Chapter V — An Unforgivable Ruse
Naomi sat at her desk. She did a lot of sitting at her desk, nowadays, though she wasn't sure why—with so few of them left, they didn't have the manpower to be concerned about Earth. They'd long ago stopped processing almost any reports, just a few stray things here and there. Sightings of other angels. Occasional miracles that couldn't be accounted for. Nothing ever panned out. Not when they could only send just one or two angels to Earth at a time, lest Heaven stutter and die completely.
As if to punctuate her thoughts, the lights overhead flickered.
Naomi sighed, burying her head in her hands, trying to ignore the throbbing in her temples. She had recovered, mostly, from the drill—but these phantom pains chased her, even now, six years later. Some damage could never be undone. It was moments like this she deeply questioned why she remained here, why she dedicated herself to 'keeping the lights on' as it were—when inevitably, this, like all things, would end. Heaven would collapse and innumerable souls would flood the Earth, doomed to wander forever without hope of salvation.
It was only a matter of time.
Naomi lifted her head just in time to be caught off-guard by an immense bolt of energy, something that seemed to shake the very foundation of the ethereal realm around her. The lights brightened spectacularly, fluorescent white once more, so much so that the walls had a glare to them, for the first time since the Fall. The ground vibrated underneath her, buzzing with energy.
Dumah pushed through the glass door to Naomi's office in a rush, eyes frantic, "Did you—?"
"Yes," Naomi said immediately, already out of her chair. "Yes, I felt it."
"An Archangel?" Dumah questioned, tentative hope in her voice. "Or...Naomi, could it be...?"
"I don't know," Naomi cut across the other angel, forcing an air of caution on herself, "but we need to find out."
Upon stepping into this new universe, Aziraphale was immediately made aware of two things: one, that it had a strange and pungent aroma not unlike stale male body odor, and two: that he was in a celestial realm. That didn't seem congruent to the angel, but he didn't question it. He knew Heaven when he felt it, or at least something like it. It was no surprise he'd been dumped in the Heaven-equivalent of whatever universe he had torn his way into; reality was thinner in both Heaven and Hell, easier to manipulate, for obvious reasons.
He was just glad he'd stepped into Heaven, rather than Hell. All implicit biases aside, he wasn't much one for fire and brimstone.
When his vision cleared and his surroundings presented themselves in a clear fashion, Aziraphale was perplexed.
A human, probably in his late twenties to early thirties, lay prostrate on the couch, a remote control of some variety in his hand. He stared at the TV screen in front of him, mouth open. He wore a headset with a microphone attachment, and appeared to not have slept or showered in quite some time. The coffee table between the sofa and the television was littered with empty Doritos bags(1) and cans of something called Mountain Dew Gamer Fuel.
"I say, dear boy, what are you doing?" Aziraphale asked, watching the near zombie-like state of the young man.
"Shh, shut up, dude, I'm about to get a Victory Royale."
Aziraphale squinted at the television. The sound of gunfire filled the cramped, odorous room. "Is this...oh yes, a home video game. I tend to forget about these."(2)
"OH YOU PIECE OF SHIT—YOU FUCKIN—"
Aziraphale balked at the tawdry language. Whatever was he so upset about? He looked for a door in the room, and found one, thankfully. He was in Heaven. Undeniably. Presumably this specific human's Heaven. The quality was not for him to say, but he wanted very much to exit post-haste before whatever a Victory Royale was occurred.
He slipped through the door, and into a white, featureless hallway, comprised entirely of neatly labeled doors. Clinical. Barren.
"Yes, definitely Heaven," he muttered to himself. He checked the nameplate on the door he'd just left; Christopher M. Meyers. A quick glance up and down the length of the hallway confirmed it was in alphabetical order. An entire meandering stretch of Chrises, in their own personal paradises. It was not unlike Heaven in his universe, though their Heaven was far less...concrete. The realm outside the hub from which the angels operated was a fluid dimension, reality controlled almost exclusively by the mortal souls that dwelled within. They were not isolated as they were here.
Aziraphale noticed the lights brightening overhead. Hmm. Odd.
He paced down the hallway. He needed a way out, but this seemed to stretch onward into infinity—more and more doors, more and more Chrises. Eventually the Chris M Meyerses turned into Chris N Meyerses, but other than that, each step he took showed him more of the same. He needed to get to Earth. He let out his wings, wondering if he could open up a portal to this version of Earth, but it had drained him quite a bit to open the portal to Heaven in the first place, he knew he didn't have it in him to do it twice in less than ten minutes.
"Stop."
Aziraphale stopped.
Turned.
Two angels stood a few feet from him, dressed in the grey pants suits he'd come to expect of his brethren. Both female presenting, one with olive skin and cascading loose black curls, another with short platinum blond hair and piercing blue eyes. They looked at him with a combination of trepidation and awe. They were both armed with celestial weapons.
"Hello, there! I seem to have lost my way, ah...?" he gestured at them in a manner that he hoped encouraged them to share their names.
"My name is Naomi, and this is Dumah,"(3) the shorter of the two angels answered him, a cautious hope in her eyes. "And you are?"
Aziraphale narrowed his eyes at them. Yes, they were angels, but...so weak, he was surprised to find, their auras so much smaller scale than his own. And their wings, visible to him on the higher planes, were awfully tattered, missing all but a few spare primaries, skeletal reminders of what once were likely beautiful visions.
"Oh my," Aziraphale said, a rush of compassion finding him, "What has happened to you two?"
"Happened?" spat Dumah. "What do you mean, what happened? You're an angel, surely you know."
"I'm afraid not, my dear," he replied softly. Like wounded birds, these two, with their broken wings.
Naomi took a step forward. "Your wings are whole."
"They are," Aziraphale answered, licking his lips nervously. What had happened in this universe? "I...yours...?" he managed weakly.
"The Fall," Dumah said shortly.
"Oh. All—all of you?" But they were in Heaven. How could they have Fallen and still reside here?
Naomi's face went tight. "Yes. All of us." She took several steps closer to him, peering at his face. "You're not wearing a vessel."
"A vessel?" Aziraphale furrowed his brow. What did they mean by that? His corporeal form?
"You created that form."
"I did," he said with a careful nod. "Not to be vain, but I think I did a rather good job of it, didn't I?" he clasped his hands over his stomach. "Awfully hard to get this color of blond right, I tell you."
"What are you?" asked Dumah, eyes drilling into him.
"I—I thought that should seem obvious. I'm an angel," he said with a nervous laugh. Were they unable to tell he was an angel? He flexed his hands, not sure how to proceed. He really needed to be getting on with this. "Could you, perhaps, if you'd be so kind, direct me towards the door to Earth?"
They stared at him blankly.
"Gate works too. Portal...egress...or would that be exit...?" he mulled aloud.
"We can't allow you to leave," Naomi told him, no room for argument in her voice. "Heaven is at full power for the first time in years. You've reinvigorated it just by being here."
"I have?"
"You're no ordinary angel," Dumah accused, ignoring his blatant confusion.
"I have superiors back home that would wholeheartedly agree," Aziraphale admitted. "Let's—let's start over, shall we?" Aziraphale gave them a curt half-bow. "I am the Principality Aziraphale, Angel of the Eastern Gate. Formerly. And I really do need to be getting to Earth as quickly as possible—"
"There is no angel Aziraphale," Naomi interrupted him. "I know the name of every angel God ever made, and He never made an angel named Aziraphale."
"He?" Oh, how strange to think about. He already didn't like this universe.
"Yes, He. As in God, as in the God who left and never came back," the angel Dumah snapped, seeming infuriated by his ignorance.
"Left?" he asked weakly. A Godless universe with broken angels. Good Lord, Crowley, what have you gotten yourself into?
"Whatever you are, you need to stay here," Naomi insisted. "We could power Heaven for millennia off your power alone."
While this was truly stroking his ego, he began to panic. What if they didn't allow him to leave? "I'm flattered, I am, but I must be getting on—"
The two angels stalked towards him. Oh, he knew that look, this was turning into a kidnapping rather quickly.(4)
"Wait!" he held up both hands, struggling to think on his feet. He wished desperately for Crowley; he always seemed to know what to do. Even if his ideas were foolish, he at least always had one or two up his sleeve.
The angels did wait, however.
Aziraphale recalled something Crowley had said to him once. They'd been in Venice. Or maybe Florence. Things blended together, but they were definitely in Italy, and Crowley had definitely said from behind a glass of fine red wine: Temptation's easy, angel. Just offer them what they already want. They do all the work for you.
"I've returned!" Aziraphale squeaked on impulse. Oh God please forgive me please do not smite me where I stand please please this is an emergency, he begged frantically in his head, whether that prayer went to the God of his world or the God of this one, he had no idea. Or perhaps they were both fragments of the same? Questions for later.
Naomi and Dumah looked at him as if he'd grown a second head.
"My children," he pressed on, trying to embody some relative Holiness.(5) "I'm so sorry to have left you like this for so very long, but there were other matters of great import that required my attending, in universes far beyond this one." Aziraphale subtly worked a minor miracle to make his eyes and skin glow a bit more. "Now that I'm home, safe and sound, I just need to tie up a few lingering issues on Earth, and then we can begin the work of putting Heaven back together, right as rain."
He dearly hoped these angels had never actually spoken to the Almighty, or this ruse would fall apart rapidly.
Naomi and Dumah met each other's eyes, as if both looking to the other to confirm or deny their doubts.
"You can't be God," Naomi insisted, but she didn't sound like she believed it. She sounded like someone who had been given a tiny scrap of hope and wanted so badly to cling to it, but feared it all the same.
Another miracle. More glowing. Aziraphale smiled radiantly at them. "Oh Naomi. You've done so well. Against all odds." He was ad-libbing, as Crowley would say, and doing quite the good job of it. He really did have a talent for acting, didn't he? "And what...what, ah, mighty odds they were." He made a tally-ho gesture. "So, my dears, if you could just show me to the gate to Earth, I'll be back before supper."
"If you're truly God, then heal me," Naomi said suddenly, stepping into his personal space. "Your Scribe, Metatron, attacked me with a drill-bit made of melted down angel blades. It took me years to recover, to put myself back together, but there are still gaps in my memory. Gaps lasting hundreds of years. And the pain has never stopped."
Her eyes were blazing with condemnation, and Aziraphale didn't blame her—he'd be rather cross with a God that just said, oh, sorry, places to be and all that, and then disappeared for—well, Aziraphale wasn't sure how long this universe's God had been gone for, but he could only assess from the desperate angels and how weak the celestial aura of Heaven was, that it had been a very long time indeed.
"Let me see if I can help," he said carefully. Healing, he could do that, but surely any angel could? He didn't know how it would help prove his Godliness, but he supposed he should just be grateful she'd asked him to complete a task he was capable of. He took a step closer to her, and noted that her eyes were a very bright blue.
Aziraphale took a deep breath, reaching his own essence out to Naomi. Dumah watched on with interest and apprehension. He could sense the damage in the angel's brain, deep and bruising, but it was nothing he wouldn't be able to fix. Angel blades? Melted down into drillbits? It all sounded terribly macabre. In his universe, nothing could melt a celestial weapon, hence why they usually tended to be ablaze. Seemed a horrible design flaw to make angelic weapons that weren't fireproof, as setting them on fire seemed to be the proper thing to do, righteous fury and all that.
Aziraphale lifted his hands, tips of his fingers resting on her temples.
"This won't hurt a bit," he promised.
And it didn't. And it was over rather quickly, too. With a medium-sized miracle, he healed all the damage done to Naomi, and restored her memory. She stumbled back from him, leaving his hands hanging. He clasped them over his chest, quite pleased. A job well done, if he did say so himself, ignoring the near Fall worthy blasphemy involved in it all. But really, if he hadn't Fallen yet, he doubted very much he was ever going to.
Dumah went to Naomi's side. "Naomi...?"
"He did it," she confirmed instantly, with a terse nod of her head. "It's..." she looked up at him, wonder in her eyes. "It's Him."
Aziraphale tried to smile, but it came out as more of a grimace. "It was no trouble at all, my dear. Now, about that gate?"
Crowley was laughing.
Dean didn't like it.
"What's so funny?" Dean asked gruffly, measuring out ingredients for the universe-travelling spell so they didn't fuck it up and end up stuck with Crowley. The demon had done nothing but complain about the Supernatural books, but now he seemed to be actually enjoying himself. Dean almost wished he'd go back to complaining.
"Lovers in league against Satan..." Crowley quoted. "I like Other Crowley," the demon said, peering over his sunglasses at the laptop screen. "Do you know how dull and dim most demons are in my universe? No imagination. No initiative. Shortsighted prats, every last one. They'll spend twenty years corrupting a priest into a wank, when they could just sabotage the ice cream machine at a McDonald's and tarnish thousands and thousands of souls in one go." Crowley pointed at the screen. "This Crossroads King, he had vision."
"He had something," Dean grumbled, preferring not to think about their Crowley if he could avoid it. Still, even after having lost him over a year and a half ago, he so often expected to hear "Hello boys" from behind him anytime they got into a snag. The King of Hell swooping into save their asses again.
Twenty minutes passed, and Crowley blew out a long breath, closing the laptop lid. "Done. Thank G—Thank Somebody."
"Neat. You're all caught up. Not that it matters, because if this works, you'll be gone before sundown," Dean said.
Crowley drummed his fingertips on the laptop. "So, what exactly happened to Other Crowley?"
"He died trying to buy us time to stop Lucifer," Sam answered from across the room, where he was drawing chalk runes on one of the long wooden tables. "We didn't actually manage to stop him, but if Crowley hadn't done what he did, one of us would have had to. He sacrificed himself for us."
"Awfully noble for a demon," Crowley observed mildly, but Dean could tell he was, possibly for the first time since he'd arrived in their universe, very interested in what they were saying.
"He was...complicated," provided Castiel from beside Dean. "He was evil, but he was...also not."
Jack looked up from the Demon Tablet translations that were a chaotic mix of Kevin and Donatello's notes, searching for anything else that could help them get more bang for their buck with the ritual. The less Archangel Grace they had to use, the better. "If he gave his own life to save you guys and save the world, then he can't really be evil, can he?" Jack asked.
"When it came down to it, Crowley was on humanity's side. He loved the world. He didn't want it to end. That's why at the end of the day we always ended up in bed together. We both wanted to keep this rock spinning," Dean said, deciding that was probably the nicest thing he'd ever said about their Crowley. Too bad the demon wasn't around to hear it.
Crowley's eyebrows arched dramatically.
"Metaphorically! Get your mind out of the gutter," Dean chastised.
"I mean, we never really did find out what you and Crowley did during your Summer of Love thing," Sam chimed from across the room.
Oh, for fuck's sake. "Shut up, Sam!" Was he ever going to live his demonic summer down?
Crowley snickered, pushing his feet against the side of the table and tipping his chair back precariously far. "Oh, that's sweet. Even demons deserve to be loved."
"Love is way too strong a word." Dean finished off his measurements of the ground Fruit of Life and rose from the table. "But...if we had a way to get him back, I'd take it."
"Uh, pardon, but...wasn't that what the ginger witch was trying to do when she ended up summoning me?" Crowley asked, baffled. "You all burst in like it was the end of the bloody world."
"No way that Rowena could come up with to get Crowley back would be worth it," Cas explained. "Dark magic always comes with a price, and the price likely would've been Crowley's humanity."
"That's what made him different," Sam provided. "We shot him up with human blood awhile back, trying to cure him. We didn't pull it off, but it changed him. Made him...diet human, I guess."
"Was that after this?" Crowley tapped the laptop again.(6)
"Yeah," Dean answered.
"Seemed like he was already on the humanity train when he helped stop the apocalypse. Got your friend Bobby out of a wheelchair," Crowley laced his hands behind his head. "Downright pleasant, s'far as demons go."
"Yeah, well. There's a lot about Crowley you don't know. And it doesn't matter now." Dean looked to Sam, pushing past the apprehension rising hot and tight in his stomach. "I'm ready when you are. We've still got enough holy blood to sink a battleship, and we have just enough of the Fruit of Life left to pull this off."
Sam finished the chalk markings—something to further stabilize the portal, he explained, a trick he picked up from the Black Grimoire—and nodded. "Okay. We just need some of your hair, Crowley."
"My hair?" Crowley didn't seem thrilled by the prospect.
"You're a demon, just make it grow back," Dean told him.
Crowley rolled his eyes, and yanked out a handful of his auburn hair with a wince. Awkwardly, he rose from the table and brought it to Sam.
"So, uh...guess we gotta..." Dean shook his head. "Fuck it, let's go get a burger and a beer first, I ain't doing this sober and on an empty stomach." He needed something to steel his nerves. He didn't want another dive back into Michael Land. The pain? He didn't give a shit about the pain. It was the memories he was worried about.
Sam seemed to understand. "Okay. No problem." He looked to Cas and Jack. "You guys hold down the fort, and uh...keep Crowley company, I guess."
"Oh, we're not calling it guard duty anymore?" Crowley asked, still massaging where he'd torn out his hair. "Touching. I might cry."
Dean just rolled his eyes. "We'll be back."
Meanwhile, Aziraphale stood in the middle of an empty playground in a Kansas City suburb.
He closed his eyes, stretching out his awareness.
He smiled, and murmured, "Hello Crowley."
1. When Crowley was with Aziraphale, he ate what Aziraphale ate, but since moving in together, Aziraphale realized the demon had a penchant for junk foods. Anything with artificial cheese powder seemed to delight him. Aziraphale did his best to hold his tongue.
2. The extent of Aziraphale's video game knowledge began and ended with Candy Crush, and that was only because Crowley had invented it. He'd gotten a commendation Down There for that one.
3. There is no angel Naomi in Aziraphale's world, but there is a Dumah (spelled Doumah)—officially known as The Angel of the Silence of Death. It is a very long name, a very ominous one, and mightily difficult to fit on a name tag at workplace punch socials.
4. You get a certain sense about these things once it's happened to you enough times.
5. Aziraphale is only a great deal holier than thou if the 'thou' in question is a demon.
6. Crowley easily brushed over the idea of demon curing. He had quickly learned not to question whatever ridiculous things that the Winchesters & Co said, because at the end of the day, did he really want to know?