The Problem.
Crowley sauntered through the front door of Aziraphale's bookshop and looked curiously round the sunlit interior. Dust hazed the air, the bell rang out, but no frumpy book shop owner popped up from the counter to give his usual greeting.
How annoying. The angel had sounded quite agitated when he had phoned and asked the demon to come over, so he had broken a dozen or so road rules to get here. Not that he didn't normally break road rules, but still...
"Oh, thank goodness you are here!" Aziraphale eventually appeared at the door to the back room, a look of relief flooding his face.
Alarm rose in Crowley as he got a good look at the angel. Aziraphale looked positively dishevelled. And the angel never looked anything but immaculate.
His hair was disarrayed, there was a rip in his cardigan at the shoulder and smears of what looked like blood dripped down his cardigan and along his hairline. This was not good.
"What happened?" he demanded.
"I, uh, I've had a, um, visitor," Aziraphale explained. "Of the sexual predator kind." He held his arms wrapped around his middle, absently rocking a little as he spoke.
Crowley's jaw dropped, and the angel took this the wrong way. "My dear, I know, it shocked me too. I mean, I'm not exactly obsession material, am I?" he gestured down at his slightly plump self with a deprecating hand.
The demon blinked hard, fighting back a blistering oath, then recovered himself.
"So how many pieces of charred pervert remain to be disposed of?" he forced himself to ask flippantly, all smiles and glinting teeth.
"Well, none, of course." The angel replied primly, "he's in perfect health, asleep in the other room."
Crowley strode over to look, and saw a thirtyish man, dark haired and well-muscled, with a domineering set to his face, even unconscious.
He was bigger than Aziraphale, heavier, taller. But he still wouldn't have been able to take him in a fight. Aziraphale was a mighty warrior of God, proven in battle and all that.
"So how'd he get the drop on you, was he armed?"
"No, er, I was reading," Aziraphale admitted sheepishly.
Crowley rolled his eyes. Bloody angel and his bloody books.
"He snuck in," the angel moaned, "pretending to be a regular customer. Then when I was distracted (reading), he got behind me and slammed my head against the table, then tried to wrestle me to the ground. Well, you know how that ended…."
Yes, the demon did, he'd tried similar moves on the angel himself in the early years and Aziraphale's swift backstrike and kidney punch had put him down fast. His objective had been the angel's de-corperation, however. Not his defilement. No wonder this guy was still laid out on the sofa.
Aziraphale hugged himself tighter as he remembered the attack. He'd been taken unawares right in the middle of a riveting Patrick O'Brian book. The ease of the attack, its suddenness, still bothered him. It was broad daylight, he'd felt completely relaxed and safe in his shop, nothing should have been threatening him.
He'd actually been feeling quite disturbed until Crowley showed up. Now he felt calm again. "I have tried to make him see the error of his ways, as you can imagine, but you know - I haven't had a blind bit of luck!"
He was right to be amazed by this, not many beings could easily set aside an angel's compunction to do good, even if only for a little while.
"So?" Crowley walked a little further into the room where the attacker lay, his hands curling into fists. "What do you want me to do about it? You know what my solution will be." A forked tongue slipped out to taste the air, a flash of fangs a quick reminder that Crowley was not a live-and-let-live kinda guy.
"Well, I was thinking I might try bringing up charges," Aziraphale smiled, the prospect of doing lawful good filling him with a much needed cheerfulness. "But I would like to pick your brain for legalities first, so that the charges stick. I should hate to waste the courts time."
The last was said with a certain amount of piety, but Crowley knew better - the angel didn't give two hoots about using up a magistrates time, Aziraphale just didn't want to lose.
But at least the angel had stopped hugging himself and returned to a more relaxed stance. Something in the demon relaxed too. Seeing his friend agitated made him feel agitated as well, and he didn't like it.
But then the angels plan caught up with him and he quickly played it out behind his eyes before giving a slow blink of disbelief.
"Wait, let me get this straight. You want to accuse this guy in a public trial?" Crowley turned back to him and lent a hip against the doorway, crossing his arms. "You want to involve yourself in the human justice system? Voluntarily?"
"Well, yes. It would be the proper thing to do. He is a criminal, unrepentant, likely to re-offend and they do say the rehabilitation of prisoners has come a long way nowadays."
They both paused to consider some of the 'conditioning' handed out to prisoners in bygone eras. Mm, yes.
"Azi, look." Crowley dropped the disinterested pose and lent closer to straighten the angels' collar.
"Don't touch that!" Aziraphale protested, "it's evidence!"
"So it is." Crowley narrowed his eyes at his friend suspiciously. "This decision hasn't got anything to do with your recent addiction to the CSI re-runs on television, has it?"
Aziraphale opened his eyes as wide as only an innocent angel can.
"You little drama queen," Crowley smirked, impressed with his friends subterfuge. "And no, I am not going to help you do it. There is too much risk involved; things will be written down, statements taken, possibly a physical exam that you'll have to fake being human through – you'll have to miracle back that cut to your head for one, and worst of all - you'd have to deal with lawyers. I don't know about you angel - but lawyers scare the crap outta me."
"Oh," Aziraphale sighed. Crowley reached up and patted smooth his friends' ruffled hair, then whacked a slumped shoulder bracingly.
"Never mind," the demon told him. "I've had a better idea."
...
There was a bamf *, a cloud of stinking gas, and the sound of someone stumbling in the dark. The political prisoner in cell eight looked up and blinked rapidly, unable to believe his own eyes. A dark haired Westerner in a leather jacket and jeans was standing in his cell, holding up an emaciated replication of...himself! It was like looking in a weird mirror.
The Westerner screwed up his large nose and made a choking noise. "Nice place they got here. Raw sewage, rats, mouldy food. Yep, this is the spot for you." And he threw the prisoners duplicate onto the ground. "Oh, and the guard likes a bit of rough and tumble, so I hear." He winked evilly at the one he had dropped then turned to regard the prisoner.
"Fancy a bit of a stroll, then?" he asked and the prisoner felt himself lifting up, then floating through the air. The sky swung past in a blur of stars and moon and sun, only to fade when he arrived with a bump in a room with walls lined with books.
"Mr Whitehall," asked a plump, pale haired Westerner, "Mr Whitehall?"
Mr Whitehall blinked and looked up. For a minute there he had been extremely disorientated. Why, he'd felt like a different version of himself altogether. "Um, yes?"
"I have your book on Eastern religions, Mr Whitehall. Already paid for earlier, as you will recall."
"I will?" Mr Whitehall asked cautiously.
"Yes, you will." The shopkeeper beamed at him.
"Thank you. It's been...I've felt as if...Good day." Mr Whitehall ended abruptly. Then he picked up his book and made for the exit, being sure to scowl darkly at the unsavoury looking young man lounging by the doorway. He hoped the merchant would not have any trouble from the man, he looked the type to steal a wallet, or knock over an innocent bookkeeper.
Outside Mr Whitehall looked at the expensive car he had driven here, in what seemed a lifetime ago. It now felt sinful that one man should own such an expensive and wasteful motor vehicle. He decided he would walk home today. The exercise would do him good.
...
"Now, you will leave that poor man alone, won't you dear?" Aziraphale fretted.
"Trust me, the further I stay from the stench of that place, the happier I'll be." Crowley assured him.
"No, I meant..." the angel trailed off. Crowley had said he'd be happy to swap the rapist over for the political prisoner, because in his tormented isolation the prisoner had been well on his way to becoming a Martyr and a Saint.
'Let's see how well he does with fast food and scantily clad women in arms reach, eh?' he'd smirked.
Crowley had claimed the switch was to further his own evil reputation and get on Hells' bad side. But it was possible that this was just one of those times when Crowley had done something for Aziraphale as a friend. It was best not to make a fuss, in that case. Didn't want to draw attention from the wrong people.
"Thank you, Crowley," he said.
Crowley reached up and with an imperceptible sleight of hand swapped Aziraphale's torn cardigan for a nice woollen knit from Marks and Spencers. That was better. Aziraphale looking so disarrayed made the demon feel...unsteady.
"Stay out of trouble, angel," he murmured, placing a soft kiss on the angels' cheek. Then with a bamf he was gone.
...
The prisoner in cell eight woke up. He felt light-headed from lack of food and water and his body throbbed with the aftermath of his most recent beating.
From the corner of the cell there came the sound of something slithering in the darkness. Then the man who used to be called Mr Whitehall began to scream. And scream, and scream, and scream...
* When on the Devils Business (TM) demons can transport themselves anywhere. But the paperwork is horrendous, so few do.