A/N: Everything in italics is by Keats. The title is from Byron's "She Walks In Beauty." Neither belong to me.
Re-loaded 12-10-04 because the first upload was horribly bollocksed. Still not sure why. Hope formatting is better this time. Sorry for random double-spacing; better than no line-breaks at all, eh?
all that's best of dark and bright
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death…
John Keats, "Ode to a Nightingale"
Aziraphael was not very well acquainted with Death, being immortal and thus not one of those creatures whom Death inhabits and loves. Over the millennia, the angel had come to know many souls, and had seen them flee their earthly bodies to return to heaven, much more often than the angel himself was wont to do. Aziraphael enjoyed his time on earth, even if his job was thwarting his old friend, and in general he found that Death would not bother him so much if he never bothered It, or Her, or however one chose to address Death.
It was with some trepidation, then, that Aziraphael met with Crowley to discuss the demise of a poet.
This death was different. The angel was steadfastly assured by the Powers That Be that this fellow was firmly on Their side. More than that, he transcended so many of the mortals he had seen go before; this poet was an angel upon the earth in a way that Aziraphael was not; he was a mortal, but a spirit-brother to Aziraphael and a creator of beauty.
The mortal man's damp, sweaty hair was like a halo on the pillow under his head. He was very pale, and every so often, he coughed. When he coughed, he lowered his handkerchief stained red.
"It's all a part of the job."
"Of course. But you, Crowley—you understand what is being lost."
"Yes. And I can't do any more about it than you can. It's out of our hands now."
"He could have given so much more; he was full of light. Even your side can appreciate—love something so powerful and gentle."
"The gentleness isn't so appealing to my side; but I will somewhat regret the loss his power. You know, my side could have used him, too. He could have been a prime instigator for sensual daydreams, with poetry like that. Not to mention the potential all these Romantic chaps have for buggering and affairs. The mortals on your side don't seem to like that so much these days."
"Dear boy, you're skirting the issue. You know there's more at stake than—than either of our sides could claim—"
"Not part of the ineffable plan, then?"
"It certainly adds to the ineffability."
Crowley creased his brow a moment, eyes under their peculiar tinted spectacles lowering to take in the poet's face.
He put his hand on Aziraphael's shoulder, and settled the angel into a chair across from the poet's bed. The poet coughed less now, but more feebly, lacking the strength to purge impending death from his lungs. Death was drowning him slowly, and his eyes were glassy with an instinctive panic brought on by the inability to breathe. He inhaled at the utmost expense, and exhaled with a ghastly rattle.
Crowley handed Aziraphael a nearby book; a translation of Homer. The demon seated himself on the windowsill behind Aziraphael, not altogether comfortably. Aziraphael began to read aloud.
Now, of course there were other mortals in the room, as well. However, the two beings of dark and light were not seen when they chose not to be seen, and they were not heard when they chose not to be heard, and for this one afternoon, they chose to be invisible and silent to earthly creatures. So no notice was taken of them when the angel began to read, or the demon hissed slowly between pointed teeth and slid off the window-ledge, and turned sharply to his companion, and expostulated:
"Angel, do something. Make it stop, damn it. Contact your side or something."
Aziraphael closed his—the poet's—book, with a gentleness that demonstrated his great care for these things. He also looked utterly helpless.
"Crowley, you know I can't. If I could have, it would be done. We can only watch."
"Whose side did this?"
"I don't know."
"I want to know."
"I do, too; desperately."
Together, they watched the poet, holding a vigil for his death, preparing for his wake.
These figures were, in their turn, unaware of certain other beings which drifted around them and sometimes even within them. Crowley and Aziraphael were manifestations of a faith that had been held in their God and Satan for ages spanning all directions of time; that is to say, certainly more than two, for our past (backward) and future (forward) are but a small part of time, and Crowley and Aziraphael existed on more levels than we may fit in our heads. Their existence was not, and is not, ultimate, though in the poet's bedroom, deathroom, in Rome, they thrived on the faith put in them; it will be nearly two hundred years before they have a brush with the Apocalypse, and scantly longer after that before the Morningstar will abdicate his throne, and the One Set Above Those Who Rise and the Silent One rule Hell, and angels may love demons.
So the Endless moved around those other more ephemeral inhabitants of the poet's lodging in Rome and held their own vigil and wake. The angel and the demon did not see them; the Endless are never seen unless they choose to be seen, and they are never heard unless they choose to be heard, and so this evening they chose to be invisible and silent to all earthly creatures, except one.
Desire was mostly female that day. She was Fanny, and when she knelt by the poet's bed, the poet whimpered in pain or longing or both.
Desire stroked the poet's hair, and spoke softly, and told the poet of his end.
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
Desire kissed the poet's cheek, and was gone with a self-satisfied smirk.
Desire's twin approached the bed, and squatted beside it and held the poet's hand so that her sigil sat upon its back. This is what Despair did; she told the poet of his waiting.
Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
Where youth grows pale and specter-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs…
Despair knew that the lines written for another's passing had haunted the poet, and she touched him upon the brow with her hooked sigil, and was gone.
Delirium fidgeted fluidly around the bed, and stumbled upon things that weren't there, and spoke to the poet in words that have not been recorded, and sounds that cannot be described, and embraced him, and fled.
The poet fancied he could see angels, but could only remember one blue eye, one green eye, and silver flecks.
The Prince of Stories bent over the poet's bed in Rome. The Lord Shaper framed the poet's face in his hands, and the poet spiraled into a night so deep that he knew dreams were true in that place; then he realized he was simply seeing into the eyes of his king. A cold, pale face hung above him like a moon. Dream held the poet thus, and in this manner he told the poet of his last hours.
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music—Do I wake or sleep?
Dream, solemn and proud and ceremonial, lowered his face to the poet's, and placed his cheek upon the poet's, and stepped back to allow his eldest sister passage.
Death came forward.
Her gown was midnight, jet and ebony, her black hair piled and spilling and lovely. She was the kindest, most beautiful creature the poet had ever seen. He drank in her presence. She took him up in her arms, and cradled him softly and tenderly, and murmured to him.
"Child, child, it's your time."
She did not speak to him of his end, for she was his end.
As the last gasp gurgled from the frail thing on the bed, the mortals surrounding it felt, for a brief moment, that they heard the sound of great and gentle wings, but none of them spoke of it to each other. Each mortal took that sound with him, in his heart, until his very end.
Crowley's hand was on Aziraphael's shoulder as they both watched the life leave the body on the bed. They stood as the wailing died down, stood as the body was wrapped in a sheet and taken away, stood as the room was emptied. There were no words or tears or resentments between the two. Destiny had not left his garden that day; God had not descended upon earth. An angel and a demon held a silent requiem for an artist now a part of the past.
"That's the end of it, then."
"Yes."
"Aziraphael."
"Yes?"
"He isn't dead, really."
"No."
End.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
-John Keats