warmed cool flesh and left burning trails behind.
Even as War waged herself into invention, the first of the Horsepersons to be necessitated, Aziraphale scoured the battlefield for red hair. He didn’t know what he would do if he saw the Starmaker, if he would run, apologize, if he would speak or say nothing at all, but there was no sign of him. He knew not how to see beyond the tears he didn’t know he could cry.
Aziraphale could only pray he was safe, and far from here, the strange angel and his stars.
It didn’t happen all at once – Her mercy was rarely swift, Aziraphale would learn. One by one, his friends, his comrades, strangers broke through the ground, an impossible gravity denying their feet purchase. Aziraphale sobbed as potholes opened around him, sucking souls to damnation, but surely – surely, She wouldn’t take him, right, O Lord? He trusted Her, he believed in Her, he had faith. I still love you. He’d only asked questions, asked them for someone else, someone so lovely, he had seemed so real in a way no other angel was, he was curious, he was joyous in creation, and he didn’t deserve–
Aziraphale’s breath caught. For a moment, he was weightless.
And he was Aziraphale no more.
The space between Above and Below was less a physical increment and more the time it took the Almighty to craft the place where they could land. The nameless creature between one thing and another had long since given up trying to fly, his wings burning with ache against an anonymous wind through starless darkness.
Later, they would call it the Fall, but to him, the falling itself was an unstretched moment, a blur of emptiness. The true pain came with the Crash. It was an impact of body and bone, the molten blue of sulphur tearing at his flesh, daring him to breathe its vapours. It stung in his eyes. Boiling chemicals tore at his wings, drenching and warping them like ink to unblemished paper. A tarnished thing, unseen between sobs as thousands of fresh demons crawled their way out on torn palms.
Hell, crafted for its first occupants, was christened with bloodied footprints and the screams of the unworthy.
The demon was gifted a name, something to wear like a bandage to a wound where the old one had been ripped away. The first thing Azazel did with his name was use it to beg forgiveness, and he prayed until his hands hurt more than the scars on his back, the itchy feathers crawling across his face.
She never replied.
But, even cast from Her Grace, Azazel was certain She listened.
If there was one thing his owlish eyes were good for, it was seeing across great distances. Atop a broad Wall crafted for Her creations, Azazel watched a flicker of light on the horizon blend into the sand, disappearing between swells. The air swept through, chilling his bare feet, though there was no cold like the shiver down his spine when he sensed the angel approaching him.
Not him, he pleaded internally, heart lurching like it wanted to wrestle free of his ribcage. Please, no. He couldn’t take it, for the Starmaker to know, to see, to understand–
And he didn’t.
He didn’t know him, and it was – God Above, it hurt more than Falling had, and the paradoxical relief stung like guilt. How he dreaded being known; how he feared never to be witnessed.
“To be honest,” the Starmaker said, eyebrows high, “I can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between right and wrong, anyways.”
Once, Azazel had been someone else, and he had met an angel who showed him things he had never heard of, and the angel had smiled with glee at the expanse of a universe of colour. He had asked dangerous questions, and Azazel had willingly lifted the mass of those words from his delicate, soft hands, ones meant for art. He had prayed it would be enough to save him, when the time came.
But perhaps it wouldn’t. Perhaps it had been for naught, as the Starmaker doubted again, questioned again. It was his nature, the one the Almighty gave him, tempting always to give Her a reason to condemn him to a fate unfit for his honest, open eyes.
Still, as Azazel lifted his wing to protect the angel from the coming stormwaters, a mirror of a kindness granting blessing to a damned soul, he found no trace of regret in his heart. So close again to the one who had gifted him curiosity, Azazel’s shoulders slumped briefly at the sight of his white wings. Clean, untarnished. And thus they would remain. Azazel would make sure of it.
Eternity was his burden to bear, if only to keep that wondering smile in place.
#
Millennia later, Azazel’s wings caught fire again.
He failed to notice them behind him, eagle-spread and stone, the stitching of the bag’s leather handle digging imprints into Azazel’s scabbed fingers. Sirens like shrieks disrupted the night, London ablaze with distant destruction.
For a moment, Azazel was weightless.
And of course, perhaps he should have known, should have understood sooner why he was a sacrifice made willingly in the name of the Starmaker Jophiel, an Archangel and a friend, someone to whom Azazel was as ineffably tied as the moon to the waves, pushing and pulling in cycles. Was it when Jophiel tempted him to Good in Mesopotamia, or when they shared oysters in Rome? When, decades past, the lie of “angel” graced holy lips for the last time?
When a white wing tucked Azazel close, like it wanted to keep him?
O God, was it not enough to Fall for him once?
“C’mon, we don’t have all night,” Jophiel called, an irritated burr to his voice as he picked his way through unhallowed rubble.
“A-Ah. Right.” Azazel notched his reflective glasses in place, roughly smoothing his puffed feathers as he tripped forward to follow anywhere Jophiel may go.
#
Azazel never really meant to Fall again, but he couldn’t resent the feeling in his chest, altering the orbit of his compound fragments.
Azazel was a demon. He could only be and do Bad, by definition.
Yet, if he could be allowed one hint of Good, he would choose this devotion every time. For Jophiel’s sake, he would let the Almighty remake him for love, and he would let the starlight leave scorch marks.
I will protect him, he promised, and in time, Azazel descended to collect the one thing that could kill his hope and anchor, wrapped tight with his own desperation to escape the inevitability of his loneliness, outcast that he was from Her light, should the Starmaker leave him behind.
With Hellfire the apology, Azazel could only hope Jophiel would forgive him.