Chapter Text
Baby, every single minute
I'll be your hero and win it
When the lights go out
REBECCA: It’s a beautiful morning, London! I’m Rebecca Moss, and you’re watching the Morning Snooze, where we give you the facts so you can hit snooze. Today is October 3rd, and this morning, it’s—
GAVIN: [NOT LOOKING AT THE CAMERA] Hot. So very, very hot.
REBECCA: And he’s Gavin Fielder, the little minx. Somebody came on air without his morning coffee, didn’t he? [LOWERS VOICE] In fact… I feel a little bit hot under the collar myself since the shower. And the kitchen counter. And the drive over here—
GAVIN: It’s a scorcher out there. Hottest day London’s seen in ages, especially with you all… wrapped up in that dress of yours . But I think I know a way to help you out…
REBECCA: Oh, yeah? What are you going to do to cool me down?
GAVIN: I think I have a couple of double-D ideas—
WEATHERMAN: Actually, Gavin, not to interrupt, but we are experiencing record lows this autumn morning, not to mention that in a few isolated places throughout London as well as… well, the world, there has apparently been… tilapia raining from the sky? That’s right, London, this Sunday morning, precipitation has been a mixture of water, sleet, and fish —
[THE HOSTS START NUZZLING EACH OTHER ON THE COUCH. THE WEATHERMAN CONTINUES TO TALK. ONLY THE CAMERAMAN NOTICES, AND PULLS OUT, WHEN AZIRAPHALE WALKS FROM OFF SCREEN ONTO SET]
AZIRAPHALE: Sorry I’m late. My associate and I were tied up in important, uh, business. But I’m here, I’m ready to begin.
[THE HOSTS TURN AWAY FROM EACH OTHER, UNPHASED]
GAVIN: I’ve been tied up before too! Anywho, London—our man with a plan, Aziraphale Fell, is back in the studio today with a new directive from N.W.H.O. about what I understand to be… child labor, of all things? Welcome back, Mr. Fell.
AZIRAPHALE: Ah, yes. Hello, I have… quite a lot to say, in fact.
REBECCA: You had ‘quite a lot to say’ about child labor last time, too, if you catch my drift!
[AZIRAPHALE LOOKS DOWN AT THE PAPER IN HIS HANDS, THEN BACK UP TO THE CAMERA, THEN BACK DOWN TO THE PAPER]
AZIRAPHALE: Yes, erm, I have an announcement directly from the N.W.H.O. Right from the jaws. And—and it is of utmost importance that you and everyone at home listens to precisely what I have to say. Are you all ready?
[BOTH OF THE HOSTS TURN TO LOOK AT AZIRAPHALE, EYES BEGINNING TO GLAZE OVER. THE WEATHERMAN KNOCKS HIS COFFEE OVER WITHOUT NOTICING. EVEN THE CAMERA VEERS AN INCH LEFT, LIKE THE CAMERAMAN ISN’T PAYING ENOUGH ATTENTION TO KEEP IT CENTERED]
AZIRAPHALE: What is… not?
[A BEAT OF CONFUSED SILENCE]
AZIRAPHALE: For ‘not’ is not what… is, but instead, whoever is brave enough to—to become! And who becomes the becoming? Who… who can not be, but in its place, has enough happening in order to create what is forthcoming. What comes forth. What… is for?
[REBECCA’S JAW DROPS. THE WEATHERMAN LOOKS BEWILDERED. GAVIN NODS ALONG, LIKE HE UNDERSTANDS WHAT IS BEING SAID]
AZIRAPHALE: And—and nothing, too! Much ado with it! When nothing begins, we inevitably must… become not—see, I brought back the thing from earlier if you were paying attention— and. And that not is what I did not come here to tell you, but show you, rather, as its ineffable shower. Because if becoming is not, and if nothing is not, and if creation is not, then what is fourth in that list must be the… coming. What forthcomes. The end.
[AZIRAPHALE SMILES POLITELY. GAVIN HAS STOPPED NODDING. THE STUDIO IS SILENT. AZIRAPHALE LOOKS DOWN AT THE PAPER AGAIN AND CLEARS HIS THROAT]
AZIRAPHALE: Did you catch that? No? Very well. Once more—
“Nonsense,” Aziraphale says drily.
“Nonsense,” Crowley agrees.
The sunlight has turned pale outside of the windows, less golden and more of a diluted, delicate yellow. Despite sunset having confusingly meshed seamlessly into sunrise throughout the hours, the following day seems to be progressing as normal, if sunnier by London’s standards. And now, companionable haze decidedly dimmed, Aziraphale watches as Crowley jumps to his feet gracelessly from the hardwood floor. He doesn’t have a strip of clothing on him.
Similarly, Aziraphale is still completely bare, half-covered by the blanket and not making any move himself to rise. He says incredulously, “I just told you we can begin looking for the Book of Life, you understand.”
Crowley’s voice comes out rapidly, distracted. “And I’m telling you that before we can, you need to go on air and spout a load of nonsense to get yourself out of the false prophet position before it sticks.” He seems to be looking for his clothing, strewn in with Aziraphale’s across the bookshop. He’s found his trousers and a single shoe, but not much else. “The humans can’t follow what they can’t understand.”
There’s twin dimples very, very low on Crowley’s back, just below a few faint, pink lines on either side of his spine. It takes Aziraphale a moment to remember what he was saying.
“Yes, and regarding that—I’m expected to believe nonsense is going to revoke my position as the false prophet? No further strategy than that?”
“Your impending position,” Crowley corrects him, giving up on his search for pants and shucking on his trousers directly over his bare legs instead. “And we don’t have the time to strategize. You have to text Pestilence immediately and go on air, sever the cord entirely.” Button, zipper, then he’s threading his ridiculous belt through the belt loops. “There’s no point in saving your life if there’s a chance you’re just going to get tossed into the bottomless pit immediately after, all by some biblical decree outside of my control.”
“With the antichrist, you mean,” Aziraphale says, filling in the blanks that aren’t being said.
“It’s not going to come to that,” Crowley assures him, in a decidedly unassured way that tells Aziraphale that it might, indeed, come to that. Then he tongues at his lip, lifts a hand to run restlessly through his hair; never-seen, the lithe inner curve of his bicep briefly transfixes Aziraphale away from whatever they’re talking about. Crowley says, “If we’re going to succeed in pulling you out from under Heaven’s thumb, we’re doing it all the way. Meaning you have to remove your piece from the board entirely.”
And Aziraphale can understand that, begrudgingly. He thinks of Adam’s anxiety over the phone regarding Aziraphale slotting himself into the place reserved for Charles Rayburn. There seems to be a fear, there, that if Aziraphale is the false prophet instead, he’s in danger—that it will, undoubtedly, come to that. And false prophet or not, Aziraphale’s piece has been on the board already for some time, now. Unprotected. He should have been knocked off many, many moves ago, but he’s kept waiting for some reason, watching the pieces all-too-willing to overtake him loom in the distance. Like he’s being toyed with by a pack of wolves.
Aziraphale thinks about Raphael. The angel is faceless in his head, even still—not yet donning brilliantly red hair, a wicked smile, eyes so knowing and earnest no matter yellow or brown. Formless, as angels were before they knew what bodies were. What bodies could do.
Raphael could be anyone, in Aziraphale’s head. Anyone at all.
“Oh, all right,” he surrenders, only because he doesn’t see any other way forward, either. “I’ll let Pestilence know to reschedule my press conference.”
“As soon as possible,” Crowley reminds him, nabbing his other shoe from where it’s perched on the lampshade in the corner. “In fact, insist on tomorrow. Some morning program to reach as many people as possible.”
There’s a dusting of copper hair beneath the barely-there swell of his navel. Aziraphale knows the texture of it against his tongue, now. Knows a great deal many things that he had only ever allowed himself to imagine, and—if they do fail in finding the Book of Life, if Aziraphale truly only has a handful of months left… He could stand to learn more, too. Fit as much knowledge that he can into the life he has now.
So Aziraphale says, quite casually, “I was planning on giving sleeping another go.”
A beat. “In the middle of the morning,” Crowley replies flatly.
Aziraphale hums his assent. “Quite. Now that I have my appetite back, I think I’d like to finally try that breakfast in bed that everyone has always been spouting on about.”
“You’d like for me to fetch you breakfast, you mean,” Crowley amends.
Aziraphale is still curiously not looking at him, finding the chandelier above them far more interesting. “Only if that’s… something that would interest you.” He says mildly. “You’re free to say ‘no’, of course.”
There’s a harrumph, then an expectant silence that ends up going on for so long, Aziraphale eventually has to peek out at the demon from the corner of his eye. Crowley’s leveling him with an endlessly fond look, mixed with a healthy dose of exasperation tempering his haste. He has his waistcoat and blazer over his bare arm, not yet having found his proper button-up, though Aziraphale certainly isn’t going to help him along with a miracle.
“What are you doing?” Crowley asks him slowly. He’s got dimples on his cheeks, too.
“I shouldn’t have to tell you what I’m doing,” Aziraphale retorts with a huff, feeling the sudden urge to snap himself completely dressed. He settles for pulling the blanket up to his chest, exposing his toes as a response. “You know, for a demon, you’re not very good at temptations.”
Crowley’s brow spikes up at that, as if challenging, but he doesn’t say anything else, just looks away with a snort of air to give one more half-hearted search for his shirt.
Aziraphale takes pity on him, though not much. “You’re far enough away from me,” he points out, not moving his head. “The miracle blocker doesn’t extend that far. You can, in fact, snap yourself dressed.”
“And deprive you of the show you’re watching?” Crowley asks playfully. “Perish the thought.”
Aziraphale goes on looking stubbornly to the chandelier. Crowley finally glances up at the chandelier, too, and does a double-take when he realizes his shirt is caught up in the lower prongs. Aziraphale keeps his face purposefully blank when Crowley shoots him a dull glare without heat, before he has to do a few awkward hops to catch the sleeve and tug it down the rest of the way.
Crowley sighs theatrically at the continuing silence. “How’s dinner in bed sound, instead?” He asks indulgently, working on the buttons deftly, rapidly, like there’s a meeting he’s minutes from missing. “I just need a few hours. Heaven’s not going to take too kindly to having the Book of Life found, so before that I have to… square some things away.”
“Square what away?”
“Never you mind what.” He slips on one shoe after the other, sans socks, hopping a bit when he has to balance on one leg to fix one of the shoes at their heel. “Consider your temptation accomplished.”
Then Crowley rights himself, only to approach Aziraphale and immediately dip down to his knees, yellow eyes locked on his mouth and a hand on the floor bracing himself beside Aziraphale’s shoulder. His other hand presses against the bare curve of Aziraphale’s pectoral, warm against his skin; while initially thought to be Crowley feeling him up, Aziraphale realizes belatedly that it was to keep him from rising up and meeting Crowley’s lips halfway. He looks up at Crowley in confused, indignant betrayal.
“Nonsense,” Crowley reminds him in a murmur, words brushing Aziraphale’s mouth quite temptingly indeed.
Then he gives a cheeky, crooked smile, and pulls away before giving him a proper kiss. He finds his tie draped over the horse bust with an a-ha! Throwing it around his neck, he unlocks the front door and strides right outside, immediately slipping on a flopping fish with a ridiculous flail of his limbs. The doors automatically slide shut behind him.
Aziraphale huffs at the chandelier and begrudgingly calls a draw in the matter of temptations.
AZIRAPHALE: … And not to mention the lack! Oh, there is a lack all over the place, both of becoming nothing and where the nothing becomes! Tell me you have noticed the lack!
[CONFUSED SILENCE. THE HOSTS ARE BEGINNING TO BREAK OUT OF THEIR FOCUS, THE AIR SHIMMERING AROUND THEM]
AZIRAPHALE: Because that’s the key! That’s what unlocks the forthcoming into—into the fifth! The sixth! Perhaps the seventh, even! And that’s what you need to remember, you… you must ask yourselves this: what lacks nothing, but doesn’t have anything? And with that—
REBECCA, SCREAMING: A memory!
AZIRAPHALE: I—What? Of course—
GAVIN, WITH A GASP: Ah… yes! Yes, a memory is what lacks nothing but doesn’t have anything! It isn’t lacking anything, because you only remember what was important to you, but memory ‘has’ no actual form! And Mr. Fell said ‘of course’! You heard it here on the Morning Snooze first, folks, the N.W.H.O.’s most recent statement is about memory.
AZIRAPHALE: What? I was saying of course not, because that’s not what I was trying to—
REBECCA: He’s so wise, isn’t he, Gavin?
GAVIN: [MOCK BOW AND LAUGH] We are not worthy! What a clever allegory you undoubtedly just gave for the people at home! Channel 38 will be playing it nonstop for the viewers at home over the next few days, seeing as we must listen to you and the N.W.H.O. always, as you have our best interests in mind at all times. Well, if that’s it, then thank you. Mr. Aziraphale Fell, ladies and—
AZIRAPHALE: [IN A PANIC] How about a question?
GAVIN: Um…sure! I have quite a few of those, actually!
AZIRAPHALE: I have one for the two of you, in fact. Let’s say… yes, let’s say I were to ask the both of you to remember a time you felt powerless. Can you remember that? Haven’t we all at one point or another felt as though we…couldn’t do as we pleased, couldn’t be who we are. Couldn’t change our station, or effect change at all, for any reason at all. Be it a particularly awful boss, or a parent… or maybe what we even perceive to be our own fate, that gets in the way of what we feel we’re capable of doing.
But I would then say to you: You can decide. You can always decide you can make your own choices. And in fact, you might have the ability to make a difference all on your own. Find that power, that innate drive to live as one’s true self, that hunger to leave your mark on the world, and grasp it with both hands—
[THE HOSTS MAKE A SUDDEN MOVEMENT FOR THE FAKE FRUIT BOWL ON THE COFFEE TABLE]
AZIRAPHALE: No, not like th—not yet. And finally, I would ask—nay, command everyone to do one last thing: ignore my commands. Can you do that for me?
[BOTH HOSTS SHARE A CONFUSED LOOK]
“A paradox!” Aziraphale gasps.
It’s several hours past sunset, and Aziraphale has been mulling over his next press conference all day. Pestilence had responded to his rescheduling text earlier with a time for tomorrow morning, a script, and a ‘Don’t be late’ in grammatically-perfect English. Aziraphale doesn’t need to assume she’s cross at him canceling several days before; he also doesn’t need to assume that when he doesn’t play along tomorrow, he’ll see a bit more of a cross Pestilence, and it won’t stop at her grammatical skills. He’s not entirely sure he’ll survive the encounter.
When Crowley doesn’t answer, he continues, “The humans won’t listen to nonsense, so—ah, so a paradox is the answer. I’ll just give a command that’s impossible to follow. You said—you said it yourself that the humans can’t follow what they can’t—understand.” He gasps again, nearly fluttering his eyes closed but keeping himself on topic with sheer momentum alone. “They also—also can’t follow what they understand but are physically unable to. Ergo. A paradox.” A breathless beat of silence. “Crowley? Are you—?”
“Are you serious?” Crowley says exasperatedly, flipping the blanket back from over his mussed hair. He’s been under the covers for the past twenty minutes between Aziraphale’s legs, and doesn’t take the interruption keenly. “You’ve terrible timing, you know that?”
“What? Terrible timing discussing the press conference that you insisted I needed to schedule?”
“But—but it’s not even daylight yet,” Crowley complains, as if it being nighttime is his sole hangup. “I’ve had a day. Can we agree from now on to keep the existential conversations for when the sun’s out?”
“Fine by me,” Aziraphale agrees easily, pushing up onto his elbows. “I will if you tell me what preoccupied you today.”
“Fine by me,” Crowley shoots back immediately, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand irritatedly. “I’ve nothing to hide from you. Not—not anymore, at least. I was getting us insurance once everything goes tit*-up the moment we find the Book of Life. Because it will go tit*-up. I was delineating tasks to demons in the event I can’t go downstairs again, telling them how to prepare themselves. In case…”
“In case finding the Book of Life triggers a war between Heaven and Hell,” Aziraphale finishes for him exasperatedly.
But Aziraphale doesn’t actually care about the specifics— more so the principle of why those specifics still exist. He also feels the absence of his mouth acutely, and wriggles restlessly in place. “I just don’t understand how, precisely, you’re still Grand Duke,” he says honestly. “Satan knows you’re working with Heaven now, knows… knows all sorts of things now.” Aziraphale swallows, continues on hurriedly to say, “He said he appointed you because you failed with the birth of the antichrist the first go-around. What, exactly, does Satan want you to fail in now?”
It’s a moment before Crowley speaks, and he’s purposefully toying with the sparse hair at Aziraphale’s stomach, eyes averted. “I… may have privately broached the topic of an alternate end to the Second Coming, before I’d been officially appointed,” he admits. “That there might be a way for everyone to survive, not just who Heaven ends up deeming as worthy. Including…” What follows is an all-too-loaded blank.
Aziraphale reels. “You want to save Satan—”
“I’m just saying that maybe destruction isn’t the answer, is all,” Crowley replies stubbornly. “That—that maybe things can change for the better without wiping them away like they’d never existed at all. Given I'm the head of Hell and the Almighty hasn’t been calling the shots in millennia, I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility.”
It is. But Aziraphale lets out a sigh, releasing his reservations with it from the tip of his tongue. If he wanted Crowley to reject being an eternal, unfailing optimist, then he’d be asking Crowley to reject the thing that makes him who he is in the first place.
But even still. There’s no harm in being cautious. “Satan appointed you as Grand Duke with that knowledge, and with the expectation that you’ll fail,” Aziraphale says carefully. “Meaning that he doesn’t want to be saved. Maybe he appointed you as leader of the lot because he wants the Second Coming to happen, Armageddon proper to go on with Heaven on the winning side.” There’s a thought that pops into Aziraphale’s head at that, but it’s vague, inscrutable. It bothers him, though, that thought. Like a pebble in the sole of your shoe that refuses to leave. “How do you save what, by nature, isn’t allowed to be saved?”
But Crowley’s distracted again. “You and your bloody paradoxes,” he mutters against Aziraphale’s hip, hands dipping beneath the covers to squeeze at the breadth of his calves. “Do the paradox, do the nonsense, go on the telly and declare war on Mars, there! Are we done talking now?”
Aziraphale does a show of thinking on it for a moment. He decides, “No, actually. We’re not.”
Crowley groans loudly from deep in his chest.
Unphased, Aziraphale reaches out and takes Crowley by the chin. “I have another paradox for you, actually. If you’ll humor me.”
He leans himself back against the pillows. Crowley follows pliantly, immediately going to half-crawl over his body. His weight settles between Aziraphale’s legs, the hard press of his hips. His complaints have died off into quietly eager eyes, flushed cheeks, an open mouth curled into a wondering, barely-there smile; waiting on further instruction.
Aziraphale stops him when they’re a mere inch away, and says, “There once was a demon who claimed to embody evilness due to his very nature. Yet he loved an angel, conspired with Heaven to keep the humanity he’s meant to damn both alive and un- damned, and even offered to save the Dark Lord himself.” Aziraphale shifts in place, and goes on shifting some more when their skin zips electric heat back-and-forth at the sensation. “Because… because despite being this infamous embodiment of evil, I daresay he wasn’t very evil at all, down to that very same nature. And do you know who that demon is?”
Crowley’s grinning now with his tongue pressed between his teeth. He shakes his head slowly, eyes never leaving Aziraphale’s.
“Are you quite sure of that?”
A wordless nod.
Slowly, enticingly, Aziraphale reaches around to press his hands on either side of Crowley’s spine, fingers pushing into his shoulder blades. His palms warm, until they begin to glow a soft, balming, divine gold. Crowley’s breathing speeds up against Aziraphale’s lips, his pulse thudding thickly between the press of their bodies. He bears the both of them firmly down into the mattress with a cut-off groan.
Aziraphale murmurs, smile growing, “Perhaps I should show you, then.”
GAVIN: A shock collar, maybe? You could ignore a command that way.
REBECCA: No, no, he wants us to put on earmuffs!
AZIRAPHALE, HEAD IN HIS HANDS: The guessing isn’t the point of the command, the point is that it’s inherently impossible to follow . There’s no way for you or anyone to follow it.
GAVIN: Oh! So the answer is my ex-wife!
[THE WEATHERMAN IS STILL WATCHING IN A DAZE, BUT HE’S BLINKING AND SHAKING HIS LIMBS, LIKE HE’S EMERGING FROM UNDERWATER. AZIRAPHALE WATCHES HIM DO THIS, EMBOLDENED, AND PICKS BACK UP THE PAPER]
AZIRAPHALE: Actually… Would you like the actual answer?
[IT’S LIKE A SWITCH IS FLIPPED. IN UNISON, BOTH HOSTS SLOWLY NOD THEIR HEADS. EVEN THE CAMERA PIVOTS UP AND DOWN]
AZIRAPHALE: Because the answer you are trying so hard to find… is in Daniel 6.
REBECCA, FROWNING: ‘Daniel Sex’? The contact name I gave the intern last year after I had sex with him?
AZIRAPHALE, IGNORING HER: Daniel 6: They said before the king, That Daniel, which is of the children of the captivity of Judah, regardeth not thee, O king, nor the decree that thou hast signed—
[A STATIC FILLS THE AIR. PERHAPS THE MICROPHONE IS MALFUNCTIONING AND PICKING UP TOO MUCH ROOM TONE. OR PERHAPS—]
AZIRAPHALE, SPEEDING UP: The king commanded, and they brought Daniel, and cast him into the den of lions. Now the king spake and said unto Daniel, Thy God whom thou servest continually, he… he will deliver thee.
[THE HOSTS BEGIN TO SHAKE THEIR HEADS, BECAUSE THIS ISN’T RIGHT, IS IT? ISN’T IT?]
AZIRAPHALE: And a stone was brought, and laid upon the mouth of the den; Then the king went to his palace, and—
[WAIT—]
AZIRAPHALE: —He arose very early in the morning, and went in haste unto the den of lions—
GAVIN, WINCING IN PAIN: I don’t—I’m not sure—
[REALITY CREAKS AND GROANS—]
AZIRAPHALE: Daniel, O Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God, whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee from the lions?
REBECCA, WITH HER FINGERS TO HER TEMPLES: I can’t—
[THE WORDS ARE GOLDEN—]
AZIRAPHALE: Then said Daniel unto the king, O king, live for ever.
[AND JUST LIKE THAT, THE PRESSURE GOES—]
AZIRAPHALE: My God hath sent his angel, and hath shut the lions' mouths, that they have not hurt me: forasmuch as before him— [VOICE CHOKES] before him, innocency was found in me.
—POP!
AZIRAPHALE, QUIETLY: O king… have I done no hurt.
GAVIN, BREATHING HEAVILY: What…
[A BEAT]
GAVIN: … An absolute tosser!
REBECCA, SCOFFING: Well. I think that’s enough of that. Mr. … Danielle, I think it was? I do believe you’ve overstayed your welcome. We have actual news to get to, like the Strictly Come Dancing season finale.
AZIRAPHALE, SMILING BRIGHTLY: So I have overstayed my welcome. Merry Christmas, everybody. [WIPES HIS CHEEKS AND DEPARTS]
GAVIN: It’s—isn’t it October? And it’s ‘Happy Holidays’, now.
REBECCA: What a wackjob! We’ll be reaching out to the N.W.H.O. and getting their statement on that statement. Nobody should listen to a thing he said. I don’t even think that guy has clearance, did we ever check?
GAVIN: We absolutely never checked. He was sent here by the network, I think. Way above my paygrade.
REBECCA: Uh oh! It sounds like somebody upstairs has gone rogue! Anywho, our next breaking story: the new Strictly Come Dancing Champion is—
“What defines a prophet as false?” Aziraphale whispers.
It’s the blue-tinged darkness of early morning, sun not having yet crested the horizon, but its impending arrival casts the overcast London into an ambient, ethereal glow. Crowley is pale in this light, hair nearly indigo against the pillow. Asleep, the stubborn lines of his face are smoothed, blurred away—he looks boyish in a way he never has before, not in this body, yet fiercely reminiscent of the Crowley he was before his Fall in the brilliant lights of the blooming universe. Aziraphale almost can’t bear waking him.
Almost.
“Crowley,” Aziraphale says.
“I heard you,” Crowley grumbles. “Why did I hear you? I was sleeping.”
“Because I have a press conference I’m meant to ruin in nearly an hour, and I need to know the entirety of the— lions den I’m going to walk into afterwards once Pestilence realizes what I’m doing.”
“I don’t get a lot of sleep in my line of work,” Crowley points out, not otherwise interacting with a thing Aziraphale said. “Could you let me have this, please? I doubt we’ll be able to sleep much once we find the Book of Life, and I’d like to make this one count, thanks.”
“Yes, about that. I’ve heard you’ve been doing nothing but sleeping these last few years,” Aziraphale shoots back provokingly. “Tell me, how do I hold up to the other Aziraphale? Does he do that thing with his tongue—”
With a stubborn frown, Crowley reaches out with spindly, grabby limbs to gather Aziraphale in his arms and legs, mouth smushed to his temple and arms tight around his back. Immediately charmed, Aziraphale folds into him in response, wraps his arms around Crowley’s waist and presses their abdomens together until the expanding of their inhales are alternating, their rising chests making space for the other in their exhales.
“Doesn’t compare,” Crowley sighs.
“I’ll choose to interpret that the complimentary way,” Aziraphale says.
Crowley settles into place with a wriggle and another sigh. “A prophet is false when he says he’s doing God’s will and spreading ferment instead,” he says, voice rough as gravel from sleep. “Ferment, of course, is anything not drawn out by God Herself at the beginning of time. There’s… loads of false prophets, always have been. But The False Prophet in Capital Letters is specific to the end times. Like the antichrist.” Crowley huffs, his breath fluttering Aziraphale’s hair. “And it was going to be Rayburn, but. I doubt Pestilence will work with me to make that happen after this.”
Aziraphale isn’t guilty. Moreso—perplexed, maybe. Speculative. “Why don’t you tell Pestilence that we’re all on the same side, saving humanity?” Aziraphale asks against Crowley’s neck.
That same neck flexes when Crowley takes a deep, resigned breath at the second interruption. “The choice has to come from her,” he says. “If Adam gives her a command to follow, she’ll fall right in line. It’s like triggering the wild instincts of a—I don’t know. A tamed wolf, maybe. She was built to listen to Adam. No, we keep her happy, and keep her survival in her own hands. She’s making the decision to stay sealed, stay tamed, and nobody else.”
“But…” Aziraphale licks his lips, unable to let this one go. “But what if she is triggered into becoming the final horseman? Accepting her crown, her—her role, just as Pollution had?”
Crowley pulls back at that, to meet Aziraphale’s eyes blearily but determinedly. “She won’t,” he says firmly. “Adam may be young and—yeah, a bit too whale obsessed, but the kid knows what he’s doing. And he’s right; as long as she stays tamed, Armageddon can’t resume.” Crowley leans in closer. “She wants to survive, angel. That was enough for me—it’ll be enough for her, too.”
And then Crowley kisses him before he can ask any more questions. It’s a different sort of kiss—it’s the delicate, trepidatious sweep of lips together that are too tired to conjure up much friction. It makes Aziraphale inhale involuntarily through his nose, filling his chest up with the warm air between their bodies; it makes him tingle to the tips of his fingers and toes, and even more places still. Without meaning to, Aziraphale lets slip a soft noise from high up in his throat.
Crowley pulls back, just enough to blink at Aziraphale owlishly. He seems considerably more awake, and in the soft, blue light, his eyes are more cream than yellow. He looks back down to Aziraphale’s lips, lashes fanning over his cheekbones. Aziraphale knows that look by now.
“I’m going to be late,” he points out breathlessly.
But Crowley’s already shaking his head with a creeping smile. “No you won’t,” he says assuredly, rolling the both of them over to go on kissing Aziraphale some more.
Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.
Matthew 7:15
The moment Aziraphale steps into the dressing room, he spots his mobile ringing on the overcrowded make-up table.
It’s Pestilence’s contact name. Which—there’s nothing else to it, really. A phone signal isn’t enough to stop the final horseman of the apocalypse, after all, whether she knows she still is or not. Aziraphale picks up the phone and, after a brief confusion at seeing his own face reflected on the screen, he goes ahead and slides the button to answer the call.
It’s a video. The infamous ‘Face Time’, he believes it’s called. When Pestilence’s face materializes on the screen, it’s perfectly put-together, and she’s looking so directly at Aziraphale it feels as though she’s there physically, an imposing force inside of the dressing room. Her violet eyes are almost too saturated for the screen to handle. She’s saying absolutely nothing. It’s not comforting in the slightest, her silence—it has no reason to be. Given the circ*mstances.
“Ah…” Aziraphale begins uncomfortably. “Hello, there.”
Pestilence simply goes on staring. It’s expectant, vaguely, while also being uncomfortably reminiscent of the slow ticking of a bomb. Aziraphale isn’t sure which one of them is meant to give first—which explosion the silence is counting down to. He shifts uncomfortably in place.
“I’m sorry for being late,” he continues, just to say anything. “Something came up. Two things, really, but I can promise you that it won’t happen again—”
“Would you like to explain to me,” Pestilence finally asks, strength of her voice vibrating the speaker of Aziraphale’s phone, “Why you didn’t just follow the damn script?”
“I…” Aziraphale’s eyes flick up to the mirror beside him, darting around to clamor for a distraction. None decide to grace him, so he says, like ripping off a bandage: “I didn’t know how else to submit my resignation from the false prophet position.”
An extended beat.
“And speaking gibberish was your method?” Pestilence asks, disbelieving and dangerously free of volume, or outward expression of the ancient droves of her anger.
“It wasn’t gibberish, it was unfollowable,” Aziraphale corrects her. He waves his script towards the camera, hand-written and decidedly not what Pestilence had sent him to say. “Because that breaks the curse, doesn’t it? I give the humans instructions they’re bound to follow but physically can’t, except for the one.”
Pestilence’s nostrils flare.
Heedless, Aziraphale continues, “Heaven and Hell only recognize a prophet as false if they’re going against the Almighty’s words.” He smiles, eyes wide and probably a bit too crazed. He feels a rush of air behind him, like someone entering the room to tell him unequivocally to get out of the Channel 38 news station. “So I gave Her instructions exactly. It’s over. I’m not the false prophet anymore, just—” He doesn’t want to go as far as calling himself a prophet. So he says, turning around to see who’s arrived, “Just an angel free to do exactly what he—”
Aziraphale cuts off in a squeak. There, so tall the top of her puffed hair brushes the dressing room ceiling, Pestilence is standing in person, lowering her phone to her side with a dangerous slowness to her speed. The energy crackles around her, blurring the edges of her bronzed skin nearly violet—Aziraphale assumes it’s out of the question to tell her it clashes with the chartreuse of her dress.
“Ah, hello again,” Aziraphale says with a swallow, lowering his own mobile phone, too. “Yes, I’ve heard that these conversations are better to have in person.” He takes a deep breath, before announcing, like he’s breaching the conversation for the first time, “I quit.”
Pestilence’s lashes are so thick that when she widens her eyes, it makes them look twice as large. Incredibly unnerving. “Quitting was never an option,” she says.
“Well! I suppose it is an option now, considering that all of this—” Aziraphale waves his arms around them both, with a bit of a performative flourish at the wrists, “—was me informing you that I was quitting. In fact, I did most of the legwork myself in undoing my influence, so I actually saved you quite a bit of—”
“You went back on our deal,” she replies sharply, the ‘k’ gutural in the back of her throat.
Uncowed, Aziraphale huffs, “I most certainly did! You mean, of course, the deal where you exchange blatantly false information over Crowley’s status while I damn myself into being your— poker chip to surviving? That deal, you mean?”
In Pestilence’s defense, she doesn’t bother to try and lie about her part in Aziraphale’s ignorance of Crowley’s whereabouts, his near-execution at the claws of Satan. Without Adam’s phone call, who knows what would have happened. “The fate of the planet is more important than a demon who can’t decide who has his loyalty,” she snaps.
“And what do you know of Crowley’s loyalty?” Aziraphale challenges.
“I know he’s lying to me,” she says immediately, without a moment of thought. “I know him and Adam are working together to begin the Second Coming, and I know they’re using me and my— proclivities to help them along. I know he stole your universal healthcare plan from you to help me get the N.W.H.O. off the ground.” She leans down, speaking very, very precisely. “And I know that he’s not being truthful to you, either. That there’s a reason he wanted to put in his own false prophet before the rightful one could take his place—before you could take your place.”
“You know a great deal, then,” Aziraphale replies, relentless in his own right. “Which is how you know that the only way forward is to ensure the humans are beholden to themselves and no one else. That’s what I’ve ensured, and without a false prophet… they’re free.” It’s what Aziraphale has always cared about, even at the beginning—humanity’s autonomy and freedom to make the choices for their own souls, answering to nobody else. He’s nothing if not consistent, at least.
But Pestilence just blinks. When she replies, her voice is canted high, and far slower than before. “…You don’t even realize what you’ve just done,” she says bewilderedly. “Have you?”
Aziraphale doesn’t give himself a moment to consider otherwise. “Oh, I most certainly do,” he corrects her. “I’m not a player any more. I might have my reservations about my survival afterwards , but at the very least, I’ve…” He nods to himself. “I’ve taken myself off of the board.”
He has little relief in the fact, but a fair bit amount of pride that it had actually worked in the first place. He’s had his fill of playing a part in the end times, however inadvertently—now, removed from becoming the false prophet and on the road to finding the Book of Life, for the first time in a very long time, Aziraphale feels… hope. Only a glimmer of it, like iridescent scales just beneath the surface of the water. He had forgotten what that felt like, so many long, long months bereft of it. He welcomes it with open arms.
But Pestilence is still looking at him in bafflement, like he’s still speaking in riddles. It makes Aziraphale bristle; it makes something dark and cold flood into the pit of his stomach. The scales descend back into the inky brine.
“You’re not a player anymore?” She scoffs, looking around as if to see if anyone can react with her. “There’s no board. Do you… do you think this is voluntary? Every single one of us is going to face Heaven’s iceberg. Not just you, not just the demons—hell, not even just the damned! We’re all going down with this goddamn ship!”
Her historical knowledge certainly doesn’t seem to be lacking from her time on Earth. Aziraphale clears his throat dismissively. “Well, there you go,” he says, a bit nervously. “If everyone is doomed, anyway, then there’s no point in me—”
“The false prophet is the only being in the world that has any power against what Heaven wants to do,” Pestilence interrupts, eyes dancing like violent, chemical flames. “You becoming that was going to save the planet from destruction, allow humans to survive long enough to be free. As long as you became the false prophet, there is nobody else in existence that they would listen to over you.”
Aziraphale shakes his head, argues, “They would listen to Christ—”
“Who’s never showing up!”
Aziraphale snaps his mouth closed. Pestilence half-turns like she’s going to leave, breathing heavily and perfectly-manicured hands spasming at her sides, like she’d clench them into fists if it wouldn’t break her nails. Then she takes pause, lifts her arms to press her steepled hands to her lips and closes her eyes—ironically, she looks as though she’s saying a prayer. It makes the frigidity in Aziraphale’s stomach go blacker, opaque like a frozen lake in December.
“Let me spell it out for you,” she eventually begins quietly, eerily. Her eyes open and fix onto Aziraphale unblinkingly, not unlike the humans outside before the curse was just broken. “God is dead, and Satan wants to die. Conveniently, Heaven wants Satan to die, too. The bottomless pit is already nice and unlocked for anyone to throw in the demons, who don’t need Christ’s judgment to figure out if they live or die—they got their mark of the beast the moment they Fell. Heaven is going to apprehend them, the planet is going to be cast into war, and the only way the humans can possibly survive it is if they can follow a singular voice with their best interests in mind.” Her face hardens, her arched brows drawing more severe and her lips curling back from her unnaturally-white teeth. “And what you’ve done is ensured that they’ve just lost their voice.”
Aziraphale has to choose his words very, very carefully. “As long as you don’t become a horseman again, Armageddon can’t restart,” he says slowly. “In that case, there doesn’t have to be a false prophet. You’re the last thing holding the war back. You—you know this, and that’s why you asked for my help. To remain sealed.”
Pestilence’s teeth bare even more as she takes a step closer, hissing furiously, “Pull your head out of your ass! The order doesn’t matter, it never has! The moment your boss, your real boss, decides to start the Seven Last Plagues of Revelation before the f*cking trumpets announcing the war, it’ll be over for me. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t follow the checklist to a ‘T’. All that matters to break the seal is the humans are getting sick, and I don’t have a false prophet to make them stop.”
“He… he can’t do that,” Aziraphale argues.
Pestilence barks out a humorless laugh. “Oh, he can’t? Who’s going to stop him?”
Nobody. And that’s the rub—there’s nobody that could, if the Almighty chooses not to, as She has been doing for some time, now. There’s nothing stopping The Metatron from going out of order, releasing the plagues and triggering Pestilence to cause them to spread—there’s nothing stopping him from beginning the Second Coming tomorrow if he wants to. If he wasn’t afraid of Aziraphale’s existence undoing it before it can take hold, that is. Making things worse.
Aziraphale feels out-of-sync with the rest of his human body, his mortal brain. It takes him a moment to blink back into focus, remember where he is. Whose side he’s on, if any sides other than ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ even exist in the first place. What he’s fighting for.
“The Almighty would never let that happen,” he eventually argues, and he’s honest, even past Pestilence’s resulting scoffs. “No, no, I’m being serious. I may have my grievances with Her, and I may not agree with the way She’s deciding to run things, but She’s alive. I know She’s alive. And above all, above even the survival of humanity, She would never let Herself be—be disrespected like that, Her mouthpiece going against Her orders so explicitly. It’s… it’s inconceivable that She would let him begin the Second Coming without Her permission!”
But Pestilence is shaking her head, pulling out her mobile phone. “If you think the Second Coming is about God, or Christ, or Judgment Day in the slightest— well. Then I’m sorry I ever wanted your help in the first place.” She dials a number, holds it up to her ear. “Clearly, you’re just as stupid as the rest of them.”
Aziraphale doesn’t parse the insult—he’s still stuck on that first bit. It strikes him directly in a hidden crack in his resolve, right at the itching in his brain that he hasn’t been able to ignore but also hasn't been able to decipher, either, for as long as it’s existed. “If the Second Coming isn’t about the second coming of Christ,” he says slowly, sounding like he’s listening to his voice from miles underwater, “Then what is it about?”
Pestilence doesn’t answer him, instead cooing sickly-sweet into the speaker of her mobile, “Oh, Anthony, please do join us. I can hear you slithering just outside.”
Aziraphale had been under the impression that Crowley had a last-minute meeting this morning. He watches flatly as Crowley turns into the dressing room not seconds later, pace casual, not looking guilty in the slightest at having been caught. He slows to a stop, half-between Aziraphale and Pestilence like he’s placing himself as a barrier. Aziraphale is less than flattered, given Crowley was apparently more-than-content with hiding outside while Aziraphale had been scolded by a blasted horseman .
“What seems to be the trouble, then?” Crowley asks placatingly, a bit on-the-nose. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we can come to some sort of agreement.”
“Oh, I’m sure we can’t,” Pestilence practically purrs, languid herself if not for the strained tendons of her neck, the shifting muscles of her face, as if she’s containing herself from any further outburst.
Meanwhile, Aziraphale mutters, “Thought you had a meeting.”
“Yeah, it ended early,” Crowley hisses back.
“Oh, well. Thanks for coming to my rescue and not skulking about like a wounded hyena.”
“I was waiting for an opportunity!”
“He knows I wasn’t going to do anything to you, girly pop ,” Pestilence informs Aziraphale bitterly. She begins to rummage through her purse, as if looking for something specific. “If I did, the Grand Duke Himself would have me shoved into the bottomless pit in two seconds flat with the others. I’ve been under his thumb the moment he pulled me out of retirement, made to obey him by Adam’s command. You were my last goddamn chance at freedom.”
That speaks to a level of understanding that’s indicative of far, far longer than the last handful of days. Pestilence hadn’t decided on a whim to hide Crowley’s sentencing from Aziraphale, to ask Aziraphale to become her false prophet. She hadn’t decided any of this on a whim.
“That’s why you wanted him out of the way,” Aziraphale says in realization. “You… you planned for Crowley’s intended punishment. The moment you handed me Lailah’s address.”
Crowley had said that he had been apprehended the moment he had gone back to Hell after their joint miracle in Oregon, that they had gotten to the miracle log before he’d even arrived, confirmed his name was involved. But—but that doesn’t make any sense. Heaven’s immediate realization is understandable, the search teams Saraquel had sent out the moment the Mother of God carrying the Almighty’s material form disappeared, surely setting off as many alarm bells in Heaven as the conception itself had. But in Hell…
“How did the dark council know the Mother of God was hidden so quickly?” Aziraphale asks, almost as if to himself. It’s rhetorical.
Pestilence knows it is and doesn’t deign him with a confirmation of what he already suspects. “I won’t be controlled,” she snaps instead without a shred of acknowledgement. She retrieves a piece of paper and hooks her purse back over the crook of her arm. “I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime, my fate being decided for me. I thought you of all people would understand what that feels like.”
Aziraphale does. Crowley takes an inconspicuous step backwards, putting him and Aziraphale nearly side-by-side.
“She just wants to cage you, just like she’s caged,” he tells Aziraphale easily, yet purposefully not looking away from Pestilence as he does. “If you’re the false prophet, your survival is intertwined with hers. You live, she lives. You die, she’s already too far gone. She wanted you locked into place.”
“You’ll die anyway if you don’t!” Pestilence snaps in a split-second lapse of composure. “We all do! That’s what the Second Coming is about!”
And Aziraphale wants to tell her that she’s wrong about Crowley, about thinking he’s helping destroy the planet that’s offering her the freedom she longs for, even if she doesn’t know it. That she’s not alone in her feelings, in her fierce desire to save the planet—she’s arguing to aged veterans at it, after all. Aziraphale knows how isolating it can be, to be the only one of your kind that cares even the slightest bit about Earth’s survival. About humanity.
But Pestilence isn’t listening anymore, already shaking her head disbelievingly and pulling back out her mobile.
“I really don’t have time for this,” she says dismissively, thumb tapping rapidly away. “I have hot yoga with my boyfriend in less than an hour, and you have no idea how hard it was to get him to agree to it, so.” With her other hand, she hands over the paper from her purse, not bothering to look up. “This is yours to keep.”
“What is it?” Crowley asks with a frown, lifting his glasses to squint down at the fine print.
“It’s my resignation. I’m stepping down from the N.W.H.O., and I didn’t have to give a dumbass press conference to let you know.” She pockets her mobile with a huff, lifts a hand to run over her hair, straightening down any stray locks out of place. Informs him, “If you want me to keep running it, you’ll need to have Adam make me. Until that happens, I’m officially going back into retirement.”
Aziraphale feels his eyelids flutter closed in defeat. Oh… oh, hell.
“Right!” Crowley says brightly, folding up the parchment until it seemingly disappears in thin air between his fingers. “That’s that, then. If you’ll excuse us, we have some unfinished business to take care of, so—” Crowley takes Aziraphale’s arm, tugs him out towards the dressing room’s doorway. Hisses under his breath, “Let’s go, angel.”
But Pestilence isn’t letting Aziraphale go without a parting word. “You could have finally broken Heaven’s hold on you, you know,” she says, almost pitifully. “You could have been Earth’s voice. You could have been a hero to humanity. Now look what you’ve done.”
Aziraphale doesn’t smile as Crowley leads him away, doesn’t feel the rush of relief at having broken free of Revelation’s hold on him, at least until his impending erasure makes its debut. Lost in thought, he simply has his brows drawn low and his frown set deep into the lines of his face. The last horseman of the apocalypse has retired, and now, Crowley won’t be able to ensure she won’t become unsealed. If it even mattered in the first place. Make it worse, the not-Crowley says in his head, a phantom of a memory. You were made to make it worse.
“As I’ve been informed by a reliable source,” Aziraphale says, “I’m already the villain to all three.”
This is the part, you've got to say all that you're feeling, feeling
Packing a bag, we're leaving tonight when everyone's sleeping, sleeping
Let's run away
I'll run away with you
“Now what?” Aziraphale asks.
Crowley falls into step right beside him, tempering his stride to match. For both of their sakes, he seems just as unwilling to discuss losing Pestilence’s favor, and just as willing to push forward and face their task directly. “We find the Book of Life,” he says simply. “Of course we find the Book of Life, now that I know you’re in the clear… ish. Don’t think I’ve forgotten what you’d said.”
“If I wanted you to forget, I wouldn’t have said it in the first place,” Aziraphale replies, holding open the front door of the news station for them both. “What did I say, exactly?”
But Crowley’s more impatient than he is anything else. “Where is it?” He asks insistently. “You said you know—”
“I said I think I know where the Book of Life is,” Aziraphale corrects him. “And I’m surprised it took you this long to ask.”
“‘This long?’ It’s been 24 hours! I’ve either been in Hell or in—well.” The early October air is colder than it has been, chill pinkening Crowley’s cheeks, so he pops the collar of his overcoat up and shoves his gloved hands into his pockets. “If I had known any earlier, I probably would have done something stupid.”
“Oh, heaven forbid.”
With a noise of frustration, Crowley stops him with a hand on the curve of his elbow. With his other hand, he takes off his glasses, revealing eyes that are far more pleading than playful. Aziraphale remembers fully how long Crowley has been waiting for this, for any information regarding the Book of Life. How intense he was with Dr. Giles anytime he got even the slightest bit off topic. It makes Aziraphale thaw, a bit, having someone advocate for his life. However futile it may or may not prove to be.
“Please,” Crowley says.
With a soft sigh through his nose, Aziraphale bends his arm, trapping Crowley’s hand amiably in the crook of it. Together, they begin walking again. “Of course,” he says. “Yes, old boy, of course I’ll tell you where I think it is. But first… I do believe a riddle might be—”
“Oh, christ—”
“At the beginning of the Earth, humans were free of sin,” Aziraphale begins anyway, leaning in closer to Crowley as they walk, grip tightening on his bicep. “I’m not going to get into the why humans suddenly weren’t, but nevertheless, the Second Coming is about returning back to the beginning. Removing the rot of sin and leaving only the righteous for God’s eternal paradise. So my question for you is: what is the only location on Earth that has ever, ever seen humanity it its most sinless?”
“Erm,” Crowley tries awkwardly. “Dollywood?”
“Think sandier,” Aziraphale replies. “With more walls. A famous eastern wall, in fact, with an… an even more famous guardian. A dashing one, really.”
Crowley blinks. His bafflement is clear enough even through his glasses, the answer reflected like they’re scrolling directly across the lenses. “Eden,” he says flatly, without any outward show of recognition. “Nearly seven months of sitting with this, and you think the Book of Life is being oh-so-securely hidden in what’s arguably the most well-known location in existence? Or, rather, not-existence?”
“Eden exists,” Aziraphale assures him, the slightest bit offended. “You were there, that’s where we—old boy, I daresay your memory is beginning to run away from you if you—”
“Of course I—right, anyway. If Eden still existed anymore, we’d know about it,” Crowley points out. “Six thousand years of time and settlement and bloody— sand? Even if the walls did still exist, there’s absolutely no way we could find it, let alone unearth the blessed thing—”
“—Ah, yes, and that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it?” Aziraphale says conspiratorially, stride nearly crossing over Crowley’s. He feels the familiar thrill of a mystery roll through his veins, even if his partner is less-than-enthusiastic. “The Book of Life has to be somewhere where humans can’t accidentally stumble across it, right? Then, yes. Sand. It could be buried beneath the desert so deeply that it’s inaccessible to archaeologists and paleontologists and all other sorts of made-up jobs. It’s not like they’d ever go digging to find it.”
“What are you talking about? Humans love to dig!” Crowley exclaims, flinging an arm out in front of him in agitation. “It’s their favorite thing to do! I’m serious, put a group of humans in a field and before you know it you’ll have potatoes and cemeteries and fake dinosaur fossils and—and bloody plastic—” Crowley makes an inscrutable sound of frustration. “Please don’t tell me Eden is your only guess.”
“Fine! I won’t tell you that, then!” Aziraphale says, before purposefully, intentionally not saying a thing more.
Crowley throws back his head and groans. “Oh, god, it’s like you want to be unwritten. I had my whole thing about—my whole speech about worms and—and flat-earthers, and you still can’t wrap your thick head around—”
“I thought you said in the Bentley that you were going to deny ever saying it again,” Aziraphale snaps, feeling quite irritated indeed. “You’ve brought that speech of yours up plenty of times since then, by my count.” He’d thought Eden was a good idea, and still does, but sometimes he likes to be praised for them rather than scolded. “Do you have a better idea, then? Go on, Miss Marple, tell me where the Book of Life is.”
“I don’t know where it is! That’s the entire point of you needing to tell me where it is!”
“Well then think,” Aziraphale insists, still feeling reminiscent of the figment of Crowley on a Californian cliffside, months ago. “I know that thick head of yours isn’t just for decoration. Think!”
“I—” Crowley begins, waving a hand dismissively at the notion that he has the ability to think in the first place, but then he slows. Stops walking entirely. Rolls his jaw back and forth, quietly speculative in a way he rarely is, eyeing at Aziraphale in the corner of his glasses.
“I know that look,” Aziraphale says, intrigued.
Crowley raises a brow at that absently, still thinking.
So Aziraphale continues, “It’s one of your, ‘I have an actual, coherent thought in my head, and I’m so shocked by the phenomenon that I have no idea what to do with it’.”
Crowley doesn’t react to the barb. He looks left and right, making sure there’s nobody that could possibly eavesdrop, then takes a step closer. “There is a place on Earth,” he begins slowly, quietly, “Where I have personally hidden away artifacts that I couldn’t keep in Hell, but needed them securely locked somewhere for safekeeping away from Heaven, Hell, and the humans. It’s not… out of the question that The Book of Life could be there, too. If it’s been moved at all over the years.”
Aziraphale frowns. “Why would it have ever been moved? It’s only unsealed during Revelation, isn’t it?”
“I mean, I don’t know!” Crowley hisses, fluttering his fingers around vaguely. “It’s a list of names deemed worthy of eternal life. Maybe God was just giving it a look while She was on Earth as Jesus, you know. It’s what she does, yeah? She made a list, She checks it twice.”
“That’s—I’m fairly certain that’s Santa Claus.”
“Just— listen!” Crowley licks his lips, tilting his head down so he’s meeting Aziraphale’s eyes over his glasses. “There are other… artifacts of religious notoriety down there, things the humans haven’t discovered. Things I hadn’t placed there myself, but could have only been handled by a not-human , so—so I’m not the only one who knows about it.” A beat, assessing Aziraphale’s lack of reaction in an acute sense of disbelief. “Why haven’t you miracled up your detective ensemble already? This is right up your alley!” Grumbles, “It’s better than your Eden, anyway.”
“Not by much,” Aziraphale replies, but despite himself, he finds himself intrigued less about the idea of a biblical hiding spot, but more to do with further proof that Crowley hasn’t yet told him everything there is to know about him. There’s still secrets between them. Before he’s gone, Aziraphale privately vows to unveil every single one. “Did you ever tell Saraquel about it? In your partnership?”
“Of course not. The point is that the things-being-hidden aren’t rediscovered, and I didn’t want to risk anyone knowing about them just in case—y’know. Just in case.”
Aziraphale remembers something about hiding places. Something about the polaroid still tucked snuggly in his blazer pocket, even now. When someone finds something they aren’t meant to find, you don’t hide the thing in the same spot later. Instead, you… pivot.
“Anyway, it’s a decent starting point, is all,” Crowley continues. “It would keep the Book of Life away from angels and demons, and the humans can’t go fussing with it, either. And it’s in a prime location for Christ The Second to get to, I promise. And—” He squeezes reassuringly at Aziraphale’s arm. “It’s on the way if we’re headed east anyway. I’d rather stumble across it there than have to go digging around in the desert for it. Wouldn’t you agree?”
“Hmph,” Aziraphale replies.
“We’ll have to fly there, though,” Crowley continues, pulling his mobile out of his pocket and opening up the web. Then awkwardly amends, “Erm. The human sort of flying, I mean. Can’t have it showing up in the miracle logs, or risk either side knowing where we’re going. We’ll need plane tickets.”
Crowley whistles for a cab, and when one pulls up to the curb, he gives the direction for Heathrow into the open window. Still typing on his phone, he uses his other hand to hold open the door chivalrously for Aziraphale to climb in first. It doesn’t charm Aziraphale in the slightest, but he goes to climb in regardless.
“Fine, I’ll play along,” Aziraphale says with an unamused huff. “Where, pray tell, do demons hide all of their evil, Satanic artifacts if they want to ensure no sorts of holy folk can ever stumble across them?”
Crowley gives him an inscrutable smile.
“The Vatican?” Aziraphale hisses. “You’ve been hiding demonic artifacts beneath the Vatican?”
The air in Rome is just as bitter as it was in London. The two of them were lucky enough to nab a last-minute flight without a miracle, but unlucky enough to spend far too much time in a cramped metro upon arrival to travel deeper and deeper into the heart of the city. After departing at San Pietro Station and taking a brief jaunt down Via Ottaviano, the obelisk standing up proudly from the center of St. Peter’s Square is undeniable.
“Of course,” Crowley says evenly enough. He hops nimbly over the fencing separating Rome from the Holy See ; scandalized, Aziraphale has to awkwardly follow, climbing over one leg at a time. Crowley tosses over his shoulder, “Why do you think I flew us here? The oysters?”
“Oh, yes—forgive me for thinking you to be a romantic,” Aziraphale snaps, miracling the carabiniere to stop yelling at them. Crowley approves it with a snicker.
The square is oddly free of tourists, comparatively; Aziraphale’s sure humans have enough keeping them occupied indoors, now that the celibacy curse on the planet has been lifted. Odd thing, that, but it need not be dwelt on. The stone walkway is wet from rain that’s currently not falling anymore, but looms in thick, gray clouds just west of the hill, brought in by the Tyrrhenian Sea. Ahead of them, the grandeur of St. Peter’s Basilica stands proudly against the haze, ornate and carved in impeccable proportion, watching them approach like it’s been anticipating their arrival.
“It’s the holiest object in the entire world we’re talking about, angel,” Crowley says. “Only meant to be handled by the hands of God. It has to be hidden somewhere neither angels nor demons are going, and with enough security that no human could dream of stumbling across it. So,” Crowley splays his hands out before them, to the grand pillars at the entrance extending high up into the sky. That seems to be the entirety of his answer.
But Aziraphale is less than amused. “And following that, your reasoning is that the Almighty shoved it beneath a tourist-trap.”
Crowley’s eye-roll is audible. “Listen, I know you and your whole ‘thing’ regarding the Pope—”
“He’s the Elvis Presley of the Christians without the sex appeal to show for it.”
“—But it’s a good guess! Angels are too far up their own asses to pay some fake ‘holy man’ a visit, and the demons would burn up into a crisp if they even considered stepping foot in here.” They climb the stairs at a brisk, but decidedly painless pace. Absolutely no hopping about like a game of hot potato feet-first.
“And what about you, then?” Aziraphale asks. “How are you able to walk around? You’d nearly burned your soles off in a simple church.”
“I’ve been coming here for millennia, angel. Adding buildings to the mix didn’t change anything, not really. The consecration, it’s—diffused, almost. A church only has the one building to work with—add more space, air, and inherently sinful humans, and it barely even registers.” His nose is beginning to turn red from the cold. “We just have to avoid the basilica itself. And any rain puddles, actually. An inch deep within the Vatican makes it holy, I’m, like ninety-nine-percent sure—”
“Hold on—the very seat of Catholicism isn’t technically consecrated?” Uneasily, Aziraphale asks, “Doesn’t that mean demons could, theoretically, survive the visit and get their hands on everything you’ve hidden away from them? After all?”
Crowley makes a creaky sort of noise. “ …Myeah, but. They don’t know that.”
He passes the entrance to the basilica and takes the two of them along a walkway to the right, the signs designating it as some sort of ticket kiosk. It contrasts the ancient mosaics of Jesus along the wall beside them, his time on Earth—one of them has him handing a gilded set of keys to Peter, kneeled down at his feet. ‘TIBI DABO CLAVES REGNI CAELORUM’, the stone beneath it is carved. To you, I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. It’s the same thing inscribed on the inside of the basilica’s dome, but clearly Crowley isn’t in the mood to have them sightsee.
“How can you believe it’s been under your nose this entire time?” Aziraphale says, voice echoing against the walls surrounding them. “That in your thousands of years of squirreling away nuts, the Book of Life has been sitting on a shelf, undiscovered.”
“I’ll thank you to stop talking about my nuts in public, thank you,” Crowley shoots back, nearly shoulder-checking a nun. She gives him a scandalized look, and he gives her a once-over in reply, walking backwards for a few paces to continue looking her up-and-down from behind. He continues, distracted, “Have you ever known me to be unobservant?”
Crowley’s first attempt at purchasing airfare comes to mind, and their near trip to Rome, Georgia. And the lead-up to the bodyswap down in Hell. And, of course, when Crowley hit Anathema with his car. “Fair point,” Aziraphale allows.
It’s not long before they’ve reached the Sistine Chapel, having avoided the main basilica altogether. There’s a crowd filtering in thicker than elsewhere in the city, but apparently it’s unavoidable, given Crowley’s brief oscillation at the entrance to it, like he’s working up his nerve. He wrinkles his nose but, seeing no other way forward, he steps inside with a hiss. Quickly, he hip-hops his way to the exit on the other side, having to weave in and out of gawking, unmoving tourists.
Aziraphale follows worriedly, not quite trusting Crowley’s judgment regarding the safety of a demon traversing Vatican City. “I’m not convinced this will be worth the trouble.”
“It’s worth it,” Crowley grunts. “It’s here. I know it’s here.”
“Yes, but Giles said that the Book of Life will be found at the beginning,” Aziraphale replies, voice hushed. “At Genesis. Six thousand years ago. What, precisely, is so foundational about a basilica built in the 4th century?”
“The hill was here before the basilica was,” Crowley replies defensively, pained. “Was always a sacred place of sorts before the Vatican staked its claim, it’s why I chose it. It was filled with Christian burials during Nero, too. Lots of those. It’s like—” Crowley snaps his tongue, brows furrowed so low they’re hidden beneath his glasses. “I don’t know. It was holy before the humans decided it was, and that’s why all the holy sorts of humans are here now. How does that work?”
“Are you saying the hill was blessed before it became associated with Christianity?” Aziraphale replies. Above them, The Creation of Adam is frozen in its eternal stretch. “That people were drawn to it because it was already holy?”
“Like magnets,” Crowley says in agreement. “Way I see it, if God planned all of this at the beginning of time, that means there are certain places that were bound to become consecrated, right? Wouldn’t that mean that they were— preemptively holy? Think about it—” Crowley makes a slight noise of pain, getting momentarily stuck by an American family in matching t-shirts. “If a human is technically already blessed or damned before they’re even born, then there’s places on Earth that follow the same logic, aren’t there? Places bound for consecration, or… not consecration.”
Giles had said these were all human definitions, the profound and the profane. Immaterial and material. Consecration. It doesn’t feel likely for Aziraphale and Crowley to be bound to the same rules of consecration that humans collectively made themselves. And yet… “You came to Rome after the crucifixion of Jesus,” Aziraphale says uneasily. “Not ten years later. So did Peter, of course, not too long after. So did Paul.”
Crowley quirks a brow in his direction. “So did you.”
They emerge from the chapel out by the gardens, the pathways being traversed by holy men and women and tourists with the proper clearance alike. Before them stands the Palace of the Govematorate, but Crowley takes them to the right of it, swinging them sharply onto another path skirting around the building, bringing the two of them deeper into Vatican City. It hasn’t resumed raining, not yet, but the ground is slick and cold through Aziraphale’s shoes, the air frosting at the condensation beneath his nose, the light sweat of exertion beneath his collar.
“Where is it, then?” Aziraphale asks, intrigued despite himself. He’s not immune to Baroque architecture and some of the most exquisite art on Earth, even if he’d never cared for Michaelangelo’s manners. Or his hygiene. “The Papal Palace? The necropolis? St. Peter’s Tomb itself?”
Crowley shakes his head, and opens his mouth to reply, when another gaggle of nuns pass beside them in rapid, Italian conversation. He watches them pass, words dying off in his throat as he tracks their movements, turns to watch them walk from behind, luckily without them noticing. His eyes drop decidedly down to their rumps.
Aziraphale snaps, “Again with that! You know, if I didn’t know better—”
“Crown band straight across the brow, veil three feet long, wimple ending at the armpit, three-knot rope around the waist,” Crowley lists off, taking Aziraphale by the arm and bringing the two of them behind a manicured, inconspicuous bush. “Sans crucifix and rosary, for obvious reasons. Think you can keep all of that together for a miracle?”
“I—” Aziraphale flounders, before narrowing his eyes suspiciously. “What kind of miracle?”
“I’m going to kill you,” Aziraphale says. “I’m actually going to kill you this time.”
“Careful, angel,” Crowley points out in a murmur, keeping his chin up and facing straight ahead. “That sort of language isn’t befitting for a nun.”
They’re both dressed as Catholic nuns, in fact, with properly-sized habits that blend in seamlessly with the order that’s currently in residency. Crowley has on the smallest pair of darkened spectacles in the world, so small that they’re hardly doing much to cover up the snake eyes. At odds with his normal walk, he keeps his gate perfectly smooth, head practically suspended unmovingly in place with each and every step. It’s nearly natural.
On the other hand, Aziraphale feels fiercely uncomfortable at pretending to be a lady of God, almost as much as he had during his historical stints as a priest. Now, he and Crowley are dressed so identically it’s hard to tell which is the demon and which is the angel. Aziraphale hadn’t miracled himself a crucifix either, but he had given himself the rosary to hang from his side. The beads of it keep clacking, getting tangled up with the rope he has cinched around his waist. “Blasted things,” he mutters. “I thought nuns were against material adornment. They’ve practically got a jewelry store hanging from their belt!”
“The rope is ceremonial,” Crowley informs him. “The three knots symbolize vows of poverty, obedience, and… chastity.”
That speaks to a level of familiarity that gives Aziraphale pause. Not even he had known that, in the various monasteries himself throughout the years during unfortunate stints as a priest. He looks Crowley up and down out of the corner of his eye, and asks, a bit suspiciously: “How often do you dress as a woman?”
Crowley curiously doesn’t reply, just bows his head piously at a passing pair of sisters. They look at each other in silent alarm before hurrying to pass Aziraphale and Crowley up quickly, sans acknowledgement.
But silence has never stopped Aziraphale before. “I’ll rephrase—how often do you dress as a nun to sneak into the Vatican’s nunnery?”
Again, no reply.
Aziraphale squints in his direction bewilderedly. “Are… are you wearing rouge?”
“It’s my hiding spot!” Crowley hisses, cheeks flushing past the rouge. “I can’t draw attention with a miracle, and men aren’t allowed on the premises, and certainly not demonic ones. I’m just—I’m simply blending in!”
Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. But three times… “No, my dear,” Aziraphale says drily. “I think you just like the dresses.”
The monastery was built in the 90’s, specifically as a residence for rotating orders of nuns dedicating themselves to praying for the health of the Pope. Apparently, electing men to the position who were consistently already over sixty years old wasn’t promising to the position’s longevity, so the Catholic Church had decided that praying was the best solution. Despite its relatively recent construction, the building looks just as Roman-esque to the rest of the Vatican, if rather plain. The nuns hadn’t even gotten a ceiling mural out of the deal.
There’s a gate posted before they reach the entrance. The sign beside it designates the building’s name: Mater Ecclesiae Monastery.
“Mother of the Church,” Aziraphale translates quietly.
Crowley quirks his lips. “Mary, yeah,” he says, nodding to the guard posted to unlock it for them, who does so without looking too closely past their habits. “Was a coincidence, I think.”
There’s a power here, more than the rest of the Vatican so far—perhaps it’s merely the location, as Crowley had said. Or perhaps it’s the accumulated power of decades of women praying over the material body of the figure they believe to be the closest living being to God. The mothers of the Church. Living above what lies beneath them, beneath the Earth below them. Whatever it may be.
“… I don’t think it was,” Aziraphale replies slowly.
It’s busy inside, the sisters migrating from room-to-room like some sort of morning service had just let out for lunch. By the sheer animation of their various conversations, none of them seem to pay notice to the unfamiliar faces standing half a head taller than most of them. Crowley gestures towards an open stairwell, looking rather shoddy and descending a story down.
“Lowest point of the building,” he murmurs, voice quiet to avoid his tenor giving them away.
The stairwell takes them to the kitchens, and Aziraphale assumes it’s the most modern-looking room in the entire monastery. They’re able to avoid being caught by anyone cooking, but with the sounds clacking further down the kitchen by whoever is preparing lunch, it’s surely only a matter of time before they are. And Crowley, while moving quickly, seems to have misplaced his hiding spot.
“Where is it,” he mutters to himself, digging into the pantry past the spare cutlery, boxes of communion crackers, what seems to be a hidden stash of candies. “I swear it was here last time.”
Around the corner, the clicking of the dishes gets closer, the shuffling of the faceless cook making their way towards them. Aziraphale knows they have miracles to use, but the anxiety of being caught still quickens his heart, sets sweat at his brow this close to the ovens. He shuffles up closer to Crowley’s back, tries to blend into the pantry’s shadows with him.
“Maybe they discovered it,” he hisses into Crowley’s ear. “Maybe you’re wrong, and the entrance is somewhere else. Let’s go.”
“No, I know it’s here, I was just—”
“You were what? And what could possibly be down here?” Exasperated, Aziraphale whispers, “A set of quarters? Another tomb? A—”
With a sound of victory, Crowley jostles the boxes out of the way. What he reveals is a wooden trapdoor in the floor, only barred with a single plank of wood; he swings it out of the way and nudges the door up with his toe, revealing a steep set of half-ladder, half-stairs leading into the darkness below.
“A wine cellar,” Crowley says approvingly, turning to look at Aziraphale with a brilliant grin.
Aziraphale blinks. “In a nunnery.”
Crowley shrugs, already lifting his robes at the ankles and making his way downstairs. “You know girls. They just want to have fun.”
That’s less than encouraging. Carefully replacing the boxes and closing the door above them, Aziraphale has no choice but to follow him down.
At the bottom of the ladder sits a wine cellar, all right, albeit a rather tiny one. The selection is measly, about what one would suspect a group of nuns would hide away for themselves—mixed berry White Zinfandel, Smirnoff Ices, Pink Whitney. One of them is just a strawberry daiquiri mix.
But for once, Crowley isn’t fussing around with the alcohol at his disposal. With a grunt of exertion, he pushes one of the shelving units out of the way, revealing a half-door sort of hatch nearly blending perfectly into the stone wall, especially in the darkness. When Crowley’s able to open it, it reveals another descending staircase, only this one far steeper, and much, much older than the building surrounding it. Perhaps older than the majority of Vatican City itself. The steps look like they’ll crumble the moment someone puts their weight on them.
“Oh, lovely,” Aziraphale says sarcastically.
“Isn’t it?” Crowley asks genuinely, before he looks back at Aziraphale with a frown. “Oh. Erm. Perfectly safe, I can assure you. I’ve made this trek many times before, and not always in a skirt.”
“How reassuring,” Aziraphale replies, deadpan. Then he sighs. “Well. There’s nothing else to it, then. Onwards. Except—one moment—”
Once more, Aziraphale takes a moment to pull the shelf back into place, close the hatch door behind them—with Crowley this careless, it’s a surprise that the entire Papal conclave hasn’t found their way down to Crowley’s ‘secret’ hiding place themselves.
He turns back to Crowley, or, rather—he thinks he does. Can’t be sure in the darkness, and it somehow grows even darker as they begin to walk. The descent has them pressed tightly together, awkward in their uneven steps, and at one particular stumble Aziraphale has to brace his hands onto Crowley’s waist. “Tight quarters,” Crowley says, sounding like he’s trying to be apologetic and failing. Then he pauses. “Maybe after we find the blasted thing, we could go about… untying one of these knots. If you know what I’m getting at.”
Aziraphale does. “What? The knot for obedience?” He asks instead, pretending he doesn’t. “My dear, at this point that one should be a permanent addition to your wardrobe. Perhaps replacing your tie, even.”
“No, I mean— eugh. Nevermind.”
It’s not like descending into Hell, reassuringly enough. For one thing, it’s getting colder rather than hotter the deeper they get into the ground, and there’s not a pervasive sense of evil wriggling its way into Aziraphale’s bones. There is, however, the near-imperceptible sensation of buzzing, not unlike the feeling of Crowley’s hands on his skin, or the Charles Rayburn books propped up in a row in Dr. Giles’ office. It’s vaguely warm in the distance, like the dawn sky before the sun rises. Promising heat before it has a chance to prove its existence.
There’s something there, something that they’re headed towards. Something that Aziraphale is… supposed to find, leftover impressions from the visions imparted on him by the Almighty. For better or for worse. And things truly cannot get much worse for Aziraphale. With renown fervor, Aziraphale presses a hand to the small of Crowley’s back and quickens their pace, eager to get back to solid ground.
Finally, after what feels like hours of descent, the stairs end and the flooring levels out, though rough and the slightest bit slick like the floor of a cave. Aziraphale’s hands extend until they brush the walls, similarly rough against his fingers. It’s not long before Crowley stubs his toe on something, cursing under his breath and shuffling, like he’s hopping in place.
“We’re here,” he says redundantly, voice pained.
The darkness is completely opaque. Aziraphale nearly pulls out his halo before Crowley’s able to dish his mobile from god knows where, clicking on its flashlight and aiming it at the alcove before them.
Aziraphale gasps.
The collection of artifacts stacked in piles before him is more sparse than Aziraphale could have imagined it being, a sizable collection in its own right but not one befitting thousands of years of collecting. He had imagined an entire room’s worth, even. But what he hadn’t imagined was the sheer brilliance of it—Crowley was very particular about what he had decided to hide away, evidently. Aziraphale spies the Holy Grail, several Dead Sea Scrolls rumored to have been destroyed during transit, the Lance of Longinus. Somewhere, somehow, Dr. Billy Giles feels a chill in the air in the middle of downward dog, trembling and dripping with sweat.
The effect is lost, however, when nestled between a piece of Noah’s Ark and the original copy of the Book of Enoch is a box set of a television show by the name of Golden Girls. In fact, once the awe subsides, Aziraphale spots a fair bit of decidedly non-religious paraphernalia in the mix—a box of Beanie Babies, an Alanis Morissette CD, the entire film reel of the 1917 film Cleopatra, a threadbare blanket. Something else folded up beside the threadbare blanket.
With another gasp, Aziraphale informs Crowley, pointing his finger at the artifact accusingly, “That’s—that’s my scarf! I know that’s my scarf. You said it had been stolen by a street urchin.”
“I—” Crowley’s face has gone bright red. “I swear, angel, I can explain—”
“And what—why on Earth do you have my Sheffield football jersey? I worked very hard for that, you know!”
“Please stop.”
“Is that—That’s my handwriting!” There’s a stack of ancient papers off beside a pile of original da Vinci sketches, deposited one on top of the other in an open briefcase. “This is my signature, these are— all of these are in my hand-writing!”
“No, uh, don’t—don’t look at those—”
Aziraphale doesn’t pay him any heed, sorting through the stack incredulously. “Private correspondence, calligraphy practice, annotations, reports to Heaven that I had gotten yelled at by Gabriel for not sending.” Aziraphale holds up one of the crumpled sheets, utterly bewildered. “This is a grocery list I made in 70 BC.”
“Let’s focus on the task, here,” Crowley says through his teeth, sounding half-strangled. “These are all of the things I personally placed here, not—The Book of Life wouldn’t be here, so. There’s no use in standing that close to them a second longer, if you wouldn’t mind—Ah, f*ck.” Crowley’s got the veil of his habit stuck on the Ark of the Covenant. He asks with a wince, “A little help, please?”
Aziraphale blinks. “I am not touching that,” he replies.
Crowley huffs. “No, I mean—” He wiggles his fingers a bit mystically, nervously avoiding making contact with the object.
“Oh, right.” Aziraphale waves a hand distractedly—in a moment, they’re both in their usual attires, greatcoats fastened back around them for warmth. It’s like a freezer down here, and lucky it is—there’s even a half-eaten cheesecake down here, miraculously preserved from Sainsbury’s. Both he and Crowley look down at it blankly, the former privately charmed, the latter visibly considering blowing up Vatican hill.
Aziraphale takes pity on him. “You said that there were artifacts that you hadn’t put here yourself,” he says, before he allows himself the opportunity to begin digging any more through all of Crowley’s belongings. There’s hardly the time for it, however much he wishes for the contrary. The I, Tonya poster on the wall that looks suspiciously like the terrible hand drawn one they had seen at Dr. Giles’s alone raises considerable follow up questions.
Crowley huffs warm air into his hands, despite them already being gloved. Just as there’s a hot stench of evil that Aziraphale’s particularly sensitive too, he assumes Crowley’s disquieted in his own right, beneath the Vatican and just inches from frigid, Heavenly objects. “… Yeah, I came across them the last time I was here, a few years ago,” he says, jerking his head to the left of his trove for Aziraphale to follow. There’s a narrow walkway half-hidden from a rough outcrop of the wall, easily missed if you’re not looking for it in the first place. Crowley continues, “There’s no telling how long they’ve been here, only that I didn’t have a hand in them. They’re just on the other side of the wall.”
Aziraphale feels warm, oddly enough. Warming by the second, even, like he can feel the midday sun all the way down here. As if its light is also dripping down past the layers and layers of stone, dirt, Christian graves—if he squints, he thinks he can see the rays of it peeking out from around the corner, like the break of dawn.
He asks slowly, “Are they also biblical?”
Crowley scoffs. “I’d say,” he replies, handing Aziraphale his mobile for him to use the flashlight himself. “One of them is yours.”
Well, Aziraphale can hardly say no to that.
The crevice is narrow, so narrow that Aziraphale has to suck in his stomach and shimmy through it sideways. He pokes his head out of the other side first before the rest of his body squeezes out after it, to an alcove even smaller than the first one.
And, there. Laid out in equally spaced increments on a bit of rock carved halfway down the wall, like a makeshift built-in shelf, are three familiar objects. In many, many more ways than one. There’s a silver crown, burnished near-black in the darkness, like it’s dripping with inky, iridescent oil; there’s a bronze set of scales nestled in a velvet case, the plates of them empty and gaping. And then, of course, there’s…
“My sword,” Aziraphale murmurs. Now, this close, Aziraphale sees that it’s emitting light on all its own, a flickering that’s white-hot without the flames. He can feel them though, the invisible heat pressing insistently to his flushed cheeks, his frigid skin. The fire wasn’t there the last time Aziraphale had held the sword in his hand, handing it over to the postman to bring it—well. To bring it here?
“The postman,” Crowley says from behind him, as if reading his thoughts. His chest brushes up against Aziraphale’s shoulder when he leans over, immaterial reflections dancing all over the skin of his face, too, out of sight. “You had called him to pick up the other artifacts, didn’t you? At the bus stop after the tarmac. Had him bring them to…?”
“I—” Aziraphale furrows his brows, just as lost as Crowley. “I had simply told him to return the artifacts back to where he had found them in the first place.”
Aziraphale can practically hear the resulting brow raise. “He’d been following the Almighty’s instructions from years ago, right? Six thousand, he said.” Crowley’s teeth are lightly chattering, but he says, a bit wryly, “I don’t suppose he dressed up as a nun himself, did he?”
“No,” Aziraphale agrees absently. “I don’t suppose he did.”
That’s where the gold had been leading him, the warmth. Not to the Book of Life, though that doesn’t come to much of a surprise—Aziraphale has never been in the habit of laying much credence to Crowley’s theories, and he wasn’t going to start now. But the sword, his sword. The Almighty wanted him to be reunited with it, wanted Crowley to bring them both here. Had known about his hiding place, perhaps before Crowley himself had known about it, too. Definitely before he had.
“It’s not here,” Aziraphale says, turning around. “I’d feel it if it was. The Book of Life. The Almighty wanted us to come here, clearly, but not for that.” Then Aziraphale assesses Crowley in the low light of the mobile flashlight, diffused against the cavern walls. With the slightest bit of hesitation, he extends the sword towards Crowley. “Here.”
Crowley just blinks absently, not making any move to accept it. “… Pardon?”
“The sword, I… I want you to have it. At least for now.”
Crowley winces. “Eh… To be honest, swords aren’t really my—”
“They will be, considering one of my visions has you wielding it yourself.” Aziraphale keeps it extended, holding it from the very bottom of its grip so Crowley can take it properly without burning himself on the blade. Without burning himself at all, hopefully—the blade was Aziraphale’s at the beginning of time, and was promised to the Horseman of War, too, perhaps even earlier. Any sort of consecration it could possibly have has surely leveled itself out, by now.
Crowley really looks like he wants to protest that tidbit, but he seems to reign himself in at the final moment. Pressing his lips tightly together, Crowley takes the sword. It sits clunky in his grip, unnatural; with a grimace, like he can’t stand to hold it for a second longer, he slips it into his trouser pocket. The pocket seems to have some sort of immaterial quality to it, as the blade descends further and further until the handle is gone, too, without any wrinkle on the clothing suggesting that there’s anything in his pocket at all. Aziraphale thinks, a bit hysterically, of Mary Poppins. Though Mrs. Doubtfire might be more fitting.
“Warm,” Crowley grumbles, a bit appreciatively. His teeth aren’t chattering anymore, at least.
Aziraphale rubs his hands together. He eyes Pollution’s crown out of the corner of his eye— Pestilence’s crown, in actuality. There will be no finding it down here, but he doubts a crown is enough to hold her back if she ends up being released.
So Aziraphale decides to keep pushing on ahead. There’s no other direction he can. “What now?” He asks. He already knows the answer, but this is Crowley’s lead he’s following, after all. Crowley’s steadfast mission. Saving Aziraphale from being erased, even if it ends up proving to be an impossible task, becoming more and more likely as the nights grow longer and the time between now and Christmas grows shorter and shorter. There’s still the iridescent crest of hope in the water, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, but it’s there. It hasn’t disappeared for good, not yet.
“Now,” Crowley says grimly, “We find Eden.”
Over the weekend
We could turn the world to gold
Over the years, the location of Eden has been a hot topic of debate amongst theologians.
The bible offers very little in the way of instruction. At most, Genesis describes the garden of Eden as watered by a river that splits into four branches individually called the rivers Pishon, Gihon, Tigris, and Euphrates. The Pishon and Gihon had, eventually, been lost to time and endless amounts of sand—the Tigris and Euphrates, on the other hand, are still alive and thriving where they cut across the modern-day Middle East. With so little canonically to go off of, this becomes the entire basis in the theories regarding where Eden, theoretically, could have been if, theoretically, it had existed. An oasis in the desert, fueled by four distinct rivers connecting four distinct seas to the birthplace of life on the newly-born Earth.
This, of course, was a lie.
There were no rivers in Eden, save for the little streams and waterfalls circulating throughout the oasis itself. But the land surrounding Eden was barren, that was the point. There was no Pishon, no Gihon, no Tigris and certainly no Euphrates. Just endless amounts of nothing outside of the garden walls, and some lions, too, strangely enough. And sand, of course. Can’t forget about the sand.
The inclusion of the four rivers in Genesis wasn’t a mistranslation. The Almighty just had a habit of using metaphors before she established the things the metaphors represented in the first place. Hence: religion.
Fortunately, that fact meant that Aziraphale wasn’t beholden to Genesis for narrowing down where the two of them needed to go—the current theories established eastern Turkey or just north of Kuwait as the most probable locations, as per the whole ‘four rivers’ gaff. No pouring through the bible for clues, especially considering that the bible Aziraphale’s brought with him has half of its pages missing. No spending longer on the Almighty’s words than he needs to.
Unfortunately, that meant Aziraphale was beholden to his own memory. Perhaps the half-missing scripture would have been more useful.
“Would you consider the possibility,” Crowley begins exhaustedly, over a week later just due north of the Negeb desert, “That you have no clue where Eden is?”
The sand they’ve been traversing for the past several hours, days has been slowly hardening into gravel, into the gradual, sporadic chunks of desert rock. Not the uniform brick of a wall in the slightest. It’s hot. And Aziraphale is irritable when it’s hot, and even more irritable when he’s hungry, and even more irritable when Crowley has a compulsive need to lodge a complaint every fifteen minutes on the journey to find the very thing he has been nagging Aziraphale about for months, now.
So Aziraphale informs him, quite patiently and not at all spoken through an iron-tensed jaw, “Well, my dear, it took two to tango—”
“Not what that phrase means.”
“—And you don’t remember where Eden is either! We were both there!”
“I never claimed I did,” Crowley replies stubbornly, before he nearly trips for the countless time. They’re walking at a pace far greater than human bodies usually allow, and he’s handling it with about as much coordination as normal. “It’s been seven days, angel,” he eventually complains, also for too many times to count. “You may not need sleep, but I’m schvitzing over here! Let’s take a break.”
“Jesus fasted for forty days and forty nights in the desert without a break,” Aziraphale informs him, still scanning the sand around him with all of his countless, immaterial eyes, feeling for the Almighty’s golden aura. “He refused temptation from the devil while he did.”
Crowley grimaces, squinting out to the dunes and dunes against the softening horizon, the lowering arc of the sun. “… Myeah, I think you’re a little late for that.”
“Why, exactly, am I the one persevering the search and you’re the one wanting to end it prematurely?” Aziraphale asks snippily, not entirely unaffected by the heat nor the grit covering every exposed inch of his body, as well as some unexposed inches, too. “This is your mission you’ve been begging to start since the moment you found out about my erasure. You know, if I didn’t know any better—”
“Of course I want to find it,” Crowley says through his teeth. “I want to get our wits about us, in fact, considering your hypothesis is apparently an utter waste of time. We don’t have enough to spare. In time or in wits.”
“Maybe you don’t,” Aziraphale grumbles.
Crowley mouths back the words mockingly, before they descend back to uncompanionable silence once more. For a while there, the mist coming off of the Dead Sea had kept them refreshed, but now they’re both merely hot, and dry, and have about the same level of morale as they did in Vietnam, when Crowley refused to climb that damn coconut tree.
“So,” Aziraphale begins, just to say anything at all. He decides on, “That… collection of yours.”
Crowley throws back his head with a groan. “Oh, god, can we not do this? Please? Surely we can—let’s just go back to talking about sand, if you’d like—”
“How long have you been…” Aziraphale begins, knowing precisely where his question is heading, but not knowing the best way to end it without Crowley fleeing from him entirely. He finishes awkwardly, “… particularly interested in my tax ledgers from Mesopotamia?”
“What is it you want to hear, exactly?” Crowley asks exasperatedly. “We’ve known all of this for years. There’s no point in dredging it all up now.”
“Yes, but the grocery list alone was from the 1st century,” Aziraphale continues, unfaltering. “The 1st century Before Christ. I had thought… Yes, I know why, but I didn’t think you did, not until the…”
“I don’t know, okay?” Crowley finally exclaims. “It’s—I just don’t know! It’s just. I saw it on your counter, after one of our run-ins, and I… took. It.” An uncomfortable beat. “It’s not like I’m particularly passionate about you opting to buy eggplant over tomato, I didn’t care about the list.”
“Then what did you care about that early on?”
Crowley’s stubbornly sifting at the sand with the point of his shoe, like he’ll find the gates of Eden when he hits it with his toe half a foot down. The press of his mouth suggests a great deal more vulnerability than he’s expressing, but it’s Crowley. That’s usually the case anyway. This time, though, Aziraphale feels reluctant to provoke him. He already knows the answer, after all. It’s merely a temporary, selfish luxury to hear it spoken aloud.
“Well,” Aziraphale says softly, beginning up the peak himself. “I suppose it’s not important what I had thought.”
It’s a moment before Crowley follows. They climb in brief silence, the sun keeping them in the correct direction, though it’s already dipped beneath the jagged rocks above them. It’s not long before it’s broken once more.
“I’m not going to lie and say I had known I felt… something for you in Heaven,” Crowley admits roughly. To anyone else, it feels random, this change in topic; to Aziraphale, he can follow the roadmap that took them here. Crowley had kept his grocery list from 70 BC; Crowley had loved him for a very, very long time. “I hadn’t paid much mind to you up there, not really, but—but we were drawn together, I think. To meet up in Heaven for a reason, at least once. Like—you know, like there was an expectation there? Like that’s why I was creating the galaxy at that precise moment I called you down.”
“Like magnets,” Aziraphale murmurs in agreement.
And Aziraphale doesn’t think of their first meeting in Heaven very often, doesn’t consider it when he spends late nights considering the entirety of their history together. But he hadn’t known, either, what they would eventually mean to each other. Would have no way of knowing until they pressed skin together, conducted warmth between their fragile, human bodies like they were having to take turns with it, with… living. Aziraphale doesn’t know how Crowley’s going to survive it, his own impending erasure. Where Crowley is going to get his heat, if not siphoning it from Aziraphale’s; if he’ll melt entirely, without someone to bear some of his.
It’s thermodynamics. The state of things with heat and in the absence of it. The state of things alive, and what happens when that life is removed, not for where it’s been but what it means for those that continue to be around it. It’s condensation, the change from one form to another when these two possibilities cross paths with one another. It’s not creation. It’s not destruction.
It’s… it’s everything. And soon, Aziraphale fears it will be nothing at all.
They reach the top of the peak. Miles behind them lays the vast expanse of the Dead Sea, the distant cities cropped up in the blurry, hazy space before them across all four sides. If Aziraphale squints, he can imagine that it’s thousands of years before, and he and Crowley are following Mary’s caravan from a distance. Careful not to be seen by her, careful not to be seen by—well, by each other, really.
Now, this close to the heavens with his feet firmly on the ground, Aziraphale closes his eyes. Reaches out with immaterial fingers of divinity still available to him, like he’s stretching them deep into every dune of sand he can see, burrowing deeper and deeper until he hits the long-buried walls of Eden or the upper walls of Hell, whichever comes first. Mostly clay, and groundwater, and sporadic makeshift graves formed in countless failed journeys over the years.
But past that, there’s only nothing. He doesn’t know why he still holds out hope for anything else.
With a sigh, he opens his eyes to Crowley, who has his eyes fixed on the sunset like he’s attempting to solve a puzzle and failing. He looks as though he already knows what Aziraphale hasn’t found.
“What are you looking at?” Aziraphale asks him. He knows what he’s looking at himself, what he’s always looking at as it approaches him, inch by inch. But for a moment there, by the quietly frightened cant of his expression, he had thought that Crowley could—
“I see it,” Crowley mutters, almost inaudible beneath the desert breeze, the shuffling of sand. He’s still looking out sightlessly to the sun half-nestled into the horizon, the brilliant splash of orange and red and violet across the sky. His eyes flick sideways to Aziraphale, before returning back to the distant west. “The… the end. I can see it coming, when I… when I let myself look.”
Aziraphale takes a cautious step towards him. “What does it look like?” He asks.
Crowley grapples for the words soundlessly before he’s able to find them. “‘S like—it’s like a massive moon, or something, slowly eclipsing the sun. I see the shadow of it coming right towards me, if I unfocus my eyes, catch it in my periphery just right. And… and sometimes I think I…”
Aziraphale swallows. “You think you won’t be able to outrun it,” he finishes for him, all-too-familiarly.
Crowley tightens his lips, turns to look at Aziraphale over his shoulder. In the golden hour, his skin is rich, windblown hair shining brilliantly like fire off of a bronze blade. “It won’t be the end of humanity, angel,” he says fiercely, so fiercely that Aziraphale can’t help but believe him. “You have my word, if I can’t give you anything else. I only…” He blinks quickly, ducks his head for a moment before looking back out to the sun. “I don’t know if it’ll be the end of… me.”
It’s incomprehensible, the idea that the world would go on turning without Crowley still on it. It’s an impossibility that Aziraphale can bear to entertain, even just for a hypothetical. He wants to say something that will quell Crowley’s anxiety, his fear—six thousand years of words on the printed page, and Aziraphale suddenly feels bereft of every single one.
So he doesn’t attempt to say anything. He simply turns towards Crowley, taking a single step to put them chest-to-chest, and wraps him in his arms.
Crowley immediately deflates, breath wheezing out of him in a long, all-encompassing stream of air. He knots a hand into the back of Aziraphale’s blazer, the other arm wrapping around his neck, hand gripping onto his shoulder. For a moment, Aziraphale feels as though he’s holding the entirety of them both in his arms, like he’s bearing a weight far greater than two human bodies, the souls behind them like the world on Aziraphale’s shoulders. Like Crowley holding back time on the tarmac. Like Aziraphale will buckle beneath them, if he doesn’t end up having the strength—like all that’s left of him will be the dust he was created from.
There aren’t words for it all. If there were, perhaps it could withstand being talked about without crumbling into nothing with him.
Eventually, the sun leaves them, and all that’s left is the rosy, bruise-like indigo of the darkening sky. “Come on, angel,” Crowley says softly, beginning to unwind himself with a self-conscious sniff. “Give it a rest for the night. I got us a room.”
Aziraphale huffs humorlessly. “Where? Bethlehem?”
Crowley snorts, pivots Aziraphale around in his arms, keeping one wrapped tightly around Aziraphale’s shoulders as he does. In the not-too-distant west, Aziraphale sees the modern, twinkling lights of a city, with bones far older than the electricity winding through it. It’s vaguely familiar, that city. Aziraphale feels as though he has electricity threaded through his bones, too, at the sight of it.
“No,” Crowley says. “Jerusalem.”
AZIRAPHALE. AZIRAPHALE. AZIRAPHALE.
This time, he’s beneath Babylon. There’s a boulder at the mouth of the cave sealing him in, and thin, spider-like webbing at the ceiling of the cavern, letting in the pale, ambient light of early morning. Aziraphale blinks awake.
The lions surrounding him are still asleep—they hadn’t been asleep the first time Aziraphale was here. That first time, they had been vicious, snapping their maws as Aziraphale had gone around in a circle, held each and every one of their jaws closed until they had fallen asleep one after the other by miraculous means. Daniel had been cowering behind him, and Aziraphale had been… doing what he had been told. Delineated by Gabriel, spoken at the beginning of time by the Almighty.
This time, Aziraphale is alone, surrounded by the dark, snuffling growls of the lions’ snores. This time, Aziraphale is angry. That’s not usually something he allows himself to be.
“Do I get to be Aziraphale this time?” He asks the ceiling, quite sardonically. His voice is low, but it still echoes starkly off of the rough stone walls. “I don’t see an angel—I would have guessed you made me Daniel, this time.”
AGAIN WITH THIS, AZIRAPHALE? FIRST YOU WERE JONAH, AND NOW YOU’RE DANIEL? ARE YOU NOT CONTENT WITH SIMPLY GETTING TO BE YOURSELF?
“Nobody gets to be Daniel,” Aziraphale snaps. One of the lions shifts, huffing in a breath and letting it out with a lingering growl. “Daniel was saved because I was told to save him and him alone. Do you remember what had happened to the men that had accused Daniel to the king? What you had done to them?”
Before the Almighty can reply, he informs her thickly, “They were thrown into the lions’ den themselves to be ripped apart, bones broken into dust. And their wives and children, of course. Can’t forget them. You certainly didn’t.”
IT WAS MAN WHO THREW THE INNOCENTS INTO THE DEN. I DIDN’T GIVE THE COMMAND.
“But you didn’t stop them!” Aziraphale hisses furiously. More shifts from around him; the cavern is warming from the bodies brushing against his, the air growing thick with the lions’ breathing and the sun seeping its heat into the earth around him. “You created mankind, you planned for every single thing that happens on Earth to happen in the first place, all since the beginning of time. Why hadn’t you stopped them?”
THAT’S NOT A QUESTION I CAN ANSWER FOR YOU. THAT’S NOT THE QUESTION YOU SHOULD BE ASKING.
There is the sound of men’s voices from outside—King Darius and his guard, come to see if Daniel’s been killed by the lions.
“I thought you wanted me to stop asking questions.”
I DO, YES. ASIDE FROM THE ONE.
The voices grow in volume, just outside of the boulder sealing the entrance. The sleeping lions grow more restless, as if beginning to rouse, tails flicking and ears twitching above the canyon-orange flare of their manes. Aziraphale knows what question he needs to ask.
“The Book of Life. Where is it?”
IF I TELL YOU, THAT DEFEATS THE PURPOSE OF YOU LOOKING FOR IT IN THE FIRST PLACE.
“What purpose?” Aziraphale asks desperately. Above him, the boulder begins to loudly shift, the grunts of men behind it moving it from the opening, opening the lions’ den to the light of morning. From one side, golden fingers of light reach inside, glare directly into Aziraphale’s eyes. The lion directly before him opens its amber eyes.
He watches it, and says, “You told me I should be asking a question. Why do you want me to ask a question that you aren’t willing to give me the answer to?”
DO YOU KNOW HOW I CREATED THE EARTH?
With a bone-shuddering groan, the boulder begins to roll away from the mouth of the cave;
WHY DIDN’T ADAM TELL PESTILENCE THEY BOTH WANT TO SAVE THE WORLD?
As it does, the lions rise to their feet, their eyes not leaving Aziraphale, their lips pulling back from dull, yellow fangs;
WHAT LACKS NOTHING—
The men above Aziraphale gasp. The light of day breaks into the den like an urn of sunlight tipping out and filling it up, up, up until it overflows and paints the world so golden, so bright, that for the following three days and three nights, they won’t be plagued with darkness. Not a single person will. Not even the dead.
—BUT DOESN’T HAVE ANYTHING?
Aziraphale awakens in Jerusalem and knows the answer.
The rain is torrential, as it was that same night two thousand years before.
Aziraphale has Crowley by the arm, is dragging him to the outskirts of the city. He had woken Crowley with his epiphany, and had wasted little time in miracling the both of them dressed for the storm, pulling him out of the inn without explanation. He feels like the humans did, listening to his command with he was on the road to becoming the false prophet—like he’s traveling in a daze. They’re headed to the cliff sides spattering the perimeter, across caked sand and too-slick hardened flats of rock, eroded smooth and frictionless by the desert’s constant wind.
“Where the heaven are you—” Crowley tries.
“Do you remember the cave?” Aziraphale asks, having to raise his voice.
“I—” Crowley flounders, though it seems less by the question and more to do with the fact that he’s soaked down to his core, minutes after being dead asleep, being led sightlessly through the darkness of the dimly-lit streets to the darkness further still. “You’ve gotta be more specific, humans love caves.”
“Crowley—”
“Yes, all right?” Crowley snaps. “Course I remember it. You have no idea what little else I’ve thought about for two thousand years, now, but—I don’t see how that’s—”
“Do you ever wonder why you chose it?” Aziraphale shouts over the rain. Not acid rain, not with either of them wielding a book, sword still tucked safely away in Crowley’s pocket—all of those visions have yet come to pass. There is still so much that has yet come to pass. Aziraphale specifies, “The cave, I mean. We had—had the world at our disposal. Why there? Why in that specific cave?”
“I—” Crowley’s not fully online yet, glasses off and yellow eyes blinking furiously past the water. “I mean, I don’t know! Outside of city limits, nobody around to bother us, rather—eugh, rather intimate—”
“But why there?” Aziraphale asks, leading them up the rocky ascent. “Why not anywhere else? Why the one place the Almighty wanted you to go?”
“The Almi—what?” Crowley nearly trips off the hillside. “She had no part of it! You made sure She didn’t! What the—what in blazes has gotten into you? And—hang on, I thought we agreed on existential conversations only when the sun’s out?”
“I think,” Aziraphale replies, climbing the last steep bit with a grunt of exertion, “I think you knew She was going to end up there, too. I think you both did.”
He reaches down a hand for Crowley, to help pull him the rest of the way up. Crowley looks at him starkly for a moment, almost hauntingly, droplets spattering against his upturned face and his wide, unguarded eyes. Then he steels himself with a swallow and takes Aziraphale’s hand, allows himself to be tugged up the cliffside.
The moment they reach the outcrop, the rain stops.
Before them is an unassuming pile of stone, easily skipped over by any humans happening to pass by, not like the more obvious gaping caverns that could speak historically to probable locations of note. The polished faces of the rocks are smooth and shiny like—well. There’s simply no way around it. Like the ink-black body of a beast underwater, breaching the surface of the violent, tumultuous brine.
And in the middle of it all sits a massive boulder, looking as though it’s simply part of the dishevelment, as though it hasn’t moved in two thousand years. Like its molded into the cliff face directly, immovable. So, so different from the way it had looked years and years ago, especially from the outside.
But Aziraphale remembers it. And Crowley… Crowley immediately recognizes it for what it is. What it truly is.
“No,” he breathes.
Now that it’s nighttime, the glowing is easier to see, to feel. Aziraphale hadn’t been able to single it out, not because it wasn’t strong—its aura encompasses everything sunlight is able to reach, despite its contents still cast in shadow. Like Adam, nearly a decade ago. It’s not surprising that Crowley can feel it, too.
Aziraphale turns to look at him, out of breath. Both of their clothing is soaked through, hair plastered to their heads from rain as the wind dishevels it from their faces in spikes.
“Do you know where we are?” Aziraphale asks him.
Crowley goes on staring.
“Do you know what this cavern became? After we—” He clears his throat. “After we were done with it?”
“I—” Crowley swallows. “I didn’t continue on with the disguise, after that. Mary’s lamenting. It was too—” He cuts himself off, doesn’t bother finishing his sentence. He doesn’t need to. “After the crucifixion. I didn’t—I hadn’t wanted to stick around for the burial, so. You and I parted ways, and I… I left.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees significantly. “Yes, you went to Rome.”
Rain drips from the saturated rocks above them, still soaking into their clothes, their shoes. This dark, it looks like ink, like it should be blackened like tar, like soot, if not for the glow from within casting all shadow away. Aziraphale takes a deep breath.
“The cavern I first drank alcohol in, perhaps the first cavern to ever have a demon healed divinely within it by God’s grace, was the very cave that Jesus was entombed in before his body ascended to Heaven.” A beat, then Aziraphale can’t help but wrinkle his nose. “How very Catholic.”
“Did we…” Crowley begins uncertainly, almost fearfully. “I mean—you don’t think we…”
Aziraphale’s already shaking his head. “We didn’t do anything to it. I think you chose the cavern for a reason, but I… I think it was preemptively holy. I think you were drawn here for a purpose, outside of your conscious control, like…”
“Like magnets,” Crowley breathes.
“Like magnets,” Aziraphale agrees, taking a single step forward.
Crowley does, too. “Good to know damnation isn’t enough to get myself off of God’s payroll,” Crowley says, kicking at the boulder weakly with his shoe. “It’s… it’s in there, isn’t it?” His eyes trained on the boulder like if he looks away, it will disappear entirely. “The Book of Life. I can feel it, feel… something. It’s been in the cave this whole time, hasn’t it? Since the moment She left for Heaven.”
Aziraphale nods. There’s no point in feigning uncertainty for either of their sakes. It’s in there. The Book of Life, the fated tome containing every human being who has ever lived, and the blotted-out remains of those fated to the bottomless pit, is sitting just on the other side of this boulder.
Crowley says, without preamble, “Let’s open the bloody thing up.”
Aziraphale turns to look at him flatly. “It’s sealed,” he says redundantly.
“Then—then unseal it!” Crowley exclaims, lifting his hands to brace them on the rock, try to move it with the lackluster breadth of his corporation’s strength. As expected, it stays firmly rooted to the ground. “Miracle up some dynamite, maybe. Blast this sucker open, we don’t have the time to waste. We have to get in there before Heaven figures out where we are, decides to fish it out themselves.”
But Aziraphale isn’t convinced. “What if unsealing it begins the desolation, the war?”
“Keeping it sealed means you’re erased,” Crowley says simply through his bared teeth, trying once more to move the boulder futilely. “And if you’re erased, there’s going to be a war anyway. I guarantee it.”
Of course there would be. Aziraphale thinks deliriously of Achilles and Patroclus, and realizes that there’s no way forward but… well, forward. Except for one small issue. “I don’t know how,” he says, stepping forward to lay a hand on the face of the boulder, too. “I doubt God would need to use explosives. What would make it open for Her?”
Crowley calms a bit, mouth still in a grimace. He wipes his hands usefully at his similarly-wet trousers, and whistles through his teeth. He’s roving his eyes up and around the hillside, as if searching for tools. “Well…” he says thoughtfully. “I would assume we just need to… pretend to be Her.”
“Historically many, many people have been killed about that—”
“No, no, think about it,” Crowley says. “Only God in a human body would ever need the Book of Life. If it’s on Earth, wherever She’s put it would recognize Her and Her alone. So, we need to find the closest thing possible to God on Earth. It’s like—” Crowley snaps a few times in remembrance.“It’s like Silence of the Lambs. What do you do if there’s a passcode only unlocked by someone’s face?”
Aziraphale’s not sure he understands the question. “You… something about lambs…?”
“No,” Crowley says, reaching into the inside pocket of Aziraphale’s overcoat, “You cut off the face and you wear it.”
When Crowley withdraws his hand, he’s holding Aziraphale’s bible. It doesn’t burn his hand, not anymore. His meaning is immediately evident—the bible is the closest approximation to God’s words on Earth. The tomb unlocks by recognizing God on Earth, once more. Only—only the bible in Crowley’s hand isn’t the closest thing to God in material form. Not here. Certainly not now.
“It won’t be enough,” Aziraphale says slowly.
“No, I know, angel, but—we have to at least try—”
“It won’t be enough,” he repeats, taking the bible from Crowley’s hand and immediately flipping through it, finding his way to Matthew, “Because it’s not Her words.”
He remembers learning it in Heaven, months and months before, the realization that the words the humans were worshiping for immaterial guidance weren’t only spoken by the Almighty at the beginning, but, incredibly, the words were somehow allowed to be spoken wrong.
“I have something to tell you,” Aziraphale says.
But to say that every line is directly from Her—
Well, Saraquel had said. From Her, then my transcripts to The Metatron to be sent to the prophets when the time came, of course.
Crowley blinks. “Now?”
“Yes, now. When I was Supreme Archangel, Saraquel told me something about the bible. Something important. I—I can only assume that she hadn’t told you about the mistranslations, too. For whatever reason.”
“The mistranslations?” Crowley grapples for something to say. “I—no, but I don’t think it ever would have come up, really.”
Aziraphale levels him with a look that’s surely inscrutable to him, but also knowing. Perhaps pitying. “It’s the entire reason she worked with you in the first place,” Aziraphale says. “If it didn’t come up, that means she deliberately chose to withhold the information from you. Information that…” Aziraphale gives a firm nod. “Yes, information that you need to know.”
Crowley is looking at Aziraphale like it’s his first time seeing him. Like briefly, terribly, they’re strangers to one another. Aziraphale, heedless, clears his throat.
“The Almighty spoke the Old and New Testament into existence at the beginning of time,” he says, flipping through the pages. There’s water dripping off of his face, wetting his fingers, smudging the ink handwritten in the margins as he searches. “It was passed down by The Metatron to the prophets on Earth. In that… that translation, The Metatron has made three changes, according to Saraquel. Three alterations to the Almighty’s word, never before seen on Earth, on paper.”
“The Metatron changed God’s words?” Crowley asks, appropriately baffled. “And She didn’t blast him to smithereens for it?”
Aziraphale hums. “Yes.”
“Terrific. And I got tossed downstairs for one blasted question—”
“Pen, Crowley, I need a pen.”
“Uh—” Crowley fishes around in his bottomless pocket, is able to grab the bright pink gel pen from Muriel’s collection, the one Aziraphale had stolen. Aziraphale accepts it without paying it mind.
“First is— first is Matthew, of course. 12:40. For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the—”
The pages are alit with the immaterial glow from the cave before them, seeping thickly through the rock. The space above and below the words is too narrow, the margins too filled with text—there’s really nothing else to it. With the pen, directly on top of ‘heart’, Aziraphale writes in ‘womb’ until it’s bolder than the original text itself.
Crowley is leaning over his shoulder, watching the pages uncomprehendingly.
“Then there’s John 3:8,” Aziraphale says, flipping several books later. This is the newest one he’s learned; the third part that’s completed the set of mistranslation. Threes. They’re always in threes.
He reads aloud, “The one who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning.” The book vibrates in his hands; the light before him grows brighter, like a star forming before his very eyes. It becomes a bit too hot in his hands, a bit too incompatible with his earthly body. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to—”
He writes in ‘reverse’ over ‘destroy’ for the devil’s work, pressing down so hard it’s as though he’s carving the word into the paper, making it as visible as it can possibly be in glitter pink gel.
The ground beneath them buzzes. Pebbles fall from the rocks above them.
What remains is Revelation. 20:1, to be exact.
And I saw an angel come down from heaven, having the key of the bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand.
Crowley watches him write in the name silently.
He asks confusedly, once Aziraphale’s done, “Who’s Raphael?”
Aziraphale looks at him a long moment, the saturated near-blackness of his hair, his earnest eyes like pools of amber. The rows of his teeth, visible past the near-constant grimace of his mouth when he’s overwhelmed. Like he is now. Because nobody has ever thought to simply explain it to him.
“I—” Aziraphale begins, before the bible bursts into flames in his hands.
He drops it with a yelp, stumbling back and nearly falling off the outcrop directly, windmilling with a flail of his arms. Crowley grabs him by the waist, pulls him forward until they’re pressed side-to-side, the flames licking at their sodden clothing, their faces. The roaring of the golden fire before them grows animalistically, like—like a den of—
“Everything She said,” Crowley gasps. “The answer was putting everything She said onto paper.”
“But it’s not everything She’s ever said,” Aziraphale says, eyes wide and reflecting the light like kaleidoscopes. “We tore out the pages, remember? This is not the entirety of the Almighty’s proclamation. This isn’t about completeness, or truth, or even good, it’s—it’s about—”
“It’s fixing what went wrong,” Crowley finishes, blinking unseeingly beneath them with drawn-together brows. “The mistranslation, yes, but… but it’s not about the words either, angel.”
“No,” Aziraphale agrees breathlessly. “It’s about the beginning.”
The fire rises, encompasses the cliff face before them like it’s swallowing the rocks whole, flaring out as if a great, olympic-sized torch. Crowley fists Aziraphale’s clothing in his grip, pressing him relentlessly to his side, holding them together in case the fire chooses to swallow them, too. In case their end finds them before the beginning has a chance to be revealed.
And just like that, it begins to dim. The golden flames grow weaker, weaker, until they’re nothing but a gentle heat, a translucent licking at the surrounding rocks. The massive boulder is now gone, in its place the familiar, gaping mouth of a cavern. Small, intimate. The smoke fades, drops to the ground thickly as soot, a thin ripple dissipating into the floor of the cavern.
And sitting right at the center, atop a flat slab of rock where a body once lied, where two bodies did earlier still, is the Book of Life.
It’s unassuming. Dark, hard leather, gilded edges to the pages, some sort of inscription carved into the cover, illegible this far from it. There’s a chiming in Aziraphale’s head, almost painfully loud, every time he looks at the tome directly. Like church bells, or celestial instruments ringing for a divine proclamation. Aziraphale doesn’t know how, precisely, Crowley is even still standing if Aziraphale’s feeling affected by the divinity himself.
There’s a beat of expectant silence, of an uncertainty of how to progress. Aziraphale glances over at Crowley. Crowley slides his eyes over to Aziraphale beneath the still-dripping ends of his hair. Neither of them know what, precisely, they’re meant to say.
So, without further preamble, the two of them break out into hysterics.
“We actually did it?” Aziraphale asks incredulously. “Us?”
“Somebody’s—somebody’s getting fired, for sure—”
“It was in—the blasted cave—we nearly—oh, good lord. Literally! Good lord—!”
Crowley whoops, hooking an arm excitedly around Aziraphale’s neck. “f*cking hell, angel,” he gasps, turning towards him. “You’re saved. Do you understand? You never have to worry about being erased ever, ever—”
“Oh, there you are,” comes a familiar voice.
Both of Aziraphale and Crowley’s heads snap back to the center of the cavern. The smiles drop from their faces.
From the shadows, dressed in a suit and impeccably groomed as always in his material form, strolls forward The Metatron.
It’s as though he had been waiting for them, but his stark desaturation at-odds with the Book of Life’s golden glow speaks to him having just been in Heaven, like he had just materialized down to Earth mere seconds ago. Aziraphale feels every follicle of hair on his body immediately stand on edge. From beside him, Crowley has slowly begun to heat up, evaporating the droplets of water from his body.
“I’ve been looking for this pesky thing,” The Metatron continues, with a small, affable smile. “Been hidden from me—oh, for two thousand years, now! I was beginning to think I’d never get my hands on it again.”
He leans down with a faint noise of exertion and picks up the Book of Life. He dusts off the leather cover with his other hand, the faded words stamped on the face of it. He brushes his thumb along the gilded edge of the pages, as if about to open the book directly in front of them.
Crowley jerks forward, and Aziraphale presses an arm across his abdomen, not a restraint, but a plead not to get himself killed. Crowley heeds it angrily.
The Metatron doesn’t react to the threat of physicality, but doesn’t open the thing, either. “And I wouldn’t have been able to, if not for its hiding place being revealed.” He gestures the book in Crowley’s direction. “Well done, you. I’m glad there was some use for your promotion after all.”
“You’ve… you’ve been bluffing,” Aziraphale says slowly, in a realization of his dawning horror. “The trial, my—my execution. Even back when Gabriel was missing, the threat of erasure to anyone found harboring him. You… it’s all been a bluff, hasn’t it? You wouldn’t have been able to erase anybody even if you’d wanted to.”
“I wouldn’t have, yes,” The Metatron says, before he tilts his head back and forth. “Well. Until now, I suppose.”
Aziraphale looks at Crowley worriedly. The demon’s face is completely, eerily blank.
“What about my promotion?” Aziraphale asks, tearing his eyes away reluctantly. “I must have had some use to you, too, to keep me upstairs for four years.”
“Yes, of course you did! Because I needed you for the Second Coming, Aziraphale. I had realized that after the first time you had disobeyed orders and somehow stopped Armageddon yourself.” He gives a reluctant nod in Crowley’s direction. “Well. With some help, I suppose.”
“And that’s why you’re sending me to my execution, then?” Aziraphale snaps. “Is that still on your agenda?”
“Don’t call it an execution, that’s so—barbaric. No, your erasure is still going to occur as planned, say—the midnight after Christmas Eve? The moment it becomes Christmas Day, on the 25th itself?” He makes a distasteful face. “London time, of course. For some reason or another, that’s the thing to do.”
Aziraphale didn’t expect anything else. “Why not just do it now?” He asks shortly. “You have the book. Just do it now, put me out of the misery of—waiting for it to happen.”
Crowley jerks beside him. The Metatron doesn’t look away from Aziraphale.
“Of course you have to be destroyed, Aziraphale,” he says, almost condescendingly. Like he’s having to explain the concept of death to a child, of an inevitable but necessary pain. “What do you think the Second Coming is about?”
If the Second Coming isn’t about the second coming of Christ, Aziraphale had asked Pestilence a week ago, to no avail, then what is it about?
A cliffside off of California, the closest approximation to Crowley’s voice hissing into his head, think!
Aziraphale feels like he’s been doing nothing else these past few months, and yet has come to very few conclusions. A laughable lack of conclusions, really. What is the Second coming about, according to Pestilence? Admittedly, she’s more likely to be correct than Aziraphale is, given her role. Why would God speak Revelation into existence at the beginning of time, if She didn’t plan on taking Her rightful throne at the eternal paradise following it? Why would She make plans to return to Earth as Christ, as the ineffable materialized into human form, if not for the Judgment Day that She Herself had planned? How can Aziraphale come this far and not even know what the point of the Second Coming is, if not…
If not for Genesis.
If not for baptism, bringing not just humans back to a time free of sin, but—but everything free of sin.
If not to carve out the roots of evil from the Earth, like an infection dangerously close to the bloodstream. If not to destroy the devil’s work, if not—if not to reverse it. The womb of the Earth, returned to by Christ. Where Christ returns to begin again.
With the abruptness of a thunderclap, Aziraphale’s figures it out.
The point of the Second Coming isn’t the arrival of the Messiah, ironically enough. It’s not about Lailah’s pregnancy—it’s not about a nine month timer to Christ’s birth and Aziraphale’s execution. It’s not about the dead rising from their graves, it’s not about the Book of Life or the Book of the Dead. It’s not even about the Antichrist, and certainly not the false prophet, either. It’s not about any of the things in Revelation, the things that are fated to happen for—for ceremony’s sake, surely. The point of it, the point of everything, has been in pursuit in one particular goal.
At the end of it all: the Second Coming is about Heaven triumphing over Hell. It’s about the war to get there, the damned and their eternal deaths as the spoils of Heaven’s victory. It’s about goodness—about Heaven prevailing above all, even the survival of humanity.
And it all ends, as it truly began, with Lucifer.
Everything else is just background, just items on a checklist with no penalty to being skipped. The blackness in the distance hovers, even from within a small alcove off of Jerusalem with the rogue mouthpiece of God looming his destruction just before him. The end, creeping forward like a curtain being drawn across the sky, across the time that Aziraphale has left.
Because who is the one figure needed for the Second Coming to end? Who does the planet’s survival come down to, at the cost of its material death? Who locks Satan away?
“I have my question for you,” Aziraphale tells The Metatron.
The Metatron raises his brows at that, but his eyes aren’t unkind. Quite the contrary, in fact, though filtered through an air of reluctance. Almost paternal, once more like Aziraphale is a child, asking for clarification in the midst of their punishment.
“Ah, yes, I’ve been waiting to hear something about that again,” he says, heavily, like he’s sighing while he does it. “Well. Let’s have it.”
The options are endless, and Aziraphale has been all-too-aware of that fact, having been weighing them for what feels like years, now. The Metatron’s true motivations. How much he knows from Saraquel. When, precisely, he had decided that the Great Plan wasn’t good enough for him, and when he had realized that God wouldn’t punish him for deviating from it. Why he thinks Aziraphale can’t fit into any of that without having to be destroyed.
But Aziraphale doesn’t ask any of those questions.
Instead, he reaches out and touches the arm inches from his own, and asks in an unwavering voice, “Is Crowley the Archangel Raphael?”
Crowley jerks his arm away, whirring back to life himself. “What?”
“That’s what the original transcripts say,” Aziraphale explains, words suddenly pouring out of him like an outflow of water. “Raphael will descend with a key and a chain and be the one to lock Satan away for good. You were in all of the Almighty’s visions She’d imparted on me, Crowley. Every last one, filtered through Her light, Her divinity. The same golden light that Adam sees covering the figure who descends from the sky at the end of the world, shoving reality into the ocean, the bottomless pit. It’s not God Herself, so it—it must be the Archangel Raphael.”
“And you think that’s me?” Crowley asks, voice thick in his throat. He looks utterly betrayed. “You think I’m some all-powerful angel meant to destroy the world? Is that—oh, god, don’t tell me that’s why you—”
“Don’t you dare even consider a scenario where I haven’t loved you since the damn Eastern gate,” Aziraphale snaps fiercely, uncaring of whatever The Metatron hears. “Empires have risen and fallen and I never went a second throughout them not thinking of your blackened wings, your serpent’s eyes, your—your very demonic being. Don’t do me the dishonor of entertaining anything less.”
Crowley doesn’t look any more settled. “I wasn’t an archangel,” he says very, very intentionally, consonants clicking and popping like they’re escaping out of him. “I know I wasn’t an archangel, and the answer to the Second Coming isn’t me turning into something I wasn’t.”
“But I have to ask.” Aziraphale feels as though he’s about to break entirely. “You know I have to at least ask.”
Crowley opens his mouth to reply. Nothing is forthcoming, except for the breaths that sound like they’re being torn out of him, gasps of exertion. He says nothing more, doesn’t give Aziraphale another reason to retract his question, instead looking to The Metatron with the slow, tense turn of his head. Because he knows. Because he wants to know, too.
So Aziraphale turns back to The Metatron determinedly. A refusal wouldn’t surprise him any more than a ‘yes’ would, at this point. He knows the answer Heaven wants isn’t Crowley’s return to an archangel—knows that bringing about the Second Coming isn’t what Crowley’s meant to do in any lifetime. But that means nothing in terms of destiny, what they were created to do from the beginning of time; it means nothing to what the Almighty will make come to pass regardless. They’re all beholden to their destinies, in the end. Whether they like it or not.
“Is he Raphael?” Aziraphale asks thickly, like he’s having to rip the words out of his throat syllable by syllable. “Is he?”
The Metatron has his snow-white brows drawn in confusion. He’s looking between the two of them bewilderedly, quietly troubled, like he’s… surprised. For the first time in Aziraphale’s acquaintance with him, The Metatron looks absolutely dumbfounded.
“No, Aziraphale,” he says, in the softest voice he’s capable of having. “You are.”
