Title: Rise
Author: TardisIsTheOnlyWayToTravel
Summary: Most things didn't truly bother Crowley. Demons trying to dismember his angel wasn't one of those things.
Author notes:
This is actually a prequel to a Supernatural/Good Omens story I'm currently working on. There's a few mild swearwords and one stronger one, but nothing too bad.
This is not slash, I should probably add. The most I write in this fandom is close, slightly ambiguous friendship - which, let's face it, is kinda canon. ;)
Also, ffnet keeps removing my formatting. Thr hell, ffnet?
Prologue
Once, almost in the Beginning, there was a cherub named Sachiel.
Sachiel wasn't particularly remarkable, as angels went. He was a fairly amiable fellow, he sang very well, and he was pretty good with a flaming sword.
Unlike most angels however, Sachiel felt, dimly, that there was something… something about all this, yes, something missing, perhaps… that while singing and sword drills and the like were all very well, maybe there could be…more?
It would be another thousand years or so before he had a word to describe the feeling, but to put it bluntly, Sachiel was bored.
As time went by, he found that he was drawn to people… there was something about these people… (they were interesting, he learned later) that was somehow better than endless singing and sword drills and praising the Lord.
So when all his new friends started following around the fairest, most blessed of the archangels, who had a certain something (style and cool were words that Sachiel only discovered a very long time later) Sachiel was quite happy to go along with them.
It really wasn't his fault, Crowley thought much later. He'd just hung around with the wrong people.
RISE
a Crowley and Aziraphale story
It had been a rather nice day, despite the conversation, until the demons attacked.
They'd gone through their usual routine – "can I tempt you to some lunch?" "oh, I couldn't possibly" – and dined at the Ritz, before strolling out to St James' Park to feed the ducks.
Crowley was in a slight mood, and at first kept pelting the ducks with pieces of bread, but stopped once he became sufficiently involved in conversation.
"I'm telling you, angel, something big's going on," he insisted. "Haven't you noticed the lower demons everywhere?"
"There do seem to be quite a few around, lately," Aziraphale admitted.
"There's a bit more than a few, Aziraphale. I'm not sure what's going on, but I actually received a notice the other day telling us that 'the day is at hand,' whatever that means. They're pretty pleased with themselves down there."
"There have been a lot more angels on earth, as well," Aziraphale said quietly.
Crowley snorted.
"Oh, believe me, I noticed. Buggers are everywhere. Can't nip out for a cup of tea without having to double back to avoid one of them."
There was a contemplative, faintly grim silence.
"Something is happening, of course," Aziraphale said at last, "but you know that they don't tell me much down here, Crowley. They don't seem to have remembered my involvement in averting the apocalypse, but they don't contact me very often. I think there's a certain, contempt, for the fact that I've been down here for so long."
"That's angels for you," Crowley said sagely. "My side's just as bad, mind. Don't understand a thing about humans, nowadays. Not the higher-ups, at least. No concept of popular culture."
"I know what you mean," agreed the angel, whose own understanding of popular culture was out of date by at least fifty years.
There was a long, thoughtful silence this time, while Crowley and Aziraphale watched the ducks eat bread and sink.
Aziraphale nudged the demon, and the ducks bobbed to the surface again, looking bewildered, and regarding the floating pieces of bread in sudden suspicion.
It wasn't much, but it made Crowley feel a little more cheerful.
"I can't help thinking… it's not over, you know?" Crowley said, out of the blue. Aziraphale instantly knew what he was talking about. Ten years gone or not, the apocalypse-that-wasn't tended to lurk in their minds. "So, there isn't a fight after all, both sides go home… and that's it? Does that sound like either of them to you?"
"Not in the least," said Aziraphale.
Crowley sent Aziraphale a sideways glance. The angel looked perfectly serene, but Crowley wasn't deceived.
He changed the subject.
"This Masterchef thing. Rather wholesome, isn't it? It was all Big Brother and Survivor and Pop Idol and so on, all sniping and tears and back-stabbing, and all of a sudden, this show about people cooking is popping up all over the world. Apparently it's sparked people's interest in cooking proper food again, instead of TV meals and the like."
"Well, people were bound to tire of all the nastiness eventually, you know," Aziraphale said innocently.
Too innocently. Crowley narrowed his eyes.
"I was getting sick of I'm a Celebrity… Get me Out of Here! anyway," he said after a moment. "You can only watch a bunch of no-name celebrities camp in the jungle for so long before it gets boring. I did like the one with the crocodiles, though."
"Crocodiles?"
"Yes, crocodiles, although it turned out that was just inserted footage from a nature film or something, and there weren't any actual crocodiles at all."
"Well, they couldn't have anyone hurt, could they?"
"Nah, insurance costs would be too high."
The conversation could have continued in that vein for quite some time, but Crowley suddenly stiffened, and his eyes darted around behind his sunglasses, abruptly wary.
"Aziraphale." His voice was a low, urgent whisper. "See that group of people over there?"
"That group of young people?" Anyone under about forty was a 'young person' to Aziraphale. (Well, technically anyone under five thousand was young, really, but Aziraphale didn't usually refer to them in casual conversation that way.)
"Yes. Concentrate on them for a moment."
Aziraphale obliged. Each one of the 'young people' had a weak demonic aura about them.
"Oh dear."
"Yeah." Crowley looked tense. "Still, they're only lower demons, they shouldn't be any trouble to us at all."
The group of demons swaggered over. Aziraphale and Crowley turned to face them.
"My dears," Aziraphale tried, "I really don't think –"
At this point he was grabbed by two demons, and another drew a sword with very distinctive sigils carved into it.
It was, Crowley saw with utter horror, an angel's sword; one of the few things capable of genuinely killing an angel. How a bunch of lower demons had gotten hold of one of those he didn't know.
"Alright boys," sneered one burly demon in a cheap grey suit, as two demons moved forward towards Crowley to stop him interfering "why don't we start with the wings?"
Most things didn't really bother Crowley. Not deep down in his soul, where he adored the Bentley and liked kittens and secretly loved Aziraphale. Not deep down, where a rather sheepish angel hid, under layers upon layers on demon and snark. Crowley's life would have been rather different, if they did.
Crowley hadn't Fallen so much as Sauntered Vaguely downwards. If there was one thing that did affect the angel, it was boredom, and working for Downstairs could hardly be called boring.
Mostly the angel sat and watched the goings-on of the rest of the world with sedentary interest, not really touched by the things that made the outer layers of Crowley rant and rave or cringe in terror. Most things simply didn't bother him at all, really.
But trying to dismember Crowley's angel in front of him? That wasn't one of those things.
Crowley wasn't really aware of the shift in his psyche.
What he was aware of, was in one moment seeing Aziraphale set upon by a group of thuggish demons with an angelic sword, and of a blinding white haze overtaking his vision; the next, he was aware of wings unfolding and Grace blazing and his sword in his hand after too long, the blade bursting into flame with a threatening whump.
"Get your fucking hands off my angel!" the angel Sachiel roared, and dived forward.
Sword-fighting is a little like riding a bicycle; once learned, it is a skill never really forgotten.
The demons holding Aziraphale had been expecting to deal with an unarmed Principality, and a rather pissed-off True Demon: what they found themselves dealing with instead was a surprisingly capable Principality, unarmed or not, and an utterly enraged, sword-wielding cherub who resembled nothing so much as a large, very angry swiss army knife in angelic form.
Sachiel cut through most of them before they had a chance to do more than think confused, panicked thoughts along the lines of oh shit, but the few who were missed in his initial berserker charge decided that survival took priority over everything else and fled while they still could.
Sachiel was half-inclined to chase them down, still in the grip of a mostly-unfamiliar fury, but the sight of a bewildered, but not unhappy Aziraphale stayed him.
He lowered his sword and stared at the other angel.
"Crowley?" Aziraphale asked, a little tentatively, and very incredulously.
"Sort of. Huh. I think I just Rose." Sachiel paused to ponder the idea.
Aziraphale reached out a trembling hand to take hold of Sachiel's shoulder, and look straight into his eyes.
Sachiel gazed back seriously, and with a little annoyance.
"Honestly, angel, it's me," he complained.
The next moment he was almost throttled in an ecstatic hug.
"Angel! Aziraphale!" Sachiel protested, but without much effect. "Get off! Oh, for –"
He gave in and embraced Aziraphale in return, but let go very quickly.
"For heaven's sake, Aziraphale, will you stop clinging to me?" he tried, slightly desperately.
Aziraphale's arms slackened around Sachiel's neck, and he sighed a little in relief as the other angel stepped back.
Aziraphale stared at him wonderingly, distinctly misty-eyed. Sachiel shifted uncomfortably.
"Oh my dear." Aziraphale was beaming. "This is wonderful." He looked rather as though he were about to burst into tears of joy at any moment.
Sachiel sent a wild glance at his surroundings, but he couldn't see any way to escape.
Bugger.
"Please, Aziraphale. Don't go all… teary on me. I'm still me."
"Oh, I know," Aziraphale sniffed slightly, to Sachiel's slight horror, "I always said, you know, that deep down –"
"Don't start," Sachiel hissed, scowling. "Shut up, angel."
Unfortunately, there was no shutting Aziraphale up, and Sachiel had to endure his happy ramblings the entire way back to the bookshop.
You should have let them do it, said the part of his mind that was purely Crowley.
You can shut up, too, Sachiel thought savagely, stomping on the inner voice with a distinctly unholy feeling of satisfaction.
Angel or not, he was still the same being, after all.
Epilogue
The bell on the bookshop door jingled, and Aziraphale padded into the front of the store to see that Crowley had entered, grinning snakishly.
While he was technically an angel once more, Sachiel had decided to continue calling himself Crowley. It was easier, and he'd never liked 'Sachiel' much anyway. 'The Covering of God?' What kind of name is that?
Crowley's eyes moved downwards at the sound of the soft shuffling footsteps, and a pained expression overtook his face for a moment.
"Tartan slippers?" he asked faintly. He was fairly used to this kind of sartorial inelegance from Aziraphale, though, and recovered his poise quickly.
Aziraphale eyed him in mild suspicion.
In rebellion against his restored angelic status, Crolwy had been going out of his way to be a nuisance lately, from gluing rare coins to the sidewalk beneath his apartment balcony, and pouring buckets of water on those he thought didn't make a strong enough effort to pick them up, to rearranging Aziraphale's books and replacing the entire 'children/young adult' section with Twilight novels.
In response to Aziraphale's look Crowley simply grinned, and pulled out a white paper bag, unrolling the open end and turning it towards Aziraphale invitingly.
Oh.
"Care for a cream bun, angel?" he purred enticingly, opening golden eyes innocently.
They were a true gold now, not the snakelike, demonic yellow they'd been before. Aziraphale found that he quite admired the glow of them.
Not that he'd ever tell Crowley that, of course. The angel was still unbecomingly vain.
"Crowley," Aziraphale said sternly, resolutely not looking at the buns, "I won't have you trying to tempt me. This sort of behaviour is vastly inappropriate in an angel, you know."
"Just one," Crowley wheedled, waving the bag around a bit. "You know you want to."
Aziraphale sent him a very mild glare.
Crowley's shoulders slumped.
"Please?" he asked pathetically. "Oh come on, Aziraphale. I got them especially for you. I know how much you like them."
Aziraphale hesitated, but found that he couldn't resist the heart-breaking tug of soulful, crestfallen golden eyes.
"Oh, very well," he said, and reached out to take the bag.
Crowley flashed him a triumphant smirk, which Aziraphale pretended not to see.
"Although, I wouldn't mind having one of those myself," Crowley added, in as casual and off-handed a way as possible.
"But dearest," Aziraphale gave him a big, reproachful stare, "you said that you got them for me."
Crowley's face wasn't quite sure what emotion to display.
"I'm always happy to share, of course," Aziraphale hurried on unconvincingly, "it's just that –"
"Oh, bugger it," Crowley burst out. "You can eat all the blasted buns."
Aziraphale sent him a brilliant smile.
"Thank you my dear," he beamed, utterly sincere despite the fact that he was well-aware that he knew how to play Crowley just like a violin.
After six thousand years of dealing with him, Aziraphale had picked up a thing or two.
"Oh, shut up," Crowley grumbled.
His smile, however, was fond.
Author notes:
So, I've read a bunch of Crowley-rising fics, and the thing that's always bugged me it that either he changes utterly when he rises, or else he makes a bad angel, when to me, it was obvious he wouldn't be that different. Crowley's mischievous, and has a rebellious, questioning streak a mile long, and snarks - but he's genuinely good-hearted, is often depressed and horrified by the evil humans come up with, and isn't really that malicious, when you look at the book.
In one of icarus-chained's fics, there's a line about how 'not much bothered Crowley deep down where the slightly sheepish angel lived,' and I was suddenly presented with the question: well, what would happen if something really did disturb the angel? Which is where this came from.
Keeping the twosome in character was a bitch, by the way, especially Crowley's speech patterns.