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They were neither of them meant to shine, any more than they were meant to throw their respective sides over when push came to shove. Had things gone to alleged plan…well, in that case Anathema Device would never have chanced, or been chanced, upon them in the first place, but if she had done, and the encounter had occurred, for the sake of argument, in broad daylight, with no such distractions as a miraculously disappearing fracture or a celestially upgraded velocipede, she would have found their auras nothing to write home about.
The popular imagination litters Hell with fire and brimstone and frozen waste, and fills an airy Heaven with brilliant white light. In this it is superficially correct, but led astray by an unconscious human assumption of passion and sensory extremes. The white of Heaven is neither the cosy glow of a spa above the clouds nor pure as the driven snow, but the sterile white of a waiting room, with spotless floors and utilitarian chairs and not so much as a ‘Hang in there’ poster to breathe life into the soulless white walls. Hell’s aesthetic, meanwhile, hews closer to char and ash than to a furious, ravenous blaze. Red and orange fires dutifully vary the landscape of black and grey, consuming in perpetuity the souls of the damned assigned to them, but they burn like exhausted mid-career auditors cranking hand calculators well into the computer age, and a constant sensation like trying to force down a tin of twenty-year-old Army surplus rations does not improve their morale.
In short, the white of Heaven and the reds and oranges of Hell are but dulled echoes of what humans, who are used to thinking and feeling in the bountiful full colour of Earth, believe them to be, and the auras of the angels and demons who populate them reflect this. Anathema, perhaps, would not be wholly surprised, but only the auras of Aziraphale and Crowley, beacons of colour and character brightened by millennia of association with humanity and each other, would satisfy the expectations she’d insist she didn’t have.
In Aziraphale’s aura, Heaven’s sterile white has softened into cream, an off-white that glows effortlessly with all the warmth its purer counterpart lacks. Aziraphale’s aura is the yellowed pages of old books, and if Anathema squinted at him long enough, she would feel them between her fingers, and feel an urge to put on gloves for their protection. She would taste hot cocoa on her tongue and hear classical music in her ears. More than anything else, though, she would feel a sense of love not unlike what Adam emitted around Tadfield, but with the distinct signature of someone who gave away a flaming sword to protect the human race, and who does not need one to be warm.
In Crowley’s aura, the dull orange embers of Hell have sharpened into a dark red, the blazing fire of creative thought and joie de vivre. On a surface level it might resemble a fine wine, and if Anathema squinted at him, she might taste that, and hear the revving engine of a speeding vintage car, and feel a rush of adrenaline flood through her veins. Crowley’s aura is drive and innovation and love for a world full of wonders, and an accompanying drive, no longer suppressed, to preserve and protect those wonders. Crowley’s aura is the red of imagination.
Either alone would have seared itself into Anathema’s memory forever, had she been at her leisure to look. Together, however, the effect would be even more arresting.
As we speak, Anathema is on her way back to Jasmine Cottage in Dick Turpin’s passenger seat, a volcanic near-manifestation of the Adversary fading into muddled memory and the Nice and Accurate Prophecies a charred brick on her lap. This latter point occupies her mind and prevents her, for now, from turning around to see Aziraphale and Crowley sit down on the tarmac in their own emotional exhaustion, indulging to outward appearances in a bottle of wine, but more truthfully in the simple presence of each other.
Crowley and Aziraphale themselves are not yet acknowledging this, but their auras bely their half-hearted excuses. Sitting close enough for the outlines thronging them to intersect, the cream and dark red transmute into one unified rainbow aura, shimmering with affection and promise. Today they are, for the first time, open allies; tomorrow is the first day of the rest of their lives. Their shared aura emanates a love that already has overcome, and a love that, on their own side at last, they will soon realise in full.
Later, when they stand up to drive back to London, the auras of Crowley and Aziraphale will revert to separate outlines of red and cream. But when, a bit further on, they return to Tadfield to reflect on things, or to answer a natural curiosity as to how Adam is getting on, and hold hands as they stroll down the lane, a passing Anathema will halt in mid-step at the sight of a rainbow glow engulfing two figures, whose smiles outshine the sun.
She will not know why she knows them, but she will know what it is she sees.