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“Why is that here? It’s disgusting .”
At Gabriel’s words, Sandalphon and Uriel looked up from the Heavenly desk where they were leaned over an iPhone - not the celestial and pure tablets the angels used, but a real, honest-to-Her human material object.
“You’ve got to see this,” Sandalphon said as Uriel giggled beside him.
“I don’t think so,” Gabriel said, wrinkling his nose. “Get rid of that. And the desk, and anything it touched. Don’t bring that stuff up here.”
“Really, Gabriel,” Uriel said, affecting seriousness. “I think you’ll be interested.” They held the phone out toward Gabriel, and he recoiled. But the image on the screen intrigued him, so he leaned close a bit, still keeping his distance from the thing.
The filthy little rectangle had a video of the demon Crowley, the one the traitor had taken up with. And he was saying “Gabriel’s my daddy,” over and over.
“What does that mean?” Gabriel asked. “Why would he say such a thing?"
Now it was Sandalphon’s turn to giggle. “He didn’t really say it,” he explained. “We can make him say anything we want - look.”
And Uriel did something with the phone - Gabriel still couldn’t believe they were touching it - and now the Crowley in the phone was saying “I’m Gabriel’s daddy.”
“Stop that!”
Uriel touched the phone again, and Crowley’s voice stopped.
“What is the significance of this word, daddy ?”
“Oh,” Urlel said, oblivious to the fact that it was the angels’ lack of imagination in phrasing to provide their ersatz Crowley that had confused Gabriel. “It doesn’t have to say that. It can say anything.”
Sandalphon took the phone, thought for a long minute, and then it was saying “Aziraphale is stupid, Aziraphale is stinky” in a loop.
Uriel and Sandalphon dissolved into laughter again. Gabriel was not laughing. But he was far more intrigued than he had been a moment ago. He inspected the device more closely, though without getting near enough to touch it.
It really did look, and sound, as if the demon was saying those words. Somehow, his mannerisms, his voice, it had all been captured. If he hadn’t just seen Sandalphon make it, and if the demon in the video was using language less absurd, he would be utterly convinced of its authenticity.
“How did you do that?”
Sandalphon wiped his eyes, settling his laughter. “Humans made it. It’s called False Depth.”
“Humans made a video of the demon Crowley?”
Uriel rolled their eyes. “No, you can make a video of anyone. Humans just invented the technology. Look -” and they flipped the phone around, then thrust out their arm, pointing it at Gabriel.
“Whoah - no! Keep that think away from me!” Gabriel raised his hands and stepped away. “Do not do whatever it is, do not Depth of Falsehood me.”
“Alright,” Uriel said, and shrugged.
“But,” Gabriel said, his tone relaxing conspiratorially. “If I had an idea for something to make, do you think you could do it - without telling Michael? I don’t think she’d find it…as funny as we would.”
“Sure,” Sandalphon said, and a plot began to hatch.
***
It was a pleasant, if boring, afternoon at the bookshop, and Aziraphale found himself longing for the evening. This was a new sensation for the angel. He never used to ‘kill time,’ as it were. He always figured it had to do with his disinterest in killing anything, but ever since the apocalypse-aversion, after which point he and Crowley had found themselves free to enjoy each other’s company, certain languid activities held much less delight. He had dinner plans with Crowley that evening, which was now a frustrating fact, given that it was not yet evening.
The bookshop was empty, which Aziraphale normally would have preferred, but he found himself wishing for some kind of diversion.
And then there was one, in the form of three archangels darkening his doorway. Gabriel, Sandalphon, and Uriel.
“We’re not open,” Aziraphale snapped.
Gabriel shrugged. “That’s not what the sign on the door says."
“Well, I don’t have anything that would interest you regardless. You’re not welcome here.” Aziraphale stood stiffly behind the counter, wishing the archangels would just turn around and leave.
“Relax,” said Uriel. “We’re not here to fight.”
“We have something to show you,” said Sandalphon in a tone that struck Aziraphale as oddly unctuous.
“I’m so sorry, Aziraphale,” Gabriel said, his hands clasped, preforming a fine impression of sympathy. Aziraphale was not fooled.
Sandalphon pulled out a cellular phone, one of the new types Aziraphale couldn’t stand. He handed it over.
“What is this?”
Sandalphon was grinning a very weird grin. “Press play.”
Aziraphale did not know what that meant, but he touched the screen, and then there was a tiny movie, featuring Crowley. It looked like the video had been taken secretively, from inside someone’s pocket. Muffled fabric noises made up the first few seconds of the video.
And then he heard Crowley’s voice. He was talking…about Aziraphale.
“No, no, he doesn’t suspect a thing,” the Crowley in the video was saying. Then another voice, one Aziraphale couldn’t make out, but sounded like another demon. “Naive little fool - though as an angel I guess you’d figure as much. Six thousand years I’ve been pretending to be his friend. You’d pity him if it wasn’t so funny.” Crowley’s voice became high pitched, mocking. “Oh Crowley, please come save me! Oh Crowley, isn’t it sad that all these people died? Oh Crowley, let’s get dinner at the Ritz!”
And then both voices laughed.
“Nah, he totally thinks you lot have disowned me. That - what was it? - that we’re ‘on our own side,’ whatever that means. Thinks I risked everything, helping him stop the fake-Armageddon. Now he’s as soppy for me as ever.”
Aziraphale saw the dark flash of a wine bottle as it passed between the two.
“To angels, in their infinite, ineffable stupidity.”
There was a hard, glassy clink, then the video went black.
Yes, that was Crowley, sure as ever - his hands, his little movements. Aziraphale had had plenty of time to memorize it all.
But it couldn’t be. He didn’t believe it.
“This is a lie,” Aziraphale said through a clenched jaw. “Take this out of here, and don’t ever come back.”
“Listen, Aziraphale -“ Gabriel began.
“GET OUT!” Aziraphale pointed at the door, and as he stretched out his arm, the whole bookshop trembled, the bell over the door clattering rapidly.
“It’s human technology,” Gabriel continued, still pretending to feel bad. “We couldn’t fake it even if we wanted to.”
“And why would we?” said Uriel. “It’s not like we care what you do anymore. It’s just…we figured you ought to know.”
“For security reasons,” Sandalphon finished. “It puts us and all of Heaven at risk if there’s an angel, even a wayward one, getting played by a demon.”
“I don’t believe you,” Aziraphale said, but he was no longer shouting. Tears began to run from his blue eyes.
“Watch it again,” Gabriel said with a shrug.
Aziraphale didn’t want to. Crowley would not say such a thing. He didn’t need to watch it again. He knew better.
But it had sounded just like Crowley. Looked like him. And the phone was human, didn’t seem to have any angelic intervention that Aziraphale could sense.
He pressed the screen again, and again the video played. Aziraphale watched closely for any sign that it had been forged. He was angry at himself for not finding anything. And for thinking even for a second that it could be real.
Was it real?
If it had been on an angelic tablet, he’d have laughed and tossed the whole thing in the bin.
If it had just been an audio recording, he wouldn’t have given it a second thought.
Could human technology even do such a thing? Create such a false image?
Crowley’s image was hard for earthly artists to capture, always had been. He wasn’t human, after all, and his snakelike body, his demonic ways, they weren’t easy to fake. Aziraphale had seen a number of folk over the years try to emulate Crowley - humans found his slinky swagger quite attractive - and none succeeded.
The video ended. Aziraphale watched it again, then looked up at the archangels. They seemed tense, expectant.
“Where - where did you get this?”
“One of ours was doing a blessing, down by St. Paul’s, saw a bar crawling with demons, nipped in for some reconnaissance,” Gabriel said. “Didn’t have her tablet with her, so she borrowed this from another patron. Got some other stuff, too, quite useful, but not related to you.”
Aziraphale swallowed, trying to process the words. Crowley did hang out in bars near there. In fact, Aziraphale knew he had met with other demons at those bars, more than once.
He pressed play again, and at the first few sounds in the video, Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Come on, Aziraphale. Of course it’s real. It’s the only thing that makes sense, anyway. You really think a demon did all those nice things for you, just because he liked you? Don’t be ridiculous. We’ve got plans, they’ve got plots, they scheme, we foil, they wile, we thwart. That’s all this is."
“Anyway,” Uriel said, sounding all too nonchalant for someone witnessing the absolute breakdown of another person, “now you know, so he can’t trick you anymore.”
“You’re welcome,” Sandalphon said.
“We’ll be needing that back,” Gabriel said, holding out a gloved hand to take the phone from Aziraphale. “Got lots more intel to take upstairs. Just wanted to stop by and show you this little footnote on our way.”
Aziraphale handed the phone over. He felt numb. Confused.
The archangels left. Aziraphale snapped his fingers and the sign on the door switched to CLOSED.
It felt as though the ground below his feet was rolling and pitching. He sat down, hard, in the chair at his desk.
What was going on?
Aziraphale pulled out a pen and a notebook. He would write down everything the angels had done, and said. He would figure it out. He would show Crowley, and they would laugh, laugh together at the sad state of affairs up in Heaven, that they would try and frame him like this.
What had the video Crowley said? Aziraphale had a good enough memory that he began to transcribe it, after having watched it only two and a half times.
He was starting to smile, eyes dry, as he copied down the first few sentences. So silly.
And then his pen formed the next words: “‘on our own side,’ whatever that means.”
Heaven wouldn’t have know to make a fake Crowley say that.
It was something they said to each other. In private company. It was theirs.
And here was Crowley, laughing over it. Making it meaningless. Throwing it at the feet of Hell.
The words in front of Aziraphale swam as his eyes again filled with hot tears.
How could this be? Was it possible the angels had been spying on them?
No, no...they would have sensed anything ethereal. Ever since the execution attempt, both of them had been looking over their shoulders quite a lot. No way an angel would have gotten close enough to hear them talking without him knowing.
Aziraphale rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands and stared down at what he had just written.
He didn’t want to believe it. He didn’t want it to be true. But if there was one thing he’d learned after six thousand years on Earth, it was that denying something didn’t make it any less true.
Aziraphale stood up from the desk, wandering the room, as if getting farther away from that piece of paper would help. It did not.
His entire body was one clenched fist. His teeth ground into each other. Crowley’s words looped wildly in his head.
Naive little fool.
To angels, and their ineffable stupidity.
You’d pity him if it wasn’t so funny.
Blinded with white-hot tears, Aziraphale crashed around his apartment, clumsy with rage. He shoved his arms into his coat and slammed out the door.
***
When he got to Crowley’s door, it was closed, but not locked. There were no wards, no bindings, that would even guard against Aziraphale’s sudden intrusion. Aziraphale had never noticed this before.
He must think I’m a complete idiot, Aziraphale thought bitterly. Not even worth bothering to protect himself from. Must assume I’d never find out. Or if I did, I wouldn’t have the guts to do anything.
Well, he had guts. He could feel them roiling in him, tight and rumbling, a volcanic tempest of pain and fury.
Aziraphale threw open the door and the sound echoed with a loud bang through Crowley’s sparse apartment.
“Aziraphale?” Crowley came around the corner, looking surprised. “I thought we were meeting-“
And then Crowley stopped short, surprise turning to shock as he saw the look on Aziraphale’s face and his posture, tense and towering, coiled with violence.
“What’s wrong, angel? What’s happened?”
Crowley’s play-acting at ignorance made Azirpahale even angrier, if that was possible. He roughly wiped his eyes with his sleeve and focused them on Crowley. “Like you don’t know,” he hissed.
“What?” Crowley took a step toward Aziraphale, hands outstretched as if to embrace him. “Really, angel, please tell me-“
“DON’T CALL ME THAT!” Aziraphale cried. His fist hit the demon’s jaw before Crowley had time to react.
“Ow!” Crowley stumbled back, one hand on his face, and looked at Aziraphale with an intolerable expression - he had the nerve to look hurt. Betrayed, even.
“You thought I wouldn’t find out,” Aziraphale shouted, continuing to advance, his hand raised. “You thought I was too stupid. A naive fool , isn’t that right?”
Crowley cowered back, hands up defensively. “No, ang - Aziraphale! Please, what’s going on?”
“Admit it! Just admit it!” Aziraphale shoved Crowley, hard, as if to punctuate his demand.
“I don’t know, I don’t - Aziraphale, listen to me!”
“I’ve BEEN listening to you! All these years, all your lies!” Aziraphale grabbed some heavy decorative sculpture from Crowley’s desk and hurled it at him. Crowley barely ducked it. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to trust a demon!” He threw something else, and it grazed Crowley’s shoulder before shattering on the floor.
Crowley was backed against the wall now, arms raised defensively. “What are you doing? Please, Aziraphale!”
Again Aziraphale was on Crowley, raining down blows, and all Crowley did was fall to his knees, curled protectively around himself. “Stop, Aziraphale!” He got onto his hands and knees, trying to get out from under the angel’s fists. “What’s happening?"
“They told me,” Aziraphale sobbed. “I know everything!”
Crowley had scrabbled to the other side of the room, where he stood behind a big leather armchair, trying to put it between him and the frantic Aziraphale. He was breathing hard and looked frantic. “It’s not true, Aziraphale. Whatever they told you, it’s not true!”
“Do you still think I’m that stupid? They showed me the video. I HEARD YOU, Crowley!”
Who’s pathetic now? Aziraphale thought. Can’t even admit what you did. What you’ve done. He stalked toward Crowley, who was still feigning confusion. Maddeningly so. It even looked like he was crying. Aziraphale wouldn’t fall for it. Not anymore.
“I’m not the fool you made me into,” Aziraphale snarled as he followed Crowley across the room. “You can’t tell me not to believe my own eyes."
Crowley tried to sidestep him, but he didn’t get away in time, and Aziraphale struck him down again, following up with brutal kicks to the demon’s ribs. Or anywhere else. He couldn’t even see where his feet were landing, his vision was so blurred with tears and grief and rage.
It infuriated Aziraphale that Crowley wouldn’t fight back. Was barely willing to defend himself. He was just talking it, lying there and sniveling. Fight me, you coward. Get up and show me who you really are. Who I finally know that you are.
But then again, Aziraphale was a soldier. What was Crowley? Some trickster, said he’d been a starmaker back in heaven. Weak. A spineless snake, crawling in the dirt. He couldn’t beat Aziraphale fair and square, so he had resorted to the lowest form of devilry. Sinister lies and stupid little favors all designed to get Aziraphale’s guard down. He had taken Aziraphale’s love, his trust, and perverted it.
How could he have missed it, all these years?
How could he have let himself believe that Crowley loved him? That they belonged to each other? That they had a side, together, to be on?
And so the soldier unleashed his hurt on the fallen starmaker, who had given up on his protests.
Crowley just cowered, trying to make himself small, to avoid Aziraphale’s violence, but there was nowhere to escape. Aziraphale was screaming at Crowley as he hit him, no longer making an argument, just whatever cruel and terrible phrases boiled out from his seething throat.
“I can’t believe I trusted you!”
“You’re nothing!”
“Just a filthy, fallen demon.”
“Foul snake!"
“She was right about you!"
Rage gave way to wrenching grief. Aziraphale had never felt so betrayed. Just hours ago he was looking forward to seeing Crowley. And Crowley was over here, laughing at him for it. Humiliation flooded through him. The only color that existed any more was red. Blinking, flashing, pounding red.
He stopped the beating and took a step back from Crowley’s shaking form.
“I should have stomped you down, all the way back in the garden. Back into the dirt where you belong!”
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Crowley whimpered, but it sounded more like a plea, like a question. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t true.
None of it had ever been.
“You are sorry,” Aziraphale said. His chest was heaving with tears and exertion. His words were throaty, more breath than voice. “Sorry, wretched demon.”
Crowley looked up at him and Aziraphale saw those eyes, those amber eyes, that had looked at him with what he thought was love. They still looked the same, which made no sense to Aziraphale. Was Crowley just so accustomed to the awful charade that he still couldn’t drop it, or had Aziraphale just been wrong the whole time, seeing love where it wasn’t, fooling himself, wandering happily around inside of a giant lie, the only one dumb enough not to see it?
No wonder Gabriel and everyone up in heaven thought he was stupid. Because he was stupid. Stupid enough to see love in a demon’s eyes.
Aziraphale stared down at Crowley, who was crumpled on the floor.
You hurt me. You hurt me so badly. And you made me hate myself as much as I hate you.
Aziraphale would never forgive him. Would never forgive himself.
Aziraphale’s eyes landed on the tall metal floor lamp standing near the wall. It reminded him of what he and the other angels had carried, back when they were in Heaven.
Back before he gave it all up for this. Threw everything away for Crowley. He thought he would be happy on earth. That they’d be happy, together.
He would never get any of it back. But he was still an angel.
And Crowley was still a demon.
Azirpahale strode over and grabbed the lamp in his hand, snapping off the shade, yanking it from its cord. Crowley had gotten up onto his knees now, was edging backwards.
Aziraphale raised his hand, palm down, and started waving it over the metal pole he now held. He mumbled blessings, glaring at Crowley as he did. The lamp pole began to glow faintly.
Something changed in Crowley, then. He stiffened his spine and his voice was clearer, louder. “No, no no no, Aziraphale,” he was saying. He struggled to his feet and backed away toward the bedroom, eyes glued to Aziraphale. “You don’t know - you don’t want to - please, Aziraphale.”
“Don’t tell me what I want,” Aziraphale growled.
Crowley’s eyes filled with fresh tears as he pleaded with Aziraphale. “Don’t - Aziraphale, don’t. Please. Just - I’ll leave, I’ll leave you alone. I’ll go away. Anywhere you say. Whatever you like. Or I’ll fix it. Tell me what’s happened, and I’ll fix it. I’ll do anything - whatever it takes - I promise -”
“You promise?” Aziraphale laughed, a cold, cracked sound. “I used to believe your promises. Not anymore.”
Crowley’s eyes were darting between Aziraphale’s face and the now-blessed object he held in his hand. “Aziraphale,” he said, slowly, cautiously, “don’t do this. Please, don’t do this.”
“For your sins, demon Crowley,” Aziraphale said, holding the pole high, a weapon prepared to strike.
Crowley just looked at him, stunned, shaking his head back and forth. His nose was bleeding, his shirt ripped at the neck, his jaw starting to swell where Aziraphale had first hit him.
Aziraphale brought the pole down, and it first struck Crowley’s wrist as he tried to deflect the blow, then caught him across his face. Instantly a horrible red-black line blistered down his cheek to his neck, and an identical one appeared on his wrist.
He fell to the floor, screaming in agony. The room filled with the stench of burnt flesh.
Aziraphale took a heavy step backwards, horrified at the damage he had just wrought. He had never harmed another living being, not even a demon, not like this.
Crowley opened his eyes and looked up at Aziraphale. But now they were changed. Different. They were missing...love.
Which meant that - if it had only just disappeared - it had been present in his gaze, up until that moment.
Something was very wrong. No - everything . Everything was wrong.
Aziraphale dropped the lamp pole and it clattered to the floor, rolling away from his feet. He stood there, hand over his mouth, for a moment that felt like an eternity.
And then there was a strange sound, the sound of laughter, and the three archangels were in the room. Sandalphon and Uriel were doubled over in hysterics, clinging to each other to stay upright. Gabriel was smiling and slow-clapping, looking with satisfaction over the scene.
“What…” Aziraphale said, spinning around to face them, lost for words.
“Nice going, Az,” Gabriel said. “Wasn’t sure you had it in you. But that was pretty great.”
“What did you do?” Crowley cried from his crumpled position on the floor. “What have you done?”
“We - we - we made a video,” Sandalphon said, struggling to get his words out through peals of laughter.
Uriel held out the phone and played the video, the one that had haunted Aziraphale ever since he saw it. Which was less than an hour ago, he realized. A sick feeling hollowed out his stomach. It felt like forever. So much had changed since then. Everything. Ruined. Lost.
“The fuck is that?” Crowley stood up, swaying on his feet, lunging at the angels.
“Human technology,” Gabriel said. “You can make anyone say anything.”
“Still top-secret,” Uriel said. “Only a few humans have it. Soon it’ll be everywhere. But we wanted to use it while Aziraphale didn’t know about it.”
“It...it was fake?” Aziraphale choked out.
“Duh, it was fake!” Gabriel pulled a mocking face. “Boy, you should have seen yourself!”
Crowley spun to face Aziraphale, furious. His voice trembled, but the rage in his words was clear. “You believed them? You believed this?”
“I don’t - I thought - they had, it said, we’re on our own side , I thought, how would they know that?”
“Genius, right?” Gabriel crowed. “Turns out there’s all sorts of human technology you can use for this. Little may-cro-phones .” He pointed to the remains of the lamp Aziraphale had turned into an instrument of angelic smiting. “Stuck one in that thing, how’s that for irony? And a few other places. All metal and plastic: gross, but nothing to detect!”
“Oh you’re real pleased with yourself,” Crowley said. The angels continued to laugh.
“I mean, yeah.” Gabriel shrugged. “Took us a while to get the video right, and to listen to enough of you two blithering at each other before we knew what it would took to be convincing, but it sure worked well, don’t you think?”
Gabriel pointed at Aziraphale as a judge would when delivering a death sentence. “You. You’ve got nothing, now. You threw us all aside for this demon, and now, do you think he’ll have anything to do with you? Hope it was worth it.”
Aziraphale said nothing. He had thought, on his way to Crowley’s, that he could not possibly feel worse. He had been wrong. This was the lowest he had ever been. Would ever be.
Gabriel was right. He had lost everything.
All he could do was blink, letting more tears run down his face, his arms dangling heavy at his sides.
“Get out of my house,” Crowley hissed.
“Bye-bye now,” Gabriel said, and then the three angels disappeared in a flash that left a haze floating in Aziraphale’s eyes.
Aziraphale turned to leave, too, but Crowley snapped his fingers and the door made a metallic locking nose. “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
Aziraphale looked dumbly at Crowley.
“You’re not walking out on this. Oh no. You owe me an explanation. At the very least.”
A moment of tense silence followed before Aziraphale spoke.
“Crowley, I’m...I’m so sorry.” He reached a tentative hand out toward the demon. “Let me - let me heal y-”
Crowley flinched away. “DON’T TOUCH ME!”
Aziraphale pulled back his hand, then covered his face, sobbing.
He wanted to go to Crowley, beg his forgiveness, heal his wounds. He wanted to apologize, to explain, but he couldn’t. He didn’t deserve absolution. Shame and guilt paralyzed him.
He wanted to turn back time, to undo what he had done. He wanted to fix his mistake.
But there was no fixing this. So he just cried, dissolved into grief, until he fell to his knees and hunched over, sobbing at Crowley’s feet.
Without a word, Crowley turned and walked into the bedroom.
***
Crowley slammed the door behind him and fell into the bed, no longer able to think or care about what Aziraphale was doing, whether he even stayed in the damned apartment.
A sharp pain stabbed through him as his bruised and broken ribs hit the mattress. Everything hurt. Everything. He snapped his fingers and most of his injuries knitted themselves back together. All but the searing burns from the holy weapon that crackled over his wrist and face. Only an angel could heal those.
And, of course, the greatest wound of all. No demonic magic could heal his shattered heart. With the bodily pain reduced, the hurt from inside overtook him and he pressed his face to the pillow, gingerly avoiding the burn, and cried.
When he was tired of crying, he slept, not knowing what else to do. He woke much later, when the sun had long set and the apartment was dark. Crowley rolled over onto his back and stared into the blankness, trying to think.
He had never seen Aziraphale like that. Never, in six thousand years, witnessed such hatred, such rage, on his angelic face. Not even when the humans did some truly abominable things. Clearly he’d saved it all up for the demon. Shame and anger blasted through Crowley. Figures. Only the damned of Hell could ever deserve such censure. Such cruelty.
You’ve always known you weren’t worthy of his love, Crowley thought, filled with disgust for himself. That eventually, he’d realize that too.
But that isn’t what happened, said another voice from deep inside his brain, a gentle one he didn’t hear from often. Heaven tricked him. It wasn’t your fault. Wasn’t his, either.
Crowley flopped around in the bed, aggravated. He argued with himself. He didn’t have to believe them. He could have come and talked to me. He didn’t have to...do what he did.
The gentle voice didn’t say anything, but it seemed to be waiting expectantly, assuming that whatever it was going to say would occur to the rest of Crowley in a bit.
Crowley had spent millenia on earth, trying to tempt humans into bad behavior. And he had learned a few things in all that time.
One such lesson was that it was nearly impossible to provoke true brutality between people who didn’t feel anything for each other. It would seem logical that humans would be more willing to harm someone they had some distance from, someone they didn’t understand, didn’t know. Many demons still assumed that.
Crowley knew better. Indifference was nearly impossible to turn into hatred. But love? Love was often a hair’s turn away from violent fury. Only love could lay the groundwork for such hurt. Crimes of passion, humans called them, and it was an apt phrase. Humans could only be provoked into true evil through the perversion of love.
The gentle voice gave him a nudge. He refused to accept what it was hinting towards, but he let the voice speak.
Look how blindingly wounded Aziraphale was when he thought you’d betrayed him. He wouldn’t have reacted that way if you were only a friend of convenience. The only way such pain could ever exist is if he felt truly, deeply, loved by you. And love for you. If he hadn’t cared so much, he wouldn’t have come apart at the belief that you had betrayed him.
No. Crowley would not admit that violence could ever be proof of love. That way lay madness. He’d seen the fruits of that idea before, up in Heaven, and when he Fell. He’d seen too many humans fall prey to such confusion.
Still...he wanted to believe it. He wanted to forgive Aziraphale. Well, no, not exactly. He wanted things back the way they had been. Before he knew Aziraphale was capable of seeing him that way. Of saying...what he’d said.
He couldn’t have that. Barring that impossibility, he didn’t know what he wanted. He didn’t even know what was possible now, what was even reasonable to want.
Crowley got out of bed and stretched, wincing as his wrist sparked with new pain. He didn’t even want to guess what he must look like, a blessed burn across his face. With a snap of his fingers, he dressed, not turning the lights on, lest the mirrors in the room throw an image at him that he wasn’t prepared to see.
He opened the bedroom door. And there was Aziraphale, right where he’d been when Crowley left, but standing now. His face was blotchy and shiny. He would not meet Crowley’s eyes.
Crowley glanced around. The shattered statues had been miracled back together and were sitting back where they had been. All of the destruction in the room had been cleaned up. The lamp was gone entirely.
“Didn’t want to look at what you’d done, eh?” Crowley sneered, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed.
Aziraphale swallowed hard. “I...I thought…” His hands fidgeted at the hem of his waistcoat. Crowley noticed that Aziraphale had not given himself the same treatment as Crowley’s apartment. The angel’s clothing was still mussed. His knuckles were raw and bloody. “I’m so sorry, Crowley.”
“I’ll bet you are,” Crowley said.
“I can...do you want me to go?”
“Nah.” Crowley walked over to the desk and picked up the statue, examining it. “Not sure I’d trust you, out there in the world. Some of my fellow demons are still wandering around, unpunished .”
Crowley knew his words stung. He meant them to.
“You really believed them, huh? Just one little video, that’s all it took?”
Aziraphale gulped. He still hadn’t looked up from the floor, where his eyes were glued. “I didn’t, not at first. But they said - it said - I didn’t know.”
Crowley sat down behind his desk, put his feet up on the corner. His obvious ownership of the space contrasted with Aziraphale’s clear discomfort helped, somehow. “And you couldn’t just come ask me? Didn’t think to talk it out before going all avenging angel on me?”
“I thought…”
Aziraphale’s apparent inability to form a complete sentence was on Crowley’s last nerve, although the angel’s uncharacteristic floundering did make Crowley realize that he was, at least, very upset. As he should be.
“I was so hurt, Crowley,” Aziraphale finished.
“YOU were hurt?” Crowley shouted. “Look at me!” He gestured to his ruined cheek.
Aziraphale finally looked up then, and gasped, clapping a hand to his mouth.
“Oh, Crowley...please, let me heal you.”
“No, I don’t think so,” Crowley said, though his face burned terribly. “I think you ought to look at it a bit longer. See what you’ve done.” He grimaced. “It won’t erase that easily.”
At that, Aziraphale began crying again, desperate sobs that shook his shoulders.
Part of Crowley wanted to run to his angel, ( Was he still his, anymore? Could they belong to each other, after this? ) hold him as he cried, console him, assure him that it was all okay. That he could forget all about this.
But it was not okay. This could not be forgotten.
Still, he was no longer enjoying the ease with which that knife could be twisted, and felt instead like changing the subject.
“Some human technology,” he said, somewhat lamely. “Impressive, that.”
Aziraphale looked at him with watery eyes.
Crowley continued. “Would’ve thought it was my lot who’d make something that nefarious. Humans always surprise you, though, the evil they manage without help.” Crowley pushed some things around on his desk, suddenly very self-aware. “Makes me wonder if we haven’t just been wasting our time down here.”
Aziraphale made a strange choking sound that might have been a laugh. “I never thought Gabriel would be one to use anything human.”
“I suppose that’s why it worked,” Crowley said, before he fully realized what he was saying.
Aziraphale’s eyes took on a new expression - a glimmer of hope. Crowley could see in those blue eyes how sorry the angel was, how desperate he was for Crowley to understand, how he would give everything for the chance to repair what he’d broken.
Was there anything Aziraphale could do to repair this? Crowley didn’t know. But he hoped, with the same desperation, that there was.
“Well, you know. We angels aren’t known for our cleverness,” Aziraphale said through a strained attempt at a smile.
Crowley laughed then, and it was genuine, if weak. The motion made his face flare up in pain again, and he squawked, gingerly bringing his fingertips to the burn.
“I can,” Aziraphale mumbled, looking at the floor again, “I can...if you want me to…”
Crowley sighed. It did hurt, badly, and there was no sense in letting his own stubbornness condemn him to continued suffering. “Alright. Come here, angel.”
At that word, Aziraphale’s face lit up, but Crowley could see him trying to hide it behind a mask of caution. He’s giving you space, the voice inside him said. He’s not demanding forgiveness. He’s not pleading his case.
It was all so selfless. Could it be enough?
Aziraphale walked toward him, timidly, and then he was there, standing next to Crowley, extending a trembling hand.
Crowley reached out and took Aziraphale’s hand, guiding it to his face. When skin met skin, both of them shivered. Images filled Crowley’s mind, of the last time Aziraphale had touched him...but that was over now, he told himself. Was it over? Could it ever be?
Crowley felt love, angelic love, flowing through him, felt his cheek healing, felt the pain wash away, as if Aziraphale was pulling it into himself. He closed his eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Crowley,” Aziraphale said.
And then they were embracing, Aziraphale kneeling on the floor, his head in Crowley’s lap, arms wrapped around his waist, and Crowley’s hands were in Aziraphale’s hair, stroking, holding, and both of them were crying, shaking, clinging to each other.
“I thought I’d lost you,” Aziraphale mumbled into Crowley’s shirt, now wet with tears. “I thought you hated me.”
“I’d never, angel,” Crowley said, sharpness warring with tenderness in his voice. “You should know that.”
“I’m sorry,” Aziraphale cried. “I’m so sorry.”
“I thought you hated me,” Crowley said. “You said as much, yourself.”
He felt Aziraphale’s grip on him tighten then, the angel’s fingers grabbing sweaty fistfuls of his shirt, as the angel buried his face in Crowley’s lap and sobbed.
That was the difference, now. Aziraphale had only thought Crowley betrayed him. But Crowley knew Aziraphale could turn on him. Had seen it. Heard it. Felt it.
He also knew Aziraphale was capable of coming so unglued at the thought that Crowley didn’t love him. That such an idea triggered pain in Aziraphale so deep it made a monster of him.
Both truths were significant. They tumbled together in Crowley’s mind, clanking against each other. Both meant everything needed to change. But how? What would change? And would they survive it?
“I was wrong,” Aziraphale said, having calmed enough to speak again. “I was wrong, Crowley, about you. It’s me who isn’t worthy. It’s me who doesn’t deserve -”
A realization shot through Crowley then, one he couldn’t deny.
“Stop,” Crowley said, running a finger over Aziraphale’s lips. “It can’t be about that anymore.”
“What?” Aziraphale sniffled.
“Deserving. Worthy. That can’t...it doesn’t matter. If we go down that path, we’ll…” Crowley trailed off, not able, not willing, to say what he really meant. “It can’t be about that anymore. It’s only us, now. And what we want. I don’t care whether I deserve you, or whether you deserve me, or what that even means. I just care whether I want you.”
Aziraphale looked up at him, and he looked so vulnerable, so open. Crowley knew that no matter what he said then, Aziraphale would accept it. If you told him to go now, and never come back, he would. He’d do anything you asked, with no argument.
Crowley had never had such power, not with Aziraphale. He had always been the one guessing, strategizing, compromising. Trying to work out what Aziraphale wanted, and doing whatever it took to give it to him.
So that’s what’s changed.
“And I do. I want you.”
Aziraphale looked up at him, stunned. Joy and surprise settled on his face, overlaid with shame and confusion.
“It’s all got to change,” Crowley said. Aziraphale nodded. “I don’t know, really. But after - after everything, I want you. Whatever that means.”
“Crowley,” was all Aziraphale could say.
They held each other for a while, Aziraphale settling into Crowley, Crowley running his hands over the angel’s shoulders and back. Eventually Aziraphale saw Crowley’s still-injured wrist. He lifted his head and held Crowley’s arm, looking questioningly at the demon.
“Can I…?”
Crowley thought for a moment. “Okay. But, don’t - don’t disappear it all the way.”
Aziraphale seemed to understand. He closed his eyes and touched the burn. Crowley closed his eyes too, and for a long time they sat like that, grace meeting pain meeting love meeting fear, all in a tangle connecting them.
When Crowley opened his eyes and looked down, he saw the scar. It swirled with black and gold, a new pattern he’d never seen before. It was a memorial.
To what they’d been through. What they’d survived together.
It was a message. Saying everything was different, now. They could not go back. But they could go forward. Into the unknown, knowing what they did now, their love reshaping itself, finding a way in this new world.
Together.