Somewhere in Gloucestershire, 3 PAA (Post Averted Armageddon)
The day was hot.
Not the electric, exciting, enterprising sort of heat that you find at the end of April. That sort of heat is full of energy and promise, the sun practically leaping at the chance to finally, if fleetingly, burst out from behind the near omnipresent clouds and drizzle which characterise three and a half out of four of the British seasons.
No, this was the lazy, strolling, easy heat of late August. The sort of heat which takes itself for granted. A heat which wears a straw hat and gently shoos away honey-drunk bees whilst sipping on a cold pint of cider.
It was, that is to say, the perfect sort of weather for a summer's day in Cotswolds.
This particular trip had been Aziraphale's idea. He had found in the bookshop's basement a collection of hitherto lost scrolls and tablets which Camford Classicists would have strangled their own mothers to get hold of, and which a certain breed of Archaeologist would even have considered putting down their beers to take a look at. A handful of these ancient documents concerned outposts, trade, and daily goings on along the Fosse Way. The Fosse Way was a Roman road which at one point marked the westernmost point of imperial expansion into the island country, and which for a very long time stood as one of the primary arteries of transport, trade, and travel in this far-flung and foggy province.
In reading through these documents, Aziraphale, in a fit of whimsy, found himself reminiscing about the short but pleasant time he had spent staying with friends at Chedworth Villa, just off the Fosse Way. That had been a sprawling and decadent palace in its prime, those halcyon days long after the Roman invasion and long before their tumultuous withdrawal. Aziraphale looked back on them fondly. From that trip down memory lane, it was but a short step to planning a real trip back to the rolling hills and tree-lined avenues of the South West.
At first Aziraphale had thought they might go for a dedicated hike along the Fosse Way itself. He had once done so under circumstances which at the time had been somewhat less than auspicious, but upon which he looked back with a kinder eye, the haze of retrospect and time and Well, It All Turned Out All Right In The End Though, Didn't It? softening an unpleasant present into an affectionately remembered past.
These plans had been swiftly altered, however, when Aziraphale actually looked at some maps of the ancient road and remembered just how bloody long it was. The issue was further compounded when Crowley pointed out how much of it was now comprised of the A429 . Whilst this was an interesting point of historical continuity, it didn't promise the most scenic of rambles.
They soon decided instead that they would go and spend a few days in Bath, and then drive to Cirencester via the aforementioned A429, which seemed to both to be an acceptable compromise between Roman reminiscence and modern convenience. Especially as both Bath and Cirencester had some really excellent pubs. And so the trip out of the city was arranged.
In all honesty, neither Aziraphale nor Crowley needed much encouragement, persuasion, or inspiration to leave London, of late. Things had changed, in big ways and in little ones, since the near-miss Apocalypse. One of the more unexpected effects was a longing in both the angel and the demon for what can only be termed " a quieter life ".
They'd thought they'd had that before, what with The Arrangement, and their very human personal comforts, and the long leashes on which their respective Head Offices had kept them. But the sudden Very Not Quiet of the events of that fateful summer's doomsday three years prior, followed swiftly by the uneasy radio silence on all sides, had only served to highlight by contrast how stressful, fraught, and emphatically un-quie t their lives had actually been, before. Add to this the fact of finding themselves out of work for the first time in forever , and suddenly a quiet retirement somewhere had begun to sound seriously appealing.
But, still, neither of them were quite yet up to leaving London altogether. They hadn't even discussed it at that point, although both had been Having Thoughts.
Weekends away (and weekdays, and weeks, and entire months, at times) in various rural-ish idylls had proven thus far to be more than satisfactory temporary panaceas. The quiet and calm contentment of country life gave a welcome break away from the chaos and clamour of the city. A literal and metaphorical breath of fresh air, an escape from the stresses and annoyances of every day London life, a-
'We're lost ,' Crowley growled, shoving his hands into the pockets of his bermuda shorts and leaning with a scowl against the sun-warmed bonnet of the Bentley. He then sprang back up again with a yelp when the hot metal singed the hairs on the back of his legs.
'We are not lost, Crowley….' Aziraphale was standing outside of the car, wrestling with a large and unwieldy OS map.
'Well, where are we, then?'
'We can't be lost, Crowley, the Fosse Way is a straight line! You can lie a ruler against it on the map, it's that straight. One cannot simply get lost driving along the Fosse Way. It's not possible!'
'Oh, that's very reassuring, Aziraphale,' the demon hissed, peering over the edge of the map only to be swatted back again by an agitated and perfectly manicured hand. 'When I'm still sitting out here at midnight, freezing my arse off in the shorts you convinced me to wear, I shall make sure to take deep consolation in the fact that we are not actually lost. That it is impossible for us to be lost. Mm, very reassuring, angel. So, what then, you just fancied getting me to drive my poor Bentley down a dead end dirt lane for fun, hm? A little whimsy you just had to follow through on? I have to say, I don't personally see the appeal, but I am sure it must be there. If it is impossible for us to be lost... I knew I shouldn't have left you in charge of the directions.'
Aziraphale raised his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and clicked his tongue impatiently as he glanced up and down between the map and their surroundings in an attempt to reconcile the two.
Crowley huffed and threw himself sullenly into the passenger side seat.
'You aren't even listening to me, are you?'
'Now, I believe, ' the angel said, not listening to him, 'that we simply turned off too early…' He glanced again at the map, and turned it 90 degrees. 'Or perhaps we turned off too late. It is possible that we took the third exit instead of the second at that last roundabout… Oh, if only there were someone around to ask !'
'Look, let's just get back in the car and drive somewhere ,' Crowley suggested with an exasperated sigh. 'There's bound to be a pub nearby. It's the South West. The only thing they've got more of than pubs are churches, and the pubs have actually got people in them.'
'That isn't the point , Crowley,' the angel snapped.
'Well, what is the point? This has been a bloody disaster from start to finish, ' Crowley snapped back with more irritation than he had perhaps intended, although with no less bite than the angel.
Aziraphale pushed up his reading glasses and ran a hand over his eyes. 'Oh, there's the million dollar question , as you would put it,' he answered with a sigh. 'What is the point, indeed, dear boy. What - is - the - point ?'
Aziraphale shook his head as he crumpled up the map and reached over Crowley to toss it into the car. Then he leaned back against the side of the Bentley, uncharacteristically louche, and stared up at the sky through the mass of summer foliage curtaining the tree-lined lane.
Crowley leaned forward on his elbows and peeked out from the side of the car.
'...Angel?'
When no reply was forthcoming, Crowley frowned. Lately Aziraphale had been behaving a little… not oddly , exactly, because Aziraphale was always a little odd, that was normal, but differently, then. Nothing so drastic as to warrant comment, or even to attract very much notice, but nonetheless Crowley had noticed. Crowley had worried .
'Aziraphale?'
'Mm.'
The demon wasn't very good at this.
'Are you all right?'
'Oh, fine. Perfectly fine.'
'It's just that you threw the map in the car and asked "what is the point", which er, didn't come across as completely fine...''
'No?'
'Not really...'
Crowley waited. And Crowley thought.
Three years. That was all it had been. Almost to the day. It felt at one and the same time as though it had been a thousand years ago and as though it had been yesterday.
Crowley glanced at his watch, which, naturally, also tracked the date.
Ah , he thought. Not almost to the day, then…
They had gotten lost that week, too. When they were looking for the bloody Antichrist. They'd had to get from London, where they knew exactly where the completely normal and absolutely not Antichrist child was, to Tadfield Manor, the last known location of the actual - they hoped - Antichrist child. It should have taken them two hours at the absolute outside to get to Oxford.
It had taken them eight .
Neither of them had ever been very good with maps.
Crowley looked back up at the angel standing beside him, still leaning against the car, his eyes closed, his face still tilted upwards towards the sky. Sunbeams filtered through the leafy canopy above them, bathing him in greenish-golden light.
Aziraphale always was the strong one, wasn't he? Always assumed the mantle of strength, anyway. Aziraphale dealt with things. Whilst Crowley worried, and wondered, and pondered, and panicked, Aziraphale rolled up his shirtsleeves and got on with whatever needed to be done. He kept calm and carried on.
Most of the time.
He had told Crowley, a few months after the averted Armageddon, of how he had figured out where the Antichrist would be. How he had figured it out some ten hours before he had done anything about it. How he had spent those ten hours debating with himself over what he ought to do. Or, rather, whether he should do what he ought to or what he wanted to do.
Sometimes Crowley forgot that Aziraphale was not, in any way that really mattered, all that different from himself.
He reached up and slipped his hand into the angel's.
'You know,' Crowley said, 'we really don't have anywhere to be, angel.'
'Hmm?'
'And if we don't have anywhere to be, we can't really be lost , can we?'
'We were supposed to be-'
Crowley waved away Aziraphale's protest with his free hand. 'Supposed to be? What's that? There's no supposed to be , angel. Not anymore. Not sure if you'd forgotten, but about three years ago, we got quite ceremoniously fired . We haven't got any supposed-to's left.'
Aziraphale glanced down at the demon, and smiled. Admittedly it was a bit of a weak smile, and it really didn't look like his heart was in it, but it was a start.
'And "What's the point?" , you asked?' Crowley continued, 'Well, you know, I don't think there is one. Not anymore. No point whatsoever. Zip. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely no point to any of it. At least, no other point. No outside point. No point from Above. Well, or Below, as the case may be.' Crowley pulled himself up to his feet from out of the car, and brought himself to stand in front of Aziraphale, face to face. He brushed a fallen leaf from the angel's shoulder and left his hand resting in its place. 'And as far I can tell, angel, that means there is no point to miss. No path to stray from. No way of getting lost. Capiche?'
Aziraphale studied the demon's face carefully before breaking into soft laughter. 'I'm not entirely certain of your logic, but you certainly make a persuasive argument. You always did have quite the way with words, my dear.'
'I mean it,' Crowley insisted. 'I know everything is still a bit, ngk, well- Who knows what will happen. I don't know. You don't know. God only knows, and personally I even doubt that . But what I do know is that we make our own way now, angel. Just us. You and me. Wherever we want to be. No wrong answers. All right?'
'More than all right, my dear, dear boy,' Aziraphale replied. As he did, he took both of Crowley's hands in his own, and pressed a chaste kiss against them, although chaste is hardly an adequate word. It was a kiss of barely restrained ferocity. A kiss which had crushed into it everything too fragile, too powerful, too complicated, and too much to fit into mere words . Chaste? Perhaps. But not simply . Not plainly . Emphatically not uncomplicatedly.
'Right, then,' Crowley said, and if his face was flushed it was purely an effect of the dazzlingly hot weather.
'Right, then,' Aziraphale agreed, and if his eyes glistened with tears it was only because the sun was shining in them.
'Right,' Crowley repeated. 'Er. That is... Where to, then, angel? Say the word, I'm your chauffeur.'
'I think,' Aziraphale replied, making no move to get into the car, and in fact gently holding Crowley back when he moved to do so himself, 'that I rather like it right here, actually.'
Crowley laughed. 'Oh, do you now?'
'I do. It's quite peaceful . And I believe we have a picnic basket and a rather good bottle of wine in the back of the car, do we not?'
A picnic basket and a bottle of wine manifested where they had not been before.
'Ah, yes,' Crowley nodded sagely. 'Although it was two bottles of Chateau Cazat , I believe.'
And, of course, it was.
Crowley extricated himself from his angel to retrieve the basket and glasses from the backseat of the Bentley.'
'Right you are, dear boy, as you so often seem to be, these days. Now... I can't help but wonder where that gate at the end of the road leads. You see? That one cut into the hedge, there. Looks like it may be a public footpath, although the sign has worn quite away so there's no way to tell. Could lead anywhere... What do you think?'
'I think,' the demon replied, basket in one hand, angel in the other, 'that we should go and find out.'