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“What are you doing here?”
Aziraphale is here.
Two years after I forgive you.
One year after Crowley’s depression nap in the stars, wrapped in the nebula of his own creation, trying to forget. (He never forgot.)
Six months after the signs of the Second Coming began popping up all over the world.
Aziraphale is here, standing outside the door of Crowley’s flat, dressed in an awful grey suit and looking over his shoulders with nervous eyes. He’s holding something large, heavy, and incomprehensibly old.
When he finally looks at Crowley, there is a brief moment of relief in his eyes. Like seeing the first signs of rain after a long, devastating drought. But then, it’s gone, replaced by something nervous and almost…fearful.
“I need to talk to you,” Aziraphale says, low and almost conspiratorial, as if the walls have ears.
“I have nothing to say to you,” Crowley spits, because it’s been two years and his heart never stopped breaking. Because the mess they’re in right now is all Aziraphale’s fault.
Aziraphale bites at his lips, working his mouth nervously. But then he seems to steel himself, fixing Crowley with a look of determination.
“You don’t have to say anything. Just listen.” The angel’s voice is low and stern. Commanding. The hand Crowley still has on the door clenches into the wood painfully, splinters digging into his palm.
“I don’t have to list—”
“This is more important than…than being angry with me!” Aziraphale interrupts Crowley, urgency and something like heartache heavy in his words. “Please, you’re the only one who can do this.”
Crowley glares. How could Aziraphale be doing this now? Radio silence for years, orchestrating the Second Coming from up high, abandoning him for Heaven. Something like hellfire burns in the blood of his corporeal form.
But Aziraphale is looking at Crowley with fear in his eyes, and that does something to the inconvenient heart in his chest that makes him snarl.
“Get on with it, then.”
Aziraphale lets out a small, relieved sigh. Then, he shoves the thing he’s holding in his hands toward Crowley, gesturing for Crowley to take it.
Crowley recognizes it. It makes his blood run cold.
It’s the Book of Life.
“Aziraphale,” Crowley growls, looking between the Book of Life held between them and Aziraphale’s eyes flitting about nervously. He doesn’t take the Book. “Why is the Book of Life on Earth? In your hands? Outside my flat?”
“You need to take it,” Aziraphale says, waving the book up and down, insisting that Crowley take it. Crowley takes a step back, trying to avoid touching the Book at all, and Aziraphale smartly does not cross the threshold of the doorway.
“No, no no no no, I don’t need to take anything from you, Aziraphale. Especially the bloody Book of Life! What are you thinking?” Crowley already has the Spear of Longinus and Gabriel’s Horn on lockdown, he doesn’t need any more holy relics attracting unwanted attention.
“You have to, my de— Crowley.” Aziraphale’s words come out in a rush, hushed and pleading. “You need to hide it, any way you can. From Hell. From…from Heaven. It can’t be allowed to fall into either of their hands.”
Crowley freezes.
“What’s going on?” Crowley is wary. This doesn’t sound right. Aziraphale is on Heaven’s side, he made that quite clear two years ago. The Book of Life was one of, if not the most powerful holy relics in existence, Heaven would never give it up willingly.
“Crowley, please, just—”
“What. Is. Going. On.”
Aziraphale’s face falls into a look of utter defeat. He pulls the Book of Life against his chest, like a shield.
“I can’t…I can’t tell you. Not now. It’s not safe.”
“Right.”
“I need you…” Aziraphale’s voice is watery, barely above a whisper. Crowley’s throat tightens, but Aziraphale continues. “…I need you to trust me.”
A storm brews in Crowley’s chest.
“You expect me to believe that you, Supreme Archangel of Heaven, would willingly hand over the Book of Life to the enemy?” Crowley asks, incredulous. He feels like he’s going crazy.
“Oh Crowley,” Aziraphale says, sad and choked. Nothing lasts forever, Crowley hears ringing in his head. Instead, “You aren’t my enemy. You never have been, not even in Eden.”
Crowley feels like he’s shattering, like pieces he could barely hold together are back on the floor again, sharp and angry.
“You’re with Heaven, Aziraphale! You left me here two years ago to—to go back with them. You chose your side, and it’s definitely not mine.”
Aziraphale is shaking his head slowly, eyes closed, that pained expression never leaving his face. Two sides pull at Crowley’s heart — the small part gratified that Aziraphale is feeling pain for what he did, and the larger part drowning in guilt at being the reason why.
“I, I didn’t, I—I,” Aziraphale struggles with his words, his throat working, eyes still closed. When he finally opens them and fixes them on Crowley, making direct eye contact despite his dark sunglasses, they shine with unshed tears. But there’s something lying deeper there, something determined.
“You didn’t pop right off to Heaven and disappear for two years?” Crowley starts pacing, turning on his heel every few steps, gesturing wildly with his hands. “Is that what you wanted to say? You didn’t leave your precious bookshop behind, hm? You didn’t leave humanity behind while plotting the Second Coming up there? You didn’t choose Heaven over—ngh!”
He can’t say it.
“No.”
Crowley’s skids to a stop, and he looks at Aziraphale. His eyes are still wet, but his brows are furrowed tightly, his mouth hardened into a tight line. He looks…angry.
“No?” Crowley scoffs.
“No.” This time, Aziraphale takes the step over the threshold, fully entering Crowley’s flat. He has Crowley locked under an unflinching gaze, held down by holy fury.
Aziraphale crosses the distance between them, the door slamming behind him without being touched.
“I would never abandon humanity,” Aziraphale says, dark and low. “I’ve already stopped Armageddon once. I will not let it happen again.”
Crowley takes a step back. Aziraphale follows, fire burning in his eyes.
“I’m not the one who left first, Crowley. Remember that before accusing me of choosing sides. I watched you turn your back on me and walk out of that bookshop long before I went to Heaven.”
“You wanted me to go back there!” Crowley bares his teeth, angrier now. “You wanted me to go back to the place that cast me out, that tried to destroy the world once, that tried to destroy you!”
“And you were asking me to leave it all behind — Heaven, the humans, the bookshop — to go to the stars!”
“But we would have been together!”
“Yes, together when the universe ended because we weren’t here to stop it!”
They are both breathing wildly, despite neither of them needing air to live. They glare at each other, both of them out of words. Crowley is too sober to deal with this right now.
He doesn’t like the familiar guilt building in his gut. He doesn’t like the pressure of uncertainty beginning to color his feelings a lighter shade of grey.
But there’s something else barreling forward to the forefront of his thoughts, setting off alarm bells.
“What’s going on, angel?” Crowley nearly cringes at the slip of his tongue, the familiar moniker still tasting like ash and longing.
“I can’t tell you,” Aziraphale replies through a heavy breath, trying to collect himself. “Not yet. It’s too dangerous.”
“All the more reason—”
“I need you to trust me.”
And oh, Crowley wants to. He has wanted to for two years.
“Why should I trust you? After everything?”
“Because it’s for you, Crowley.” Aziraphale is looking at him with pleading eyes and a wobbly smile, and Crowley doesn’t know if he can take it. “Everything I’ve done since…since then, in Heaven, has been for you. All of it.”
Crowley’s eyes flicker between the Book of Life and Aziraphale’s face. He makes unintelligible noises while he struggles with the angel’s words.
“Are you…in trouble?”
Aziraphale sighs dejectedly, nodding.
“And you’re not my enemy?” A shake of Aziraphale’s head. “But Heaven is?”
A trembling lip, another nod.
Crowley swallows thickly.
Then, he reaches out a hand, gestures with his fingers for the Book.
At first, Aziraphale doesn’t move, like he doesn’t believe what he’s seeing. Slowly, he moves the heavy Book that had been pressed up against his chest like a shield — like it was protecting his heart — and tentatively lays it in Crowley’s hand.
Crowley takes it.
“This better not be a mistake, angel.” Crowley curses internally at himself, his tongue slipping again.
“Coming to you has never been a mistake.”
Before Crowley can even process how he feels about that, Aziraphale stiffens, looking up at the ceiling. No, toward something farther.
“I need to leave. Now.”
“No, no no don’t even think about it, there is more we need to talk about.”
“They’ll know I’m gone if I don’t return quickly. I don’t want them to suspect I was here.”
“Aziraphale — angel — please, just tell me what you’re doing. Tell me this is the right thing to do. Tell me…tell me you’ll be back.”
Aziraphale smiles at him, reaches out like he wants to touch him, lets his hand fall limply to his side instead.
“I hope so, my dear. I hope so.”
And then, Aziraphale is gone.
Crowley stands in the middle of his foyer, alone once again, the bloody Book of Life clenched in one hand, his other balled into a fist.
Somewhere, in a safe protected by Anathema’s Earthly magic mixed with the combined wards of Heaven and Hell provided by Gabriel and Beelzebub, are the Spear of Longinus and Gabriel’s Horn. Holy relics stolen from either side, pieces needed to advance the Second Coming, hidden in a demon’s flat in Mayfair.
Crowley walks to the safe, opens it when the wards recognize him, and places the Book of Life inside. He locks and wards the safe again, then immediately pours himself two fingers of whisky from the bottle stowed in his desk.
He wonders if he’s doing the right thing. He wonders if he did the right thing two years ago. He wonders if Aziraphale’s heart was just as broken as his was — as it still is now, though the sharp edges already seem to be growing duller, more malleable.
He wonders if he made the right call by trusting Aziraphale in this. (He already knows he has.)
Crowley finishes his drink in two swallows, pulls out his mobile, and punches Anathema’s name on his contact list. The line begins to ring.
There’s a Second Coming to stop, and an angel obviously in trouble that he needs — has always needed — to protect. The edges between what is Right and what is Not are still blurred, even more so now that he has seen Aziraphale again, but Crowley knows one thing is absolute.
He has work to do.