Chapter Text
Crowley was an optimist. It had been a constant about him, since the very genesis of his being.
It had been easiest, of course, when his life had been easiest; and funny thing, that, that things had gone so downhill for him, it made breathing stars into creation seem like a walk in the park.
But it had been, really — because it was what he had been made to do. And he had been elated for it; joyful, to watch nebulae burst into life before his eyes, covering the vast expanse of the universe with twinkling lights and pulsing, glowing colors.
Yet still he had kept his optimism, even in the face of such antithesis.
Even when he had been plummeting from Heaven, wings blackened and charred, throat hoarse and voice lost from screaming; even when he had plunged headfirst into a pit of boiling sulfur and dragged his way out, watching in horrified agony as his angelic corporation had caved into a mass of writhing scales, the coils of a cursed serpent; even when, after six thousand years spent on Earth and having a rather grand old time, really (save, of course, for the 14th century), it had seemed as if it were all going to come to a grisly end at the hands of an eleven-year-old boy.
But the world hadn’t come to an end. Just as Crowley hadn’t perished when he had Fallen; just as even the 14th century had, eventually, given way to the 15th — the century when the humans had started making good whiskey, making it, in Crowley’s opinion, astronomically better than the last.
Crowley was unlike other demons for many reasons, and his optimism was one of them. Generally, demons did not feel much emotion save for the three Bs: boredom, bitterness, and burning homicidality. That last B was technically a cheat, but Crowley’s imagination was rather limited to things he actually cared about, and his former co-workers were not one of those things.
What Crowley had always imagined — had always believed — was that, in the end, things would work out for him. They always had. Even if, each and every time, it took a long while to get there. Of course, he had taken time to mope, and feel very sorry for himself, when times were particularly difficult — or even just in the wake of some brief annoyance when he felt like being particularly dramatic. But there was a difference between having a moment, and giving up entirely.
Crowley had suffered through a great deal of misery and pain. He had seen the face of God turn away from him as he and the rest of the Fallen had been cast from Heaven; he had felt every atom of his body be devoured by the pits of Hell from the inside out; he had been subject to Hell’s punishments for his own demonic incompetence enough times for it to have left a mark, over the millennia.
All of that, and he had picked himself back up and carried on.
And yet there had been two moments in his life — one in the past, one ongoing — in which he did not pick himself back up. In which he, instead, stayed right where he was. In which he, metaphorically speaking, just lay there and let himself bleed.
The first time he had given up, it had been by the blazing roar of a ferocious fire, and the stifling choke of smoke curdling in his lungs. That defeat had lasted only a few hours, but Crowley still counted it; a singular outlier, in millennia of boundless optimism.
The second, it was by the burning of lips against his own, and the suffocation of words that had gone unsaid. And that defeat lasted — was lasting, rather — much, much longer.
There was a common denominator, in both scenarios.
It — or, he, rather — did not have anything specifically to do with Crowley’s optimism. Crowley was not optimistic because of him, nor for him. But in the absence of him, he found it rather more difficult to be.
Crowley had not meant to become smitten by an angel. In either meaning of the word.
When he had first slithered in Eden, he had, in fact, been quite concerned about the possibility of the Principality on the Eastern Gate smiting him (i.e., striking a lethal, angelic blow that would render Crawley quite unoptimistic, because he would be dead), a concern that had quickly abated the moment the angel had offered a wing to shield him from the rain.
But across millennia, his concerns had switched to the far more pressing, in Crowley’s opinion, possibility of him becoming smitten (i.e. — entirely, irrevocably, ineffably in love) with the very same Principality.
It was quite an inconvenience, really.
Hard to be an optimist, when you were ‘head-over-heels’, as the humans say, for your hereditary enemy — when you were doomed from the start, in other words.
Harder, when said hereditary enemy — when Aziraphale — had chosen his side.
And it was not their own.
Crowley was an optimist. It had been a constant about him, since the very genesis of his being.
For six thousand and four years, he had had one singular outlier: when he had thought Aziraphale had been destroyed in the bookshop fire, before the Armageddon-That-Wasn’t. He rather thought that that was still a good, mostly clean record; grief killed humans every day, he was quite allowed to have a few hours to have cast up a feeble white flag and conceded to the end of the world.
These days, however, it had become less of an outlier, and more of a standard.
The Three Bs were a lot simpler, anyway. Even if his were less of being bored, bitter, and burningly homicidal — and more of being bored, bitter, and broken-hearted.
If asked on the matter, Aziraphale, too, would call himself an optimist.
He was an angel, after all; it was part of his job description, to see the best in things. To find the good in every circumstance. To hope, as Crowley did, that everything would work out in the end — for the world, if not for himself. And that, to him, was what really mattered, when it all came down to it.
Through his own optimism, Aziraphale believed — with every part of himself — that he could influence the universe for the better. That meaningful change against the things that were wrong about it all was possible, so long as there were individuals such as himself willing to fight for it. Whereas Crowley may have seemingly abandoned such a notion long ago, Aziraphale was convinced that there was a chance for it.
That was why he accepted the Metatron’s offer; that was why he had become Supreme Archangel.
Aziraphale was not an idiot. He knew the things Heaven had done — to the world and humanity in it, to himself, to Crowley. But simultaneously, he wasn’t going to sit idly by, twiddling with his thumbs, when he was given the opportunity to fix things. And at the crux of it, he believed Heaven was a place of truth, and light, and goodness, just as he had told Crowley.
When Heaven ends life here on Earth, it’ll be just as dead as if Hell had ended it, Crowley had said in return — but Aziraphale knew that he could stop life on Earth from ending at all, because he believed that he could make a change.
Regardless of that belief, however; he, too, was . . . struggling.
Leaving Crowley had felt so wrong that it had very nearly trumped what he knew was right. That thought alone terrified him, just as every word that had left Crowley’s mouth in his last few minutes on Earth had terrified him, just as it had terrified him when Crowley had kissed him — kissed him! — with all the ferocity and desperation he could possibly muster.
Just as it had terrified him when, for a moment, he had kissed him back.
Just as he had been terrified, for the past six thousand and four years, because his life on Earth was not a Jane Austen novel; because they were an angel, and a demon, and even if — as Crowley had said, or started to say — even if, in the past four years, they had been something more of their own side, they were, still, an angel, and a demon.
And yet . . .
Aziraphale was no stranger to difficult decisions. He had chosen his side in the Great War, despite the familiar faces he had seen opposing him; he had given his flaming sword to Adam and Eve, and he looked into the Light of God as he had lied about it; and he had sacrificed the love he had for Crowley (had always had, would always have), for the sake of humanity.
He could make a change, make a difference.
Or at least, that was what he had believed; when he had looked at Crowley, eyes full of tears, and forgiven him.
The thing about Heaven was that everyone in it should, theoretically, be as optimistic and as hopeful for the future of humanity as Aziraphale himself was. They were angels; they had watched God create Adam from dust, and Eve from Adam. They had seen the beginning of the people; had seen the best of them, and the worst of them. They had seen the potential, within every single person, of their free will.
Instead of inspiring most angels, however, it frightened them.
Angels were not built for free will. It was, arguably, why so many had Fallen after the Great War. God had invented free will for the people to have, not for Her angels to wield as a weapon of asking questions and threatening Her authority, and whatnot (all of which Crowley had snarled about, to a great extent, while they had both been drunk many, many centuries ago, and that Aziraphale had not forgotten about since). It was for that same reason that Aziraphale had been terrified for six thousand and four years, since the moment he had offered his wing to the demon on the wall of Eden, who had a smile that he recognized from the cosmos.
The bottom line was that angels saw free will, and saw something that needed to be destroyed.
And, thus: the Second Coming, and Aziraphale’s determination to circumvent it.
He would. He would circumvent it.
That was something he believed not because he wanted to, but because he had to. Because otherwise, everything was for nothing, and he would not even have been given the chance to say to Crowley all of the things that terrified him, just as clearly as Crowley’s own words had terrified himself, in the bookshop.
If asked on the matter, Aziraphale, too, would call himself an optimist, because he was an angel — and yet, an angel who believed in free will, and in humanity, and in the chance to make a difference.
Even when things started going pear-shaped.