Author's Note: In a fit of insanity, I wrote this. My first Good Omens fic, and also my first His Dark Materials fic. Also my first crossover, for that matter. This is also posted on Archive, under the same title. If you liked this story, feel free to follow me on Tumblr, where I post some stories I do not post here and also where I post sneak peeks on what I'm working on. I go by thompsonandco on Tumblr.
Author: theotherthompson (thompsonandco on Archive of Our Own)
Summary: Daemons, they called them, and Crowley has no idea why.
Humans were strange, sometimes, strange in how they forgot history so quickly, strange in their obsessions. Stranger still with how many refused to believe that the animal that walked beside them was their soul, real and physical and vulnerable, like open hearts beating beneath the tip of an arrow, scarring at every thump.
Rating: T
Warnings: This story contains some reinterpretations of events in history and the Old Testament.
Disclaimer: I do not own Good Omens or His Dark Materials in any shape or form. I am not making any money out of this fanfiction.
Crowley and Jezebel have been together in the world for some time. How they came to be has no importance, nor what they define themselves as. What truly mattered is what they've done and what they plan to do.
They watch from their hiding place in the Tree of Knowledge, twin snakes on branches that reach for the sky. They're on the lowest branch, a tad too high and a tad too low. Animals around them still do not know of hunger, of an instinct that takes a hundred years to outrun, so they do not flinch away from Crowley and Jezebel's sharp little hisses that ring in Eden's ambience like a fork against a wine glass.
Eve is nearby, wandering freely, and she is glorious in the sunlight, a fond, almost loving smile on her face. She follows a line of ants, closer and closer to where Crawly hides. Her soul takes the shape of a dove, then the next moment it is a tiger, then the next an anaconda before it settles with the image of a doe, not once leaving Eve's side.
The angels of the Garden are nowhere in sight.
"You there," Crowley hisses, and Jezebel coils tighter around the branch they are on, tongue flicking in and out quickly. "Come over here."
She comes. She climbs the Tree and takes a bite out of her spoils, and the world begins to end.
- X -
Humanities downfall shall be their trust. Their trust in their technology, in their experts, in their leaders and doctors and priests and knowledge and most importantly, themselves.
This is what Crowley predicts, and maybe Aziraphale, but no one prophesied.
- X -
On the eighth day Jezebel points out an angel brooding by a tree. Next to him, his soul, the shape of a honey badger as was named by Man and Woman, curls up against the angel, nosing sadly at bright, white robes.
They don't really care for Aziraphale's sorrow. They only make conversation out of boredom, of morbid curiosity, of a sentiment they should not have.
- X -
It's either 1916 or 1940, Crowley can't really tell, doesn't really care either way because it doesn't truly matter. What truly mattered was the man with the wings of an angel, non-existent and beautiful, sitting at a hole in the wall cafe. The honey badger curled by his feet yawns then swipes at a bee that buzzes past.
Aziraphale sits on the other side of a street in Seattle (or is it? Crowley can't tell that either), sipping tea and doing the crossword. He looks strangely content despite the war, vibrant in a muted sort of way. The people around him look gray in comparison. Gray, moody and afraid.
Crowley doesn't exactly know why he crosses the not-bustling street, why he takes the chair opposite of Aziraphale, nor why he leans back and ignores Aziraphale to study the ordinary man behind him.
He does so regardless of reason, glowering under his sunglasses and long legs sprawled out.
"You're going to trip someone." Aziraphale greets, tone chiding. Rather than his words, Crowley is intensely aware of how the man's soul stirs at their feet, yawning and scratching at brick.
Jezebel slithers out of his sleeve, smaller than she's ever been. Gracefully, she moves down to meet the honey badger. The only words that Crowley hears of their conversation is 'you' and 'again', biting.
"I don't really care," Crowley responds, maybe a second too late to seem sincere.
The man behind Aziraphale checks his watch, gets up, and walks away. Following on his heels is his soul, an average looking sheepdog whose tail droops low. Daemons, they called them, and Crowley has no idea why.
Humans were strange, sometimes, strange in how they forgot history so quickly, strange in their obsessions. Stranger still with how many refused to believe that the animal that walked beside them was their soul, real and physical and vulnerable, like open hearts beating beneath the tip of an arrow, scarring at every thump.
When Crowley focuses on Aziraphale, it's to see the angel smile, enigmatic in his contradictions; holy but plain, loving and cruel. Crowley looks away, tracing the line of the man's shoulder, down, down, down to fingers that rub together to spin a red flower around and around.
There's a stain on the cuff of Aziraphale's coat, small and almost unnoticeable and not quite inconspicuous. To a person like Crowley, it is no hardship to recognize blood, and he wonders why the angel has yet to miracle it away.
"The Arrangement is still in place," Crowley says, and he only has a feeling of why he said it.
Aziraphale nods, damned smile still in place. He leaves soon after, miracles still hidden up his sleeves, a story gone untold. The blood looked fresh, Crowley thinks for a moment, and then he leaves too. He spends the next few years avoiding the battlefields because the Arrangement is still in place, and that means Crowley cannot touch.
- X -
In the beginning, there was a darkness.
It was the sort of blinding one that consumed everything, the kind poets would call the abyss and the unimaginative would call nothing. This darkness was neither good nor bad, just was. Pure and unfettered.
Then, God said "Let there be light," and there was light, and the world that came to be was divided into light and dark. Good and bad. (This world was Earth.)
When humans came to be, they too were divided. Divided by seas and imaginary borders and prejudice and too many things to count; humans divided themselves for a name, for identities, for so many reasons that some were lost in time. But before this, God had divided them Himself.
God had divided Man and Woman's soul, one part the image of Himself, the other the image of Themselves.
Then, He turned to His legion and did the same.
(At least that's what Crowley has pieced together.)
- X -
It's a funny thing, time.
For beings like Crowley, there is no such thing. Time is the measure of change, but how does one measure that, when each day, week, month, all feel the same? Look the same? How does one tell apart a century from the last when they blur together, when there are only some bright, shining spots in a blur of monotone?
Crowley does not measure time like a human. He does not ignore it either. Rather, Crowley and Jezebel measure time in experiences and encounters- people and actions.
And whoever said history repeated itself was the smartest human Crowley has ever not known.
- X -
They met once during the time of the Old Testament, as humans, Christians, believers and non-believers called it. Actually, they met many times during that time, in brief instances and instances stretching on into forever. They have met many more times since. However, that had probably been their most important encounter at that time.
But he digresses, so let him start again.
Aziraphale and Crowley have met many times in history. It's to be expected, par the course, that they met during the time of Moses, of David, of Elijah and Solomon.
They met many times, and the only reason that Crowley chooses to remember this instance, this drop in the pond so to say, is because Aziraphale burned and then he stopped.
It was during Egypt, where amongst pagan gods, God's people were whipped and punished.
When Crowley spotted Aziraphale, he could taste ozone in the air, sense God's rage that has been hidden and used in that small angel. More importantly, he could see the angel's soul mourning at his feet, still and silent.
Aziraphale was angry, Crowley had realized, in an epiphany. Angry enough to do something, he realized again, in a revelation.
So he wrapped his snake body tight to Aziraphale's ankle, then his wrist, and he stayed with the angel for forty days and forty nights. He hissed and clung, hissed and clung again, until Aziraphale's holiness no longer hurt as much and Aziraphale no longer flinched so obviously when Crowley spoke.
Until Aziraphale was willing to let God's people save themselves.
Jezebel and Aziraphale's soul never once touched during that time. They only ever spoke once, and it had been enough, but they stayed by their respective other half's side and that had been barely enough, because this was all on Crowley and all on Aziraphale.
They don't really speak about it. Not after Aziraphale asked 'why' and Crowley said 'why' right back.
(If there is one contradictory thing about Crowley, it's that he doesn't want to see a good man fall. That he doesn't want to see a brother lose everything and a friend feel lost.)
- X -
Aziraphal's soul is named Shalva. She's not tranquil in the slightest.
- X -
People with souls that are shaped as snakes are tempters. They're liars and untrustworthy. People with tricky, tricky hearts. At least, that is what snakes have come to represent. That and more.
Crowley is those things, but at the same time he doesn't define himself by those words. Maybe he isn't, not in the sense that most people think, but he technically is. He's a snake, literally and metaphorically, and the people will judge whether or not he was one either way.
Jezebel clings onto his arm, coling tight. Her tongue flickers out, soft against the skin of his wrist. She tiny now, compared to her size in centuries gone past. Her skin is shedding, unusual in itself, and underneath dead skin is peculiarities of their own. Her new skin is a different colour than the last.
"We're changing," Jezebel comments. She whispers it to him, soft and reverent. Crowley cannot deny it, cannot ignore it, cannot will it to go away.
He thinks about it long and hard. Wonders if they truly, truly are changing, in ways that could shatter what they've carefully built up. He figures that Jezebel would know better than him, anyway.
"We're changing," he agrees a year later, and they leave it at that.
- X -
Crowley and Aziraphale met during the seventh day, actually, while walking through God's new, shiny world.
Originally, their intentions were to do good or evil, respectively. Undo or fix the other side's actions. Somehow, at some point, one of them had come across the other's work while the other was still in the area. Crowley's not sure who started it first, or if it really mattered, but what happened next could be described as a game, a competition. Spite and pride.
Basically, it was like this. Where Aziraphale left life in plants and animals, Crowley took it, and where Crowley took it, Aziraphale breathed it back. Mostly, it was just chasing after each other's tail, like a game of tag or capture the flag.
(These days, by which Crowley means the most recent decades, the most recent things that come to mind, the things still fresh in his memory, fresh and not new and blurry around the edges, Crowley does not take life, nor does Aziraphale bring it back. Instead, Crowley whiles and Aziraphale thwarts. Someone does something and the other does something else.)
(This time it's Crowley who starts it and Aziraphale who chases.)
- X -
"My dear," Aziraphale says, and whatever he says next is cut off by Shalva spitting at Crowley. Her fur looks brighter, almost, or maybe it's darker. Crowley can't tell because he has only looked at Shalva directly for a few seconds at a time before. Couldn't handle looking longer than that. Either way, Shalva looks different. Thinner, with a colour change and more patience.
"I only did what I was told to do." Crowley says,making a face. He crosses his arms, leans back on the flimsy chair and carefully stretches his legs. The waitress serving them comes back to their table in that moment, so they stop their conversation.
She sets down food and drinks roughly, loud clinking noises you could hear over the soft mutters of other customers. She has an ugly, ugly bruise, Crowley notices, one that wraps around her wrist. It peeks out of her sleeve, coy, when she stretches across the table to light the tea candle there.
Aziraphale blinks and the bruise is gone. The waitress leaves, quieter than when she came, softer.
"They said 'make some trouble', and I did." Crowley continues. He ignores the food like he had ignored the waitress' soul, a wolf that growls in fear and anger.
He fiddles with his napkin. Granted, the new motorway in London may have been a bit much.
Aziraphale frowns, the angelic equivalent of a dirty scowl. Jezebel slithers out of Crowley's sleeve, smaller than she's ever been, as Aziraphale opens his mouth. "It's a bit much," he says, then he cuts a piece of his meal and pops it into his mouth.
Aziraphale's meal is kosher, carefully put together according to old laws and ordered out of habit. Crowley's own meal is a steak, grilled to a nice, medium rare. Whether or not the meals is kosher does not matter to Crowley, not the way it would have mattered centuries ago. But kosher or not, Crowley doesn't feel very hungry.
Crowley shrugs in reply. He cuts a piece of the steak for something to do with his hands, chews on it. It tastes like smoke and ashes on his tongue. Jezebel shifts in her place on Crowley's lap.
"Yeah," Crowley says, not really meaning anything by it, let alone an agreement. Jezebel hisses.
Shalva swipes lazily at them, not touching anything but air. Her beady eyes must be glinting with irritation. Crowley can't be sure, because he can barely see her in the corner of his eyes, cannot bring himself to look directly at her either.
A moment of hesitation, uncertainty, and Crowley picks up Aziraphale's untouched glass of wine. He watches Aziraphale over the rim of it as he takes a careful sip. It's sweet on his tongue, chases down the ashes that have been caught in his throat.
Aziraphale pays Crowley's antics no mind except for a rueful shake of the head.
- X -
Jezebel has changed. It's a reflection of his own change, according to the psychologists of this time. It's funny because a some centuries ago, Crowley would have been burned at the stake, probably. However, none of this matters to the rest of Heaven and Hell.
Crowley is still a demon. Evil is inherent in him and it's only a matter of time before this world ended- as a demon, he would have to take part in the Apocalypse, not matter what his personal opinions were. See, sooner or later, Crowley would have to kill someone. Sooner or later, he'd have to hurt someone. (Or hurt himself. Hell wasn't as picky as Heaven.)
But he's getting off topic.
No, see, it's funny that he would have been burned at the stake only some years ago, but it's funnier how Shalva is changing too.
Both Crowley and Aziraphale do not mention it, and the people who would have recognized that change have either died a long time ago or don't care.
- X -
The thing is, Delilah's beautiful. Beautiful in how she took whatever chance she got to live a better life, in how she she refused to forget everything for the sake of a man that had killed so many of her own people.
In the stories, she is the wicked one, the witch-heart with the beautiful face, snake like in everything except for her soul. However, Crowley does not care for the stories that humans have come to treasure, but instead he finds glory in how she had stayed true to herself, was herself inside and out.
There are few people that Crowley respects. Delilah and her fox soul is one.
- X -
Crowley touched another person- a human's- soul once, around the fourteenth century.
It was out of fascination, a morbid curiosity, a sentiment he should not have had. It was a horrible decision. Horrible on his part, because he really should have known better, should have listened to Jezebel when she said he shouldn't.
Jezebel did not speak to him for a year for that stunt.
He and Jezebel don't talk about it. If anyone ever asks they always say that they spent most of the century asleep or lounging about.
- X -
See, the mongoose huddled in Aziraphale's- shiny and new, except how they weren't- arms is different than what Crowley expected. Then again, he didn't expect Aziraphale to appear before him in a woman's body, having his old one discorporated for whatever reason. Nice of the Antichrist to give Aziraphale back his autonomy.
But all the same, Aziraphale has finally changed. It's actually more accurate to say that the tiny changes in Aziraphale's psyche have snowballed into one giant change after eons, and that it had manifested in his soul. More accurate to say that Aziraphale has completed his change, and whatever change will happen next will blindside Crowley yet again.
Something must have happened while Crowley was busy with Hastur. He almost wants to ask what, but it feels too personal a question to ask in front of strangers.
Jezebel slips out of his pocket then, chameleon skin shifting to match the black of his suit, then the gray of the cement after she has safely made her way down. Then her skin turns into a yellow-ish colour when Shalva jumps down to meet her halfway.
"Where have you been?" Jezebel asks, quiet, like she's in a church and standing by the altar.
Shalva replies, voice loud and stinging, "Around."
She lowers herself to look Jezebel in the eye, and Crowley's sharp intake of breath is only heard by God when Shalva and Jezebel touch for the first time. Aziraphale does not say anything but stays very, very still, and Crowley almost wants to ask- ask if this is okay, this if fine, because this is the closest that they've ever been and he does not want to mess this up. Figures that they'd have a moment of bonding when the world is going to end.
"And you? You look rather... crisp." Shalva says, voice softer. Jezebel crawls up Shalva's snout to rest imperiously in between small, fluffy ears. The feeling of two souls touching is more intimate that Crowley had ever imagined. Far too intimate to do in front of others.
Crowley doesn't know how humans do it. How do friends let their souls touch so casually, like it is not a big deal; lovers to allow their souls to curl up next to each other?
Crowley and Aziraphale have been together in a sense for far longer than any lover or friend or siblings or twins. They are more than nothing, yet Crowley can barely stand the feeling of another so close to his own, vulnerable heart. Can barely stand the feeling of heat coiling in his body until he feels like he's burning, bright hot like a dying star. Cannot stand the feeling of being small and big at the same time, when another soul is right next to his, vast and limited all at once.
How do humans do it, he wonders, when this moment of sensation is the closest Crowley has ever come to kneeling in the face of something holy. (Aziraphale.)
"We've been around," Crowley says to Shalva, and it's a slip of the tongue. It's a mistake in his everything to look straight into her eyes when she turns to give him an unreadable look and see the part of Aziraphale that the angel has hidden in plain sight. He's vaguely aware, distantly and uncaringly so, that he is breaking a form of etiquette that humans have made in talking to another person's soul directly, but he's a demon, a fallen angel, a rule breaker.
Aziraphale smiles, and it doesn't seem as empty as his other smiles, so Crowley only raises and eyebrow and gets this show on the road.
He realizes later, when looking at Adam Young and the rest of the Them, that humans have always gone faster, burned brighter and run hotter. It's the angels and demons that are stuck in time and unable to reach out to one another, because they are the ones unable to forget. Humans can stand a few things better than what stock Crowley and Aziraphale were made of.
- X -
In that brief moment where Crowley was able to see everything that Aziraphale was, is, and could be, it felt like the universe was laid out upon a table; like a map that would sooner eat his finger then tell him it's secrets, like a piece of black cloth spun from reverence that spilled onto the floor because the stars would not stay still, falling through black space like an angel would.
He had looked upon Aziraphale's soul for a brief instant, and he had taken from the angel what the Lord had given him and what pieces Aziraphale had stolen for himself, what he had given to others.
It was only fair that Azirphale was able to do the same.
- X -
"Why would he split our souls?" Crowley asks, drunk and lonely.
Jezebel shifts from snake to lizard to chameleon then snake again. She has no answer to give him, no answer to pull out from thin air.
There's no one else to ask.
- X -
Why. It's a question that has plagued Crowley since his days in Eden.
It's not like he could ask the other demons why God did what he did, or why anyone did what they did, really.
It's not like he could ask Aziraphale, either, because of a very good reason. A solid one that Crowley has not questioned, ingrained into him as it is.
Aziraphale is an angel. Crowley is a demon.
It's as simple as that.
- X -
"Is this His plan?" Crowley asks.
"Ineffable," Aziraphale replies, and this is the first time Crowley is there to see him doubt God.
He sounds unsure, like he's tasting the word on his tongue with every syllable and can only perceive the taste of apples.
It's strange, almost private, how Aziraphale wanders through a ravaged village, a small casualty of war. His bare feet barely touch the dirt, but dirt and ashes stick to his pale feet anyway, clinging like sin does to men. His hands are empty, but they grasp at air as if something was lost. Behind the angel, his soul trails close, pushing bits of the wreckages out of her way. She cries once, twice, a mourning sound that rings in the ambiance like a fork against a wine glass.
Crowley takes a step forward, stops for whatever reason. Jezebel is the one who leads the way, picking her way through debris and old blood. They reach Aziraphale only because his pace is slow, his steps uncertain.
"Ineffable." Aziraphale says again.
Crowley wants to ask, ask if that's an excuse or a curse. He doesn't, if only because he looks at Aziraphale and sees the Tower of Babel ready to fall, sees glass ready to shatter, all with the touch of his word.
Aziraphale has no need to change just yet. Not when his reformation would depend on the unskilled labour of a glassblower with clumsy hands, a builder without any plans. Not when his reformation would depend on a person still defining himself.
They stand and the next time they move, two ages have passed and only a moment has been finished. It's the next day, maybe, or the next month. Crowley doesn't know.
Aziraphale turns to him and says, "Do not interfere in this," looking Crowley in the eye. It's an order, one that the angel expected to be followed. Crowley only raises an eyebrow, hands sweating despite him feeling his skin is dry, despite the steady set of his shoulders and hands.
"And you are?" Crowley says, and it's a slip of the tongue.
Shalva spits. She circles like she's grumpy. Like she wants to take a bite but knows that she can't. Aziraphale only stares him in the eye, face blank and eyes alight.
Then, "Just a bit," he says, soft and pleasant. An empty smile, the sound of wings flapping, and he and his soul are gone again, leaving Crowley and Jezebel alone in the middle of a ghost town.
The crusades are far from over, Crowley thinks, and then he leaves too. He spends the next years visiting other places in the world, because Aziraphale said no, that Crowley cannot touch.
- X -
If there is a place where God's grace cannot touch, Crowley does not know if its existence.
If he did, Crowley would... he would...
Well, Crowley doesn't know what he'd do. Doesn't, because such a place surely does not exist. God has had a hand in the creation of this planet, in the creation of the Heavens and, technically, Hell, and maybe purgatory.
God had touched at least half of the world, and his angels and people have touched what was left.
If such a spot existed, Crowley would probably be unable to touch it.
- X -
"Why would He split our souls?" Crowley asks, drunk and not thinking straight.
Jezebel crawls into his shirt pocket, chameleon skin changing to bright green, just because she can. "Was it part of the Plan?"
"Ineffable," Aziraphale says back, just as drunk. It's not really an answer. A strange excuse at most, an obvious deflection at least. It's not really an answer to Crowley's question, but he'll take it anyway.
Except, in hindsight, it really is an answer.
- X -
Sometimes, Crowley feels that the seventh day had never truly passed. Never rolled into an eighth or ninth or ten thousandth, by virtue of the seventh day being the beginning of the end, and the end having no discernible end quite yet. Sometimes not even for that.
Sometimes, he feels that they are still following the other, chasing and chasing, circling and circling this green Earth, like they will never stop.