Work Text:
Crowley woke in the middle of the night with a start. Tears filled his eyes as the images from the bookshop came flooding back in a wave powerful enough to drown him. To cope, he pressed his palms to his eyes angrily as if to rub the memories away from his mind as he sat up in the Bentley shaking. Quickly, he stretched his long limbs in the driver's seat and shook them out as if he was trying to shake the terrible trembling that now wracked his entire body. Plagued with things he wanted to say he miracled a notepad and pencil and began to write to Aziraphale for the final time.
Aziraphale,
How is it? Up in heaven? Is it everything you've ever wanted and more? Is it changing just as you had hoped?
Crowley began the letter bitterly, it was finally time to get out all he needed to say when his heart had broken all those years ago.
I heard that the second coming is going to happen, is this your work as well? After everything we did together you're ready to throw it away so quickly? Well after everything I can't necessarily say I'm surprised but it still makes me wonder what they've done to you. Is your smile still as bright and beautiful as it once was? Or is it as dull as the vast and empty space of heaven?
How did it feel? I want to know when you forgave me for the last time, did it hurt me just as much as it hurt you? It was the last act of forgiveness out of the three that have haunted me for my entire life. Every forgiveness hurts worse than the last and for what? Angels that cast you away? Is it worth it to keep running back to you every time?
Crowley put down the pencil and angrily wiped tears away from under his glasses, the paper now stained with them. They smudged the words creating ugly pencil smudges that almost seemed to mock him
I always hoped, deep down, that something would be different. That maybe one day I’d get to hold your hands in mine in a way that friends couldn't do. Hold you the same way we saw lovers do, heck even hold hands like best friends do. I waited so patiently for you my angel, came running back every time even if previous words cut deeper than a blade dipped in the holiest of water. I don’t even think the hands of death could pull my heart away from your hands now angel. I am hopelessly devoted to a being that I shall always place second to.
Crowley laughed bitterly at that, and then marched on through his clouded vision and trembling hands.
And after everything, the sad thing is I will never be able to forget you. Every time I look at the bookshop, the Ritz, St James, and London all I see is an unspoken promise that we could never keep. All I see is a love I so desperately craved that fell through my hands like sand from the hourglass of eternity. Did you ever love me the same way I loved you oh so dearly? My last gift to you was of pure desperation, if I never had kissed you could we have stayed the same? I always wonder how lips that looked as soft as yours could form words so bitter.
This will be the last letter I ever write to you as a means for me to hopefully let go. (Even though I think we both know that if you came back I’d come running to hold you). Some days I wonder what would happen if I sent you a letter, one just like this, but everytime I dismissed it just as easily as you had dismissed me. Could things have been different? I guess we will never know. And so, let me say the final toast, to the words I wish I could've gotten to say.
I love you Aziraphale, and I would've loved to spend the rest of this godforsaken eternity with you.
And when Crowley put the pencil down he wept, to take the place of a sound that the nightingale will never fill.