Chapter Text
This was Crowley’s first time travelling to a planetary system on the other side of the galaxy. It was also his first time jumping through a wormhole to reach his destination. His heart pounded nervously in his chest, since he knew that this was a risky jump with a ship as old as his, but at the same time he felt hopeful, looking forwards to a peaceful future. He trusted his ship more than anything. He had named it Bentley, she, because girls run the world. She had flown him great distances from Earth so many times that this was just some insignificant hurdle on his journey; he trusted her, because he was confident in his skills, in keeping her in tip-top shape and upgrading her just for this moment. He put so much effort into her that he knew they would survive the extreme forces this wormhole would have on every physical body. He was making this trip for himself, for a better life which waited for him on the other side of this invisible tunnel in space.
He checked the coordinates in his ship's computer for the last time and fired up the hyperdrive, steering determinedly in the direction of the coordinates that flashed on one of his screens. Besides a slight gravitational pull, there was no indication that the portal was actually there. Crowley felt Bentley’s familiar vibrations shaking him gently in his seat as she accelerated. The stars around him turned blurry. His eyes were fixed on the empty spot in space before him, the tunnel through space that was there or not. And if the coordinates he had acquired were correct, there was no looking back now.
They were correct.
He could feel the stretch and distortion of space as the ship's slight vibrations turned into uncontrollable shaking, causing every part of her to creak and pop. If she had been alive, Crowley would have thought that she cried out and moaned in pain. The sensitive electronics in his cockpit flickered and error messages obscured his screens. A flash of white light blinded him for a brief moment, then all went black; the stillness of space returned as he floated towards a constellation of stars that he had never seen before; those sparkling white dots coming alive against the deep black background, as Crowley’s eyes adjusted to the darkness again, looked so familiar and yet so different from the ones he knew from his former home. Closest to him, appearing much bigger and brighter, were the twin stars that marked the centre of this planetary system, constantly circling and attracting each other, but never touching, like two secret lovers.
Due to the strain the wormhole had put on the ship, some of its systems had automatically switched to emergency mode. Unbothered, Crowley swiped away the error messages and switched all necessary functions back on. He checked his coordinates, confirming that he had arrived at the right destination. Only two more days of flying and he would reach the planet that he had chosen to become his new home.
Crowley flew for a while—about two earth hours it felt like, but he could be entirely wrong—when one of his engines suddenly went out of hyperdrive and sent out a warning to the display in front of him. He slowed down and studied the numbers on the diagnostics screen. Although he knew his ship better than he knew himself, this error wasn't one he had seen before. Unable to make sense of it, he assumed that the ship's sensors had failed during the jump. He reset the sensors, put the ship back into hyperdrive mode and carried on.
A sudden bang snapped Crowley to attention and the ship's alarm rang, its light casting the cockpit in a red hue, alerting him to fatal engine error. They turned off completely making the ship drift silently like a nutshell on still waters.
He tried to start them up again, but only the emergency drive responded. The push it was giving his ship was painfully slow as if moving through sticky goo. That way it would take weeks to reach his destination and Crowley certainly didn’t pack enough food or underwear for that. This was supposed to be a quick ride.
Crowley checked the star map on one of his monitors. Luckily there was a planet in his vicinity. H3-AV3n, habitable, no data available, was written on the screen next to it. Weird, this was a populated star system and humans usually lacked the ability to leave anything undiscovered and conquered. Every corner of space within reach of humanity was raided by scientists to find answers, exploited by companies looking for resources and terraformed by settlers seeking out a better life. But at this moment this didn’t really matter to Crowley. All he needed was the gravitational pull and centrifugal force of a planet to slingshot his ship further into the planetary system. He let his computer calculate the course and pulled his control stick towards the planet’s direction.
As he approached the floating sphere, it appeared before him like a white marble hovering peacefully in the dark nothingness, but instead of marvelling at its serene beauty, Crowley had to maneuver his ship into the right position to hit the orbit at the right angle and use the momentum to speed up again without his hyper drive and get back on his preferred route. He steered into orbit. The numbers on his screen looked good; the ship accelerated. He just needed to correct his course a little bit…
Something was wrong. Either the numbers on the screen were incorrect or the rudders didn’t respond to Crowley’s inputs as they ought to—this was something to inspect later. What Crowley knew was that the planet’s gravity pulled him in more than expected and no input into the board computer, no pulling at the manual control stick worked against the ship getting pulled closer to the white planet.
“Shit, shit, SHIT!”
The heat of entering the atmosphere illuminated the cockpit in white light. The ship rattled and moaned and Crowley tried to steer blindly until the light subsided and was replaced by thick clouds that soon turned into a heavy snowstorm. That planet wanted him dead, it seemed, but Crowley was a roach and everybody knew what was said about roaches. He managed to avoid the peak of a mountain and then prepared for impact. With a loud scraping noise, he hit the ground and the ship slid a few hundred metres over sharp rocks, snow and ice before a boulder that could have also been a big lump of snow stopped its movement.
Crowley opened his eyes. He groaned. His head hurt. The alarm rang. He turned it off again and hoped it was for the last time today. At least the ship's sensors showed that the air on this planet was breathable. One less thing to worry about.
Through his cockpit window all that Crowley could see was a flurry of thick snowflakes and fog. Although this planet was marked as habitable, these were not conditions that Crowley considered as such. He was stuck in a snowstorm. He had to wait it out before he could check his engines, which, according to the warnings his ship's system aggressively flashed at him, were now severely damaged.
Crowley unbuckled himself from his seat and switched off all unnecessary devices to preserve as much energy as possible. Hopefully the batteries wouldn’t drain in these conditions. Who knew how many days he would need to repair the ship before he was able to leave this icy hell and continue his journey. Now that he was thinking about it, when he had to decide on a power source he should have gone with the nuclear reactor. They were more reliable after all. However, radiation had been a big problem back on Earth, which made Crowley wary of everything radioactive, and thus he decided against it.
Some time later, Crowley was woken up by the rumbling of his own stomach. Apparently, he had fallen asleep. He wasn't sure for how long, but the storm seemed to have subsided. He crawled out of his seat to get into the back of his ship, only now noticing how much his body was aching. "I should have stayed in bed this morning," he muttered to himself as he ripped open the wrapper of a cereal bar.
He put on his light pilot's jacket (this was definitely not made for this weather, really, he bought it for fashion purposes only) and opened the back ramp of his ship. Snow was blocking it and he had to push against it with all his weight before it fell open with a creak, raining powdery ice down on Crowley. "Shit," he swore.
To assess the damage to his ship, he trudged around her through the thick snow, which soaked the legs of his trousers. Just by looking at her from the outside he couldn't determine what was wrong. At least the ship didn’t get hit by debris. It seemed that he had to have a look on the inside of the engines and take them apart. This would be a pain in the arse to do alone, but it was nothing he hadn't done before. Quite the opposite. Taking apart spaceships when he had to survive as a teenager alone and putting them back together when he got Bentley were his most valuable skills, but now it was an annoying inconvenience that he would have loved to avoid, just like he had avoided ice planets so far. Today was an unlucky day.
It became evening soon and, with daylight fading, the cold outside became unbearable. Crowley sat in his cockpit, wrapped in his thin jacket, shivering, the damp trousers not helping. The ship's heating was reduced to a minimum, since Crowley, after a thorough inspection of her, figured he would be stuck here for a few days. Bentley needed all the energy left in her battery to lift off from this frozen planet.
The next day was as cold as the one before. Thick grey clouds darkened the sky, but at least there was no snowstorm.
"Fuck!" A wrench forcefully hit the ground before Crowley climbed out of the engine. This was it: an important piece of metal looked like it had just snapped apart very cleanly, almost as if someone had sawed into it. This must have happened inside the wormhole. Bentley wasn't originally made for wormhole transits. Crowley knew that the day he stole her from the scrapyard and then spent months to repair her and even longer to upgrade her to being able to handle long distance travel.
He needed a replacement for the broken piece or else his engines wouldn’t work again.
Crowley sat in his pilot seat, head slumped against the headrest. For whatever reason his emergency signal couldn’t be sent. He was fucked.
Crowley was cold, so freezing cold, and hungry. The few rations he had on board were long gone. With his back leaning against the icy metal of the Bentley he had sat down on the ground that he had partially cleared of snow to build a fire, the ship’s wing providing some shelter from above. His body refused to get back up as he started drifting in and out of consciousness; this was supposed to be a short respite. Through his blurred vision, he saw a broad figure, its fur thick and milky, emerge between some boulders and trees. It moved menacingly through the thick snow directly towards him. This was it, Crowley thought, he was going to get eaten by a polar bear.
"Oh, mother in heaven, bless this soul!" the bear said as he rushed to kneel beside Crowley's weak body. Warm paws that surprisingly felt like human palms touched his face, his hands and wrists, burning like fire against his frozen skin. "How long have you been out here?"
Crowley tried to move his cracked lips, but he was too weak to reply. He couldn't protest when strong arms wrapped around him, and picked him up like a weightless doll. Thick, white fur surrounded him and Crowley’s eyes fell shut.
When he opened his eyes the next time, he felt disoriented and dizzy. He lay on his back, gaze fixed on a wooden ceiling illuminated by flickering light, and took stock of himself. His core still felt like a block of ice and his limbs hurt in a way he had never experienced before. His blood pulsed through his fingers and toes and burned like magma was rushing through his veins. His tongue was so dry it stuck to the roof of his mouth like velcro. The crackling of a fire disturbed the silence of the room and its warmth hit him from the side. When he finally tried to lift his hands to his face to rub his crusty eyes, he noticed thick blankets and furs that were tightly wrapped around him and restricted his movement. As he shifted and wriggled to get out of this cocoon he caught the attention of another person in the room.
"Thank mother, you're awake."
Crowley turned his head towards the voice. On the floor next to him sat a woman holding a steaming cup between her hands. Her fire-red hair stood in stark contrast to the simple white robes she was wearing.
"Aziraphale found you half frozen and brought you back here," she started talking. "I offered to take care of you while he is outside performing his duties. Oh, I should introduce myself. I'm Tracy." A kind smile formed on her red lips.
She put her cup on a little table and picked up another one that looked almost the same. She shuffled closer to Crowley.
"You should drink this. Can you sit up?"
With her free hand Tracy helped him peel the pelts away and then held on to his arm to assist him get up. The temperature change of his shoulders now freed sent shivers down his spine while his lower body remained buried in the warm heap of fur and blankets. He had never felt so weak before; it was rather embarrassing.
Tracy lifted the cup to Crowley's lips, her other palm still resting gently on his shoulder. "Careful, dear."
The liquid spilled into Crowley's mouth, refreshing his dry tongue as it flowed soothingly down his throat. His taste buds picked up a rich, green, earthy flavour, and never before had he been so thankful to be given what he assumed to be herbal tea. Only then did he realise how thirsty he had been. He clung to the cup like a traveller who had gotten lost in the desert.
After he finished up, he spoke hoarsely, "Thank you, I'm Crowley."
"Nice to meet you, Crowley. We can talk later about everything, but first you should rest some more," Tracy answered and gently guided him to lie back down, once more wrapping him securely in the blankets. Crowley gladly complied.
A quiet conversation awoke him some time later.
"What have I done? I must tell Gabriel that I have broken the rules," a male voice whispered nervously.
"Please wait before you tell him. We have a few days to figure out how to introduce him to the Elders without... things getting messy. You said his ship is stranded out there. Go help him fix it and maybe we can send him on his way before anybody gets suspicious, and then we don’t have to get the Elders involved at all," the second voice, belonging to Tracy, replied. Her tone was soothing even to Crowley who wasn't part of the conversation.
"But I don't know anything about space ships. Oh, this is a mess. Why didn't I leave him there?"
"I'm sure he does know how to repair it. Now stop fretting. You did the right thing by not letting him die.” There was a pause as if Tracy waited for a reply before she continued speaking. “We will figure something out. I have to go now. See you tomorrow, dearie."
The sound of heeled boots on a wooden floor moved away. A freezing draught hit Crowley's face as the rattle of a door opening and closing again finally pulled him out of his half-conscious state.
“Dear celestial Mother, please guide us…” he heard the man whisper quietly to himself.
Crowley peeled his eyes open. There stood, like a lost child, the polar bear, but he was an ordinary human with a cherubic face and platinum curls. A big cloak of white fur covered his shoulders. He turned to look at Crowley and their eyes met; it felt like he’d been hit by lightning. Crowley squirmed and cleared his throat. "Uhm, hi," he said awkwardly, still lying on a mattress on the floor wrapped in his warm cocoon.
"Hello," answered the not-bear stiffly.
"Crowley." Crowley introduced himself as he sat up.
"I know."
"I, err, guess you're Aziraphale then?"
"That's right."
"So... You're the one who found me?"
"Yes." Aziraphale turned away, pointedly not looking at him.
"Good, that's good." Crowley shifted, peeling the furs away from him, unsure what to do in this awkward situation. As he looked down at himself, he noticed that he was not wearing his usual black ensemble anymore. Instead he wore a white shirt and white trousers similar to the ones Aziraphale was dressed in.
"These are not my clothes," he remarked.
"Yours were wet."
"Did you—ugh, never mind."
Aziraphale looked back at Crowley again, seemingly indignant. "Yes, I did change your clothes. It's not like I don't know what a naked man looks like."
Flustered, some undefined consonants tumbled out of Crowley's mouth, before he gave up on trying to pronounce real words.
Aziraphale deflated, his haughty voice turning softer. "Look, I found you out there and I just couldn't let you die. But we have strict rules here. We are not supposed to talk to outsiders."
Crowley eyed him. A thousand questions raced through his mind, but he simply replied, "Thank you for rescuing me."
They didn't talk much more after that. Aziraphale's cloak had been removed shortly after their conversation, revealing the soft yet strong physique that was hidden underneath—the kind Crowley would have found attractive if he hadn't been so unpleasant to be around. But at least the man had cooked a simple meal for them to share.
They ate in silence, both ignoring the person who was sitting opposite them. The warm stew and hearty potatoes made Crowley sigh contentedly. After days of involuntary fasting, even the simplest meal felt like bliss.
Suddenly, Aziraphale disturbed the silence when his spoon hit the plate with a clink as he put it down. "So," he started speaking. "What happened. Why did you land here?"
Crowley huffed. "I wouldn't call that landing. I think my engines were damaged when I went through the wormhole. Hadn't really planned to crash here. Wasn't able to do repairs, the emergency signal didn't go through, thought I was going to die."
"Emergency signal, yes." Aziraphale looked a little bit guilty. "We block all outside communication."
"You do what? Why on earth would somebody do that?" spluttered Crowley.
"We're not on Earth."
"I know that." Crowley propped his elbow on the table and pointed his spoon accusingly in Aziraphale's direction. "Now tell me, why do you block 'outside' signals? Doesn’t really make sense to me."
"Well." Aziraphale's fingers tapped nervously against the wooden table. "We'd like to avoid people like you coming to our municipality."
“People like me? What, smart and sexy?”
Crowley’s joke was skillfully ignored.
“Impure people.”
"Impure—Do you think I'm impure?" His voice hitched up two octaves..
"Yes," Aziraphale replied plainly.
"W-w-what do you even mean by that?"
"You're tainted."
"Tainted?" Crowley asked, incredulous. He felt his eyebrows almost touch his hairline.
"Yes, and I really shouldn't talk to you."
"You started this conversation! And I'm here in your home, eating the soup you cooked!"
"You are." Aziraphale looked down on his plate, fidgeting nervously with his spoon.
"Listen, I'm grateful that you saved me although it is against your law or belief or whatever that is. You're my literal guardian angel. I would have frozen to death if you hadn’t found me. There’s no way anybody could blame you for that. And I promise you I will leave this planet as soon as possible and get out of your hair again."
Aziraphale nodded and they finished their meal in silence.
"Your ship. You said the engines were broken." Aziraphale broke the silence, when he prepared his night quarter next to Crowley's in front of the fireplace. "Are you able to repair it?"
"I can't do much before getting some spare parts, do you know where I could get some? A workshop or scrapyard or old engine I can take apart?"
Aziraphale swallowed. "Uhm, well, I don't think we have anything like that here.”
“Really? It’s just a piece of metal. Doesn’t have to be the exact one. I can make it work. It only has to last for two days of flying.”
“No, you don’t understand. We’re not very keen on technology. We don’t have spaceships or anything similar here.”
"Are you serious? I hope you are joking, because I am seriously wondering if I actually died inside the wormhole and landed in hell," Crowley complained. He couldn’t quite believe this. "How did your bunch even come here? You don't look like aliens to me! There must be ships or shuttles or even rockets! And how did you build all of this? Was the forest here before? How do you—"
"Good night, Crowley." Aziraphale slid under his covers, turning to the side, away from Crowley, ignoring all of his protests.
"You can't just ignore all of my questions!" It turned out, Aziraphale could.
Crowley sighed when he received no more replies. He wrapped the warm furs around himself, looking into the dancing shadows the dying flames in the fireplace produced. The steady crackling of the fire soothed his nerves. He was still tired from the days spent surviving in the cold wilderness, and he fell quickly into a dreamless slumber.