The Sort of Thing You Forget

A Good Omens fanfiction

Part 4 of 4

The bell over the door jingled.

Aziraphale chose not to get up but, then, he'd also chosen not to lock it. Just in case this very scenario happened. In case Crowley – or Raphael, or whoever he was – decided to turn up tonight. He hadn't help out much hope of it happening; he'd been harsh, and he knew it. Still, it hadn't been nice, what his friend had done.

It sounded as if Crowley were dragging his feet in an overly noisy fashion, and Aziraphale wondered if he was doing that deliberately to get attention. If he were declaring, "I'm here, pay attention to me! I used to be an archangel, you know!"

"Are you still angry with me?" The voice was sheepish.

Aziraphale slowly closed a book, using his thumb to hold his place. "I don't believe so, not if you're quite done being a prat." With his other hand he slowly pulled off his reading spectacles. "Are you?"

"Pretty much," he conceded.

"Then I suppose we're all right, dear. All is forgiven."

A smile broke across Crowley's face – with it flared intense relief the angel hadn't anticipated, so pure it made his chest clench – and he took another step forward.

Aziraphale's eyes widened. "You're limping!"

With forced nonchalance, "I got hurt."

"How?" He'd only left him alone for the better part of a day. How much trouble could he possibly have gotten himself into?

"I got into a tussle with Michael."

"Archangel Michael?"

He nodded. "That's the bitch." A sigh escaped him. "Anyway, I still can't work out how to use my occult powers so..."

"So you've been going about London with bone and muscle out of place for hours." Aziraphale felt terrible. He set the book down. "Come here."

Crowley inclined the hurt leg towards him, pressing his hand against the side of the desk for balance.

Gently, Aziraphale placed a hand on Crowley's contorted thigh and concentrated.

He hoped Michael hadn't done anything special, that it was just an ordinary miracle. If it was anything more vindictive than that, he might not be able to fix it and he'd never forgive himself. She might have some reason to be sour, given the last time she thought she'd seen 'Crowley' had been when Aziraphale himself shamelessly asked her to miracle him a bathtowel.

Michael. Duude. Do us a quick miracle, will you? I need a bathtowel?

Perhaps he'd overdone it, just a bit.

Luckily, she wasn't quite as petty as Gabriel would have been in the same situation – it really was just a misplaced bone. Brutal though it was, a human could have caused the same injury if they'd really wanted to – it just would have taken more effort.

Crowley grimaced and said, "Owww..."

"I know, I know." His own pale face was etched with furrowed creases from sympathy pains. "Brace yourself, dear boy. It's nearly over."

Pop.

"Ahh." Crowley sagged in relief. "Much better."

"Now." Aziraphale got up. In spite of himself, he was beginning to feel the anticipatory twinge of excitement he sometimes felt when he was about to enjoy agreeable company. "Let's have a nice hot cup of tea, we'll talk a bit, and I'll get the spare linens out."

"What for?" asked Crowley.

"To make up the couch."

"The couch?"

"I might not have much use for sleeping – but I suppose you're still partial to it. You might even need it, for once. You look exhausted."

Aziraphale was trying to read – and take notes on – the book he'd put aside the night before, but was distracted by the sound of Crowley humming to himself. He'd hinted a few times that he'd was trying to work, a hint that Crowley had always gotten fairly quickly in the past but regarding which Raphael seemed a bit slow on the uptake.

"How's it look?"

With a patient sigh, Aziraphale glanced up to see what his friend was talking about.

Crowley had the medal Aziraphale was given in the 1800s – presented by Gabriel and Sandalphon – hanging from his neck. His wings were out; he was flapping them in a preening fashion, even though Aziraphale had warned him already that the shop was open and people could walk in at any moment and that, also, he could knock something down if he insisted on repeatedly fluttering them like that. His feet were moving in what, if it were more graceful, might have almost been dancing. It was, basically, everything short of literally twirling in front of a mirror.

Raphael clearly had some vanity issues, and Aziraphale was surprised to discover he didn't actually mind them. Yes, sin of pride and all that, but once you got past the initial emotional whiplash, Crowley's newfound flamboyance came across as fairly harmless. At times it was even endearing. A bit like watching an excited child play dress up.

"I've always wanted one of these," he remarked, fingering the medal wistfully.

Aziraphale had to admit the effect was flattering. Crowley really did make a beautiful angel, with the light-coloured clothes and now that gleaming medal. It was bittersweet, how ironic that fact was. He couldn't even imagine how striking he must have been up in Heaven before his downwards saunter.

"You can keep it," Aziraphale told him. "Looks much better on you anyway."

He began to pull the ribbon off over his head, simultaneously drawing in his wings. "I didn't earn it."

"Well, frankly, neither did I."

"Oh?"

The angel smiled, trying not to laugh. "I got it for thwarting you."

"I must confess," he chuckled, coming over and placing the medal down beside Aziraphale's book on the desk, "I don't feel particularly thwarted."

"Well, there you are, then." The angel placed a plump hand over the medal and slid it back towards Crowley. "Keep it."

"But..."

"What is it, my dear?"

"It's not something he would want, is it?"

Aziraphale was puzzled. "Who do you mean?"

"The version of me you know – the one who isn't six thousand years behind you – Crowley." He added the name was if it tasted sour in his mouth. "He wouldn't want some stupid angelic medal, would he?"

The angel softened. "You don't have to try to be him, Raphael." And for once he didn't feel like he was being robbed, calling his friend by that name. "You are him. And you're also you. It's all right."

"D'you really mean that?" He looked like he might cry. "I mean, what if you're stuck with me like this? What if I'm like this forever – or at least for another six thousand years while we play catch up? You won't hate me for it?"

"Of course not. Whatever happened to you wasn't your fault. Why would you think that I–"

"You did go into a church to get away from me yesterday." There was the smallest hint of reproach in his voice.

"I suppose that's a matter of us needing to work out some boundaries. You used to always get the hint – when I was angry at you or busy – but it's no feathers off my wings if we've got to build that all back up again."

"I feel like a coward, though."

Aziraphale stood and reached out to him. "Why? Tell me."

"I'm afraid that if there was the chance to get my memories back I wouldn't take them – it'd be a bit like dying, you know, becoming somebody else just like that – no more Raphael – but then I'm already way past my time."

Taking his friend's hand and patting it in consolation, Aziraphale sighed gently. "Listen. If such an opportunity should arise" – and, depressingly, he was not sure he believed it ever would, after all Crowley was the real optimist of the two of them, not him – "I'll respect whatever choice you make."

"Respect but not like." Crowley squeezed his hand.

"It's the best I can do for now. And I'm as sorry for it as you are."

"You know, it's the craziest thing..." The demon looked away, trailing off.

"What?"

"Oh, nothing. It's ridiculous."

"No, really, what was it you were going to say?"

"I was just thinking that" – and he was uncharacteristically bashful – "it's a pity we weren't already friends in Heaven. I mean, I get that we're not the sort the other would seek out. There's that. Sure. But going by that sells us both short. Because you are just enough of a bastard, Aziraphale the mad Principality, to be worth liking."

Aziraphale found himself fighting a smile. "Not as much as you liked Lucifer."

Crowley's yellow eyes rolled up towards the bookshop's ceiling. "Lucifer can go to Hell."

Although he was trying very hard to be serious, the irony of this statement proved too much for the angel whose shaking body gave away his repressed laughter.

Seemingly realising what he'd just said, Crowley began laughing, too, so hard there were tears streaming down his face.

"This really isn't that funny, is it?" gasped Aziraphale, holding onto the nearest shelf for stability.

"No," wheezed Crowley, nearly bent over. "It's really not."

It felt good, though.

Above their heads, the lights suddenly flickered violently, accompanied by a zip-zip-zip noise, and Aziraphale sobered. "Oh my."

"Why are you doing that?" As soon as Crowley's laughter ceased, all the lights in the shop stabilized.

"I'm not," Aziraphale marvelled. "That's never an ethereal force. That's occult."

"You mean there's another demon–" he began, slightly afraid.

"Cro...I mean, Raphael. No." He fought against a smile. "It's you. You're doing that – I think you're starting to figure it all out again."

Punishments were not supposed to work this way, Hastur thought, watching from the glass-front door of a Cafe in Soho as a certain angel and demon pair cheerfully stepped off a double-decker bus.

Wait. Was the flash bastard wearing a bloody medal around his neck? Surely not. Not even Crowley was that stupid, that boldly obtuse.

Wearing that, he was, for all the world, giving the forces of Hell the middle finger.

But it was there, sure as anything – right over his heart, not a speck of tarnish on it – glinting in the low light.

The sky above the couple was dense with grey clouds and, noting the forthcoming rainfall, the angel was fumbling with an umbrella. His fat fingers weren't quite getting it right; he appeared to have broken one of his shiny, sickeningly clean and perfect fingernails.

Hastur saw Crowley's mouth form the words, "Here, allow me." The umbrella unceremoniously imploded, charred and blown out the wrong way. "Bugger." He handed the now useless lightning rod back to the angel, who had his hands on his hips but was grinning with warm tolerance.

A disposable demon came up behind Hastur. The Duke of Hell could see the idiot's jaw dropping via his reflection in the window. "No way! They're still friends? Satan will not be pleased."

"Shut up or I'll make you tell Him."

He prattled on, unwisely. "But I thought this whole thing was–"

"I said," barked Hastur, "shut up!"

Outside, a drenched Crowley was attempting to lift a pastel grey trench-coat over his and the angel's heads while they scanned the street for – it seemed – a suitable place to have lunch. The rod of the umbrella was already rolling down the pavement, long forgotten.

Hastur seethed. This was meant to bring him satisfaction. Satan only did the memory wipe personally because he didn't like the idea of an angel – especially one he considered as unworthy a foe as paunchy, fussy Aziraphale – playing with one of his toys, no matter how little he actually cared for it. For all the pet names and endearments he lavished on him, he hadn't liked Crowley enough to promote him in Hell. The devil had started growing tired of his 'snaky red-haired darling' about five minutes after the rebellion ended badly. Why else would he have sent him into Eden with no more instruction than 'Get up there and make some trouble'? He'd wanted a break from his neediness.

And – when you came down to it – it had been Aziraphale he really wanted to punish, Aziraphale he'd watched and plotted against.

Satan neither loved nor hated Crowley enough for it to warrant more than a supernatural tantrum when he went turncoat.

But Hastur?

Oh, Hastur hated him. Loathed him with a special passion that was rather creepy, given the degree of its obsessive fixation. He'd been looking forward to what he'd see when his master sent him up here to spy and report back.

Those two idiots giggling together under a raincoat was not what he'd gone through the bother of coming up here to witness.

"Bad luck that he seems to be working out how to use the powers of Hell again, too." The dim demon paused, for less than a proper beat. "But wasn't this supposed to be revenge for you, too, your Disgrace? Didn't Crowley kill your best friend? Wasn't this meant to take his away to teach him–"

The vivid memory of Ligur – of his echoing screams as the bucket of holy water had fallen on his head – was too much for the infuriated Duke of Hell. He destroyed his idiot companion with little more than a thought.

The disposable demon was nothing but a fiery-coloured puddle of goo to his left.

He snapped his fingers at the nearest member of the cleaning staff he could find. "Accident by the door," he said darkly, stepping outside and brushing past Crowley and Aziraphale.

As he stomped by, he could hear the prissy angel say, "Something smells terribly burnt." It was very much the same tone any other angel would have used to say 'something smells horrendously evil'. "I think we should eat some place else."

Aziraphale was simply astonished.

They'd been sitting – he and Crowley – in companionable silence on a bench in Berkeley Square, the sky above not so much a brilliant blue as a remarkably serene one with only the faintest hints of grey.

Quite suddenly, Crowley had reverted from his perpetual slouch, perked up like he'd been pinched on the backside, and launched into a most remarkable speech.

It began with a question: "That apple thing you were telling me about the other day – the thing I supposedly caused in Eden, fall of mankind and all that – what if it was just a blip?"

Aziraphale didn't exactly follow, and blurted something to the effect of "Wha–?" as Crowley continued on with scarcely a pause for breath; he was that excited.

"No, seriously. What if it was?" His cheeks flushed, eyes shining as if he'd worked out something marvellous. "Nobody who can create a universe in six days is going to let something that stupid – one demon with too much time on his hands and too vague of instructions for his own good – sully what they've created. Not permanently."

"I'm not sure I understand," confessed Aziraphale, though his heart was racing in time with Crowley's manic voice, and he felt certain his friend was onto something.

"Why'd the rebellion happen?" he challenged. "God could have just told Lucifer to shut up and sit down and please not get his feathers in a knot while he's bloody going about it, right? It's God, after all."

"Well, it's free will," Aziraphale ventured.

Crowley snapped his fingers. "Exactly! That's m'point! Free will. God tells Lucifer to stick it where the sun doesn't shine, and there's who knows how many throngs of passive-aggressive angels who are still angels not because they want to be angels, but because they think God wouldn't let them choose to be anything else."

Aziraphale was entranced. What an idea! He was surprised, too, that he was so drawn to it, as he ought to have been bias in the opposite direction, despite his love of truth.

After all Crowley – his Crowley, his companion of six thousands years – would never have made such a connection. He couldn't, poor thing, he was far too jaded, too many times burnt.

Raphael, however...

"So Adam and Eve..." Aziraphale offered.

"Same thing. Think, Aziraphale. By your own admission, you were guarding the Eastern Gate when we met. What were you doing that for?"

"Well," he admitted, a trifle testily, "I was meant to be keeping the likes of you out, I suppose."

"Oh, well done," teased Crowley. "But really. Why couldn't Adam and Eve return home? Put aside the irony that they learned good and bad by choosing bad. It's not like there was anyone else in the garden for them to influence. They hadn't had kids yet; she was only just expecting when they left."

"I don't know," Aziraphale said helplessly, spreading out his hands.

"What if..." And he smiled a slow, snaky smile and wet his lips, then smacked them emphatically. "What if there was another tree?"

"Another tree?"

"Every poison has its antidote." He raised the medal around his neck to his mouth, breathed on it, then rubbed it to a shine with his wrist. "Tree of Life, perhaps?"

"But was knowledge – knowing good from bad – poison?"

"I suppose it is, if you choose bad."

"But it's all ineffable."

Crowley's brow lifted. "Is it?"

"You can't second-guess ineffability."

"Hmm. Maybe we can't – not you and me. Not angels and demons. People, though?"

Aziraphale shifted in his seat. "How can it matter now, anyway? There's no more Eden – it was lost in the flood."

A look of impatience flitted across Crowley's face. "Aziraphale, you're smarter than that. God doesn't need the stupid tree – it's just a blip. That's what I've been telling you."

"But how does that fit in with what you guessed before – after we stopped Armageddon? About angels and demons against humanity?"

He shrugged. "Maybe we get jealous. Or angry. Angry that they could – if they wanted to – understand something we aren't allowed to. Angry that we've already made our beds so to speak but there's still time for them." He rose from the bench and began skipping in place. "I think I need to walk a bit. Coming with me?"

Aziraphale nodded and trotted alongside him.

"What I'm saying is there's a big reset coming up, like drawing venom from a wound – that's the real Armageddon, not the little stunt Lucifer pulled with his Antichrist."

"But, my dear, things don't just reset." Fallen things don't just soar back upwards.

"I did, sort of," the demon pointed out. He held up a hand before Aziraphale could protest. "Badly. With some unpleasant results. Which is why I don't think it was God's plan – not the Almighty's doing. But it's an example. I started all over again – six thousand years gone in a twinkling – why can't the world go the same way?"

"But people wouldn't know..."

"We'd know. We'd have records... Anyone who asked why things had to be the way they were – we'd just tell them what Lucifer did, how it wasn't all a barrel of laughs. We could help them to start on the right path. Tell them, yeah, sure you can eat the bloody apple if you want, no one's got a gun to your head, but look what happens. Then, as they get older – no sin, so perhaps no death either, meaning long, long lives – they'd help themselves. They'd be around long enough really get it right."

Aziraphale grimaced. "Yes, but what about all the good things? My bookshop, your Bentley, that insufferable bebop you play on the stereo in your flat..." The last ten years had not warmed him in the least towards the idea of spending eternity watching The Sound of Music over and over again. "All gone? Forever?"

"I shouldn't think so." The foliage overhead cast amber and green spots of light onto Crowley's rapt face. "More like, they'd be there, but better. Safer." He paused for a moment, turning from the light to look directly at Aziraphale. "Like, you'd have your bookshop, right enough, but you wouldn't have to lock it because people would know better than to enter without permission. They'd be kind, but not robots. Still have wit and mischief but they'd know better than to take it too far."

"But," sighed Aziraphale, reluctantly, as it did sound delightful, "there would be too many people who would want to make everything strict so it didn't get bad again – people who would just get rid of any music they didn't personally like or ideas they didn't fancy." He thought of Gabriel; he'd like people to behave like that, think it quite right. "It'd be rather a mess."

"But we're talking about God." Crowley's voice broke, almost into a croak of desperation, and Aziraphale understood his meaning. Can't God do anything no matter what? Isn't that the whole point of a miracle? "If Adam – that's our Adam, Adam Young – could change the world, simply because he wanted to, what's holding back the Almighty?" He sucked his teeth. "It isn't time. We've all had that in spades."

They came to a halt at the Lansdowne fountain.

"It's wonderful, if you're right," Aziraphale stated, a little breathlessly. "Wonderful. It's almost too good. It would explain everything. Nothing to be afraid of ever again."

"It frightens me," Crowley confessed.

"Why?"

"Because if the great plan wasn't completely ineffable, if God was knowable all the bloody time, I made a horrible mistake. I never got us on speaking terms – I never tried. I just got put off by that infuriating smile and let myself..." he trailed off. "I'm still a demon. I can even use some of my occult powers again. You'd have your shop, and so many humans to look after and love. What happens to me? I must have been hanging around the wrong sort, I never meant–"

"Excuse me, gentlemen." A tall, dark figure nudged past them.

Aziraphale blinked. Somehow the sun was inexplicably shining directly into his eyes and he needed to turn away. Then he found he couldn't recall what they'd just been talking about. "I'm sorry, my dear, what were you saying?"

Crowley seemed just as lost. "I don't know. Nothing terribly important. Gosh, it's getting late. Is it time to leave the garden?"

Aziraphale hooked his arm through his friend's and they made their way off the green and onto the pavement in perfect step with one another.

Azrael hadn't truly wanted to wipe what Crowley had just worked out from the minds of the demon and angel; he admired their cleverness, even if he wasn't comfortable with the idea of another supernatural creature knowing how he was going to end.

No, the problem was that it wasn't for them to know about – if they'd been born mortal, it might have been different. The secrets Crowley had been on the verge of unravelling were not for the likes of demons and angels – not yet, with the exception of himself, of Death – though they longed, unknowingly, to peer into them.

It wasn't right, Crowley being two sorts of creatures at once. Part angel, part demon, smeared with too much human influence. It was dangerous, before its time.

Still, when he took from them, Azrael had also decided to give them something back.

Crowley slumped forward and Aziraphale caught him before he could go falling from the unexpected dip in the pavement into the street, where he would have slid directly into the path of an oncoming taxi.

Crowley opened his eyes and stared up at Aziraphale, looking none the worse for the sudden stumble. "Angel?"

The voice was not an alto.

"Crowley!"

A/N: This ends this fic. Hope you readers liked it. Reviews always welcome, even when replies are delayed.