Chapter Text
It’s indeterminable time later, years probably, decades possibly because when he gets back to Soho that one time, Maggie and Nina are nowhere to be found anymore. The shops are replaced, people are replaced, as they are over time, only the bookshop is the same really – or not even that. Same only from the outside. Crowley is the same only from the outside too – or not even that.
He never went back to the bookshop, not once, having only seen the building from a distance with Muriel hunting the place. There was no reason. There is no reason. Crowley respects a decision even if it’s a bad one, doesn’t wait more than a few months, doesn’t self-destruct more than he can live through. Aziraphale could’ve asked for anything in Heaven, Earth or Hell and Crowley would’ve given him what he wanted, but the angel wished for the one thing that couldn’t be, for the one thing that is buried inside Cowley’s still bleeding, wounded heart so deep it could never heal.
Come back to Heaven with me.
Cowley remembers everything of Heaven. Technically at least, his memories weren’t taken – wouldn’t really be a punishment if he didn’t know what he lost – but the pain, anguish and trauma smeared the details. He doesn’t think about the old times else he goes mad. The cold, cruel, emptiness of Heaven. The hot, cruel, choke-fullness of Hell. He landed in Hell bare, broken and confused. Abandoned by Her, by his creator.
Since Aziraphale fucked back up to Heaven, he thinks about the old times very often. It fucks with his mind but loneliness and solitude fucks with him more.
He loses sleep first, can’t manage more than a year, later more than a month, then he loses taste, wit, then time. He sits down with a drink, stands up a month later, days and weeks and years lose meaning. The plants don’t recognize him anymore. The Bently turns back into a regular car again as if Crowley’s influence and grasp had faded from the world. He doesn’t know what he loved about these things to begin with. About parks and ducks and stars and children.
“Excuse me…” a voice calls out to him. Crowley sits at the edge of the railing of a bridge, with the river under his foot.
I’m not jumping – he wants to say. He can’t, although he often wants to, wanted to way before Aziraphale left him – or he left the angel. Depends who tells the story really, if any of them tells it at all.
“You’ve been sitting there for a long time, friend.” At that, Crowley looks at him, at the ordinary man in brown coat with concerned face and kind eyes. It rains heavily, the man holds an umbrella above them both. “For a few weeks now.”
People don’t recognize him like this, when he loses focus, has so little grip on the world around him even time fucks off. He gets to be part of the scenery, part of the city, part of the background of life. It frightens Crowley to the bone when he comes back to.
“Who are you?”
“Robert. Call me Hob.” Crowley watches him. “Would you mind if I offered you a drink?”
*
Crowley drinks and gets drunk in record time. It helps to warm up the bones, banish the chills and the fright. Fills the loneliness and ringing emptiness filled only by the voices of his shattered mind. It wasn’t shattered when the angel left, the damage is older than that, older than humanity, was caused by pain and fire and degrading harsh words. Although the voices are lauder since Aziraphale left.
“Do you dream?” Hob asks.
“What a stupid question is that?”
“There are hardly any creatures without dreams. Are you an angel?”
Crowley scoffs so hard it hurts his throat. He blinks and expects Hob to disappear, time to move. He can’t really interact with people anymore; they age, move, die and change. What would they talk about anyway, now at the end of times?
“And what are you?”
“Immortal.”
Crowley doesn’t even question it. He remembers some rumors about the endless fucking up their own shit and playing their own games. There was an issue with Hell and some helm or other before the Adam business, but Crowley didn’t go back for the details. “How long?”
“Six hundred years give or take.”
“Not too long then.”
Hob shrugs and smiles. “You’re older.”
“A bit.” Crowley smiles too into his drink.
“So you must remember, at the 1700s there was that…” and Hob talks and talks and talks and it’s nice, warm and comfortable for the first time since Gabriel turned up in their life. They drink even more, Crowley loses his wits, wakes up at some point with a hand on his shoulder.
“You talked about a letter” Hob slurs.
“Letters… There is more.” Crowley corrects, although he doesn’t know when or why he brought up Aziraphale’s letters. The first one starts with: “Dear Cowley! Maybe I shouldn’t breach this issue so early in the letter, but I cannot think on anything else. You hurt me badly when you abandoned me. I needed you. Asked for you to come and you…” It only gets worse after that. “He blames me. I should be blamed and be the one who fucked up again. I told him not to take in Gabriel, leave with me to Alfa Centauri. He wasn’t leaving Earth for me but did for them.”
“He didn’t leave for them, though, did he?”
“Wants to reform Heaven. I can’t follow him up there, no matter how he asks for my help.”
“Help for what?”
”Thwarting the Second Coming. Judgement day, End of Time.”
Hob hesitates. “It sounds like a good idea.”
“It is, isn’t it?” He sighs, drinks again, when he puts down the bottle Hob is watching him like he understands the situation, him, all this fucked up… this fucked up… This. But Hob can’t understand everything cause Crowley himself is confused. He knows when the night ends he will break down again for a long time, but not being alone helps. Knowing there is someone on the face of Earth wo will be there tomorrow also. Who is not Heaven or Hell and…
“You need something to hold onto” he lays a hand on Crowley’s and the demon is so drunk the gesture hardly registers. “Something that grounds you. Makes you feel home here on Earth.”
Crowley scoffs again but two days later, he stands at the side of the old road, watching a big patch of land on the hills, which belonged to Hob yesterday but belongs to him now, and he sees it. He never ever owned anything in his life before, not his homes, his clothes, his body – but he sees a home here. A cottage with a garden and trees and flowers. Sees a reason to come back to, feels the air in his lungs and the ground under his feet.
“I have friends who will help with the plans and the material and I will help of course, I built a lot of things in my time,” Hob says. “But everything else, we will build brick by brick up from the very ground.”