Chapter Text
The morning after Aziraphale left for Heaven, Crowley is back in the bookshop, busy lounging miserably. Drinking miserably, ruminating miserably. To be fair, most things he does these days are done miserably.
When Muriel sees him, they squeak in surprise. Crowley doesn't have to get up to see them; he's at Aziraphale's desk with his boots up on the surface, slouched low enough in Aziraphale's chair that his head can rest on the back of it. His arm dangles over the side, loosely clutching the neck of a bottle of whiskey.
“Oh,” Muriel says after a moment, laughing awkwardly from the doorway, “it's you. You surprised me! I didn't expect anybody to be in here!”
Crowley gives no indication that he's listening, but Muriel keeps wittering on anyway. “I thought nobody would be able to get in, since I locked the door with the key. You know, because human establishments usually close at night?”
He’s really going to lose his patience. Does Muriel do anything except state painfully obvious things?
“Night is when humans sleep! I mean... obviously.”
Muriel has made their way close enough that Crowley doesn’t need to tilt his head to give them the blackest glare it's possible to give. They’re lucky he's wearing his sunglasses, else they might have burst into flame from the sheer weight of his demonic disgust.
“How did you get in here, anyway? Did locking the door not work? Maybe I didn't use the key properly?”
“I have my own key,” he growls. “And even if I didn't, I wouldn't need it. I'm a demon.”
Although, it’s not as if he usually needs to perform a demonic miracle—the bookshop has always welcomed him inside without resistance, ever since Aziraphale first invited him in. Even still, apparently.
“Oh! Of course. I knew that. Um, but the Metatron asked me to take care of the bookshop, so... I don’t have to thwart you, do I?”
As if Crowley has the energy or inclination to do anything that would require thwarting. “Don’t you worry your little cotton socks off. I’m not here to prevent you from doing your Heavenly duties.”
“Right. That’s good! But then, what are you here for?”
“Don’t see how that’s any of your business.”
“Well you see, I’m looking after the bookshop,” they explain patiently, “so if you’re here to do anything evil to it, I would have to stop you.”
Crowley laughs. “I’m not going to do anything evil to the bookshop. Unless you have anything against being miserable and drinking enormous amounts of alcohol.”
“Um... I am against people being miserable, but I don’t think it’s evil to be.”
“You’re against it?” Crowley sneers.
“Yes! Obviously I’d like everybody to be happy, not miserable.”
Where exactly did Heaven find this odd creature? They make even Aziraphale seem relatively normal. “Right. Well good luck with that one.”
“Thank you! Can I help you to not be miserable?”
“...Yeah, actually. You can stop talking to me and leave me alone.”
Muriel nods, pleased to be able to help, and begins some sort of morning routine. Crowley watches out of the corner of his eye and aches, because if he doesn't focus his gaze he can almost pretend it's his angel turning on the lights, opening the blinds, and putting the kettle on. The bookshop looks and smells the same, even though it feels different. Empty. Almost soulless, but not quite: enough of Aziraphale lingers behind to make it sort of like walking into a room when someone wearing strong perfume has just left it. They've been here recently, were here for a long while, maybe. Might even just walk right back in at some point—
No. Stupid.
Aziraphale is gone for good, for all that he could never truly leave Crowley. Ghostly imprints of his fingers still linger on his shoulders; the startled forbidden taste of him on his lips. And all the rest of it. His laugh, the excitement in his gestures when he told stories, the firmness in his voice when he stood his ground. All of it, all of Aziraphale, lives in Crowley’s head at all times.
He can’t ever escape it. He’s tried. He isn’t sure whether or not he wants to anymore: it’s curse and consolation both.
Crowley takes a swig from his bottle of whiskey. He hasn't been sober since he first drove away from the bookshop, but even with the alcohol in his blood everything seems intolerable.
The door opens with a familiar tinkle.
“Get lost!” Shouts Crowley, and the startled human quickly backtracks right outside and probably all the way out of Soho.
Muriel, who’d jumped, straightens their stupid police hat. “Uh, is that what you're supposed to say to customers?”
“Yes.”
“But if they go away, they won't buy any books.”
“Yes, that's the point.”
“The Metatron told me that bookshops sell books, though.”
Crowley closes his eyes. Why is he bothering with this? “Not this one. This bookshop hasn't sold a book in two hundred years, and it isn't about to start now.”
Muriel blinks at him. “If the bookshop doesn't sell books, what's it for?”
“It's… you wouldn't understand.”
“I'm not as stupid as everyone thinks, you know.”
“Yeah, well. I didn't say it because you're stupid. You wouldn't understand because you haven't lived on Earth for six millennia.”
“Oh!” they brighten immediately. “Then when I've been here for six millennia, I'll understand!”
Crowley doesn't reply. He's too busy imagining six thousand years of Earth without Aziraphale, and it looks unbearably mind-numbing and painful. He can't do this. Hated by Heaven, loathed by Hell, yes, he can cope with all that. But... rejected and left behind by his best—his only—friend? What would be the point?
“Where are you going?” Muriel asks when he forces himself to his feet with an almighty groan.
“Away.”
“Aw, don’t do that!”
He half-turns to glower at them, raising an eyebrow as if to say, you want the demon to stay?
“Well, it’s just, if there’s no customers then it will just be me, and it’ll be lonely.”
“And what,” he scoffs, “gave you the impression that I give a damn about that?”
Muriel doesn’t reply.
It’s rained recently, and the air outside is fresh and cool, almost enough to sober him up a little, which absolutely must not happen. He aims for the Bentley but only makes it a few strides down the street, before he walks, unfortunately, into Maggie. He doesn’t know how he didn’t spot her, dressed as she is in polka-dot reds.
“Oops—sorry—oh, Mr Crowley! Good morning!” She smiles almost mischievously as she says, “How is Mr Fell? I haven't seen the two of you for a couple of days.”
Crowley considers how creative he wants to get with his lie, and finds himself coming up empty. After a minute of increasingly awkward silence, he simply settles for, “He's gone.”
“He’s gone? Gone where?” When Crowley doesn’t answer, she tries, “Like… on holiday?”
“No.”
“Well... when is he coming back?”
“He’s not.”
“What?”
Nina appears at Maggie’s shoulder, just to personally make Crowley’s day even worse. “Hey. I’m on lunch.” She exchanges a tentative smile with Maggie before examining Crowley. “What’s happened to him?”
Crowley turns away with a noise of disgust, feeling scrutinised.
“Mr Fell has... gone, apparently.”
“Gone?”
He's not having this conversation. Why is he having this conversation? He makes to leave, but Nina catches his arm, and he somehow doesn’t give in to the violent urge to fling her away.
“Hold on, I’m not done with you. Did you screw up somehow?”
Maggie is scandalised. “Nina!”
“What? Why else would Mr Fell suddenly be gone? After everything that happened?”
“Unless something happened to him?”
“I don’t even know if anything can happen to him. More likely this one managed to royally make a mess of talking about his feelings—”
Crowley wrenches his arm free. “It’s his fault,” he spits, “not mine! And I won’t forgive him! Not ever!”
He doesn’t look back as he strides to the Bentley, throws himself inside and drives away, not even bothering to change the red lights to green before blasting through them, hoping he gets ploughed into by an HGV.
However, like some great cosmic joke, he miraculously survives every encounter with other vehicles. And after a few days and nights of driving recklessly, he finds himself coming back to Soho, yet again. He’d move on to someplace new, but it feels impossible. The bookshop holds a gravity that he cannot escape, even as painful at it is to be there. Perhaps because of how painful it is, the misery a punishment he deserves, the reminder keeping the agony fresh.
Time continues to pass, and Crowley hates it. He hates the bookshop that he can’t seem to claw his way out of, and he hates Muriel with their pitying glances. He hates Nina and Maggie and their tentative, faltering happiness, and hates the coffee and Eccles cakes they occasionally bring him.
He hates Aziraphale's tartan blanket when he finds it draped over him after falling into another drunken stupor. He hates the hairstyle that Aziraphale had complimented a few years ago and goes back to his shaggy curls from his Golgotha era, from when he only saw Aziraphale every few centuries and didn't care. He hates the sunlight and the way it falls in gentle dusty shafts through bookshop windows. He hates, even, the Bentley's penchant for playing breakup songs and forlornly turning its wheel trims yellow when it thinks he isn't looking.
“He's gone,” he hisses savagely at the Bentley. “Get over it.”
Except getting over it is well known to be easier said than done, even if you’re a vintage car. Or a demon. And whoever said ‘time heals all things’ clearly hadn't been around since before time was invented.
So Crowley remains miserable.
Sometimes Muriel goes back to Heaven to report to their superiors, and looking haggard.
“Heaven is… somehow… not a very nice place at the moment,” they admit to Crowley, apparently now comfortable being honest with a demon. “The Supreme Archangel is unhappy. In fact you could even say he's, um, angry.”
Crowley doesn't care. He really, really doesn't care. “What could he possibly have to be angry about in Heaven?”
Muriel shakes their head. “I'm not sure, but he's quite upset about it.”
There's a moment of vindication, a glorious I-told-you-so feeling, before it sinks back into uncaring gloom and he shrugs an unbothered shoulder. He’s not going to worry about Aziraphale; he made his choice.
Crowley paces, itching with a need to do something, to escape somehow. He’s sick of all this. He needs to leave, or sleep, or go to a church and get himself fucking baptised, the kind where they dunk you entirely in holy water.
*
Aziraphale sighs deeply. Oh, it aches sweetly, seeing his beloved bookshop after all these months. And while months on Earth had always passed in the blink of an eye, the months Aziraphale has spent in Heaven felt unending. Eternity was going to be a long, long time—except he had never planned to stay there for eternity at all, had he?
The door opens with that old familiar sound, and even that almost makes him want to weep. Inside is all exactly the same as he remembers it—the smell, the dusty sunlight, the disorganised organisation of all his old friends, the books.
“Hello! Get lost, please,” Muriel chirps, and then, “Oh, goodness! Supreme Archangel! You're not a customer.”
“Did you just—did you tell me to get lost?”
Muriel nods enthusiastically, bouncing over to stand proudly in front of him. “I've been telling every customer to go away, just like Mr Crowley said. I haven't sold a single book!”
Aziraphale is really, actually going to cry. “Crowley said that?”
“Yes, he was very adamant. And he told me I can read the books but I have to put them back where they came from. Reading is so fun!”
Aziraphale agrees vaguely, distracted. “He… he came here?”
“Mmhm. I thought I was going to have to thwart him, but he never did anything evil.”
Of course he didn't.
“Muriel, you've done a wonderful job of looking after the bookshop. I'm so glad. Thank you.” Muriel squeaks, evidently about to explode from giddy pride at being praised by the Supreme Archangel, so he decides to leave it there. “Now, Muriel, do you happen to know where Crowley went? Did he give any indication?”
“Oh, yes! He's here.”
“What? Here? Right now?”
“Yes! He’s taking a hundred-year nap, he said. Um, he told me not to wake him for anything, ‘unless the place is on fire, which it better bloody not be’.” Muriel points at the sofa, and the dark lump of what Aziraphale thought was blankets resolves into a person-shape, curled up.
Oh, Crowley. Aziraphale was so sure he would have moved on, long gone. The other side of the world, or Alpha Centauri, even. He'd always wanted to go there, after all.
Aziraphale suddenly can't move, can't speak. The hope is almost agonising. At the other end of the sofa, curly red hair peeks out, just a little, and a hand rests beside it; Crowley seems so peaceful in sleep that Aziraphale almost decides not to wake him. But he needs his help, and it cannot wait any longer.
“Muriel, my dear, why don't you go upstairs for a while? Then Crowley will know it wasn't your fault when he wakes.”
“You're waking him up?”
“I need to speak with him. How long has he been asleep?”
“Um.” Muriel counts backwards on their fingers. “Six... seven months? I was worried after the first few weeks, but Nina said it's probably better for him like this. She said he can sleep off his heartbreak.”
“His… heartbreak?” He can hear his own voice shake over the word. A chasm of bitter shame has reopened inside him.
“You know—his heartbreak from when you abandoned him to go back to Heaven?”
“Yes, thank you, Muriel.” He swallows past the sour regret in his throat, his face screwed up involuntarily. He gestures weakly. “Upstairs, then?”
Once Muriel has obediently scurried upstairs, Aziraphale approaches the sofa. Crowley seems vulnerable like this, and that's not a word he ever would have thought to apply to his demon.
“Crowley,” he murmurs gently. Then, loud enough to wake him, “Crowley?”
Crowley sits up so suddenly it's startling. His yellow eyes are wide, mouth gaping as he swings his legs over the edge of the sofa. “Aziraphale?” he says, and his voice, for a moment, is wondrous.
Hope blooms in Aziraphale's chest. “Yes. I'm here.”
“I’m not dreaming?”
“No. You’re not dreaming.”
All of a sudden his face changes, becomes cold and hard. At Crowley's repulsed glare, Aziraphale's hope withers and perishes as quickly as it had spawned.
They stare. Aziraphale knows he looks exactly the same as the day he left, while Crowley has changed, his hair long and curly around his shoulders, deep purple bags under his eyes despite his months of sleep.
“Crowley,” he says softly, voice breaking.
Crowley turns his face away. He glowers through the window at the humans passing as if envying them. They don't know the world is crashing down in this bookshop for the second time.
Teeth clenched, he hisses, “What. Are you. Doing here.”
“I need to talk to you.”
“I don't have to listen to anything you want to say to me.”
He sighs. “Yes, that's true. You don't have to. But you are going to want to, because I'm here to tell you that I'm so, so sorry, and that you were right. That things are… much worse than I thought they were.” He glances tentatively at the ceiling, as though Heaven might be listening.
Crowley pushes his jaw out as he looks back at Aziraphale. “Well, there you go. You regret your decision and things are terrible upstairs: you’ve told me. Very sad. You can clear off now.”
“I—there's more to it than that.”
“You can spare me the details, I already knew it was going to be a catastrophe. Thanks for telling me I was right all along. Goodbye.” Crowley lifts his legs back onto the sofa in order to lie back down.
“No, it's—there's—!” Aziraphale is close to tears. “I need your help, Crowley.”
“Ahh, and here's the real reason you've popped back. You need my help,” he drawls, and pops the p, mocking. “And here I thought you'd come because you missed me.”
“I do miss you,” Aziraphale admits readily, his eyes glistening. “I miss you every single day. I... I miss you so much that it hurts.”
Crowley's mocking expression has dropped into one of wretched antipathy. “Not enough to come back, though, hm? Not enough to change your mind.”
“Well, that's the thing. You see, after the Gabriel incident, Heaven took measures to ensure nothing of the sort could happen again. When I arrived, I had to sign a rather long terms and conditions of employment scroll, a contract—”
“Don't tell me you didn't read the whole thing. Not even you would be that stupid.”
“Of course I read it carefully, and made sure I understood it—or at least, that was my intention. The scroll was very long and very complicated, and the archangels were getting more and more impatient. Michael threatened that the offer could be revoked if I didn't sign immediately, so I…”
“...Signed immediately.”
“I only skipped over the last inch or two! Surely it couldn't be that important. Only… it turns out that there was some small print there that was quite, um. Significant.”
Crowley raises an eyebrow.
“It said that the Supreme Archangel is not allowed to make any decisions related to Heaven or take any divine action without the consensus of at least two other archangels.”
“Of course it did.” Crowley rubs an exasperated hand over his face. “Wait, hold on, though. You can't tell me that two archangels agreed that you should come to Earth and ask a demon for help.”
“No, no. They agreed that I should go to Earth to prepare.” He spreads his arms a little. “So I'm here. Preparing.”
Crowley's brow knits. “Preparing for what.”
Aziraphale mumbles something, avoidant gaze skimming the walls, the bookshelves.
“You what?”
“The—oh, the Second Coming!”
“The Second Coming.”
Aziraphale nods quickly, still avoiding Crowley's wide-eyed stare.
“But that means—what, Jesus—?”
“Yes.”
“And the humans—”
“Mmhm.”
“The humans die, Aziraphale.”
Yes. Aziraphale’s voice is small. “I know.”
“Argh for… for…” Crowley flops against the sofa, throwing his forearm over his eyes. “Ffffffuck's sake. We can't let this happen.”
“I know. That's why I'm here.”
Crowley removes the arm to peer at him. “You got a plan, then?”
“The plan was to talk to you,” he shrugs helplessly. “There's nothing I can physically do to prevent this without the consent of the archangels.”
Pinching the bridge of his nose, Crowley laughs darkly. “So all the changes you had planned, all the difference you were going to make…” He stares up at Aziraphale with narrowed eyes. “You haven’t done any of it, have you?”
Of course, Aziraphale had made suggestions. And, of course, not even one archangel had ever agreed with him. He shakes his head, and knows he looks ashamed.
“How long have you been up there? Months?” Crowley checks his phone, finds the battery dead. “What have you been doing?”
“Paperwork, mostly.”
Crowley laughs again. “And you wanted me to go with you. ‘Doing good’, he said. ‘Make a difference’, he said.”
Aziraphale puts a hand over his tired eyes, and sits heavily in his old armchair. It welcomes him like an old friend. A different, less scathing kind of old friend. “I know. I know. You were right.”
“Ah, the three words I love to hear you say. Fat lot of good it makes, though, since you decided not to trust me. And now look—the world is in danger. Again.”
“I think they would have decided to do this even if I hadn't agreed, though. At least now, with my position on the inside, I know what they're planning.”
“And you can't do a single thing about it!”
“Which is why I need you!”
“Dunno what you expect me to do about it. Has Christ even been born again yet?”
“No. He’s still in Heaven. They're waiting for my return before they begin.”
“Hmm,” says Crowley, clearly considering, reluctant.
Aziraphale swallows, and awaits his judgement.
Crowley studies the angel, sitting stiffly with his hands twisting together. He looks like the same old Aziraphale he's always known, anxious to do the right thing, imploring Crowley to help him. He’s such an irritatingly, comfortingly familiar sight, his forehead creased with worry beneath his blond curls, that it’s painful to look at. And even when if doesn’t look, the scent of him is entirely unchanged, just as familiar as it has been ever since they met on the wall, no matter how many perfumes and colognes and oils he’s used over the centuries.
Crowley shouldn't care. After all, Aziraphale left him behind. Aziraphale left him behind after telling him nothing lasts forever, after rejecting his confession, after turning up his nose at six thousand years of them. Aziraphale's plight ought to mean nothing to him. But then the Earth will suffer, and Crowley’s starting to get into a bit of a habit of saving the world.
He purses his mouth. “Alright. I'm going to help you. But I'm not doing it for you.”
The mixture of hope and hurt on Aziraphale's face is so potent it makes Crowley’s chest do something odd. “Yes. That's… that’s only fair.”
Crowley slinks to his feet and paces a few times, suddenly full of nervous energy. “So here’s the plan.” He offers Aziraphale his hand, as if to shake hands. “We switch appearances again.”
Aziraphale stares at it. “What?”
“It worked the first time. You stay here, I go up and have a little word with Jesus, convince him that the Earth doesn't need destroying. He agrees not to go ahead with Armageddon, and then we swap back with nobody any the wiser.”
In his lap Aziraphale's hand twitches, and then folds into a fist. “No, Crowley. It's too dangerous.”
“You were fine with it the first time.”
“We were both already in danger. And getting away with it once is one thing, but twice is just tempting fate.”
“I've tempted fate plenty of times and lived to tell the tale. Temptation's what I do, after all.”
“If they realise it's you, they will kill you.”
“I can fool them again. Trust me.”
The magic words. Aziraphale reluctantly reaches up and takes Crowley's hand, and they both squirm a little as they settle into one another's bodies once again. Crowley stands and stretches.
“Promise me you'll put your own safety first,” Aziraphale says seriously. “If it looks like you might be in trouble, abandon the mission and come back. We'll find another way.”
“I can't promise you that.” He steps out of reach before Aziraphale can make him switch back. “The world is more important than me.”
“Not to me,” Aziraphale murmurs.
“Don’t say that. You left me!”
“It was always my intention to come back, Crowley! Once I'd changed things, and the new arrangements were running smoothly, I was going to step down and come back to you. To Earth, to us. I never wanted to leave you, but it was my only chance to make a difference.”
“Except you didn’t make any difference. It’s been months, and you’re just doing paperwork. At what point were you planning to come back?”
“I was still working on it,” he protests. He looks uncomfortable in Crowley’s body, slouching where he stands like a tangled marionette. “I hadn’t given up hope.”
Crowley shakes his—Aziraphale's—head. “Whatever you say. Anyway. Just give me directions to find Jesus upstairs, and I'll get going.”
Aziraphale swallows visibly. “You're sure about this?”
“Course I am. Wouldn't suggest it otherwise.”
“And, in the meantime, should I… go to your flat?”
“What? Nah. You can stay here.”
“But if I'm supposed to be you, I don't want to raise suspicion…”
Crowley turns away, adjusting Aziraphale’s waistcoat carefully. “S'alright. I've already been here, uh, a while.”
There’s a pause as Aziraphale thinks about the fact that Crowley had chosen his sofa, in his bookshop, for his hundred year nap. He thinks about Muriel's nonchalance regarding Crowley's presence in the bookshop. He thinks about Crowley on Earth alone all these months, even though it hurts to contemplate. “R-right. Then, I suppose I will stay here.”
“Great.” Crowley turns back to him and claps his hands together, suddenly in professional mode. “Then let's get to business.”
Crowley strides through Heaven with enough purpose and authority to prevent any angels stopping him to chat or ask questions. He knows Aziraphale well enough to be aware that this will be a hazard if he doesn't move fast enough.1
Jesus is where Aziraphale said he would be, lounging on a celestial sofa, about which are scattered a number of angels all hanging on to his every word. They watch him with rapture as he talks. He always was charismatic, gathering groups of admirers.
“Jesus,” Crowley says.
The man jumps a little. “Oh! Archangel Aziraphale. What can I do for you?”
“I'd like a word with you, please. In private.”
“Of course. Please excuse me,” he says to the angel sitting next to him, who nods politely but shoots Crowley a slightly disappointed look. Crowley would smirk at them if he wasn't trying to stay in character.
He leads Jesus far enough away not to be overheard, looking around carefully for eavesdroppers, which is easier said than done when the whole place is full of convenient pillars. He straightens his bowtie and tugs down the bottom of his waistcoat, a nervous tick he's seen Aziraphale perform enough times that it's almost unconscious.
“So. As you know, we've been preparing for the Second Coming.”
“Yes. I await my calling!”
“Mm. Rather. However, the other archangels and I have been having a discussion, because things are not quite as we thought.”
“How do you mean?”
“It's too soon. We have decided we're going to call it off.”
“Call it off?”
“Yes. You see, humanity is, well… they are trying their best. There is still great potential there, and in some areas they are positively flourishing.”
Jesus frowns, confused. “But the Metatron said Armageddon is overdue, that it was already meant to happen a few years ago.”
“That was believed to be the case. However, the information Heaven had at the time was outdated. I have personally updated our records and, having now reviewed them, the other archangels agree that it is, in actuality, too soon to put an end to life on Earth.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” Jesus nods. “I’ll just check with my Mother—”
“Oh no, there’s no need to disturb Her—I cleared it with Her in advance,” Crowley lies, hoping his alarm doesn’t show on Aziraphale’s expressive face. “Everything is all taken care of.”
“Well… alright. But I was sort of looking forward to going back to Earth.”
“You can still visit, of course. In fact, I highly recommend it! There’s just no need to destroy it.”
Jesus nods, breaking into a smile. “Of course. I trust your judgement.”
“I wouldn’t if I were you,” says a new voice.
Crowley closes his eyes as dread slips inside him like venom from a snake’s fang. Damn Saraqael and her blessed ability to sneak around silently.
“He’s lying.”
“Lying?” Crowley whirls around, adopting his best deeply offended voice. “Do you really believe the Supreme Archangel would lie to the son of God?”
Saraqael’s face is severe. “Jesus, please leave us for now, while we discuss this amongst ourselves.”
Jesus shrugs and leaves them to it, but glances back over his shoulder as he goes.
“How did you do it?” Saraqael asks.
“Do what, exactly?”
“You are breaching the contract, despite the fact that your name is still written there. How are you doing that?”
Crowley shakes his head bemusedly. “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You have not consulted with any archangels about any of this, and you certainly haven’t spoken with God about it. You are telling blatant lies.”
“This is an insult!”
“It is the truth. And I have a theory that will be quite easy to prove. Uriel? Michael?”
They emerge from somewhere between pillars, striding towards them; Uriel is holding what appears to be a bowl of water. But Crowley isn't stupid.
He is done for.
*
“Muriel? Are you in? I was wondering if you still have that book, the one about lesb—oh, it’s you. Didn’t expect you to be up.”
Aziraphale cringes. Nina has walked in and spotted Aziraphale with his head in his hands, where he's been sitting doing nothing but worrying about Crowley. This is not what he needs right now. “Unfortunately.”
“I thought you were sleeping for ‘a hundred years’.”
“Yeah, well. I, uh… s’pose I felt a bit better.” He tilts his head the way Crowley does.
“Ha, I don't believe you.”
“…What?”
“You didn't recover that fast.”
Aziraphale opens and closes his mouth, floundering. “H-how do you know I didn't?”
“Is he back?
“Who?”
Nina raises an eyebrow at him, like, really?
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, stop being difficult. Mr Fell came back, didn’t he? I’d put money on it.”
“I wouldn't advise it.”
“Well, what woke you, then?”
“What's with the obsession? Can I not sleep and wake whenever I please without having to provide you a reason? Do I need your permission?”
“Well, you were all heartbroken, and now you seem okay. It's just… weird.”
That word again. Heartbroken. Aziraphale swallows and turns his head away, running a hand through his hair.2
The bell rings above the door. “Muriel, have you seen Nina? I—ah!”
Maggie too, now? Why did he not lock the doors as soon as Crowley had left?
“Mr Crowley. How are you feeling?”
Nina frowns at Maggie. “He seems different. He's acting weird.”
“Well… he's always a bit… you know…”
“No, I mean, weird for him.”
Aziraphale does a Crowley growl. “There's nothing wrong with me. You can both clear off.”
“What happened? Did Mr Fell come back?”
“I can function perfectly fine without Aziraphale!” Aziraphale snaps.
“That's not what you told us, last time we came to see you,” Nina says.
Oh. That’s surprising. Feeling somehow like his feet have just been swept from under him, despite being seated, he says, “What, ah, w-what did I tell you?”
Maggie sits next to him on the sofa, hands between her knees. “You don't remember?”
He shrugs a shoulder, certain he’s the picture of nonchalance. “I have a few blank patches, s’all.”
Nina narrows her eyes at him. “Maybe he hit his head.”
“Can't remember. Could have done. What did I tell you? Jog my memory.”
“Well… not all of it made sense. You were very drunk—there were something like twenty bottles around you—and you were mostly, um, crying.”
“You’ve been a bit of a mess.” Nina perches on the edge of Aziraphale’s desk. “You told us he'd rejected you for a promotion, whatever that means for his kind. He’s probably got like, six wings and a flaming sword now, and twenty extra eyes.”
“Nina,” Maggie chides.
Humans are definitely not supposed to know about this. At some point, Aziraphale needs to investigate why Nina and Maggie seem incapable of forgetting about angels and demons. “Ah, back to the matter at hand?”
“Right.” Nina tilts her head in thought. “Well, you told us that you’d been in love with him since ‘the garden’.”
Oh, God.
“You said you’d be a different person if you’d never met him.”
“You said something about holy water...”
“You said it was always Mr Fell who’d tried to keep his distance. It’d never mattered to you.”
Aziraphale, increasingly distraught, buries his head in his hands.
“You said you were pretty sure he’d never loved you back anyway—”
Aziraphale explodes, unable to bear it any longer. “I did! I do! For God’s sake, I’ve been in love since 1941 and probably long before that, too. I was going to change things. I was going to make it so there was no more war, no more us and them, so that it’d be safe for us to be together. He was supposed to come with me!”
Nina and Maggie exchange a shocked look. Aziraphale takes off Crowley’s sunglasses to angrily swipe away his tears.
“Oh, for Heaven’s—it’s—I might as well tell you, since you apparently seem to know everything else. It’s me, Aziraphale—Mr Fell. Crowley and I switched appearances so he could go to Heaven for me, and, ah, sort something out.”
“What?” Nina rubs her forehead. “Crowley said that you’d left him, though. Gone to Heaven.”
“I did. Ugh.” He rubs his face again, trying not to notice the stubbly, angular feel of it against his palms. “I was offered a position of power, and I wanted to use it to change things, but… oh, I was stupid.” He sniffs sadly. “And now Crowley’s had to go up there and fix everything for me, again. I’ve sent him into danger. Again.”
Hot tears are welling in his eyes once more, expelling themselves much more easily than they usually do in Aziraphale’s own corporation. Crowley must be more of a crier. It’s heartbreaking to learn such a thing, like this, and after so many years.
“Well, he seems like the self-sacrificing type,” Nina shrugs.
Maggie nods. “When all those demons broke in, you said ‘rescuing me makes him happy’. So he’s probably fine with it.”
“Regardless of how he feels about it, the danger is still present. If the Heavenly Host cottons on, there’ll be hell to pay.” He cringes, then, at his own choice of words.
“What about Muriel? Can they help him?”
Aziraphale lifts his head sharply to stare at Maggie. “You know about Muriel, too?”
Nina laughs. “Come on, it’s pretty obvious Muriel is one of your lot. We’ve been helping them adjust. Well, mostly Maggie.”
Maggie tilts a wry smile. “They’re quite naive, and I couldn’t just leave them to fend for themself. Mr Crowley wasn’t helping much. Anyway—can they help?”
“They are helping. I asked them to go up to Heaven and observe from a distance, discreetly, and to let me know if anything goes wrong.”
Nina folds her arms. “That’s something, I suppose. What are you going to do, though? If something goes wrong?”
Aziraphale chews his lip, then remembers it’s Crowley’s lip and stops, mortified. “Ah… we will hope it does not come to that.”
“You ought to think of something.” Nina’s raised eyebrow says she doesn’t think much of Aziraphale’s planning skills, given the situation they’d found themselves in after the ball. “You can’t just wait until Muriel shows up and says—”
“Something’s gone wrong!”
The anxious voice echoes through the bookshop at the same time as Muriel materialises on the rug with a sound of distant trumpets. Everybody jolts to standing, stricken.
“I’m sorry, Archangel Aziraphale,” Muriel gasps. “He managed to talk to Jesus, but then the other Archangels came for him. They know he’s not you.”
*
It’s not his finest plan. It’s not even his okay-est plan. It’s not even, really, much of a plan at all; but it’s all he’s got. It’s the only weapon he can wield without using his powers as Supreme Archangel.
The thing about the contract is that it specifically applies to decisions Aziraphale might make about Heaven itself—its plans, its structure. The contract would be a nuisance if it was too broad and applied to every decision Aziraphale might make; the other archangels don’t want to have to approve every time the Supreme Archangel wants to inspect something, or sign a document, or have a conversation about the view.
So deciding to talk to Crowley, that was allowable, because it was not a decision on, say, a policy change.
Deciding to go to Hell is also, apparently, completely acceptable as far as the contract is concerned. He’d asked himself, what would Crowley do? And decided that Crowley would first of all, use his network of contacts, and second of all, do something drastic and probably dangerous. And so off to Hell it was.
Few people know that one can, in fact, simply walk into Hell. Probably nobody has ever tried, because why would anyone? Aziraphale uses the main entrance, the one with the revolving door and the escalators, and strides confidently downwards the way he’s seen Crowley do many times, unable to resist the urge to hold his breath as he sinks through the reflection.
Aziraphale has only ever been to Hell once, although he feels he knows more than enough about it from many descriptions and anecdotes through the years. In fact, he once thought he must know more about Hell than any angel who’d never fallen, although that was before they found out about the back channels and Aziraphale had watched Michael casually walking into the basement with a jug of holy water.
It’s filthy and dank. Even the air feels unclean, worse even than the cities of the middle ages—worse even than London when the Thames was polluted with waste and dead animals. (That is, much more so than it is today.) And he isn’t sure where he’s going, a problem made infinitely worse by the crowds of mangled bodies, the unreliable flickering lighting, and the less-than-helpful signage. He takes care to saunter as Crowley would, trying not to give in to the impulse to hurry anxiously, aware that every passing second is another chance for things to go very badly in Heaven.
“You?!”
Aziraphale jumps guiltily, stricken.
Furfur elbows a few damned souls out of the way to plant himself before Aziraphale, hands on his hips. “Well, well, Crow-ley. Fancy seeing you back here.”
Oh, right! His disguise hasn’t been seen through—it’s just that Crowley hasn’t returned here since, well, quite possibly since he took a bath in holy water.
“Ah, it’s you,” he says with mocking pleasantness. “What a surprise! Oh, wait, no, sorry. Nobody would be surprised to see you still where you belong.”
“Actually, I’ll have you know, Shax has promoted me out of requisitions!”
“Oh, lucky you. And how’s life treating you, here in, ah…?” He looks around pointedly at the depressing crush of stinking damned.
Furfur’s sneer shows his disgusting teeth. “Are you here for a reason, or did you just come here to lord it over the rest of us? You think you’re untouchable now, Crowley, since your little stunt, but things are changing now that Shax is in charge. I’d watch your back, if I were you.”
Aziraphale feels his smirk drop. Now’s not the time to be having arguments or throwing his metaphysical weight around, as much as he wants to intimidate this annoying demon. “Yeah yeah, if you say so. Speaking of, where is she?”
“In her office,” Furfur says, as though it ought to be obvious, and Aziraphale’s heart sinks for a moment, until—”Oh that’s right, you haven’t seen it yet, have you? Come on. You and I may not agree on much but I think you’ll share my opinion that it suits her.”
Furfur leads him through a maze of corridors and dark, open-plan offices filled with disgusting things and wails of despair. Aziraphale wants to shut his eyes to all the suffering, but also doesn’t want to trip over a stray writhing body or step in a maggot patch, and so he settles for squinting uncomfortably behind his dark glasses.
Eventually, Furfur halts, and knocks on a grand wrought iron door.
“Enter,” calls an imperious voice, and Furfur sarcastically gestures for Aziraphale to take the lead.
The room is a deep red, floor and ceiling included, and of a dubiously unidentifiable texture (except for the ceiling, which is clearly manky old drop-ceiling). Other than that, however, the rest of the room and its clutter of furniture reeks of demonic luxury: plush leather seats with grotesque carvings in the dark wood of their arms and legs; bookshelves filled with hunting trophies, disgusting jars, and evil grimoires; and at the centre, an over-large desk behind which sits a throne made in the shape of—just the shape, Aziraphale is certain, he’s certain—twisted and contorted human bodies.
Shax sits upon the throne, grinning to show her spiked rows of teeth. The twin, high burning fireplaces on either side of the room make her glow unnaturally. “Do you like it?”
“Lovely,” Aziraphale says. Crowley wouldn’t really like it, he knows. Crowley claims to like bare stone and brutalism, empty spaces with a spooky vibe, and yet he certainly has always looked most comfortably at home in the cosiness of the bookshop. “You should go into interior design.”
“Oh! Do you think so?” Shax preens. Then her expression changes, suspicious. “Is that sarcasm?”
“No no, honestly, it’s better than the rest of this miserable place. And by better I mean worse. Y’know. In a good way.”
Shax, evidently trying to work out if this is a compliment or an insult, exchanges a look with Furfur, who is lurking demonically behind Aziraphale.
“Anyway, Shax!” Aziraphale says loudly, leaning into the Crowley act and striding towards the throne. “Shax, look, I need a favour.”
“What makes you think I would do you a favour?”
“Helped you out on Earth, didn’t I? Taught you about a whole bunch of stuff. Besides, if it weren’t for us reuniting Gabriel and Beelzebub, you wouldn’t have been promoted, so I reckon you owe me. Listen, I need a lot of hellfire ASAP, and a secure means to transport it.”
“Why can’t you get your own hellfire?”
“Long story. There’s not much time.”
Shax considers, clearly enjoying her position of power over Crowley. “I’m not in the habit of handing out favours, Crowley, and least of all to traitors.”
“If I tell you I’m taking it to Heaven, will that change your mind?”
She sits back in her throne. “Heaven? Well, that’s unexpected. Your fat little boyfriend is in trouble, is he?”
“He’s not fat!” Aziraphale protests, and then, remembering himself, “And he’s not my boyfriend.”
“Aww, poor Crowley. All these thousands of years, and you still can’t get him to like you back? How unbearably pathetic.”
Furfur laughs derisively behind him.
“I don’t—that’s not—none of this is relevant. Just give me the bloody hellfire.”
Shax lifts her chin imperiously and examines her fingernails. “Hmm. Very well, but only because the outcome is sure to be amusing no matter which way it goes. Kill any archangels, however, and you might just get yourself back into my bad books.”
With a wave of her hand, a protective silver case appears on the desk. Aziraphale approaches it with caution, and lifts the lid to find, nestled amongst ample padding, 6 glass phials filled with liquid fire.
He doesn’t think he ought to thank her, but there’s an air of expectancy in the room as though he’s supposed to say something. Well, Shax has already told him she’s helping him only because it might be entertaining, so at least he can try to promise that.
“I’ll make it worthwhile,” he grins.
Upstairs, the sound of heated conversation carries far through the hallowed halls of Heaven, allowing Aziraphale to locate Crowley easily.
“...come now, this is ridiculous. Totally unnecessary.”
“If you really are Aziraphale, then you have no reason to protest.”
“I can jolly well protest about being accused like this. Do you have any idea how degrading such a 'test' of my authenticity is? The lack of respect is astonishing.”
“There is nobody else here. There's no need to be embarrassed.”
“I am not playing your silly games.”
“This is not a game to us, though it might be to you. Stop wasting our time.”
“It is my time that is being wasted, here. I have a lot of important… things to do.”
He lets the sound of his footsteps announce his approach. Four archangels—or three archangels and Crowley—turn to stare at him; three faces frowning in confusion, and one frozen with horror. Aziraphale had simply disguised himself in white to gain entry this far (on Muriel’s adept suggestion, surprisingly) and Crowley instantly recognises him, or at least, recognises himself.
“Let him go,” Aziraphale orders.
“Crowley!” Crowley shouts. “I’ve got this under control. Get out of here!”
“No. I’m not leaving you here with them.”
“If we suppose this is the demon Crowley...” Uriel begins slowly.
Michael gasps. “That that must be Aziraphale!”
“Oh well done,” Aziraphale sneers. “So there is half a brain between you somewhere. Frankly I’m stunned.” Glaring at the archangels, he doesn’t notice Crowley staring at him with open admiration. “I command you to leave him alone.”
Suddenly in Aziraphale's hand is his derringer from the bookshop, slipped from his sleeve, his finger ready on the trigger. He cannot pull it; to discorporate one of the archangels would violate the contract, but he’s hoping they won’t consider that.
Michael curls her lip. “Really? I doubt the contract will allow you to fire that, but whether or not you can, the threat is enough to condemn you, you know. The Metatron will not be pleased. If it’s not Extreme Sanctions, then at the very least, you’ll Fall.”
“I'd rather Fall a thousand times over than let you harm my best friend,” he spits with feeling.
“And what exactly do you think you can do with that pathetic little thing?” Uriel says, tone steeped in disdain.
Aziraphale smirks. He meets Crowley’s eyes, and twitches his head upwards just fractionally. “Distract you.”
“What?”
Crowley, catching on with the swiftness Aziraphale knew he would, dives aside, a little graceless in Aziraphale’s stocky form. The glass bottles of hellfire, which had been hovering carefully over their heads, hit the floor with a smash, spreading a swirling ring of flame around the three archangels taller than any of them thrice over.
“Holy hell!” shouts Crowley, impressed.
“Stop them!” Shrieks Michael from the other side of the flame wall, and alarm bells begin to blare, striking everything with red light.
“Let’s go!”
Aziraphale grabs Crowley and they run together for the lift, sprinting hand in death-gripped hand, dodging angels as they begin running in from various directions to apprehend them.
Suddenly Heaven seems teeming with white-clad avenging angels, all of them converging on the pair of outcasts. They’re quickly swamped from every side, breaking through only by the grace of Crowley bodily shoving angels aside and said angels, not expecting such behaviour from the Archangel Aziraphale, too shocked to do anything about it.
Most of them, Aziraphale notices, have their sights on him, the outsider, unaware of the swap. This, perhaps, is one way he can keep Crowley safe: he wrenches his hand free and shoves him away. “Go!” He cries. “Don’t wait for me!”
“No, you idiot!” Crowley shouts in the high-pitched timbre of a panicking Aziraphale, but it’s too late. They are separated, and Aziraphale draws the bulk of the crowd away, leading them away from the lift. Without Crowley to clear the way, however, it doesn’t take long for him to become trapped. Uriel materialises before him, smug, and that is the moment it becomes clear that everything is over.
“The Metatron has your boyfriend,” she states, not bothering with any taunts or pleasantries. “He was waiting for you both in the lift. It’s time to hand yourself in, Aziraphale. And this time, it’s Extreme Sanctions.”
If the angels weren’t so well-behaved, they’d be whispering feverishly amongst themselves at these revelations. Aziraphale’s clenched fists shake at his sides. If Crowley hasn’t even managed to escape, then it really is all over. He and Crowley will both be erased from existence all for the sake of Aziraphale’s plea for help; for the sake of nothing, if the plan has failed.
He looks at the shocked faces surrounding them. He wants to tell them that Heaven has corruption amongst its leadership, that it’s manipulative and controlling, that the Metatron and Archangels will not hesitate to sacrifice anybody for their own ends. But the contract won’t allow him to do that, either.
Uriel summons a length of white rope. Before she can restrain him Aziraphale bolts, using Crowley’s speed and strength to force his way through the stunned crowd until he breaks through, heading for the stairwell. He bursts through the door and, before he can second-guess or doubt or feel afraid, he hauls himself up to stand on the bannister, looking down the gap into the darkness below. The drop is many hundreds of storeys, unimpeded all the way to the basement. He doesn’t know what the end result will be, death or discorporation or something else entirely, but the alternative is certainly Extreme Sanctions, and that is far worse.
He closes his eyes.
Nobody is there to witness his fall.
- Aziraphale will happily stop and chat to anybody anywhere, unless he's going to miss an orchestral performance or something, in which case he'd probably just have the conductor drop all their papers, or some other minor hiccup, just to give himself chance to get there on time.[return]
- While he’s in charge of this corporation, he’s changed Crowley’s hair back to his more recent cropped style, which he feels suits him better. Hopefully Crowley will come back safely so they can have an argument about it.[return]