Okay, everyone, here's the continuation of my personal take on "what happens next" for Crowley, Aziraphale, and to some extent, everyone and everything else in existence! Not that it's ambitious at all.
If you read "Days To Come," it will help a lot. However, if you did not, chapter 2 of this story will do a lot to catch you up on the details. But here's the less-detailed nutshell version:
The actual story: two weeks after the failed Apocalypse, Aziraphale is staying with Crowley (supposedly temporarily, although...). Gabriel shows up and demands that Aziraphale find Agnes Nutter's second volume. When Aziraphale learns that it's been burned, he's heartbroken because he really feels it's a loss to knowledge and posterity. So, Crowley finesses Hell into letting him borrow a time-travel device. They go back to two weeks prior, and talk Anathema Device into giving them the manuscript, since she didn't want it anyway. After that, they have to stay in Tadfield for two weeks, in order to catch up to the time when they "left."
The continuity: while Crowley is in Hell, he learns that Beelzebub et. al. have had a series of "meetings" about Crowley and Aziraphale, and how they survived their executions. One theory seems to make the most sense to them, because it's the most terrifying, and it will bleed into this story quite copiously.
The shippy bit: meanwhile, our angel and demon pair get closer. They enjoy "creature comforts" at each other's encouragement, namely, good food and a good night's sleep. They discuss their own experiences with, and perspectives on, love and sex. Crowley's "career" has been all about temptation and therefore, indulgence, but Aziraphale's has not. Though they both have the same corporeal makeup, their corporeal experiences have been vastly different. As expected, Crowley is much "louder" in his non-verbal declarations of love, though Aziraphale makes a decision in the end that speaks pretty loudly, as well. We end with the two of them having a very frank discussion in a Tadfield B&B, as to where to go next with their "friendship," and for now, things will remain more or less status-quo... at least on the outside.
Please enjoy this story! Please squee, and please laugh! This is another true labor of love for me! :-)
ONE
It was a Tuesday in Hell.
The ceiling still leaked white goo that occasionally, though not always, ate through the desks and flooring onto which it landed. It was foul-smelling and viscous, and not even the demons who worked in the Paperwork Processing department of eternal torment were wont to give too much thought to what it actually was, or where it had actually come from.
Fortunately, there had been bigger fish to fry, over the last ten days, and most demons had been able to keep their minds off it. At the moment, they were setting up chairs in front of a screen, and a very slow computer behind a projector, in anticipation of the fifth meeting they'd had on the topic of what the Heaven had happened two Sundays ago.
Ten days prior, on what could have been an ordinary Saturday in late August, the Forces of Darkness, such as they were, had been ready to see their own evil-doing come to fruition, and the Antichrist and his boisterous Hellhound had been provoked to bring about the end of the world. They were on the precipice of the Final Battle with the opposition. Everyone had been poised for the War To End All Wars, the War To End Everything… but what happened?
Well, the Antichrist had been reared as a mischievous but ultimately quite sweet-natured human boy in a charming English village, by eminently normal English people, and not by wealthy, privileged, constantly-surveilled, flamboyant American politicians, who would have hired out his care. He'd been named Adam, rather than Damien or Lucifer or Cain or even Warlock. He'd had friends, a proper school, hugs from mum and dad. He'd been taught thoughtfulness, kindness, and a sense of belonging. And the hellhound had become that boy's conception of what a faithful dog might be, and had been rendered a cute black-and-white Spaniel named Dog. The boy had become resolutely disinclined to destroy the world, and everyone had gone home. Including the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and all of the angels and Archangels, and demons and Demon Lords standing at attention for the coming of End Times.
That was the long answer.
But the short answer was: Crowley. Crowley had happened.
That sunglass-wearing, slang-speaking, trend-following, concern-having, angel-loving, evil-questioning, comfort-seeking bloody snake of a demon, he'd derailed everything, starting with the day Adam was born.
He had handed off the infant Antichrist to the wrong parents, and then had cheekily teamed up with his Heavenly analogue eleven years later to further convince the already defiant boy to challenge his true nature, disobey orders, and effectively vanquish Satan's influence from his life forever.
Crowley, Crowley, Crowley.
That always-swaggering, colleague-murdering, rule-breaking, grey-area-seeing, humanity-rescuing, poor-excuse-for-a-demon, Crowley.
But today's meeting was not about what Crowley had done on that anticlimactic, anti-apocalyptic Saturday. It was about what he'd managed to do in the aftermath, the following day. It was about what the Ranks of Hell were now calling Wet Sunday.
Because, the failed Apocalypse was just that: a failed Apocalypse. It was an evil plan that had gone tits-up. Evil plans got thwarted all the time – it was nothing new, and Hell had always been able to recover and reload. Never on this scale, of course, and Satan himself had never received quite such a thump on the nose before… but ultimately, they could just wait another thousand years, and try again. It was sort of in the cards for them, because, like it or not, everyone in existence was subject to God's Ineffable Plan. No need to have meetings about it – nothing had changed. God was in Her penthouse, Satan was in his basement, everyone would regroup and give it another go. In theory, that Armani-wearing, television-watching, Scotch-swilling Crowley and his icky little boyfriend Aziraphale, could be got rid of, and Armageddon could get back on track, with competent personnel at the helm.
But that was just the thing: the two who had thwarted everything could not be got rid of. Wet Sunday referred to the day upon which both Apocalypse-undoers had been scheduled for execution – Aziraphale by hellfire and Crowley by holy water – yet both had survived.
Hastur, Beelzebub, and Dagon had watched in horror as Crowley had stripped down to his skivvies, then stepped into a bathtub filled with a substance that should rightly reduce any of Hell's minions to something that resembled steaming, raspberry-chocolate rice pudding, just before said minion ceased to exist…
But Crowley had not screamed, nor turned to pudding, nor, in fact, had he protested at all. He simply smiled, immersed himself in holy water, and laid back to relax in the bath, as though he were in one of those Calgon, take me away adverts that he'd invented in the 1980s. Then, he'd looked at all of them with daggers in his yellow eyes, and a kind of cheeky smirk they'd never seen before (which was remarkable, because Crowley was the absolute King of the Cheeky Smirk). He effectively pointed out that this new ability of his was a clear indicator that the game had changed, and unless they all wanted raining upon them the untold and bizarre vengeance and fury of which he was now capable, they should probably leave him alone.
And by all accounts from those who were there, something similar had happened when Aziraphale had stepped into the column of hellfire. He had not screamed, not twitched, not turned to ash. He had behaved very much as Crowley had, in that he not only survived it, but seemed to relish in it, and in his superiors looking on in confused terror.
A demon who can survive a bath of holy water. And an angel immune to hellfire.
Something, indeed, was amiss.
Just the fact of Crowley and Aziraphale's collusion meant that they could no longer be counted on by their respective domains for anything. But their corporeal statuses had morphed altogether, which meant something bigger. It was no longer about the individuals, Crowley and Aziraphale, not being reliable any longer, yet still being in the game, which meant that Armageddon was effectively out of the question until they could be dealt with, which, according to the evidence, might be never…
…it was now about nothing being reliable any longer. The laws of celestio/infernal physics were no longer as they had been understood for six thousand years.
And that's what today's meeting was about.
The Archangel Michael and the Demon Analosima had been instrumental in interdepartmental relations – both had worked willingly with their respective other sides to try and get the executions accomplished, in the interest of furthering, ultimately, the cause of Armageddon in the not-too-distant future. Not to mention, sending a powerful message to others in their ranks who might stray from the fold. But it had been decided after Wet Sunday that those channels of communication would have to be closed off, that it would not behoove anyone for Heaven and Hell to actually work together to find out what had happened. They would share information if and when it proved relevant, and advantageous, to do so.
On Beelzebub's orders, Hell's minions had taken it in turns speculating over what might have gone wrong on Wet Sunday, and what to do about it. So far, they had had four meetings over it, as different Dukes, Lords, Deacons, Counts (etc.) of Hell had come up with theories, worked through them, galvanized them, and turned them into a series of unreliable Powerpoint presentations. Which was no easy feat, considering that everyone in Hell, save for Crowley, still worked with Windows '95.
Hastur was the first to arrive in the dank, oozy room, and he was actually pleased to be presenting his "findings" to his colleagues. He hated feeling pleased.
It was an idea he'd had even while he was standing there, staring at Crowley in disbelief, watching him sit chest-deep in holy water, and Analosima had encouraged him to develop the idea further (that is, before he'd had Analosima discorporated for the fifth time, just for fun, only to find him again, sitting at his desk, smiling, cracking nervous jokes, all pointy-haired, and expendable). It was a theory that he knew to be intriguing, because it had been on his mind constantly in the ten days since Wet Sunday. And, the more he talked with Analosima (who had happened to be there when Aziraphale had pulled his own wicked stunt in Heaven), the more he believed that the execution-survival phenomenon was explainable only through the influence of something completely unknown… until now.
Eventually, the room was full of demons, now come to hear Hastur's theory.
"I hereby call this meeting to order," Beelzebub called out from the front of the room, as usual, sounding utterly bored. Though everyone knew that she was far from bored; she had a frightened hunger to know the truth, just like everyone else had. "This is the fifth meeting following what has been referred to as Wet Sunday, whereupon, the Demon Crowley successfully avoided a well-earned horrific death by holy water, and no-one can bloody well work out why. So, Duke Hastur, take the podium, and try not to be rubbish."
And Lord Beelzebub sat down in the front row, crossed one ankle over the other knee, folded her arms, and sat back.
"Right," Hastur said, walking up to the front of the meeting space and snapping his fingers. At this, there appeared upon a large screen behind him a white background with the words Is There A Domain Other Than Heaven and Hell, and What Are Its Interests? written in black, Arial font. He said, "My presentation is entitled Is There a Domain Other Than Heaven and Hell, and What Are Its Interests?"
"Yes, Hastur, we can read," Beelzebub complained.
Hastur snapped his fingers, and the slide advanced, and showed a cartoonish silhouette of a bathtub with someone in it, and that someone had flamboyantly poufy hair, and sunglasses. "As you all may know," he began, in his awkward Hastur way. "When Crowley was in the bath, taunting us, Lord Beelzebub's words were, he's gone native, he's not one of us anymore."
When he snapped his fingers again, the words he's not one of us anymore appeared below the bathtub, also in the most uninteresting font possible.
"Well, indeed," said Hastur. "Who is he, then? Or what is he? Our colleague, Lord Mephisto, he presented his theory to you that perhaps angels and demons who spend too bloody much time together can hybridise. He asked if two beings of the same stock could, over the millennia, essentially catch each other's qualities, vulnerabilities, like a lovely, heart-warming, infectious disease. Essentially, he thinks that Aziraphale caught a bit of Crowley's demonic nature and Crowley caught a bit of Aziraphale's angelic nature, allowing the two of them to survive their otherwise glorious executions."
At the thought of "catching" angelic infections, just about everyone in the room, including Hastur himself, shuddered.
"Another of our colleagues, Deacon Oscuro, took it one step further with The Ying and Yang of Angels and Demons, and suggested that an angel and a demon who have hybridised will eventually morph into a separate species," Hastur continued, as he snapped his fingers, and a stilted animation appeared on the screen, wherein a Ying/Yang symbol spun together and became a grey blob. He gestured weirdly at the image, and said, "Oscuro asked whether the essences of Heaven and Hell, when combined, will neutralise, and become a different kind of essence, or substance. Crowley and Aziraphale became… a grey blob."
Hastur inspected the crowd, and could see them either thinking hard (most demons looked as though they might be defecating, whenever they began mulling over a truly heretofore unquestioned notion of philosophy), or discussing the issue with colleagues.
He actually paused for effect here. Then continued.
"Who dared to ask the question of whether there's a way for a demon to fall deeper than he already has, and what happens to the material body when that happens? Why, it was Count Sangrenero! And who dared to wonder aloud whether demons who stray from the fold eventually become angels, as the reverse is true?"
"Yeah, that was Arragorgio," Beelzebub said, leaning back in her chair, even further. "What a load of dragon shit that was."
"Well, all of these theories are interesting – except that last one – but all are, of course, well, dragon shit. I'm here to present you with something bigger, weirder, and profoundly disturbing," Hastur declared.
"Disturbing?" Beelzebub asked. "This is Hell – how much more disturbing can it get?"
"Oh it can get disturbing! I'll disturb you good," he answered, rather awkwardly.
"Stop being a wanker, and tell us what you've got."
"Early in the day, just before the Apocalypse became a false-start, our late comrade, Ligur, received a call from the Archangel Michael, asking if Aziraphale was perhaps working for our side. He was not. But it put an interesting question into our heads, mine and Ligur's, that is until…" Hastur swallowed hard, and a look of fear and disgust came over his face. "That is until his head became a mass of dripping, burning liquid bone and brains, and the rest of him melted to the floor in an imploding pile of sludge and… er, anyway, Ligur and I discussed the possibility of Crowley working for Heaven. But it appears that that was not happening either."
"Get to the point!" Beelzebub screamed, throwing her head back, in a grand gesture of utter, hellish, mind-crushing tedium.
"But just because Aziraphale was not in cahoots with Hell, and Crowley was not in cahoots with Heaven, does not mean that either of them, or both of them, couldn't be working for someone else. Someone we don't know about. Heaven and Hell are both wily, but they are both known quantities. What if we couldn't understand what happened with Crowley and Aziraphale in the throes of holy water and hellfire respectively, because they're both working for an unknown quantity? A domain other than Heaven or Hell, a domain that's even wilier than either of the two, so wily, it's managed to stay hidden from us?"
At this, the room fell silent. The only thing that could be heard was white slime dripping onto some stray paperwork, then sizzling as it burned through.
"And if this Third Domain, if you will, exists, then its interest must lie in keeping Creation alive, for some reason," Hastur continued. "It must need the Earth to continue turning, as it were, in order to play out its own agenda later on. Why else would it employ Crowley and Aziraphale to thwart the Apocalypse?"
"Bugger," Beelzebub said, matter-of-factly.
"I posit that Crowley is no longer a demon. Much as he is no longer an angel. When he fell from Heaven and joined our ranks, he did not lose his original stock, his corporeal form, his memories, intelligence sensibilities, nor any of his bleeding bravado, his flash, his disgusting smile, his tomfoolery…"
"Hastur," Beelzebub warned.
"What he lost were qualities specific to Heavenly beings," Hastur said. "He lost certain vulnerabilities, and gained others. Now, he's left his position in Hell for another. Same stock, same corporeal form, same memories, intelligence, personality, and the like… but different metaphysical traits. He lost his vulnerability to all things holy, and gained, presumably, other vulnerabilities. And all of the same could be said of Aziraphale. We just don't know what those vulnerabilities are yet, given that the Third Domain is totally unknown, and…"
"And we're not even sure it exists," said Beelzebub.
"No, admittedly, we are not," Hastur said. "But it is my recommendation, as Duke of Hell, that we dispatch whatever resources needed, to look into it."
Again, the only noise that could be heard was leaking from the ceiling and destroying paperwork. That, and the demon Madegren shifting in her chair, snapping her femur, and cursing under her breath.
Hastur noted with both pride and dread that silence was not a reaction received by any of the other presenters, nor any of their theories. He had hit a nerve here. He wasn't sure whether to cackle uncontrollably, or bite his thumb until it oozed blood.
"Very well, thanks, Hastur, the Dark Council will take your ideas under advisement," Beelzebub declared, slurring her speech. "Now, everyone, fuck off."
Thoughts? Feelings? Wonderings? Please leave a review, and let me know you're out there! Thank you for reading!