Chapter Text
“Angel… what if the Almighty planned it like this? From the very beginning?”
“Could have. I wouldn’t put it past her.”
It was six thousand and six years before Aziraphale began to pray.
Angels did not need to, as a rule. The humans prayed. Angels went through official channels, and if their news was serious enough it would be passed along up the line, and eventually instructions would come back from Michael or Gabriel or even, if it was really serious, the Metatron. Aziraphale had always been given his orders that way. The Almighty hadn’t personally spoken to him since that morning outside the Garden.
He didn’t go into a church. London was full of churches, big and small, but that was another thing for humans. He couldn’t play-act at being one of them. It would be absurd. Even more absurd than a disgraced angel trying to have a conversation with Her. Instead, on a pearly-grey morning, with the sun coming up somewhere behind clouds and buildings, he took a walk in the park.
“Hello,” he said, under his breath – humans could do this in their heads, but he wasn’t entirely sure how - “good morning. I know I’m not really supposed to be doing this. I haven’t been doing many things the way I’m supposed to lately. But, well, you are omniscient, and omnipotent, so I can’t really be clogging the airwaves – Look, I know you’re not very big on direct answers, but I do have some very sincere questions, so I’ll just have to keep asking them until I figure it out, or something.”
Aziraphale stopped with his hands clasped behind his back, to watch the ducks talking sleepily amongst themselves. He took a deep breath. “I have a sort of confession to make. I didn’t lose the flaming sword. I gave it to the humans. They needed it. Some way to defend themselves, and to make a fire – It was a hard world you turned them out into. So I gave them the sword. They didn’t ask for it, but it was the right thing to do. And I’m not sorry about that. I never have been.” He looked down at his feet. “But then I lied about it, for a very long time. I know you knew, of course you would have known, it was silly even to try, but I lied to all the angels, too. I let them think I still had it, hidden away somewhere. I was afraid of getting into trouble. It was just cowardice, really. So I think what I’m saying is – I’m sorry. For lying about the sword.”
There was no response. Not from the ducks and not from Her. He hadn’t been expecting one, if he was honest with himself, but it was still disappointing to be correct.
After the confession, it got easier. He still came down to St James’s most of the time, feeling it was somehow more proper than chatting away to Her in the back room of his shop. He talked about the Plan.
“I never liked it,” he said, watching a young squirrel trying to bury an acorn beside the concrete footing of a bench. “All the way back in the beginning, I thought there had to be something more to it. You couldn’t just have given up on them. Not when you’d built a whole universe with so many wonderful things in it. And that was odd, too, that you’d built a whole universe and then shut the humans up in a little walled garden. Almost as if you’d meant for them to disobey. But that was an impossible idea, so I tried not to think about it.”
He spoke to the flocking pigeons about Crowley. “He always had so many questions. Right from when I first met him. He was always asking whether what You did – or what Heaven did, I suppose, to be precise – was right. Whether all the smiting was really deserved. And I tried not to listen to him, I did honestly try. I just wasn’t much good at it.”
He came out in the first snow-fall of the year and said, very quietly, in the dim yellow glow of the streetlamps, “I really don’t think we could have done it, if You hadn’t wanted us to.”
In six thousand years, Crowley had never stopped praying.
For most of that time he’d been certain nobody was listening. That was what it meant, to be fallen. It meant that She wouldn’t hear you, wouldn’t look at you, that you weren’t part of Her universe anymore. You were a nasty cancerous thing growing under the skin and one day she would cut you out and cauterise the wound. In the meantime, there was nothing to do but fight amongst yourselves and follow whatever orders you had to for survival. He escaped up to Earth as soon as he could and he stayed there. He was still roughly equivalent to a boil on the planet’s behind, but at least the view was better.
He’d known the Almighty wasn’t interested in him. Even the angels didn't talk to Her. They had their proper channels to go through, working up the ranks and probably never reaching the top. Crowley didn’t have access to that. But he’d prayed anyway, whenever he had something to say, or something to ask.
After the world didn’t end – after Aziraphale hadn’t died and neither had he – after he’d spent a month shivering whenever he thought about it, Aziraphale dropped into a tub of holy water, and knowing it couldn’t hurt him didn’t make it any easier to imagine the result if it had – once all of that was over with, he’d tilted himself back in his big chair until gravity wept at the angle, and stared at the ceiling.
“So what happens now?” he’d asked. “Do we get another Patmos? A new Plan to work towards? Does someone go and feed the witch mushrooms until she makes like her ancestor and writes the next part? It was all written. It just wasn’t written where we thought it was.”
The ceiling, as ever, was silent.
“If you have any big ideas about what happens now, do share them? I think we could all use a bit of divine guidance. I’ve got some lovely walls you could write on.”
Nothing.
“No? Well, think about it. For me.”
He rocked further back on the chair. It was a frivolous miracle, but he could hardly get in more trouble than he had already. And anyway, wasting their warped celestial powers on selfish pleasures was what demons did. He was just obeying his nature.
There was a bell of the door of Aziraphale’s shop. He had it for the usual reasons, to alert him to wayward customers who could be dealt with or shooed away as appropriate. It was part of the fabric of his world, a noise so familiar he said, “I’m afraid we’re closed,” before he noticed it was six in the morning and the door had certainly been locked.
He pushed away from his desk, quietly. It wasn’t Crowley, because Crowley would have said something by now. It wasn’t Shadwell, who had once picked the lock, because Tracy would have called to warn him. Someone else was in his shop uninvited. He stepped out between the bookshelves, ready to confront the intruder. “I really must insist – Gabriel?”
Gabriel raised his hands, showing empty palms. “No weapons. See? Friendly.”
“What an unexpected… visit.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. I would have warned you in advance, but I’m not here officially. This is more of a, a, a personal trip. While I was in the area.”
His obvious, awkward shame made Aziraphale’s chest ache. He used to talk like that, when he was still pretending Crowley was an enemy and every meeting needed an excuse. He said, “Well, if you’re here to buy a book-”
“No, I’m not here to buy a book,” Gabriel interrupted, instantly dismissive. He backtracked almost as quickly. “I mean, they’re lovely. I assume. I can see you’ve put a lot of effort into your collection. But I’m not here for that, I just wanted to – talk.”
Aziraphale could have told him to go away. He could have demanded to be left alone as they'd agreed. He said instead, “You know, there’s a park just around the corner. We could go for a walk. Neutral ground.”
“Yes! Neutral ground, what a great idea. Uh – lead the way.”
It was raining that morning, a slow sullen London rain that had arrived two days before and showed no signs of leaving. Aziraphale reached automatically for his umbrella. Gabriel watched him from the doorway, bemused. “Do you always carry that?”
“Not always. The humans usually do, in this kind of weather.”
“Oh.” He frowned. “Why?”
“To keep their heads dry. And their clothes.”
“That’s… actually very clever. Did they think of that?”
Aziraphale raised an eyebrow. “All by themselves. They do have to live here full-time, you know. They’ve invented quite a lot of things to help with it.” He hesitated for a moment, but his conscience won out. He reached behind the door for another umbrella. “Here, I have a spare. You can borrow it.”
“Thank you.” Gabriel fumbled with the catch for a moment. “How do you – oh, I see. Ingenious.”
The umbrella wasn’t exactly a spare. It was more of a Crowley-never-remembers-and-then-complains-about-rain umbrella, and Gabriel looked faintly ridiculous under its pinstripe canopy. There was a wariness about him, as if he was hoping not to be noticed. It was a caution Gabriel had never shown before.
“So,” Aziraphale said, as they turned into the park through the black iron gate, “what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”
“First things first,” Gabriel said, “this is going to sound very combative, and I just want you to know that I don’t mean it that way. I’m just asking the question.”
“Go on?”
“Why aren’t you fallen?”
Aziraphale stopped moving. “I beg your pardon?”
“You’re still an angel. I mean, technically. After that stunt with the hellfire I really don’t know what you are, but you still...” and here Gabriel waved his hands, trying to express his meaning and nearly dropping the umbrella, “you still show up on the records as if you were still on our side. And you certainly haven’t become one of them. We would know. Which means the Almighty has not cast you out.”
“No,” Aziraphale agreed. “That was just Heaven, I’m afraid.”
“And you’ve been – again, this is going to sound combative, I’m not making accusations – you’ve been praying.”
“Yes.”
“Directly. Straight up to Her.”
“We’re angels, Gabriel. We’re meant to encourage prayer. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with – with setting a good example.”
Gabriel looked disbelieving. “Why do you care? You defied the Great Plan. We cast you out. What can you possibly have left to say? You abandoned Her service, you walked away from Heaven, I don’t understand why you would want to talk to Her.”
“You sound like you’re offended.” Aziraphale started walking again, down to where the rain was gathering in the old fountain basin. “I’m not sure that it’s any of your business whether I do or do not pray.”
“It’s not. You don’t work for me.”
“So why the visit?”
“Because it seems like you’re the only one who might know what She wants.”
Aziraphale looked sideways at him. Gabriel was glaring, his jaw tense. “Isn’t she talking to you? You’re an archangel, I thought -”
“Yeah. Yeah, you would think. But all I get is the Metatron, and he just tells me to keep everyone at work and get ready for the next time. Meanwhile we’re outside of the Plan, I can’t give them any kind of timeline, I can’t even promise there will be a next time, and the only angel who refused to fight is down here praying like he and the Almighty are on first name terms. So what is it? What is it that you know? You can tell me. It’s not too late to come back.”
“It is, I’m afraid.” Aziraphale stuck his hand in his pocket, hunching against the cold wind. “I’ve given it a lot of thought. I don’t think there’s any way back to Heaven for me. I would have to believe, you see, that Heaven was doing the right thing. I stopped believing that, a little before Armageddon. I’m not on your side. What I’m trying to figure out is what it might mean to be on Her side.”
They walked silently for a while, as Gabriel thought it over. Eventually, with the rain pattering hard on their umbrellas, he said, “Does she talk back?”
“Not yet.” Aziraphale smiled. “I’m practicing faith.”
Several months after the apocalypse that wasn’t, an angel and a demon were sitting in St James’s Park.
“Here’s what’s worrying me,” Aziraphale said.
“The increasing rarity of sushi-grade tuna?”
“No. Well, yes. That is very concerning, but that’s not what I meant.”
Crowley leant deeper into the arm of the bench. He titled his head so Aziraphale could see his eyes, crinkled behind his dark glasses. “What did you mean, angel?”
“What worries me,” Aziraphale started again, “is, what if I was right? About the Ineffable Plan.”
“I thought that was just something you said to slow them down?”
“It was. Well, it was at the time. Mostly. Partly. I had been wondering for a while. And now here we are, and the world is still here, and we’re still un-smited.”
“Smitten.”
“No, that’s something else. The thing is, we got away with it. The immunity thing.” He was choosing his words carefully, afraid that either Upstairs or Downstairs might be listening in. Best not to say it out loud; Crowley would know what he meant. “And there’s one other being who knows how we did it.”
“What? Who?” Crowley frowned in confusion, following Aziraphale’s glance at the sky. “Her?”
“Yes, Her. She must have known what we were up to, and she didn’t tell anyone. Not even Gabriel. Didn’t do anything to us.”
Crowley blew out his cheeks. “Well, maybe she wasn’t paying attention.”
“It was the end of the world, Crowley. Her son was supposed to ride out at the head of the hosts of heaven and destroy Creation. And we were holding hands with the Anti-Christ.”
“Mmm. Yeah, she probably noticed us.”
“Yes. So, what if I was right, and this was always the plan?”
“Can’t be,” Crowley said, after a moment of watching the ducks swimming in circles. “That’s not possible.”
Aziraphale nodded. “Of course not.”
“It’s not. Because if that was true – then I – I would be carrying out the plan. Which would mean-”
“I know.”
Crowley was still staring at the birds. His jaw worked. “No,” he said, and swung himself up to his feet, striding away from the bench, trying to escape the implications.
They were unavoidable. Aziraphale had been trying for months and there was no way around it. The chain of reasoning only led to one place. He followed Crowley along the path, walking a pace or two behind him, until the demon stopped under a tree. He stuck his hands in his pockets and hunched his shoulders.
“If that’s true,” he said in a bitter hiss, “then I’ve been doing Her work all this time. She needed me to fall. So I could switch the babies. So I could talk you into stopping the war. Nobody else would have done – they might have made the same cock-up at the hospital but they wouldn’t have spent hours and years persuading you the world was worth saving. It had to be me. I never meant to fall, I didn’t know what I was doing – I was doing Her work all along. I was doing it all along!” The last was screamed at the sky, grief tearing out of him, matched by a hard wind that bent the branches of the trees.
“I know,” Aziraphale said. “I’m so sorry.”
Gabriel kept coming down to visit. Every few weeks he’d appear on Aziraphale’s doorstep, or interrupt his breakfast at the local coffee house – it had changed owners several times since the bookshop was established, but the current management was doing well and had found a very acceptable supplier for their pastries. The lemon tart was Aziraphale’s particular favourite.
“I don’t know what you want me to say,” he said, dabbing at his mouth with a paper napkin. “I didn’t tell Adam to do anything. I told him I would support him in whatever he did.”
“What about your demon friend?”
“Crowley didn’t tell him anything either. It was all Adam. It’s not as if either of us had the power to stop him, not on that day.”
Gabriel scowled. “Well, what Adam did has left us in the worst mess since the rebellion.”
“Whatever state we’re in, it’s – it’s where She intended us to be.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” Gabriel sat up straighter, which should have been impossible. “Aziraphale, this wasn’t Her idea. There was a plan, it was Her plan, and you ruined it.”
Aziraphale shrugged. “I couldn’t force one eleven-year-old to change his mind. What could I have done to stop Her, if She’d wanted to ride out? And Adam, well… his power was only ever borrowed, you know. His father was never divine. I think the Almighty always meant for young Adam to have a choice.”
They’d been having this conversation, in various words, every time Gabriel visited. Aziraphale was starting to believe himself through sheer repetition.
“He made the wrong choice and you tempted him into it.”
Aziraphale cut a neat section of lemon tart with the edge of his fork. He looked back up into Gabriel’s radiant eyes. “Even if that were true – which I don’t agree that it is – humans have made the wrong choices before, and the plan has changed to account for it.”
“The plan doesn’t change,” Gabriel scoffed.
“Eden didn’t go according to plan.”
Gabriel had one hand curled around the edge of the table, to support himself when he leaned forward. He was gripping it so hard now that the wood creaked. “And whose fault was that, in Eden? Let me think. Oh, it was Aziraphale, and a snake that wriggled out of Hell. Why does that seem familiar?”
“I was at the Crucifixion, too.” Aziraphale let that hang for a moment, knowing that Gabriel had not been. “So was Crowley. That went perfectly to the plan, including the part where some humans had to do some really very unkind things. So I don’t appreciate the suggestion that I always interfere. And I didn’t make them eat the apple. They did that themselves. All I did was give them the sword.”
“I – I’m sorry, you did what?”
“Ah. Yes. Right. Told Her about that, didn’t actually tell you. Yes. I gave them the flaming sword, on their way out of the garden. That’s why I never used it again. I didn’t have it. They needed it much more than I did.”
"Aziraphale..." Gabriel stared at him, lost for words.
"I never really liked fighting, anyway."
“The thing is,” Aziraphale said, “you have to consider who his father was.”
Crowley squinted from behind his glasses. “Whose father? Adam’s father? Adam’s father was the whole problem.”
“Yes, I know that. What I mean is, he was meant to be the opposite of the first one, but he wasn’t.”
“Obviously not. The first one went through with the plan.”
“The first one was human and divine. Lucifer was never divine, even before the Fall. He was only an angel. The strongest of us, but not an independent power.”
Crowley poured himself more wine and gestured with the bottle. “So he’s not exactly a god. What does it matter? He’s still the ruler of this place.”
“I’m not talking about dominion. I’m talking about incarnation. When the Christ was born he brought godhood into humanity and he brought humanity into God. He made a bridge. Made himself into a bridge. Made of Her and made of them. Whereas young Adam...”
“Made of them and made of him.”
Aziraphale nodded. “And he’s an angel. And a demon. Same thing, as you’ve been saying all along.”
“Same thing originally. Underneath.” Crowley put his glass down and leant deeper into the sofa. “You’re saying that Adam was a second incarnation, for us. To bring us into humanity. Where the path back to Her already exists.”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
When She came, it was on a bright morning in a garden.
In a fit of s entimentality , Aziraphale had closed up the shop and invited Crowley out on a little day trip. The horticultural society kept some very fine gardens around London which Aziraphale never paid to enter. They walked past the little ticket booth as though it couldn’t possibly apply to them, and so of course it didn’t. It was late August and sticky-hot, the summer rallying for one last heatwave. The world was a year overdue for its ending.
They had taken a meandering route, with no particular goal in mind, past the ornamental pond and through the rock garden. Crowley had spent several minutes examining the miniature alpines, planning a new installation for his flat. “I don’t like bonsai trees,” he’d said, when Aziraphale suggested those. “Well, I don’t dislike bonsai, but it’s not – I think small perennials would work better.” So instead they’d wandered along the path away from the glasshouse – much too hot to visit in this weather – and into the less regimented parkland. There were mature old trees along here, and tiny moths basking in the long grass. The high shrill of crickets threaded the breeze.
And then the heavens parted.
Aziraphale staggered under the force of Her gaze. His wings swept out to catch him, slipping into the corporeal world for a moment, and the midday sun on his feathers was nothing to the warmth of Her. He felt he might burst out of his skin, bleed gold and starlight into the grass. He turned his face towards blue sky, his eyes half-closed against the fire, and said in a helpless whisper, “I’m here.”
There were no words. Her voice did not ring through the earth and crack the boughs of the trees. But She knew him, knew all his prayers and hopes and loves, and approved, and when Her presence faded the day seemed thunderstorm-dark. He stood alone on the green path with something like prophecy on his tongue.
He wiped his face on his sleeve. He tucked his wings away, when he noticed them, before any humans could see. He looked around for Crowley.
He found him, several minutes later, concealed beneath a large rhododendron.
“Crowley?”
Crowley twitched. “Is she gone?”
“She’s never really gone. I mean, She’s everywhere. She has... turned her face elsewhere.”
His friend shook his head. His wings, invisible to anyone but Aziraphale, relaxed from their protective mantling.
“Why were you hiding?”
Crowley’s laugh was bitter. “Last time she looked at me, angel, she was casting me into the outer darkness. It’s not an experience I want to repeat.”
“No, don’t worry. That won’t happen again.” Aziraphale frowned. “We should go further along this path.”
“What did she say to you?”
Aziraphale tried to fit words around it, and couldn’t. “I’m not sure,” he admitted. “I could work it out, I think, if I stopped and thought about it for a few days. Or I could walk along the path, and – find out.”
Crowley blew out his cheeks. “Alright, then. Let’s do it.”
The path ran on straight for a while, between the bushes and the tall old trees. Aziraphale still wasn’t sure what he was looking for, until the little wood opened out into a neatly pruned orchard, short trees with low branches, dropping fruit into their dappled shade.
Beside him, Crowley breathed in deep. “They’re all ordinary,” he said, his voice quiet. “Nothing special about any of them.”
“No,” Aziraphale agreed. “They’re all ordinary, mundane apple trees. Any one of them would do.”
He went between the rows. The apples were coming into ripeness, heavy on the branches and sweet on the air. There was nothing special about any of them. He chose one at random, one particular apple that came easily into his hand, its mottled skin turning red on the sunward side.
It tasted like wine. Like the faintest echo of Her.
He held it out to Crowley. He didn’t know he would, until he did. Crowley was staring at him, his shadowed eyes the colour of golden leaves. “Take it,” Aziraphale said, and heard his voice tremble. “Eat. This – It – This is the fruit of the tree of knowledge.”
Crowley’s fingers lifted the apple delicately from his hand. He smiled wryly. “Amen,” he said, half in mockery, and bit into it.
The phrase “the Earth moved” has been used before, when two people find revelation in their shared experience. It would be crass to use it for that moment in the orchard. It would also be accurate.
When the thunder faded, they sat on the ground, in the cool shaded grass.
“You stole that,” Crowley mumbled. His eyes were wet behind his dark glasses. Aziraphale hadn’t mentioned it, for fear of Crowley pointing out how his own breath was ragged.
“I know,” he said instead. “I think She’ll forgive me.”
Crowley took the core from Aziraphale’s stolen apple and he sat at his kitchen table, digging out the seeds with a paring knife. The flesh was soft from sitting in his pocket for most of a day, the exposed parts turning brown. They had passed it back and forth, sharing it bite by bite, until he couldn’t tell which were his tooth-marks and which were Aziraphale’s. There had been a light in Aziraphale’s eyes that Crowley couldn’t bear to meet straight on, a distant reflection of Her, like moonlight on a pond, but blinding. Aziraphale had always had the faint glow of heaven, of course, had always shone, for anyone with the eyes to see. But not like that. Not like a stained-glass window when the sun comes out. Crowley had been afraid that his touch would burn.
Instead, the apple. Instead, something new.
The moment had faded fast, for Crowley. He could see Aziraphale lingering in that place, in the presence he had never been exiled from. But for him it was a moment, when all the clouds parted and he could feel Her on his skin like starlight, half a universe away and unreachable, and then it was gone and the apple was only an apple.
He took the core anyway and stuck it in his pocket, seeping sticky juice into the lining of his jacket. He killed a half-dozen wasps who came nosing around before they got back to the car. He sat in Aziraphale’s back room with a glass of scotch, reminiscing about oysters and garum so they wouldn’t have to talk about Golgotha, or at least, not aloud. Not directly. They had known each other long enough to recognise the centre of a conversational diversion.
In the early morning, sober as a judge, he sat with a knife and worked until he had a pile of apple seeds gleaming in their neat brown skins. He swept them into an envelope and tucked them back into his pocket, and then he went for a drive.
There are many thousands of roundabouts in London. Nobody walks on them, nobody drives over them; they are little green islands in the tarmac rivers. Mostly they’re looked after, but there are always some overgrown and neglected and on his journey in the pink-grey dawn, Crowley stopped by each patch of wildness and planted an apple seed. What he gave them was not exactly a blessing, constrained as it was by his demonic nature. He gave them stubbornness and ambition and sharp, spiny defiance, so they would grow fast and the council landscapers, if they ever got round to visiting, would find them not worth the effort to remove. They wouldn’t flower this spring or next, but they would one day, and spread apple pulp under the tyres of every expensive car.
Crowley didn’t visit them often. He felt superstitious about it, as though him looking at them, with his eyes, would stop them thriving. They’d come from somewhere so much bigger than him. So he didn’t go to the roundabouts and menace the seedlings in a whispered hiss. He didn’t take pruning shears and cut back the vegetation around them. He left them alone.
(He did see rabbits near one of them and took the precaution of making the whole area smell persistently of fox. The local dogs barked for a week.)
Perhaps because he’d left them alone, the apples did what apples did, instead of what he’d expected them to do. He'd thought, quite reasonably, that if you planted seeds from an apple you would get a similar sort of apple. But on a cold September morning, five years after he’d planted it and surrounded by the roar of commuting traffic, he stood in front of a sapling tree and glared at it.
“You were meant to be pink,” he said, irritated. “I remember what you looked like. Green one side, pink on the other, all pretty and mottled. Not yellow. How can I go to Aziraphale and say hello angel, I grew the apple that the Almighty gave you, and it’s yellow?”
The tree, unlike his houseplants, had not been trained through years of his attentions to mind what he said. It did not appear to be intimidated. Mildly offended, at most. It was preoccupied with orienting its leaves to better catch the rising sun.
Crowley reached out and sulkily tapped one of the yellow apples. “I’m going to come back every week until you’ve ripened these and if they don’t taste good, we are going to have words.”
He made the rounds, pulling the Bentley up on verges and sauntering over busy roads to reach the growing trees. Of the nine seeds he’d planted, six had germinated, and one of the seedlings had died in its second winter, nibbled down to a stump by what must now be the holiest deer in all of Surrey. The five survivors were all bearing fruit and no two trees were producing the same variety. One was hard and green and very unpromising. One was yellow like the first, with a smooth red blush on the sunny side. The fourth looked similar to its parent, but the fruits were half the size they should have been. Only the last tree was bearing what Crowley had expected, and even there, the scent was not quite right.
"Hm," he said to himself. "Well. I suppose one in five is acceptable. Whose idea was this, anyway?"
He drove home in a sulk and shouted at his potted orchids.