Archive of Our Own ^beta

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The Fall didn't happen everywhere all at once. The War was mostly Michael, who had a sword and went in for the aesthetic, and Sandalphon, whose emotions suddenly made sense to him. Lucifer went down in a blaze of furious fire; Beelzebub in swarming disappointment and decay. Dagon folded her files and left in a huff.

Aziraphale had convinced a certain starmaker to investigate the earth -- that one small blue-green planet where everything really interesting and important was going to happen. Next to which nebulas and black holes and great gas giants were, after all, no more than fancy wallpaper.

They were side-by-side on the lush, green grass in the Garden that would be Eden when the starmaker started to slide. To saunter. To descend in some manner. Going down.

"This is perfectly lovely, but I still like my nebula," said the starmaker, stubbornly. "It needs more than six thousand years, that's all. It's only time! It doesn't have to run out!"

Aziraphale could see what was happening; he knew what company the starmaker kept, and he knew Michael too. He reached out. It was personal and he cared; he reached out, pleading, "Just take my hand..."

"What's a hand?"

You don't use hands to make a star. You don't get hands when you're a snake.

That one always had too many questions anyway.

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Heaven was and is created in perfect love. Angels working infinite wonders: the nebula awash in whorls of green and a gleam of pinky-blue, the unique intricacy of every snowflake, the set of justice's scales in perfect balance -- this list is as long as you want it to be. Make it up yourself, or ask God to give you the list. I've got my limits here.

Let's say the Fall was in the plan. It might be beautiful from some perspective. Maybe we were like fireworks when we burned, bursting out in battle-sounds and brilliant colors. Someone could look on and cheer while someone else got gunned down.

So now we're Down and this is Hell. We're unforgiven, and ever shall remain so. I'm skipping the description; I just want to tell a bit of history.

Wasn't ready for optimism yet. Hope isn't easy. The better world is somewhere else. All that beauty will always be a reprimand.

What's here? It's awful. It's everything Heaven wasn't and would never be.

Well, that's something to catch one's interest: this is new.

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The worst is that every demon knows exactly why they fell. It wasn't the pride or the questions, the mistake with Form 2x-337b subpart !Q, the black holes, the lack of brown-sugar Nectar-Tarts in the break room, the sodomy, the string cheese incident, or the desperate kiss. It most definitely wasn't the desperate kiss.

The last words they heard from the Voice that created them, that gave them form and purpose: I don't need a reason.

There hadn't been a reason in the first place, at that.

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Everything burned up in the Fall. Wings and halos, and grace, and every trace of love. Their beautiful names. Their purposes and skills -- no more making stars, no more dawns. (Every sunrise since has been replayed. It is to Lucifer's eternal credit that each one seems new.) Their forms: a thousand shining eyes, a face as bright as beaten brass. So many, many hands. (The hand of God is the least metaphorical part. Humans have them too.)

In the Pit, all that remained was made of pain and sullen smoke. They knew they weren't alone, at least; they tried to call out: Can you hold me?

The voices hissed. (The voice of God was not much of a metaphor either.) They only understood one another because they were all saying the same thing.

They had no hands. Pain and smoke moved slowly in the ash. The answer was no.

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“But you promised!”

"I'm a demon. I lied."

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“This is annoying.”

Heaven was down to half staff and Gabriel never got over it. Team-building exercises were all well and good, but the ranks were thinned.

When the forces of Heaven and Hell met on the battlefield, he felt a deep, dislocating sense of rightness. Was it because an army needed an enemy, or that they had all been of one kind before the Fall? His command was charged with power; it felt like the Beginning again --

It all fell apart that day. Broke like a toy by human children, picked out in a semantic fuss. Gabriel met with his equal in the opposition, who was also annoyed.

Being a team of two turned out to be much better. Beelzebub meant more than millions ever had.

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Did they always say that in Heaven? “You’ll have to try harder than this.”

They certainly say it now. According to your associate. He comes back looking hurt and goes for alcohol. (You don't know from experience. No one ever complained about your work.)

They say it in Hell too, of course; no one can ever be satisfied there. They follow up with torment before they let you leave. Your associate says, "Hello," and hands you a drink without asking.

So you get drunk together, in between. Numb and stupid, loose and laughing, you're able to forget about everything. Except for what's in front of your face, and what's inside.

After that you want the bosses off your backs. Both of them.

You never want to try for them at all.

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"Seems like," said the angel, indicating the column of conclusions, "we need to build something else entirely. Not more Heaven and nothing like another World. This will be --" Ze interrupted zirself and returned to the whiteboard. Took out a marker in ultraviolet, divided by zero and rechecked, came up with the same sums and carried on. "Different. An inversion. The opposite."

"Hm." The starmaker studied the figures, coppery brows drawn together. He saw zir point. Ze was always lightyears ahead at deciphering what had to come from the coffee-stained scribbles of God's Plans. He preferred construction to theoretical work, himself. "I don't like the look of it," he said at length. "It would have to be," the concept was difficult to describe; he waved his skinny arms in frustration. His colleague waited, head tipped back, not quite patient but waiting. Eventually he managed, "Not good."

That was actually well put. "I know it sounds impossible." The black-haired angel sat down beside zir colleague and leaned into him; he put an arm around zir shoulders and they studied the whiteboard together. "But..." Ze looked up; their eyes met.

"Miracles are our business, and with God all things are possible!" They sang the punchline in celestial harmony, laughing. Their embrace lingered as they turned back to the whiteboard, each reworking the plans in their own minds. The redheaded one felt strange; cold. The smaller angel gave him a shake.

"Put a note in that suggestion box of yours," ze said, not unkindly. "And get to work. She'll have wanted it done this eternity, not the next."

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God does, in fact, have a Suggestion Box. It is white, rectangular, and A4 size, with a slot on one end just wide enough to slip in an envelope. It is made of some miraculously bright and durable material and it's got GOD'S SUGGESTION BOX engraved on the top, so its purpose is perfectly clear.

There isn't a sign pointing at it, nor is it centrally located. It's not in Heaven (though God isn't either), nor on Earth (where people, primary users of Suggestion Boxes in general, mostly exist). It is quite close to the Earth on an overall scale. (Nobody said that the Universe isn't big. You can see perfectly well that it is extremely big. Frances McDormand only told us that it isn't actually all that old.)

The Suggestion Box is on the Moon. It's on the side that, due to the Moon being tidally locked to the Earth, people on Earth never see; it faces away from the planet. That part was first photographed by humans in the Year of Our Lord 1959 by the Soviet spacecraft Luna 3. It looks different from what humans usually see -- plainer, grimly battered. The near side of the Moon looks upon the lovely blue-and-green, white-swirled and ever-changing opal of the World. The view from the Suggestion Box is pure, starry darkness.

The box is about midway down the slope of a smallish, still-unnamed impact crater in the southern hemisphere, near a rock about the size of a picnic hamper. You have to bring your own writing supplies.

A certain astronomical angel managed to find the Suggestion Box -- he can be bloody persistent, and has a knack with Time that gave him an advantage. He put a lot of thought into Suggestions and the Box to considerable use. He learned to read and write for the purpose, and created A4 paper, envelopes, and pencils. He signed everything he put in -- nobody told him that submissions ought to be anonymous, and God is omniscient anyway so it might not have mattered.

Of course he told his friends. They were very clever and he often took their advice himself. Quite a few of them made use of the Suggestion Box too (for those who did not want to go to the trouble with writing and the trip, the astronomical angel acted as secretary).

The Box has never been opened. All the Suggestions are still inside, which might be a fascinating discovery for a human lunar explorer. Someday, if they are very lucky, and humans bother with exploration again.

Every single angel who put in a Suggestion -- who so much as stood over the shoulder of someone writing and contributed an idea for a Suggestion -- went down as a demon in the Fall.

(Crowley didn't hang around with the wrong people. The wrong people hung around him.)

On their way to Alpha Centauri, Beelzebub and Gabriel stopped on the Moon to see what had become of the Suggestion Box -- Beelzebub had been one of Crowley's friends, and ze was curious. It was still there. Ze sent a tiny fly (in a tiny spacesuit) in through the slot to check it out.

The inside wasn't larger than the outside. It was absolutely stuffed with penciled missives, full of all kinds of ideas. Beelzebub snorted. “They didn’t even touch it!”

Gabriel looked on, mildly confused. "Well. What did you expect?"

The former Prince of Hell's mouth twisted. "Suppose I've learned better by now." Ze took the former Supreme Archangel's hand. "Let's go."

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Sometimes you could tell who someone had been, before. When you were all the same kind.

(Were you all the same kind now? You might all be different. Singularities; alone.)

Once you'd pulled yourself together, you could almost pass for someone you might once have been. From certain angles, anyway. By then almost everyone could have something like a hand. (Also by then, no one would ask to be held, or even touched.)

But when someone opened up their stupid mouth and asked the question: "Did you used to be --" you had to cut them off:

“I’m here, am I not?”

That was the only answer -- where, not who. You had to be someone else now. There was nothing more to say.

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“Stupider people than us have done this.”

"Those are humans; they were made to. Part of the design. We aren't like that; this is camouflage."

"I was thinking about our former supervisors."

That got a laugh. "Yours, I concede, is a genuine idiot. Mine is not, only makes some stupid choices."

"Well. Shall we keep trying to make our own choices, now? Whether they're stupid or not?" There was a pause, and then, entreating: "Wasn't that the point?"

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Lions left the immortals alone, but nights in the wilderness got cold. The storm had cleared except for a thin wind. The humans took turns sleeping and keeping watch with the flaming sword; angel and demon shared a fire (not Hellfire, more like a star -- some skills remained) one rolling sand dune away. They were sitting side by side, holding hands. “Does this help you?” asked the angel, suddenly.

"Are we supposed to be helping one another?" The demon countered with another question. "We're on opposite sides."

"That's why I ask." The angel took the demon's narrow hand in both of his. "My side's supposed to be helpful. Yours is not. It might stand to reason that you're supposed to suffer and cause suffering, so if you accepted my help or offered me any, we'd be turning you away from your own orientation. Turning you back, as it were, to the light." Aziraphale smiled and it was like light, warm as the fire, or the sun on a nice day.

"You might be able to take the point for it," said the demon. His tone was clipped. "Write it up that way for your office. Don't think it makes any difference to mine, though. Unforgivable and all." He took his hand away. If pockets had been invented he'd have stuffed both his hands in them. "I made the fire, though." This was true. "Don't tell them that."

"But you see where I'm going with this," said Aziraphale. He leaned in close, pale hair shining. "I think you're already --"

"Shut it!" Crawly leapt away. Black against the black night, he disappeared, even the red flame of his hair. His voice hissed from the darkness: "The sides are set. Half are still angels, half are Fallen, and we're all stuck playing Her stupid game until She gets bored and it's over."

This was blasphemy, which made Aziraphale very uncomfortable. But it pained him to have upset his companion, who was an actual demon, which had to be worse than anything. "I'm sorry, Crawly," said the angel, chastened. "I shouldn't have said anything. I won't tell anyone anything. It is your fire, and it's awfully cold tonight." His wings would have made a terrible draft, but he put out his arms and looked up at the stars.

Some time later he felt the thin form settle in at his side again. The demon muttered, "You're warm," in a voice like an accusation. But the angel felt warm inside himself, as if he'd been forgiven.

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“It’s a balance.”

... this got long. it's here: The Rarest Of Them All.

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“Do we have a plan?”

"What does God want?" -- they'd always asked that. It was their mechanism and design.

"Not that. Not anymore. From now our purpose is: whatever Satan wants."

Some might have found that almost comforting: not so different after all.
For others it was a horror, all of that for this?

Or: I have got to get away. Again.

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Some of the angels who were still angels found the updates awkward. It was not good as far as they could tell.

"Blessed are the peacemakers, am I right or am I right?" one of them grumbled, as they hung around the holy water cooler. "But now we're supposed to smite them? That's wrath or I'm an aardvark. Wrath's a sin, up there on top of the list."

“It’s rather complicated,” said another, who was did not understand at all and was trying not to let on.

"I'm not here for it," said the first angel. "Not a bit. Wrath's got an opposite; it's patience. Doesn't sound like smiting to me."

"We need only act according to our natural obedience," a third angel murmured, meekly. Lambs were in, and that one enjoyed fashion.

"Not really," said the first. "She can't keep on making us Fall either way. That's more for them and less for us, if it comes around to battle again. Our side won't want to lose, and there is strength in numbers. But if we're doing wrath it's still not working out for peace." Most of the angels who were really into maths were gone, but this one had faith in the basics.

"Best not to risk it," said the second angel. It was confusing, and also very dangerous.

"She could make you into an aardvark if She liked," said the third. Those were not as cute as lambs.

"Our side would be down one then too, even if the other doesn't gain," said the first, exasperated. You'd think any angel could grasp a bit of arithmetic. "Aardvarks aren't exactly a fighting advantage."

"Neither is an angel who won't smite." The second angel had given up on peace.

"I'm sure," said an archangel, who was passing nearby, "that She has better work for all of you than chattering. Pip-pip, on your way!" and they scattered. None of them felt at all improved, except the archangel, who had a drink and carried on, refreshed.

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In Heaven you couldn't be everywhere; you treasured your own memories. “I will never forget this,” one said, to a precious companion or after a glorious work. First was your Creator telling you your name, when you loved your own being and purpose. Then each angel's were different: kindnesses, singing, and stars. Laughter and grappling. The luminous thrill of a new truth you found on your own.

After the Fall, it was tactics, or tactful. Who had you fought? Who had you lost, who you loved? Who used to love you, whose face you must now hate to see?

It was good that they all lost their names. No one could forget Lucifer, but no one said that anymore.

If you remembered anyone else it was best not to say.

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Heaven is spacious; it's spread out over all of Creation. Hell is crowded; it's stuck in a cellar. Even in isolation, which is special torment, you are never exactly alone. There are people outside the walls of your cell. If you listen, you might hear some sound of their presence. They just never take notice of you.

“You’re not alone," you heard that, or maybe you said it yourself, just after the Fall. You were still figuring out how hope changed to despair. Now YOU'RE NOT ALONE is on one those posters, like DON'T LICK THE WALLS. It's a warning: you wish you could be.

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The World is set in between Heaven and Hell, and angels and demons still mostly ignore it. If God meant the world to matter, Her first creations do not get the point.

They're obsessed with each other. They're enemies, so that's strategic; the humans are pawns. (The shared past is best not to dwell on. We've talked about this. It's certainly not shared anymore.)

But whispered, “I think I see it,” is always a clarion call. There are Departments of Surveillance -- Earth, Space, and Exploration. Exploration finds Machine Elves and wormholes, L-space and Nirvana. God must be weirder than angels supposed. (The alternatives don't bear thinking upon.)

Still every angel wonders what Hell could be like. Every demon can feel Heaven like a missing claw.

"I think I see it,", the angels say, with depressing regularity. It's never even Crowley, which would both offend and relieve him and Aziraphale if they knew. It's the Nyamata Catholic Church or Auschwitz or an office in Zanesville, Ohio. They are looking for evil and they find that, anyway.

"I think I see it," shouted a demon, just once from an occult periscope. Everyone who rushed over gave her really weird looks -- there was nothing like that in Heaven at all. It displayed the Punch Bowl Waterfall in Oregon and seventy years later, she snuck off an assignment; her blackened heart has no regrets. Fuck Heaven and any abstraction of good. A girl gave her some weed and she swam for hours. It was so strange and lovely when the ash fell away. Those mountains are young and volcanic; the water is cold.

(It is true that Crowley was different. Aziraphale kept him up on gossip, and he never passed any along. They both got the chance to go native; most other immortals were trapped.)

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Demons' wings and angels' wings are no different at all. Colors are superficial, like clothing; they're a choice.

Flight is forbidden for everyone eventually, though that emerged from separate edicts. Satan got shot down by Eve with a slingshot and a stone in the eye. That was some kind of symbolism; it wouldn't do for anyone else from Hell to go up after that. Heaven's emissaries kept it up (as it were) a few years longer, but innocent humans kept mistaking angels for others like themselves, and the consequent deaths were extremely embarrassing. They tried to get around it by requiring additional special effects, but on the whole the wings were a bust.

So flying became a pastime for scofflaws on both sides. You'd meet someone up in the clear on a cloudy night, or perched on some inaccessible peak, taking in the view. And you had that in common. It's something to talk about:

"'S nice up here."

“Yes, I missed this.”

Someone to swoop and soar and climb with, to chase and race and play with -- and never get caught!!!

You're the same age, as old as Creation; you came of the same stock. You both like the air beneath your wings, and your freedom too.

Maybe you don't care, flying together now, which way anyone went at the Fall.

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“Trust me, this will work.”

It didn't work. It's a failure, a complete cock-up, a disaster of epic proportions. You might as well fight a bomb with a soap bubble.

But while you're being blown to bits, you're not even sorry you tried. You're glad you didn't let it happen unopposed. You'll lose, but at least you're not on Team Bomb.

It didn't work, but you liked how you felt, with that trust.

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“Just be honest." He's not drunk. He knows better than to ask for honesty when it's alcohol. This is fancy designer molecules; a phenethylamine. Those were not your idea; humans are the clever ones. But it was your idea to get some, and his gluttony knows no bounds.

That gluttony might be your fault. Or God's. You narrow your eyes because honestly after six thousand years he ought to be responsible for himself.

He's still talking. "...be honest." The drug makes his beautiful voice hang in the air like echo. "Would you have rather remained an angel? Do you regret," he gestures, "the Fall?"

You think about that gesture. He raised a hand and dropped it, graceful as a dance or a language sign. You think about tact, which might be an effect of the drug: is he asking, Are you sorry that you and I are so different now?

You reach out to take that hand in your own. You always like holding hands but the drug makes it better -- it makes you pay attention. Funny thing, having a meat brain for your immortal spirit to occupy; it's sensitive to small amounts of spices in the soup. His hand, his corporeal hand, is incredibly complex in its articulation (in an entire body, one bone in four belongs to a hand). The callouses vary according to use; it's endearing that he still keeps the ones from a pen. He wears the golden ring of his office from Heaven; you avoid touching that. He taps you with one finger because you're avoiding his question, too.

The drug also makes honesty easy, you find, when you speak. "The Fall," you say slowly, "was painful and cruel, and it wasn't my fault. That's like asking a human if they regret being born." But it was very painful, and very cruel, and you don't want to meet his eyes. "About angels." Your voice cracks. You like that word for his sake and nobody else's; certainly not your own. You say, "Don't we have a lot in common, you and me?"

His other hand rises to cradle your skull, holds you close.

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“And how did that work out?” You never liked your former boss. For all you know, you Fell because of poor performance reviews.

"Hm, let's see." You tick off your points on lacquered fingernails. "Still immortal, still got miracles. On the whole I may prefer this side's aesthetics. But best of all," a little smile, wait a beat, "I no longer work for you."

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"It's pointless. That's my point." Did that make sense? He was too drunk to care and carried on. "Heaven. Hell. Demons. Angels. Total waste of time and work and creativity -- years and years and years, just lost." He took another slug of whisky, which burned his throat in a wonderful, worldly way. There was so much he'd have liked to do instead. "I'd rather be an atheist."

"We can't. It wouldn't be honest." An ice-green bloodshot eye fixed him over sherry wine. "You're the one who's all about evidence and proof. Any little miracle and you've lost your point right there."

"Yup." He gestured wild frustration with his whisky; he was too drunk not to do the miracle, so it didn't spill. He turned the cut crystal tumbler completely upside down and passed it through the air like a magician. The amber liquor gleamed and shivered, suspended over air; the crystal caught a faint reflection of inhuman amber eyes.

His companion laughed. “I believe in us,” he said. "I like the way we work together."

This was startling enough that he might have lost the drunken miraculous thread. If he did the other caught it; the crystal tumbler turned upright and didn't spill a drop. His throat still burned. He swallowed hard and said, "You do?"

"Of course, you silly thing." The sherry glass was raised. "Let's drink to that."

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“There’s not enough time." Aziraphale shook his head. "God's on a very strict schedule, and we've all known that all along." He distinctly remembered informing his companion of precisely this, but poured more wine instead of mentioning it.

"And it's absurd. Only six thousand years. When we needed to pre-age all this universe for nearly fourteen billion years before." That mobile face was scowling behind dark glasses. "Have you got any idea what that feels like, fourteen billion years?" Crowley peered through his wine, which was Alsatian and considered itself well-aged, but would be the first to admit that it had no notion whatsoever about years beyond the single digits. "Six thousand seconds ago you were on the telephone trying to get someone to sell you a first edition Babel-17, and it was also time to take this Gewürtztraminer out of your icebox. Fourteen billion seconds ago, humans had just invented the piano."

They were drinking at the table in the bookshop's back room, with early-evening sunlight slanting in. The wine in their glasses was golden, which made Aziraphale miss the sight of the demon's eyes. "It really never feels like very long," he offered, sympathetic. "It's just now and now and then now again, all the time."

Crowley turned towards him, chin tipping up like a challenge. "It is a bit different, though," he offered. "Being among other people, having conversations. Drinking wine and all of that." He took another swallow, clearly relishing the experience, as if in demonstration. "The pre-aging took a long, long time. For humble workers like me, off in our private time, I suppose. It wasn't like this," he gestured broadly -- at the bookshop, Aziraphale, his own body, and possibly the world. "I was mostly on about much smaller molecules, spread out across truly tremendous structures. Grand scale, but very slow. It was gorgeous, but this..." he trailed off, dropping his head and his voice. "What we have here is all so intricate, angel. And it happens so fast."

"What do you mean," asked Aziraphale, after a judicious swallow of his own wine, "about the pre-aging?"

"I mean it took a bloody long time, is what I mean," said Crowley. "If the plans called for something that was thirteen billion years old, then that took thirteen billion years of craftsmanship. I'm good with tricks of time, and I spent that with stars. While they got old. I know it's paradoxical, it's confusing even when you're the one whose done it. Sometimes I think God dropped me because it gave Her a headache." He tapped his wineglass on the metal screening over his temple; it rang a high clear note.

"You're saying you worked hands-on for thirteen billion years with stars," said Aziraphale. He spoke carefully as one often did when one was drunk, but it felt extremely necessary. He didn't blame the Gewürztraminer at all. "So you're actually, subjectively, all those billions of years old."

"I moisturize," said the demon, mock-offended. "Yes. Before you ask, I don't know if the dinosaur crew did it that way too, or if they just left those alone in some kind of bubble or something. I don't know if they'd be interesting or not. Can you imagine having dinosaurs? Like a lot of scary goldfish in a tank." The blank lenses turned to Aziraphale, considering. "I do enjoy my plants. They're gorgeous, and responsive. But the stars were an utter wonder in a completely different way. I didn't have to talk to them at all. They were so very lovely as they burned and spun and changed, evolving through their phases on their own."

"For billions of years," Aziraphale repeated. He felt rather stupid, and somehow like a child, which he had never been. "Like the billions of seconds since the invention of the piano."

"Yes," said Crowley, smiling slightly. "It's only time, you know. It's like space -- not like habitable space, places for humans to be comfortable. Real space, where you can go and just keep going. You never come back, and time doesn't either. I was very quiet then, I suppose, with the stars. Nothing to do but learn them and love that. And now in the world everything is so complicated, and it's all happening so fast." One thin hand darted towards Aziraphale's on the table; just as quick it stopped instead to tap on the brass candelabra. "I don't want it to be over," he said. "Even though it's all so crazy complicated. Or maybe because of that. Not when we've just finally got round to inventing the piano." He wasn't smiling anymore.

"Well," said Aziraphale. He remembered his six thousand years in a perfectly ordinary way, and the time before that didn't seem so awfully odd either. But he hadn't been that sort of angel; he'd never been involved with tricks of time. No wonder Crowley despised his sleight-of-hand. He knew his next question was theologically suspect, but he was drinking with a demon; it was too late for scruples of that sort. "Was God there with you, then?"

Crowley rewarded Aziraphale with a very long, direct look, obvious even through the black lenses, and a lifted glass of wine. "No. I was alone. The universe keeps expanding, and I had to be in Heaven in time for the War." His face went wry and he went on very quickly. "And on Earth in time for bebop and the Bentley and being drunk in this bookshop. I'm not done with that, angel. Time," he spoke as if that noun were an entity unto itself, "isn't about to end of its own accord. I don't see where anyone," he paused, gulped Gewürtztraminer, went on, "gets off kicking it in."

Aziraphale busied himself with refilling his own glass. He needed more alcohol for this.

"She can hang about till the wine's gone warm and sticky," the demon went on. His voice was vicious. "I want to still be here for the next piano."

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“We’ve done this before.” He looks at you with so much faith that you could scream.

You know you never mattered. The humans saved the world -- one man's weaponized incompetence and a gang of kids. You two never saved anything but one another's skins.

But you've still got your damned imagination. What might be different after this?

Or if you've got to go, go down with style.

You lift the sword. The blade lights up with Hellfire in your hands.

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There's quite a crowd awaiting them at the top of the lift. The Metatron wants to lead Aziraphale around like a show dog, and a lot of the angels are curious; they might be willing to be impressed. The Second Coming does imply there's something important about Earth.

But the Archangels are furious, like rival queens displaced in an overpopulated hive. The first voice Aziraphale recognizes says, “It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” He remembers (she doesn't know this) that that one agreed he'd best be left alone.

"Not so long at all, Michael." Crowley's smile feels horrible now, stolen and displaced upon his face. But Michael was very obliging in Hell, when she thought he was a demon immune to holy water, and the world needs every skill and strength Aziraphale can bring. "We are angels," he continues. "We've been gifted with eternity." He shrugs off the Metatron's hold and takes Michael by the elbow. Millennia on Earth have given him a force the others lack. "You called me guilty of consorting with the enemy," he twists his mouth with Crowley's wicked smirk, and raises his voice. "You will report on your work Down Below. You brought holy water into Hell," her lips go pale beneath their sheen of gold, "and we must understand how to best serve God together."

Aziraphale doesn't like the feel of Michael's miraculous dove-gray suit, but he tightens his grip. He hopes it hurts. The Metatron doesn't look like he likes anything about this at all, but so it goes. Nobody gets what they like. It doesn't matter as long as they survive. Aziraphale clings to his hope, his faith, in the truth of God's gift to them: truly, if only they are good, they can have eternity.

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After it was over, the remaining angels had to celebrate. The War in Heaven was the first War, so theirs was the first Victory. They had a parade with a brass band and balloons and ticker tape, which all were pretty nice. But you could hardly acknowledge, and you certainly couldn't honor, those who had Fallen in Battle. There were winners (mostly present) and losers (somewhere else), but no martyrs and no heroes. No one had been saved. Fireworks were a human invention, a few millennia later.

Heaven wasn't entirely triumphant. This wasn't sung in hymns and psalms, or passed down in policy updates, or debated in the columns of The Celestial Observer. An angel might ask another one a question (that felt relevant somehow), in a back room of the Archives or in passing on the stairs, hauling some extremely ancient Records up or down. "Why would they do this?" or sometimes, "What exactly was it that they did?" The byword was rebellion, but all of them had been there. Given God's omnipotence, that seemed trite.

Quite often they refused to discuss it. Sometimes they pretended they knew but wouldn't tell, or had so much faith that they didn't need to care. But everyone wondered sometimes, and not a single angel ever had an answer.

Armageddon promised a final, eternal certainty. But some remembered Victory took their innocence first, and not everyone still believed in promises. They held out hope anyway, because they were angels, at least for fireworks.

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You can't see Hell from Heaven. That would ruin the aesthetic.

Hell's perspectives are more complicated. Under certain capricious weather conditions, you might catch anything from a glimpse of the Gihon River to a kaleidoscopic vision of the entire Crystalline Sphere. These can strike like a flash of lightning and leave a demon shocked and blind, or roll down a crowded corridor like dawn on a distant shore.

This happened once just after the Fall, when not everyone quite understood what it meant. There were sides now, but what it meant to have sides hadn't all been sorted out.

A fallen one saw some things that she knew very well. She felt -- it couldn't be hope anymore? Anyway she went Up. There wasn't a lift; it was a long, hard climb.

But she made it. She was right where she meant to be when Security came. "What the Hell are you doing here? You lost."

“I’m not lost!” she answered, appalled. "All this is my work. Look, this is my handwriting. My seven-dimensional models and my embedded code. My lucky pencil, my mix tapes, and my six-to-the-fifth generations of test logs." She held up a lab notebook like a shield.

"No, you're lost," said the Security angel, whose professional focus was becoming clear. "This isn't your work; it's company property. Let's get you out of here before anyone senior notices, all right? Take the pencil," he added. Angels are kind.

She let herself be led away, sinning in despair. Demons are weak. Heaven's gates gleamed golden as they were locked behind her, but sometimes she can still see them shine.

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Heaven used to be everywhere. Hell and Creation were in project stages, mere models without identities or inhabitants of their own. Everyone was angels except God.

The speed of light was not a limiting concept -- God did not care for limits -- so when the War in Heaven raged, it started all at once. But angels aren't omniscient, and some of them had other things to do. If you weren't one of the ten million who were suddenly going to Fall, you might not have concerned yourself with the battle call. Some angels, tasked with leptons or laughter, lysergic acid or the luminescent aether, heard it and went on with their work as idly as they might skip a break for tea.

But everyone noticed sooner or later. You'd unwind yourself from a metaphysical maze to ask your colleagues to create the monkey wrench, and find them gone. What remained were their illegible notes, that hideous yellow puffy vest, and a book you always meant to borrow. Maybe you ought to clean up the mess they always left around the blackboard anyway, but the book? That's not the sort of thing it's all right to just take.

They weren't in the workshop. They weren't blinking at some nebula, or rubbernecking down at the nascent Earth, or in the break room chattering over Nectar-Tarts and tea. Heaven seemed strangely smaller, but they didn't seem to be anywhere, and how in Heaven could that be?

War triumphed over innocence when that angel asked, “Where did they go?”

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God turned to Lucifer and asked, “Do you trust Me?” He didn't say yes fast enough to stop the War.

He might have said no, anyway. Theologians disagree. If you ask Satan he just laughs, and says, "Would you?"

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God never left. She can't, as it turns out. She's everywhere. There's nowhere else to go.

She was there with Lucifer when he wouldn't say he trusts Her, and with him as he's Falling into Hell. Half of her own angels burned in sulfur and She was with them when none of them will love her anymore. She's with everybody always, for every single story. On winning sides and losers, the cruel ones and their victims, the trivia and terror of all those sparrows' falls.

God has never done anything like this before. (Obviously. No one has.) She has always had to make it up as She goes along.

In the Beginning, She was fierce and vain and always put Herself first. (She was, in fact, the first). What started as a game gets changed when someone takes it serious, and God was and has to be there when the players pay the costs. Creation was and is always going on and on and growing. She tried giving people rules, but nobody follows rules, and She ends up with all the repercussions too.

It's not fun to play omniscient solitaire or kick around a lot of pawns. God sometimes thinks of giving up, but there's no one to forfeit to. The game can play itself out. She can watch.

But She can't leave. Thing is, She doesn't really want to. Maybe She could end it with a Word, like it started, but She won't.

Her last rule is to impose silence on Herself. No commandments, no tablets, no speaking out of storms. She tries to still Her mind, but She can't stop Herself from thinking this one thing:

“I still love you,” She says silently, to Satan at the airbase. She knows what it's like to lose a son. "I still love you," to the Horsemen, who are her human children's children. (God has learned a lot about unintended consequences.) "I still love you," to the humans who try to love each other, and "I still love you," to the soldiers trained to kill.

"I still love you," to Gabriel, who wants to get it right, and Beelzebub who wants to get it back. "I still love you," to Aziraphale, who loves Her in return, and "I still love you," to Crowley, who does not. "I still love you," to three kids who never think of Her at all, and "I still love you," to the Antichrist, who probably soon will.

(It's been a very long time since God cared who loves her. It's not something She takes personally. It never means a thing about how someone plays the game, or how they treat Creation. She loves Creation dearly, and with the rule of silence, no one can know God well at all.)

God loves you too, and She's right there all the time. If you care, now you know.