Chapter Text
It wasn’t actually raining, but the London evening was doing its best to convince you that it was. The air was damp, the streets were damp, even the last few pedestrians scurrying home looked a little damp, though that may have been perspiration, as the evening was also unseasonably hot. Not the kind of heat you could enjoy, grey and wet and windy as it was, but heat nonetheless.
Nina and Maggie spotted him as soon as they rounded the corner, and glanced at each other wordlessly, conflicted as the weather. Previous attempts had been a wasted effort, but their consciences tickled them regardless - had he, sort of, saved their lives at one point? - and besides, he was making a mess of the seating area Nina had neatly stacked away just a few hours earlier. That settled it, and Nina led the way to the coffee shop, outside which an inebriated demon lolled on the ground, next to the latest uncooperative chair and a litter of empty bottles.
“’s broken,” he grunted, when Nina’s shadow fell over him. He gave the chair an ineffective shove.
“Crowley,” Nina started. “You can’t keep doing this.”
He blinked up at her, recognition dawning with difficulty. “Ah,” he said. “I think… should try… eight shots, this time.”
“Oh for goodness sake,” Maggie muttered, making only a cursory effort to lower her voice. “This is ridiculous.”
“I’m not here to take your order,” Nina told him, indignant. “We are quite definitely closed.”
“Closed!” He grinned, and even in his state, it was disarmingly charming. “What are you, a bookshop?” He seemed to find this quite amusing, and barked out a laugh, followed by what could have been a hiccup, or a belch.
Nina glanced over at Maggie again, their exchange unspoken. Maggie nodded almost imperceptibly over to the record shop - let’s just go. We tried. Nina pursed her lips, ever so slightly. Just one more attempt, and then we’ll leave.
“Right!” She snapped back towards Crowley. “Enough of this. Stand up.”
Crowley seem to respond more out of surprise than anything else. He made it into a shape and stance that could conceivably be called upright. He looked at them again, and seemed to register something.
“You both look nice.” Unlike most of his utterances, it was neither snide nor sarcastic. Maggie softened considerably.
“We’ve been to the theatre,” she told him, gushing just a little. “Our first proper date.”
He looked at her for a moment, then smiled. It was not a happy smile, but when he spoke it sounded sincere. “That’s nice.”
“Yes, it was, a very nice evening, slightly ruined by coming back to find you messing up my chairs, again,” Nina said firmly.
“Oh, sorry.” He glanced around guiltily, then waved his hand. The chairs re-stacked themselves in an instant. It looked like there might have been a few more of them now. “Was just… looking.”
The three turned, as one, toward the bookshop, which was silent and quite dark. It seemed frozen in time, the absence of its owner palpable. For a moment, no one spoke.
“You have to stop doing this to yourself,” Maggie said quietly, once the silence had become unbearable.
“You don’t know,” Crowley told her, but didn’t elaborate.
“Maggie’s right,” said Nina. “Instead of moping around, you could actually do something. Talk to him.”
“I can’t!” Crowley snarled.
Nina bristled at his tone but pressed on. “If you really wanted to, I’m sure you could find a way. Get a message to him, or some-”
“Oh, shut up,” Crowley spat out, and strode away, swaying so much his torso appeared completely independent from his legs.
Maggie sighed. “Come on.” She reached a hand out toward Nina, who took it. They continued on to their original destination - the record shop, ignoring the jarringly comical sounds of Crowley, who was now pressing his full face against the bookshop window and groaning.
Inside The Small Back Room, Maggie quickly slipped behind the counter. “I’m sure it’s here somewhere.”
“I don’t know how you can lose your phone for a whole evening and not notice,” Nina commented. “I sometimes have a panic before I realise it’s already in my hand.”
“I’m saying nothing,” Maggie responded, smirking at her, before returning to her search. Nina turned to look outside. Crowley was barely visible now, but she could hear him yelling something. She wondered if Aziraphale, wherever he was, could hear it too. She was still very unclear on the rules of all this angel and demon stuff, and Crowley hadn’t been in much of a condition to fill in the blanks.
“Oh, got it!” Maggie’s voice was muffled, but her face appeared above the counter, beaming triumphantly. “It fell underneath.”
Nina smiled, and was about to lean in for a kiss when she caught sight of something that made her heart stop. She stepped closer to the window to get a better look.
“Leave him be,” Maggie said. “We’ll try again once he gets through the obnoxious drunk phase. If he gets through-”
“Shh!” Nina said frantically, now sure of what she’d seen. “Demons!”
Maggie stepped closer to her. “What, other than Crowley?” she asked worriedly.
“Of course other than Crowley,” Nina hissed. “I think…”
At that moment, a figure stepped into a patch of light and they both gasped.
“That’s her,” Maggie said. “From that night.”
“It’s her alright. Shax. That’s what they called her.”
“What do you think she wants?”
“Can’t be anything good.”
It was difficult to make out exactly what was happening, even with both their faces pressed up against the glass (Maggie was very glad she hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on). Then, Crowley’s upper half became visible as he hit the ground, hard. There were at least three shadowy figures surrounding him, and the lady in red, Shax, who stood primly watching from a short distance. She opened her mouth to speak.
“You watch, I’ll listen,” Nina suggested to Maggie, turning so her ear was now pressed against the glass.
It wasn’t easy, but she could make out a few words. “Hurry…Crowley…hell… before the angel…”
Nina stared at Maggie, whose eyes were wide with fear.
“We have to help,” Maggie mouthed.
“We can’t,” Nina replied firmly.
Maggie breathed out, knowing she was right. “This is horrible.”
They both watched as Crowley, who appeared to be unconscious (not a huge departure from his previous state, to be fair), was hoisted on to the shoulders of two of the demons. They saw a third reach up to swat at the red-headed demon’s face and cackle gleefully. They witnessed in horror as the group, as one, sank swiftly through the ground, leaving nothing but several mounds of upturned tarmac in their wake. Only Shax remained for a moment; she smiled widely, straightened her hat, and followed suit.
The record shop was silent. Nina reached out and grasped Maggie’s warm, welcoming hand, and squeezed. “Oh dear,” she said, lamely.
Maggie squeezed back. “Oh dear,” she agreed.
*
Aziraphale was getting the hang of things. If, by ‘things’, one meant being utterly miserable, desperately lonely, and maddeningly frustrated.
If he had thought the position of Supreme Archangel would win him any respect in heaven, he would have been sorely mistaken. He tried to cast his mind back to how others had treated Gabriel during his tenure. The struggle was, Aziraphale hadn’t made much of an effort to observe such behaviours at the time. His visits to heaven had been seldom, and his efforts usually pertained to leaving as quickly as he could, not jotting down notes on angelic politics.
Whatever Gabriel’s experience, Aziraphale had found his treatment much unchanged, especially where the other archangels were concerned. If anything, some of them were more disdainful. It’s true, a few lower ranking angels had seemed intimidated by his rank, but that was hardly an improvement, to Aziraphale’s mind. The angel assigned to be his assistant, Lyriel, had seemed somewhat amicable at first, and Aziraphale had breathed a sigh of relief - just a foot in the door, that’s all he needed. Of course, a few days later he saw Michael and Uriel flanking Lyriel on her way back to her desk, and he’d been met with cold professionalism bordering on contempt ever since. The moment he registered this change had been the first time he’d shed a tear since arriving in Heaven (he’d hidden it by closely examining the file she’d just handed him, rather slickly he thought). It had not been the last.
Of course, respect from your colleagues was one thing, but it was a far cry from what he actually sought. Connection. Friendship. His own words regarding Gabriel haunted him now - I don’t think he’s got any friends. What a desperately sad sentence, spoken so blithely. He found himself, bizarrely, missing Gabriel, or Jim, or whatever it was his former boss had finally settled on. As trying as their relationship had been as colleagues, and as frantic as his brief stint as ‘assistant bookseller’ had been, there had been some nice moments. Aziraphale almost rolled his eyes at his own thoughts. How pathetic. So desperate for companionship you’d try to redeem a being who once almost executed you. What would Crowley think? No, best to not go there.
He looked at his surroundings, and reassured himself that he had a least made a little more progress with his workspace than he had with his workforce. The office could hardly be called comfortable, in fact, it could hardly be called an office. His initial request for walls had been met with three large but insubstantial dividers, similar to those you would find in any Earth office, but an offensively glaring shade of light grey. As they’d been shifted into position, the Metatron had met his gaze evenly with the barest hint of an eyebrow raise. Aziraphale had understood then that he was not to push the matter further.
Still, within the dividers he had fared a little better. He’d miracled himself a perfectly squishy chair and a handsome wooden desk, both in muted tones so as to not to stand out too much. Then, he’d waited a few days for the fallout. When none came, he’d added a bookcase, which admittedly didn’t hold files as well as Heaven’s usual filing system (not that he had a clue how that worked), but it made the space feel homier. Since then, he’d added a few trinkets every week or so, cautiously but with an increasing sense of satisfaction. A small painting here, an antique chess set there. Every little bit helped.
Best of all, of course, was his spider plant. Or, more accurately, Crowley’s spider plant. He was fairly sure the demon hadn’t intended to leave it in the bookshop when Aziraphale had returned from Edinburgh, but it was small and had perhaps fallen out of its box. Whatever the reason, Aziraphale hadn’t been able to resist it on the one, brief return visit he’d been allowed to make to the bookshop. He’d pocketed it quickly before returning to the task of calming down Muriel. (Muriel had been in quite a state when they’d realised they knew nothing about bookshops, humans, or Earth itself. Aziraphale had to admit to feeling a little disappointed that Crowley hadn’t stuck around to protect his books, but then he gave himself a shake, and advised Muriel to keep the door locked and the shop Very Closed).
The little plant had pride of place on his desk, and he looked at it often. It filled him, each time, with overwhelming joy and pain in equal measure. He had taken to talking to it softly, whenever there was no one in hearing distance. Once or twice he had sang to it - Everyday had become quite a favourite - and it had assuaged his loneliness a little. At least, until it began to droop.
Aziraphale didn’t have Crowley’s green touch, but he hadn’t expected the poor thing to start dying on him. He’d been under the impression it was one of the easiest plants to keep alive! He’d miracled a book on house-plants and followed it to the letter - even conjuring sunlight to ‘help him read all these reports’ - but the plant had steadily grown limper each day. If Aziraphale had held stock in such things, he would have said it was an omen.
It was the plant he was sadly contemplating when he heard Lyriel clear her throat - the closest he’d get to a knock. She was lingering by the entrance - if you could call it that - and looked as she always did; eager to leave. He smiled at her in welcome.
“I have a prayer for you,” she said smoothly, crossing to his desk and handing him a roll of parchment. She had already started to turn away when the words registered.
“A what?”
Lyriel looked down at him with barely contained derision. “A prayer. It’s when humans-”
“Yes, yes, I know what a prayer is,” he assured her, smiling brightly and in vain. “I just, er, don’t they usually go to the Almighty?”
Lyriel blinked slowly. “Usually.” When it was clear he wanted further explanation, she continued. “Most prayers go to the Almighty. Or more accurately, to the Almighty’s press office. But on some occasions, an angel is named. In which case, the prayer goes to that angel, directly.” It was very clear from her tone that she thought he should know this already.
“I see,” he said, “sorry, I’ve…”
“Spent a lot of time on Earth,” she finished for him. “Indeed.”
He nodded - it was true the excuse came up in almost all of their conversations - and thanked her for the parchment. As she left, he called out to her on a whim.
“Lyriel?”
She turned and looked at him expectantly. “I just want you to know what a wonderful job I think you’re doing. I’m most grateful for all your hard work and diligence.”
If he thought laying it on thick would crack her shell, he was wrong. She simply thanked him - stiffly - and disappeared. He cringed, imagining what Crowley would have said if he’d witnessed that particular bit of brown nosing. And to his own assistant! Of course, he contemplated glumly, what Crowley thought of him no longer mattered. He was, for better or worse, his own judge now.
He tried to banish such thoughts. Trying not to think about Crowley was his main pastime.
Nothing Lyriel had ever handed Aziraphale had turned out to be at all important. As such, he put the scroll down and continued what he’d be doing; staring sadly at the potted plant while doodling A.Z. Fell with his newly-miracled fountain pen. When that got too depressing, he miracled himself a cup of tea, and opened the top drawer of his desk, which he kept completely empty for the sole purpose of hiding partially drunk cups whenever anyone came by. He wasn’t exactly sure what the rule about consuming things in Heaven was, but he wasn’t risking it. Wriggling a little to get comfy, he turned to the scroll and unravelled it with a flourish.
Quite what he was expecting he wasn’t sure, but it wasn’t for Maggie’s incorporeal head and shoulders to come floating out of the parchment. Her hair was a little longer than he recalled, and she appeared worried, but other than that she looked much as she had the last time he’d seen her. Her hands were up, clutched together in front of her collarbone, wringing nervously. As he watched, the image of his young friend began to speak.
“Mr Fell, er, I mean, Az…Azirafell. Aziraphale? Sorry. I’m not sure if I’m doing this right. Nina thinks I’m nuts. I probably am. Phew. Okay. Right.”
The projection sighed, then appeared to steel herself.
“I don’t know if this will work but I’m trying anyway, because I don’t know what else to do. So. I want you to know that someone you care about very much is in a lot of trouble. I’m not saying who because Nina - who doesn’t believe that this will work but still has an opinion about it - thinks it might, er, get you into trouble. Oh. Maybe I shouldn’t have said that. Oh, please just come back to Earth so I can talk to you in person. It’s very important. Er, thank you, and I hope you’re doing well. Um, amen.”
The image of Maggie’s face wobbled before him for a few seconds, than disappeared. Aziraphale stared at the space where it had been for several stunned seconds, and then leapt into action. There was only one someone to whom Maggie could be referring. Miracle-ing away the untouched tea, and stuffing the scroll into the empty top drawer, he practically ran out of his office and skidded to a halt at Lyriel’s desk. She met his arrival with a glare but he started to speak before she could object.
“Lyriel, I have some urgent business for you!”
She whipped out a notepad. Even as she was scathing, she was never not efficient. “Yes?”
“Er,” Aziraphale started, suddenly aware he didn’t have a plan. “I need to see Muriel.”
Lyriel pressed her pen to paper but wrote nothing. “You wish to visit Earth again?”
Aziraphale was too flustered to catch her tone; he later wondered if she’d been asked to keep track of his visits.
“No, no,” he said hurriedly. Even in his panic, he knew he needed to play this carefully. “I’d like Muriel to visit me. Here. In Heaven,” he added unnecessarily.
“I see. And this is urgent.”
“Quite!” He nodded several times to make his point. “The welfare of all angels is of paramount importance to me! I have been highly remiss in taking so long to check in on them again. Highly remiss.”
Lyriel seemed no more sceptical then usual, and made a quick note before pocketing her notepad and getting to her feet. “I shall summon them at once.”
“Oh, thank you,” Aziraphale said, unable to contain his relief. “Thank you very much.”
Lyriel made a small noise through her nose in response and left.
Aziraphale sagged where he stood, watching her go for far longer than was required, a feat made possible thanks to Heaven’s incessant lack of walls. Eventually, he slumped back to his ‘office,’ glancing around warily as he did. Angels went about their business in the distance, and certainly no one was paying him the slightest bit of attention.
He grabbed the spider plant and ducked down, crouching between his desk and the nearest partition. It wasn’t exactly snug but it took the stinging edge off his anxiety. He cradled the dying plant in his hands, and a tear spilled from his eye and landed on one of the wilting leaves. He brushed it away with his thumb.
The feeling of helplessness was overwhelming, and he clutched the plant closer still.
“Please,” he found himself begging, his voice barely above a whisper. “Please don’t give up on me. I need you to keep fighting. For me.”
The plant, lifeless in its plastic pot, gave no sign that it had heard.