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Damnatio Memoirae: "condemnation of memory."
It wasn’t supposed to end this way. This assignment was, for all intents and purposes, one of the easier jobs hell has tasked Crowley with. Stir some dissent among the humans about timekeeping and the collection of knowledge at the Great Library of Alexandria, and set them back a few decades.
Nothing serious, of course, there was that whole gaggle of people who’d tried to build a tower to God, and the bearucrats upstairs didn’t quite take kindly to the idea of humans being closer to the pearly gates. The lot of them loved their exclusivity, and the humans, bless their gullible little hearts, fell in line to the heavenly expectation.
Honestly, Hell’s management needed to settle their collective, maggot-ridden minds. The Garden of Eden was a stellar example of the ever-changing demonic agenda. Gather knowledge, stir things up. Go on, the mandate had essentially been, eat the apple, learn the difference between good and evil, realize you’re naked, it’ll be a laugh. Now, apparently, humanity’s thirst for knowledge was a problem.
Hell couldn't seem to decide if humanity was destined to be miserable intellects or bumbling idiots, and, to be completely honest, neither could the humans themselves. Hell just desired to get under the skin of any feathered bastards that looked down on them, and it was Crowley’s fate to be sent forward on a majority of the big jobs.
So Crowley was sent up to do the usual, ground-level nudging. It was easy enough work. He spent a couple of weeks sauntering through sun-soaked markets, sprinkling paranoia on the fruit stalls and a dash of anti-intellectualism in the wine casks. He whispered in the ear of a spice merchant by the name of Demetrios a tale about the scholars hoarding the city’s wealth. Nudged a thick-necked legionnaire named Titus about the spiritual dangers of foreign philosophy. All with the dusty, cool detachment he reserved for anyone and everything.
Everything and anyone that was not- of course, Aziraphale.
The plan was simple. A small riot, a touch of vandalism, and the cherry-topped disorganization of the expert file systems the librarians had argued over for weeks.
Then, the fire started.
At first, it was the normal variety, human begun and primal. The kind that found itself clinging to the edges of Caesar’s ships and was due to a miscalculated wind, the type that resulted in the collateral damage of empire building that often occurred when people were afraid. That was all it ever was, fear misguided to anger. Crowley knew it well.
The smell of sulfur was sharp, irritating, and oddly nostalgic. It made Crowley’s back ache with the phantoms of pain from a fall he’d not been sure he could completely remember. His skin seemed to remember, though. The heat. It made the hair on his arms stick up.
Goosebumps were a silly name for a feeling like this. The sickening honeyed dread that washed over him when he saw the flicker of fire somewhere else. The humans hadn’t planned for this. Of course, they hadn’t. They barely planned the protest themselves; Crowley pulled the strings and dipped into the darkness like a dastardly eunuch in the emperor’s ear. No, this was one of his; someone downstairs had the brilliant idea to take initiative.
Hellfire.
Hellfire had a specific smell that flavored the air. It made the crackling sulfur scent seem trivial; rotten brimstone subdued the smell of anything other than itself. The flames chewed through the stone around its source, crawling to the building like a parasite finding a new host to drain of life.
Crowley’s spot on a rooftop overlooking the scattering protestors and employees was a good place to watch over the pieces in this game he’d been a bishop in, knocking pawns to the side and watching the board vanish before him. He’d get comfortable and keep the flames within the boundaries of the library. Couldn’t have another tragedy resulting in the mass exodus of Alexandria. Too many kids. Too much paperwork. Couldn’t have them promoting him downstairs, then he’d never get off the hook.
It all seemed to be managing fine. The flames chewed and spat out rocks from the outside of the building, choking the air around him with thick plumes of smoke that smothered the sun above. People gathered below after the initial protestors dispersed, doing their best to hold back the flames. Water, unless it were of the holy variety, wouldn’t do much to purge the flames from the stones it glued itself to. It’d take a clergy at this point to bless enough water to fight back the flames as they rose around the outside. Crowley contemplated the bureaucratic chaos this was certain to cause when a flash of impossibly un-sooted white weaved through the crowd and caught his eye.
Or one bastard of an Angel.
Crowley’s heart- a useless organ for a demon, only kept around for a dramatic sigh and the occasional palpitation- stopped dead in his chest. Aziraphale, at some point, pushed through the fleeing crowds and elbows and pitchers of seawater towards the grand doors of the library.
The Angel was charging headfirst into a burning building currently being remodeled by Hell’s finest. Aziraphale, the big-hearted buffoon he was, seemed to have absolutely no idea the source of these flames, nor what that meant for him. He simply saw the pinnacle of human knowledge going up in what he’d assumed was mundane, run-of-the-mill smoke, and rushed in to play hero of the librarians.
“Damnit- Angel!” Crowley called out, realizing his distance from the scene was being closed by his body moving down the side of the building at the instinctual drive to charge after the feathered idiot. He slid down the roof and scrambled across the stone pathway towards the crowd.
The flames were a lot larger from the perspective of someone on the ground looking up at them. He sprinted across the plaza, dark robes and tight curls whipping in the wind behind him, shoving past panicked faces and in towards the suffocatingly hot entrance of the library.
“Angel!” He shouted, yellow eyes flickering to the walls around him as they cracked and whined under the barrage of heat. The flames parted for Crowley, naturally. It was a gentle, albeit annoying tickle at his skin, recognizing one of its resident demons.
But it wasn’t going to be gentle to an Angel, not to Aziraphale. It wouldn’t just discorporate him, but completely erase him from existence. He’d heard before of what Hellfire did to Angels, and he’d not been keen on finding out if the rumors were as true as he’d feared.
“Aziraphale!” Crowley bellowed, dodging the crumbling ceiling that jettisoned retaliatory stone at him. It hit the ground in a way that made Crowley swallow, If HE was at risk of being discorporated, Aziraphale would be much worse off. He’d have to be careful.
This vision of the apocalypse around him made his throat tighten as he shouted into the flames. Massive limestone columns groaning under the weight of the crumbling roof, fracturing like it’d been besieged with cannon fire, falling around him. The air was thick, swirling with the burning of papyrus and what Crowley could only hope wasn’t flesh. Thousands of years' worth of thought in embers around him like infernal snow. The shelves at his sides wobbled and crashed into one another, nearly clipping his leg as he ducked out of the way. The roar of the fire was deafening. His legs couldn’t carry him fast enough.
“Aziraphale!” He called out again, a plea for something, anything in the form of a response to tell him where the Angel was. A shockwave of sparks rushed towards him as another column cracked ahead of his sprint. “Angel, damnit you better not be dead!”
Crowley spotted the white robes in The Great Hall, a tragically comedic sight. Aziraphale’s pale robes now stained with soot and ash, sweat sticking the cloth to his skin, bumbling through the plumes of smoke that spat at him from the crumbling building around him. His arms curled around thick spools of papyrus and knowledge. The expression of frustration didn’t seem to reflect one of the conscious peril anyone from Upstairs would have maintained had they known it was the fires of hell around them.
“Good Heavens, is that you, Crawl- Sorry- Crowley?” Aziraphale bumbled, a cough surging through his chest, grabbing at another roll of parchment and tightening his grip. There were too many to carry, but he’d stubbornly managed a few. “Be a dear- take the works of Homer, would you? I’m not sure why you’re here, but I hope you aren't up to any nefarity- this heat is completely dreadful for the bindings…”
Crowley’s eyebrow twitched with violent irritation. “Drop the scrolls, Angel-! The whole bloody place is coming down, and the fires around us aren’t flame-of-the-lord type.” He surged forward, quick strides that led him to the Angel till he was barely a foot away. His hand encircled his wrist, attempting to yank him forward.
Aziraphale planted his feet, entirely unbudging. The concern and confusion on his face searched the Serpent’s for an answer.. Crowley’s corporeal form wasn’t exactly terribly muscular in a way that could win a tug-of-war against a Principality.
“Crowley- Please tell me you’re not- Are you responsible for this- this…” The wrinkles on his face tightened around his eyes and his furrowed brows. His nose crinkled as he searched Crowley’s admittedly guilty mug. “Vandalism?” He seethed, arms tightening further around the scrolls. “It’s one thing to sow discord, but I didn’t think you were the type of demon to-”
Above them, a crackling noise made the structure howl. Crowley’s serpentine eyes flew to the ceiling in time to see the crumbling of the building coming down on them. His hands flew to Aziraphale’s chest, and he shoved back a few steps, the debris coming down between them in the form of a flaming wooden beam. Aziraphale barely managed to hang onto the scrolls, stumbling back to regain his footing.
A shower of sparks sunk across the two of them; the beast of flames outstretched its claws, digging into all available surfaces. Aziraphale turned his arm to shield the papers, the flames colliding with his exposed skin. The fire seared right through the cloak, sinking its grasp into his skin.
Aziraphale cried out in a mix of confusion and pain, scrambling back a couple of steps away from the fallen beam, haphazardly swiping the embers from his arm. His blue eyes widened upon the realization that he had been burnt- and it hurt. His panicked gaze flew up to Crowley, who was making his way over the rubble.
The fire parted for him, utterly unbothered, unburnt, and not even sweating from the heat. The hurricane of embers and flame not even sooting his black cloak.
“This isn’t a human riot- this is Hellfire!” His voice trembled with a fury that Crowley hadn’t heard from him before. A horrified expression filled Aziraphale's face that made the pathetic organ in his demonic chest twist and churn. He gets it now, at least. “Crowley, you... You fiend! How could you?!”
“This wasn’t my idea!” He cried out in reply, stumbling up to his Angel, who looked at him now with a fury that made the flames around the Demon feel cold in comparison. “S’posed to be a- It doesn’t matter- Downstairs got impatient! We have to move before it finishes the job!”
“I’m not going anywhere with you, Demon. Not without the scrolls!” Aziraphale seethed, firmly planting his feet in the space.
“You- You’re going to-” Crowley’s panic welled up. Wasn’t he aware he was going to die if he stayed here? What would Crowley do? He certainly couldn’t push the immovable force that was Aziraphale, nor could he convince the Angel to leave without the highly flammable objects. He didn’t have any other choice; this bastard had him wrapped around his angelic ring finger. “NGK! Fine! Damn it, I’ll carry the ones in your arms, but we have to go-!”
Aziraphale’s fiery resolve seemed to waver at Crowley’s admittance and relenting to support. He hesitated for a moment, but he, certainly, wasn’t fire-proof, even if he’d believed he was. He had to rely on Crowley if he was to have any hope of getting out with any of the scrolls at all. Finally, he nodded, pushing the contents in his arms towards Crowley and bending down to gather the remains of a few more at his feet.
Crowley’s arms coiled tightly as they could around the scrolls, leaving him to force a bit of trust in the Angel that he would remain within an arm's length. “Stay behind me, I’ll part the flames, and we won't be roasted alive.”
Aziraphale’s head bobbed, ensuring the scrolls in his reach were gathered and safe from the flames at their feet. Crowley surged forward, pointed sandals parting the flames like Moses through the red sea.
It was skin-broilingly hot. Hellfire was kind to Crowley, but even then, damn, the flames were something other than the lush life he’d gotten used to on earth. Hell didn’t care much for the comfort of its denizens. Eternal punishment and all. Aziraphale, the headstrong Angel he was, pushed forward through the flames that licked at his clothes, a few points having to kick off the flames clawing up his white clothing now sooted with the vengeance of those cast out of the pearly gates.
“Not much further up ahead-” Crowley began, turning back towards Aziraphale to provide assistance. Aziraphale was, however, no longer looking at the Demon in front of him. Crowley squinted through the smoke at what Aziraphale could possibly be looking at, but struggled to see anything. “C’mon, Angel! Just a little further-!” He ushered.
“Someone is here,” Aziraphale spoke with the concern and calm of a practiced saint. “She needs help, Crowley.” He stated it in such a way that it’d already been solidified in his mind. He was going to rush into the flames. Damn him, Damn this Angel- a heart so large he couldn’t see himself as a walking target.
“Forget her!” Crowley begged. “You can’t save her if you’re burning up down here!” He reached for Aziraphale’s hand, but the Angel, in all of his glory and warmth, despite the chewing pain of hellfire grasping through his clothing, pushed himself through the flames. “Aziraphale! Damnit!” Crowley shouted after him. He looked down at the scrolls in his arms.
His miracles were strictly on probation for the next millennium after a rather unfortunate, highly bureaucratic incident involving a burning bush. Using one here, in the epicenter of an officially sanctioned Demonic Event, was akin to signing his own discorporation papers. But he couldn’t very well drop them; the Angel he’d just promised to save them for would turn right around and burn with them if he had. With a sharp, furious snap of his fingers, he sent the scrolls out of the building and away to a place he knew they’d remain unharmed. At least for now. He’d pay for this later, but he couldn’t afford the cost of not sacrificing another miracle.
For Aziraphale, navigating through the hellish flames was hard enough. Still, following the voice that he’d just so faintly heard, the prayers whispering from their lips, was like following a single speck of light across the galaxy. Impossibly vast and difficult to pin. He could feel the tug of devotion, of helplessness, of courage despite it all.
And there she was. She was small, around four and a quarter feet, a child. Leg trapped under a fallen beam, hair sticking to her skin with sweat. The child looked up at Aziraphale, eyes squinting, watery, and coughing through the sea of smoke around them.
“Help Me… Please, my leg.” She sobbed, small body shaking with each heaving breath, both hands wrapped around her leg, clearly crushed and trapped underneath the rubble. Aziraphale’s heart thundered. The flames engulfing the room had honed in on him and were approaching quickly. He’d have to shield the child below him.
“Be not afraid.” He spoke, falling to his knees at the side of the girl. Large feathered wings that beckoned the excitement of the hellfire to devour spread from his back to block the unrelenting flames around him from consuming them. He bit into his lip to suppress the howl of pain from the fire's wrath. “I’m here to help you.”
His arms were still full of scrolls, of the history he fought to protect, the only reason he was here. But this child was the future, the history before culminated into her. The choice, although painful, was obvious.
He threw the scrolls to the wayside, trying not to wince at the crackling of them burning up, and slid his hands under the rubble. It was heavy; the building had come down upon them. He clenched his teeth and lifted with all of his strength, the rubble beginning to shift and rise. The agony from the flames surging up against him suddenly turned to cool dark distance. Crowley’s voice, familiar and comforting, swam into his ears, shouting, “Lift it, Angel!”
“The Child, Crowley!” He commanded, far too focused on not allowing the building around them to not crush her further. Crowley swiped her up from beneath the rubble, and Aziraphale released the stone. The roof sinking inwards from the cracking support and falling to pieces.
Aziraphale stepped back a few paces, the dust flying into the air around them to face Crowley again, tucking his wings away. The singe marks of Hellfire would take centuries to clean from his feathers. In his arms was the child they’d saved from the flames, the Demon’s large dark wings outstretched to shield the three of them.
“Out, Out!” Crowley hissed in a hastened breath. The child had fallen unconscious in Crowley’s arms. He and Aziraphale pushed through the remaining flames and out towards the city again. Crowley’s wings sank back into the smoke of the flames and under his cloak.
They rushed out of the plumes that smothered what was left of the good air around them, pulling forward into the city. The Child was injured, her leg exposing bits of red and white under torn flesh. Humans were so fragile.
Aziraphale’s hurried footfalls behind the Serpent told him he’d kept pace through the weaving through city alleyways. They navigated through alley ways that ebbed and flowed with various long abandoned stalls and people rushing towards the scene they'd been fleeing. Chatter of the burning and ‘who could have done this’ on their lips. . “Crowley, Slow down! Where are you going?!”
“Not far now, Angel, just a skip ahead. I know a place.” Crowley tossed the words over his shoulder, slipping by a long-abandoned oil vendor’s cart that had fled from the fires. “Just past the- Watch the olive oil, it’s slick- market square.”
The space Crowley had been referring to was not at all what Aziraphale had anticipated. It was a remarkably modest home of stone, tucked away on the outer edge of the middle city. It was far from a palace, barely a couple of rooms clustered together- but behind the solid, heavy door that guaranteed no soul would pass through uninvited, there was an overflow of lush, green plants. Potted ferns, creeping vines, vibrantly, impossibly green plants that all seemed to possess the trembling, fearful health of one under Crowley’s care. A vibrancy that Aziraphale hadn’t seen in hundreds of years, not since… Eden.
Aziraphale’s mouth fell open, following Crowley into the house and shutting the door behind him carefully as he looked around. Nearly forgetting the child who was currently unconscious in the demon’s arms.
“Right ah- there’s a kline…” Crowley murmured, ushering the plants to part out of his way with a glare. He leaned down and carefully set the child down upon the daybed. “Aziraphale, work a miracle so she’s not bleeding all over…” He grumbled, ushering the Angel forward. Aziraphale snapped from his awe with a focus on the child, realizing he still had a touch of work left to do.
He stepped over, kneeling next to the unconscious girl. He kissed his fingers and pressed them onto the tip of her knee, right above where the most damage was. With a near-instantaneous glow, the leg seemed to put itself back together, flesh stitching itself over the wound and bone cracking back into place. Aziraphale’s concentration as the miracle occurred seemed to lift once the leg had finished its healing process. He relaxed slowly. Resting on his knees next to her.
“Alright. Out with it.” Crowley demanded.
“Pardon?” Aziraphale asked, turning his head to give a furrowed brow towards the cross-armed Demon, tapping his sandals impatiently.
“Yer wings, they’re burnt, aren’t they?” He added, gesturing out. “Let’s take a look at the damage. Don’t need upstairs coming down because I damaged some of their property, now can we?” Crowley added, gesturing outwardly. Aziraphale’s memory kicked in then; he stood, rightfully furious, and turned to fully face Crowley. Crowley’s eyes widened, the slits dilating into larger pools as he stood up.
“So it WAS you?” Aziraphale boomed, stepping forward before realizing the child was still unconscious behind him. He ushered Crowley back a few steps, speaking in a hushed but still equally threatening manner. “You were the one who burnt the library down with Hellfire? Hellfire- Crowley?! What on earth were you thinking?!” Aziraphale, exasperatedly swept a hand through his platinum curls. “Then rushing in to the flames after me, you understand what a foolish action that was?”
“It would have killed you if I hadn’t-”
“It wouldn't have if you hadn’t gotten involved at all!” Aziraphale spat, arms crossing. “Now, none of the scrolls made it out in one piece. We lost all of them!”
Crowley seethed with bubbling rage; it boiled up into the red of his hair. “Damnit, Angel- it wasn’t my doing! The Humans got involved with someone else from downstairs- and…” He scrunched his brow, realization dawning upon him. “But… I know who.”
“It doesn’t matter who. There’s nothing to be done; all that history has been erased. We’ll have to start from scratch. There’s no way for anyone to know who’d done this…” Aziraphale relented, his face falling from a righteous fury to a deep incomparable sadness. He’d lost everything, all of the history, the books, the writing, the poems…
“About that..” Crowley began, scratching the back of his neck. “Look, my miracles- they're on probation- right? Firmly warned. Do not use unless actively attempting to thwart the divine plan, yada yada.”
Aziraphale’s eyes lifted from the spiraling to meet Crowley’s yellow. Watching his pupils dilate as he made eye contact silently. Crowley shifted his weight, unable to hold the contact and finding a pattern on the floor to stare into.
“It occurred to me that Hell specifically wanted the knowledge destroyed. So, technically... saving it would be… technically… thwarting the Divine Plan. Which is... sort of my job description. If you squint…”
Aziraphale’s heart thundered behind his ears. He breathed out slowly. “Crowley-”
“I might have done a little, demonic intervention of my own… Nothing big- just a little one. Before we bolted.” He muttered the last few words, more quietly than before, waving his hand. “They’re uh… in here-” He ducked underneath a stone table, digging his arms into a crate. Inside were the scrolls Aziraphale shoved into his arms. All pristine, perfect papyrus. “All the ones you forced me to carry, plus a few extra… Figured there might have been better places, but they aren't worth anything good if they’re lost to time.”
Aziraphale stood in shock, the warmth blooming in his chest like the flowers around him, their leaves curling towards him like he was the sun. Crowley, the demon, who was almost certainly looking to face some form of punishment from downstairs, went out of his way to save something. To do something against his nature. To do something Good. Simply because Aziraphale asked him to.
“You…” Aziraphale stepped forward, crossing into Crowley’s personal space, his hands finding the sides of the crate Crowley had lifted. Disregarding the soot and the burning and the world around them. “Cr-”
“Don't,” Crowley warned, holding up a finger, but remaining firmly planted in his space. No desire to back away present in him. “Don’t you dare thank me. If you do, I swear I’ll burn another building just to balance the scales.”
Aziraphale’s mouth shut, a fond smile spreading on his face, radiating the warmth that had nothing more to do with miracles than the simple kindness of the demon before him. He reached out towards Crowley, putting a careful hand on his shoulder.
“I wouldn’t dream of it, Dear. But I might insist on pouring you a glass of wine.”
Crowley swallowed hard. Red crept across his face, his eyes, shifted nervously away from the Angel. The tight knot in his chest that had formed the moment he’d seen the buffoon running into the building was slowly releasing. The tension of the night before him was bleeding away into quiet.
“Make it a jug, it’s been a hell of a night.”
The child returned to their family the next day after a quick walk taken by Aziraphale, leading them back to their parents, who were worried sick outside of the smoldering rubble that had remained of the library.
Aziraphale was offered compensation for finding the child, but he refused, stating it was simply the duty of the community, which allowed for such an ideal scenario.
In the following days, a new method of protest had emerged, one that’d simultaneously given the fate of those who’d decided to erase history a taste of their own medicine, but also ensured all knew of their misgivings. The humans named the act Damnatio Memoriae, against Crowley’s suggestion of “Burn Em” being the method by which they followed through with the ritualistic erasure of those who’d committed atrocious crimes against their own community.
Crowley’d intended to take credit for the creation of Damnatio Memoriae, after all, it was his brilliant suggestions they’d taken to start the damn thing to begin with. Ironically, it seemed his contributions met the same fate that any of the emperors facing its wrath- with the erasure in history, only the act itself remaining.
Centuries bled away, empires rose and crumbled to dust, but the concept survived.
Now, Aziraphale stood inside his Soho bookshop, a newspaper in hand, and several first edition copies of books he’d collected over the past forty or so years stacked neatly on the table nearby. At his side, the Demon Crowley, hair shortened and glasses masking his slitted eyes, looked disinterestedly at the paper from Aziraphale’s shoulder.
“You know,” Crowley drawled. “You could get with the times. Not as hard to keep up with current events with one of those smartphones the humans love so much.”
Aziraphale tutted disapprovingly at Crowley, turning the broad pages in front of him. “I prefer the traditional method; these silly devices are too fast for me to keep up with. Besides, I’m far more interested in this.“ He tapped the story on the page he’d had open. “It appears your old tradition has been making a modern resurgence.”
“Which one?” Crowley asked lazily, leaning his head into the shoulder of his Angel. “Orgies or the structural concrete?”
“Damnatio Memoriae, My dear.” Aziraphale shifted the paper to a comfortable reading level. Leaning his head on the Demon’s and flattening his hair. “A rather prominent author. It seems a series of highly unsavory truths has come to light. Seems many of the readers are scrubbing him from his legacy. Some of those- talkies, they call it?”
“Movies, Angel, I know you know what a movie is.”
“Right, well, they’ve been completely halted. Names scratched from books, and connections severed. Quite a thorough modern erasure.”
Crowley leaned closer, squinting at the headline. He knew the author. Hell, he’d probably been somewhat intoxicated in a bar in London, listening to his ramblings before. “Ah. Him.”
Aziraphale sighed, the sound heavy in his throat and chest. “It’s a shame, really.” Aziraphale mumbled. The weight of an angel who’d spent his existence archiving what he felt was the greatest thing about humanity. “He wrote some rather lovely things about us, all things considered. It feels… A tad bit complicated to force some kind of separation from the author and his creation.”
“Does it?” He tapped a black nail on the page. “It says right there it’s to bring attention to his actions, not exonerate him from them. Besides, didn’t that book about us get authored by two folks?” Crowley scoffed, removing himself from the side of his Angel to look Aziraphale in the eyes. “This is just a consequence. You don't get to act like… that… behind closed doors and expect to keep your angelic public relations.” Crowley waved his hand at the page.
Aziraphale looked down at the paper and back up at Crowley. The memory of hellfire, burning pages, and collapsing buildings lingered at the edges of his mind. Now replaced by the smell of tea and wine in a dusty bookshop.
“I suppose you’re right, my dear,” Aziraphale murmured, folding the newspaper beneath his arm. He left it on the table, next to the freshly altered novel Good Omens on the desk at his side. Now, with the sole name Sir Terry Pratchett left untouched, a searing mark crossing out the additional author’s name left its place on the page. “It seems some fires are entirely self-inflicted. Now, I believe I owe you a glass of wine. Let’s scrounge a vintage that survived.”
“Oi, wasn’t it a jug?”
End