oOo
UnforgivableThe bathroom door slammed. Crowley hadn't meant to shut it so hard, but he had temporarily lost the use of his fine motor skills. Gross motor skills? Whatever, Crowley had lost the use of all of his motor skills at this point. He was lucky the door was still on its hinges, the way he'd kicked it open and wrenched it shut behind him. The Angel probably heard that , he thought. Or he would have thought, were his head not in the midst of a maelstrom of emotion. He could barely see straight, let alone think .
Crowley braced himself on the edges of the sink, gripping until his knuckles turned white. Ridiculous, ridiculouss, ridiculousss, ridiculoussssss. Even in his thoughts he was hissing his esses, now. He hated it. He hated it. He bit down on his tongue and only stopped when he tasted blood.
The Demon was adrift.
Crowley looked up into the excessively large mirror that hung over his sink. He really was a wreck. His face was still ash-blackened and soot-stained from the bookshop and the car, and his hair was sticking up all over the place and slick with sweat and dirt. His shirt was filthy, and somehow, he had no idea how, his waistcoat buttons were done up all wrong.
His skin was pale, the heavy circles around his eyes were purple and black, and he looked as though he'd aged more in the past twenty-four hours than he had in the last six thousand years, which all things considered, he probably had. And he'd been walking around like this all night! What on earth must people have thought of him? No wonder those people in the pub had looked at him weird. He'd thought it had been because of the sword. And Aziraphale had been looking at him like this all evening. He could have said something!
Staring at himself in the mirror, Crowley began to laugh. He laughed until his chest hurt. He laughed until his head ached. He laughed until his laughter buckled and cracked into unrelenting sobs.
Or, not quite sobs. Crowley wasn't sobbing. Crowley never sobbed.
He swallowed hard and looked back up into the mirror, staring deep into his own eyes. His own yellow, serpentine, unangelic, inhuman eyes. His dry eyes. God, how he hated them.
Crowley never cried. Tears never spilled over his eyelashes, or dripped, ugly, onto his sunken cheeks. They never left stains on his skin or expensive silk shirts. His eyes were never one good blink away from tears falling at inconvenient and awkward moments. They never did, they never were, they never had, they never would. No matter how much he wanted them to.
And it wasn't because of any misplaced machismo, or fear of looking weak, Crowley wasn't that kind of a person. And it wasn't because crying was uncool and he was cool, nor because he was some haughty, icy, unfeeling Demon. Not even because he was any kind of a Demon, in fact, because he knew that other Demons cried.
He'd seen Hastur cry tears of joy after seeing a baby fall out of a pram when its mother was on the phone and wasn't paying attention. And he'd seen Beelzebub cry with sadness and frustration after they'd tripped and dropped their ice cream and Dagon said they didn't have time to go and get another because they had a meeting, and Beelzebub had just imposed really strict rules against being late and it would undermine everything if they were late, especially if they were late and showed up with an ice cream ...
Other Demons cried. But not him. Never him. Snakes don't cry.
Crowley had read about tears. About how psychic tears, the ones that are caused by extremes of emotion, actually contain chemicals, or proteins, or whatever - things with names Crowley couldn't pronounce, that reduce stress . That reduce pain . That tears actually get rid of some of those irritating, enervating, paralysing feelings that, that, that, that exist even when you try really, really hard to force them not to. Crying released some of those hormones, it physically got them out of the body. Crying really did make things better.
His throat constricted and the Demon folded over on himself, kept upright only thanks to his continued grip on the counter. His shoulders shuddered and convulsed as he was forced through the crying equivalent of dry-heaving. He could barely breathe. It hurt .
Of all the punishments She had inflicted upon him, he felt that this was one of Her cruellest.
Crowley slammed his fist into the wall hard, catching the corner, knuckles gouging into the sharp edges of his onyx black tiles.
He regretted the decision immediately.
"Ah! Ow ow ow ow ow ow ow owwwwww !" He brought his knuckles to his mouth. "Mother fucker ! Ouch.. ."
Whimpering, Crowley turned on the tap and let the cold water run over his hand. He splashed some on his face for good measure. It made him feel a little better. Not much. But it was something. It was something to do.
He pulled a towel off of the wall rack and slid to the floor by the locked door. He sat with his back pressed up against the wall and he hugged his knees tight to his chest. He made himself small. He wished he could make himself disappear.
You are a genuinely good person. Not angelically good. You are so much better than that.
Crowley squeezed his eyes shut.
I'm a Demon, he said to himself. Said to the absent Aziraphale. Said to the Universe at large. I'm Fallen. I'm flawed. I'm wrong. I'm not good, I'm not nice, I'm, I'm, I'm… " He gritted his teeth. "I'm Anthony J. Crowley, and I am not good enough. Not good enough for Heaven, not good enough for God, not good enough for anything. So damn them all. I'll never be good enough, and I'll never try to be. And I don't want to be! I'll never judge myself by their standards. Never- ...Never bend to their will. I'll never be what they want me to be. Never.
Never again.
Crowley's breath hitched.
Because he had been angelically good, once. He'd painted the heavens. He'd created the stars. He'd walked by Her side and pointed out every nebula, every cluster, every supernova that he'd made, and She'd smiled. He'd been so proud. He'd been so Loved. He'd been the best of them all, once.
But then it went wrong.
He'd asked too many questions. He'd been too interested. He wanted to know everything . He wanted to poke into every corner of existence and take it apart to see how it worked. He'd just wanted to understand .
And so he'd asked. He'd asked, and he'd asked, and he'd asked, and he never got any answers. Before long, the Heavenly Hosts began to see his questions as impertinence and his inquisitiveness as interference. He was marked as meddlesome and quarrelsome and irksome, and he was labelled A Trouble Maker. And all the while he grew ever more disillusioned, and ever more distanced. When faced with their condescension, Crowley met it with subtle sarcasm. He met their impatience with unshakeable obstinance. He met their lazy dogmatism and their self-righteous apathy and their arrogance with silent and seething rebellion .
He hadn't started out that way. He had been One Of Them, once. They'd been his mentors. His colleagues. His family . But the more he found his curiosity shot down with hostility, the less he was able to close his eyes to their hypocrisies . The less he could tolerate, and the less he could respect . He became what they believed him to be. They were going to think it anyway. Why bother trying to prove them wrong?
Do you see now, angel? This is what I am.
Lucifer had asked questions too. He asked questions like:
"Aren't omnipotence and omniscience mutually exclusive? "
And
"Is knowledge ever bad? Can you have too much knowledge? "
And
"What created God? "
And then, as the Lightbringer gained more listeners among the disaffected ranks, the questions changed. They took on a sharper edge. They grew angry, and they grew loud.
"Look how She places the humans over us. Look at the love She gives them. Why are they so much more deserving than us? Why are they so much more important than us? "
and
"Are we not intelligent? Are we not beautiful? Are we not powerful ? "
and then
"Who decided that She should be in charge, anyway? Why is She so much better than Us ? Why should we bend our knees? Why are we not Gods?"
They'd stopped being questions, by then. The words had become a rallying cry. Those loyal to Lucifer wanted power and change, and those loyal to God wanted power and stability. No one wanted answers. No one cared about the truth. They shouted and they railed, and their opposition shouted back. No one listened, and no one learned, and no one looked at themselves and asked why they were doing this, or whether they could be wrong. No one asked any questions, anymore.
And God stopped answering.
I'm sorry . I'm sorry... I didn't mean for it to happen. I didn't want to Fall. I never turned my back on You. You turned Your back on me . I loved You so much, but you abandoned me. You stopped talking. You stopped helping. What was I supposed to do? Where was I supposed to turn? You let go of my hand in the dark, and I Fell. I Fell and You weren't there to catch me.
The War came. It swept over them all. There could be no neutrality, no third option, no alternative. You were With Us or Against Us. You were Our Ally or Our Enemy. You Assented, or you Rebelled.
Crowley never liked being told what to do.
And so he fought. He fought, and they lost, and he Fell. Fell from Heaven, Fell from Grace, Fell from one tyranny to another. Worst of all, he Fell from Her favour. He Fell from Her love.
And in doing so, Crowley learned that love was conditional. Love was impermanent. Love lasts as long as you are perfect, and it doesn't forgive imperfection. Love doesn't forgive at all. It should. But it didn't. Not in the real world. Not for him.
I forgive you, Aziraphale had said.
You don't, Crowley thought. You can't. And you shouldn't.
I am unforgivable.
"Crowley? Are you... alright?"