I'm sorry. I am. I really am.

That's all I'm gonna say.

Lyrics from "Unsaid Emily" from Julie and The Phantoms

Also thanks to the wonderful Emma Thompson who read the poem "Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye for Emilia Clarke and inspired me to, well...go and nick some verses for this because it was too damn beautiful.

Chapter Three: Broken

~oOo~oOo~oOo~

First things first, we start the scene in reverse

All of the lines rehearsed disappeared from my mind

When things got loud, one of us running out

I should have turned around, but I had too much pride

~oOo~oOo~oOo~

"What the-?" Crowley brought a hand to his lips, palpated the hot flesh, everything suddenly sore and unnaturally swollen.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale's eyes were wide with shock and horror when the demon met his gaze. "What happened?" The angel looked just as lost as Crowley felt himself, a flicker of fear underneath the thick blanket of confusion clouding his blue eyes.

"I don't know." But something did happen. "But it wasn't me."

"Me neither! You aren't indicating that I-"

"Of course not", Crowley interrupted him quickly, with as calm a voice as the growing feeling of dread in his gut allowed. "But something went definitely wrong."

Aziraphale swallowed, followed the nervous habit of biting his bottom lip - and instantly flinched in pain. The sight made an unwelcome thought manifest itself in Crowley's short-circuited brain. A horrible thought. Yet the only theory he had so far. What if...-

No. Please, no.

"Angel. Give me your hand."

Aziraphale stopped cautiously running a fingertip over his mouth and looked up.

"W-What?"

"Hold out your hand to me."

Aziraphale hesitated for a second, threw a curious glance at the demon, but did as he had been asked to. Crowley took a step forward, determined to test his hypothesis, praying that it wouldn't turn out to be true. (Of course, his prayers had never tended to get answered.) He slowly went to take Aziraphale's hand, felt the usual warm glow the angel's closeness had always emitted, the actually quite pleasant tingling that grew into something resembling little electric shocks. Then his fingers wrapped around the angel's and it took mere seconds before both drove apart with a start.

Crowley hissed in equal surges of pain and frustration.

No, his mind muttered, pleaded, yelled. Nonononono.

"No", he said out loud at some point, whispered it into the horrified silence as he mindlessly stared at his own hand, burning red and blistering between his fingers. He had stumbled backwards into a bookshelf without being aware of it, but as he felt his knees give out beneath his weight, he gratefully leaned against it in search for support. His other hand thoughtlessly grabbed something from behind to hold himself upright and slipped, some books tumbling to the ground, but he barely noticed.

Aziraphale did notice, but for once in his life, he didn't care about the irresponsible handling of precious first editions.

"Crowley!" He rushed forward, ignoring the painful pulsing in his own hand as well as the mistreated pieces of his life's work. "Dear, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

It was a futile thing to say, neither meaningful nor effective. He wasn't even sure if Crowley heard him, the demon's eyes still locked on his hand in obvious disbelief.

"Crowley?" Aziraphale reached out without thinking (a simple reflex), drew back again before his fingers reached their intended destination (a painful realisation).
"Crowley?", he repeated again, eager to do something, helpless to find out what. "Dear, are you alright?"

He scolded himself for that useless set phrase. Of course he wasn't. Neither of them was.

Still, it seemed to rip the demon out of whatever state he'd been captured in - his hand lowered slowly, his head lifted and his eyes focused back on Aziraphale. He blinked as if he were surprised to find the angel there, stared.

"Crowley? Dear?", Aziraphale asked again as the demon showed no sign to break his silence. The worry was seeping from his angelic voice like the tears that threatened to roll down his face. But finally, the demon spoke.

"I-", he pressed out, voice cracking. (But even this small life sign made the angel's features light up momentarily.)

"Yes, dear? Talk to me."

"I..." Crowley swallowed and it looked like a huge effort. "I can't, I-"

I can't touch him, his head completed the sentence, a mantra it had taken to repeat countless times over the last couple of minutes. I can't touch him. I can't have what I want, I can't accept this, I can't bear this, I can't do this, I can't, I can't, I can't...

I can't stay, his thoughts finally settled on and the angel's shocked, worried face came back into focus. No idea how much time had passed with them standing silently until Crowley found the will to speak and the words to do so.

"I can't, Aziraphale", he repeated the constant chant in his head. "I can't do this."

"...W-What?" The frown on Aziraphale's brow deepened, confusion added to the mixture of emotions. "Crowley, what does that mean?"

"I have to go, angel."

"Go? What do you mean, go?" Of course, Aziraphale already knew, and the look in those yellow eyes he usually loved so much told him he wasn't mistaken. "You-... But..."

"I'm sorry." Crowley turned towards the door and Aziraphale panicked.

"Crowley. Crowley, wait!"

He couldn't let the demon go now, every fibre in his body screamed at him that he couldn't, mustn't, let him leave. Too much had happened in the last couple of days, the last couple of hours, the last couple of minutes - too much had changed, too much, too much.

For one, Aziraphale hadn't ever quite realised how absolutely unbearably lonely he was. He'd spent 6000 years rather enjoying his own company, after all, but then something had happened. He had (temporarily) lost his bookshop - and that one had done the trick. Because suddenly, he'd had nothing. No home to go back to at the end of a day, no books to read for comfort, no familiar tartan armchair, no warmth, no anything. If Crowley hadn't offered him to stay at his place that night, Aziraphale realized that he'd had absolutely nowhere to go. Nowhere. After effectively (not temporarily) being excommunicated from Heaven - where was he going to go? He'd probably just have sat there on the bench at the bus-stop, waiting for nothing in particular until some archangel or other came to arrest him. But of course, this wonderful creature that had not only helped him save the world, but also called him his best friend mere hours ago, offered him to stay at his flat. He invited Aziraphale into his home, his safe space. Even in times when the angel hadn't had a roof and four walls of his own, he was never, in fact, homeless.

And Aziraphale had been...surprised. He'd been openly and honestly surprised. Because he didn't expect anyone to treat him with kindness, ever, not even Crowley. Not even Crowley, who had shown him nothing but kindness over and over and over again despite it not being in his nature. (Because before you could know what kindness really is, you had to lose things. You had to feel the future dissolve like sand running through your fingers - what you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go before you knew how desolate the landscape could really be. Before you could know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you had to know sorrow as the other deepest thing. And then it was only kindness that made sense anymore, only kindness that became clear as the only thing you had been looking for.) Still, Aziraphale didn't dare to get used to it after it had been given, didn't dare take it for granted, didn't dare rely on the demon in case all would suddenly be over and he would be alone once more, just as he'd always been.

He'd thought it could all finally be different, now. That he wouldn't have to pretend anymore, wouldn't have to pretend that he wanted anything but to spend every possible second of every day in Crowley's company, that he wouldn't have to pretend anymore that he hoped nothing more than that Crowley would want the same. No more secrets. No more hiding. No more loneliness.

But that possibility was about to leave the bookshop and dissolve like all the other daydreams he'd foolishly allowed himself to indulge in over the years.

"Please!" He was begging. He knew. He didn't care in the least. "Please, don't! I know it's- it's not what-" He couldn't say it out loud. They both knew what was wrong (not why, but what). "I can't stand it either, Crowley!", he said instead, the words mirrored in his desperate voice. "It's awful, it's unfair, but we can find a way. We must!" He instinctively reached for the demon's arm in an attempt to stop him from leaving, but the unnatural warmth his hand met through the thin fabric of Crowley's jacket made him pull away in a new almost sickening wave of hurt.
"Please", he repeated for the umpteenth time, his shaky voice barely above a whisper. "I...I can't lose you."

That made the demon hesitate at last. Thank whoever. His hand had already lingered at the doorknob, but now he stopped in his tracks, slightly turned back towards Aziraphale without letting his hand sink, as if holding onto a safe-rope that could eventually rescue him before he drowned.

"I-" Even in this one word and with seeing only his profile, Aziraphle could easily tell the pain he was in.

"We can still have what we always had", the angel said, aware how weak it sounded even to his own ears, an attempt to persuade them both. "We can still..."He trailed off, searched for words, silver linings at the horizon, found only darkness.

"But that's the thing, isn't it." There was an undertone of bitterness to Crowley's voice Aziraphale didn't like at all. "We can't. I can't."

It wasn't exactly what he said that made Aziraphale feel like the air had been pressed out of his lungs. He'd said it before. It was how he said it. There was a sense of finality to the demon's voice that made its way right into the angel's heart, hard and cold and hopeless. The breath caught in his throat and he could have sworn that his heart missed one or two beats.

"Can't?", Aziraphale echoed finally, a sudden hardness to his voice and the line of his mouth that was totally unfamiliar and just as unbecoming - not of an angel, but this angel in particular. "Or won't?"

Both, thought Crowley. (Not that he said it. He did what he always did. He went in defence mode. And probably fucked it all up further.)

"Oh, don't be such a bastard about this!", he snapped - and could practically watch as the usually so polite and composed angel vanished completely, revealing the Principality Aziraphale, Soldier in the Army of the Lord and Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden.

"Me?" The normally calm face was contorted in a mixture of disbelief and anger. "Me? Have you met yourself? I'm just trying to make the best of things and you-"

"The best of things?" There was no way for Crowley but to fight fire with fire right now, letting Aziraphale's anger fuel his own. He wouldn't be able to cope with anything else. Without the anger, there was only pain, and that was so much worse. "Aziraphale, there is no best of things", he growled between clenched teeth. "There's just awful. Total plain fucking awful and unfair-"

"You think I don't know that?" Aziraphale interrupted him. (It was never a good sign when Aziraphale forgot enough of his manners to start interrupting him.) "Because I do. Of course I do, I'm not an idiot, Crowley!"

"I beg to differ", the demon muttered under his breath. Angels, as he damn well knew, had exceedingly good hearing, but Aziraphale chose to skilfully ignore his remark with an enervated eye roll.

"At least I'm trying anything at all, which is more than can be said about you at the moment", he replied, audibly suppressed frustration in his voice. "Drowning in self-pity is not going to help anyone, Crowley, and you know it! We need-" He searched for words, answers, solutions - found none. "I don't know. But we need to do something. We need to get over this somehow." We need to get through this together. "Yet you won't talk to me. That's a non-starter-"

"I have nothing to say to you."

Aziraphale just snorted. He was beyond the stage or disbelief or even hurt.

"You're not being reasonable", he snapped, surprising himself with the harshness.
"You do realise this is not my fault, yes? Swallow your pride, for Heaven's sake!"

Crowley felt a growl start to form in his throat.
I know. Oh, I know it's not your fault. (It's mine.)
He stubbornly crossed his arms in front of his chest, stayed in reach of the door, though.

"I'd call it common sense."

"It's pride!" Aziraphale huffed in exasperation. "And it's an admirable quality, until it becomes a wall! I know you're angry, and that's perfectly understandable, but-"

Goddamn right I am. And I have every right to be.

There might have been a spark of truth to the angel's words, but that knowledge just fueled Crowley's obstinacy. He would so not have any of that logic shit.

"I'm not doing this now, Aziraphale."

"Will you do it eventually, though?"

"Stop pressuring me!"

And suddenly, Crowley was pushing the angel against the door, not quite sure how he happened to be in that compromising situation, not finding it in himself to care. His teeth were bare and he could feel that his fangs had come out. This was one of his worst nightmares, losing control like that with Aziraphale, but the angel stared back at him with qual fire in his eyes, not even flinching as he was securely held in place by his shoulders. Seconds passed and as their emotions cooled down, they could simultaneously feel that heat again, the electric tickling that slowly but steadily grew into a burning pain even through the fabric between Crowley's hands and the angel's skin. But he didn't let go, an invisible force keeping his fingers clenched in the cream-coloured coat and his body leaned forward into Aziraphale's space, keeping him from escaping.

"Are you scared of me now?"

Aziraphale could see that the question had slipped the demon involuntarily. He held Crowley's gaze, the serpentine eyes completely yellow and utterly inhuman (yet still so beautiful). The demon looked at him challengingly, but underneath the surface of his great effort not to show any signs of vulnerability, Aziraphale could see the fear flicker in the sea of gold. It was just a second until Crowley had regained control of himself and his eyes hardened again, but it was more than enough to let the angel melt with affection in return.

It had momentarily occurred to Aziraphale that those Thingsᵀᴹ he certainly shouldn't be feeling for a demon were the result of some sort of temptation. That thought had been dismissed after barely a second, though. Aziraphale just knew it wasn't true. Not that Crowley wouldn't have been able to successfully tempt Aziraphale - he absolutely was, due to his own talents as much as the angel's unfortunate but hardly deniable vulnerability concerning any kinds of small misdeeds and not-so-small indulgences. It was that Aziraphale knew Crowley wouldn't have tried. He'd known it from the beginning, from the moment they met on the Garden Wall, that Crowley was different. He was a demon and good enough at his job, if the whole Original Temptation thing had anything to say about it, but he wasn't dangerous. Something about him told Aziraphale that despite the snaking and the tempting and all the other rather demonic ways of his, he was nothing to be afraid of. Indeed, as the years went by, the mere idea of fearing Crowley became more and more ridiculous. He caused mischief and chaos, spurred humans to bad deeds, but he was never evil. Aziraphale couldn't really describe what it had been that first day in Eden, that without knowing him at all, he couldn't help but feel safe. He simply knew that Crowley meant the epitome of safety (and that first impression had proven to be more than correct later, in a cell of the Bastille, in a church during World War II, any time and everywhere). God help him, he simply trusted Crowley. He trusted him more than anyone else, a trust that had always been there, immediately, foolishly perhaps, yet quite borderless. He hadn't even meant to, it was something that just...well, was. No conscious decision, simple fact. It had never changed. And he had never had any reason to regret it, either.

"No, dear", he therefore said truthfully with a sad shaking of his head. "I'm scared for you."

That was too much, as it seemed. Crowley's eyes widened, and for the long yet fleeting span of a few heartbeats the world appeared to stand still, Crowley staring, his mouth slightly open, the unrestrained emotion raging behind his eyes, written in every wrinkle on his troubled face.

And then the moment was over. The demon blinked as if awaking from being paralysed, released Aziraphale's lapels and took a step back.

"I'm sorry that I can't give you what you want, angel." He suddenly sounded very tired, all anger blown out of his face, his eyes matte and lacking their usual spark. "But you must understand...This is worse than anything I ever imagined. It's worse than you rejecting me. If it had just been you not wanting to give more than we already had, I could have lived with that. I would have accepted it..." (He would have accepted it to please Aziraphale, because he would always put the angel's wishes before his own.)

"But this." Aziraphale's heart ached with the sadness seeping from the demon's words, found their meaning mirrored in his own aching heart. He wanted to say something to comfort him (them), opened his mouth, closed it again. Crowley hadn't even noticed, his shoulders sacked, head hung low. "This is... Knowing that you would be willing and yet I can't...I can't get what you have to give (I can't give you what I've wanted to give for centuries), I can't reach you, I still can't...I can't..."

I'm being denied. Again.

Crowley trailed off, drove a hand over his face (the one he hadn't used to take the angel's earlier), and rubbed his burning eyes.

"I just can't do this", he finally said, meeting Aziraphale's gaze. "Not anymore." (Not now was what he'd meant to say, but the pain of having to do it eventually sealed his lips.)

"Crowley..."

The demon silenced him with a slight shaking of his head. (Aziraphale wouldn't have known what to say anyway.)

"I can't... I just..." Not yet. I need time.

"But-"

"Angel." There was no power to his voice anymore, he just sounded exhausted. "Please, don't."

Aziraphale could feel the tears welling up in his eyes again, stinging at the corners where they threatened to fall. The same lack of energy had befallen him when the fueling anger vanished, but as Crowley turned back towards the door, he found himself surge forward - a living, breathing wall between the demon and his way out (away, gone for who knew how long).

"Let me go, angel."

The angel looked at him with watery eyes, helpless, pleading, and didn't move. Crowley had to look away.

"Aziraphale. Let me go. Please."

No sound. No word. No movement, either.
Crowley sighed and waited, too done with everything to bring up the will for another fight now, contemplated instead if he should just take a step forward and try to make his way past Aziraphale. Thankfully, there was the rustling of fabric and the angel stepped aside, opening the way.

Crowley lost no time.

"Will you come back?", he heard the angel's tear-choked voice just as he turned the doorknob. His head told him to flee, but his feet wouldn't move, glued in place by Aziraphale's distress. So Crowley closed his eyes and hesitated, his forehead leaned against the red-painted wood, one step away from leaving the bookshop and this whole mess behind. (Leaving Aziraphale behind, too?)

The clock ticked, Aziraphale cried, Crowley breathed. When his eyes opened, so did the door.

"Crowley!" Aziraphale was sobbing now, Crowley could hear it. He wouldn't turn around to see as well. "Will you come back?!" The panic in his voice broke the demon's heart. He wondered that Aziraphale couldn't hear it shatter into pieces.

"I always come back to you, angel."

The next thing the angel knew was that there was a rush of air and the only other being he wanted to be with had vanished to leave him alone once more.