You Should Know That: Whatever you think of the use of lyrics in fics, you should hear the song 'Godspeed' on youtube performed by the Cactus Cuties. Do search it, it's such a wonderful version I just couldn't resist it! I have no idea why it makes me think of Crowley... Also, special thanks goes to prone2dementia for being my most fateful reviewer and prompting me to post chapters fast.
Disclaimer: Blahblahblah. Not mine.
Author's Note: I apologize for this chapter. It has its bright spots but I'm not terribly fond of it. Among the things I dislike about it but couldn't escape writing for some reason are two songfics, one real world crossover and too much time spent on the same character moping. There are probably more annoying things too. Nevertheless this chapter is necessary. So please read and review. You know I post stuff faster when you review. :D
Inner Angels and Guardian Demons
Part 4
Never Say Never
# 31 Book
"All right, it took some time but here it is!"
Crowley proudly handed the book to Aziraphale. The angel raised a questioning eyebrow.
"It took you a lot of time to find a brand new book? Well, you shouldn't have bothered this much, I am more interested in antiques anyway."
"Nevertheless, you'll be interested in this one. It's a first edition, signed by the authors."
Aziraphale who hadn't examined the cover yet glanced down at it.
"'Good Omens' by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett? Crowley, what is this?"
He skimmed trough the first pages and his eyes widened in horror.
"You didn't!"
"I did," Crowley grinned.
"Are you insane?! They're going to kill you for this. Or both of us!"
"No, they won't. They don't read much and, anyway, this sort of thing has been done before."
"It has?"
"Have you heard of 'Bring Me the Head of Prince Charming'? Great book. Some demon sold his story to a pair of writers. Nobody seemed to mind too much. Come to that, those millennial contests Heaven and Hell used to organize were a far better idea than the whole Armageddon thing. They were fun! We should suggest they bring them back."
Aziraphale shook his head, still worried.
"Either way, this is quite reckless. If the wrong person reads it..."
"Look," Crowley began, "I know it was dangerous to have things about the Arrangement written down, okay? But I agree with every word that's in here. And it's not like we're much of a secret to anyone. We get seen together in public all the time and just hope Michael isn't looking."
"Yes but…"
"If you don't want people to know, say the word and every copy will be burned, I'll make sure of it. But at least read it first."
A few hours later, Aziraphale was still crying with laughter five minutes after reading the last page.
"Oh my… Oh my dear God… Was that really us?"
Then he accidentally turned to the first one.
Beneath Pratchett and Gaiman's signatures, there was something written in Crowley's script.
I would do it again.
A.J.C.
Aziraphale stopped laughing.
"Oh, Crowley…"
"So, do you want it destroyed?" the demon asked from his perch on the armrest of the couch.
Aziraphale looked up at him.
What do you think he answered?
# 32 Eye
"I got it! I sholved the mysssshtery!"
"What myshtery?"
"God. God is Shauron."
"Who?"
"Shauron from 'Lord of the Ringsh'! He's evil!"
"Crowley, you're absholutely trashed."
"Sho are you. But lishen! Shauron had thish big bad eye, right? An' God ish preshzented as this triangle with a big eye in th'middle. Shee the c'nection?"
"No. But I shee pink elephantsh. I think we should shober up immediately."
They did.
"Hmm… I still think God is an evil overlord," Crowley remarked.
And spent the next ten minutes running away from an angel with a flaming pen.
# 33 Never
One of the reasons Crowley was generally a very happy and optimistic person was that he had discovered the unlimited power of the word 'never'. More specifically, this little word's ability to not stay true to its meaning.
Things had seemed pretty bad after he had Fallen. He didn't like Hell too much and he didn't look forward to the possibility of spending eternity there but it seemed inescapable. He remembered thinking 'I'll never get out of here.'
He did. He was sent to Eden.
After that he gradually started to realize that 'never' really meant 'it might not happen soon but it will happen'.
There were people who said humans would never fly. They did.
There were probably people who had said that a hellhound would never fetch sticks. Dog did.
If enough 'nevers' could be accumulated about something, they acted like a catalyst, causing the event in question to happen.
Crowley was currently working on reminding himself that Aziraphale would never fall in love with a demon.
# 34 Sing
"Will you sing me a goodnight song?"
The boy's eyes are sunken in and very dark in contrast to his pale skin. He's eleven but looks younger, especially in the middle of the hospital bed.
"A- a song, dear?" Aziraphale asks, caught off-guard. "Oh, my, I'm not sure I know anything appropriate… I should know some kind of Heavenly lullaby, shouldn't I? I really don't think Liszt will do the job…"
He looks at Crowley for help.
"You don't happen to know anything that would fit, do you?"
The demon rolls his eyes.
"I thought no," Aziraphale sighs and turns back to the boy. "Let's see now, do I remember any of the hymns?"
The angel stutters a little more before he hears an exasperated sigh behind him and then a soft tenor fills the room.
Dragon tales and the "water is wide"
Pirate's sail and lost boys fly
Fish bite moonbeams every night
And I love you
Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man
Oh my love will fly to you each night on angel's wings
Godspeed
Sweet dreams
The boy is smiling now, eyes closed. The angel turns slowly. There's disbelief in his eyes and a lot of other, undecipherable things.
Crowley just shrugs and continues. This isn't his job but it's not Aziraphale's either. The angel has met the boy's mother accidentally and has asked Crowley to drive him here for an unofficial visit. The demon reasons that his counterpart's fretting would have driven him crazy if he hadn't stepped in. And since his musical horizons are a bit broader than Aziraphale's…
The rocket racer's all tuckered out
Superman's in pajamas on the couch
Goodnight moon, we'll find the mouse
And I love you
The song is so perfect. Where does the demon get this stuff? Aziraphale's chest feels like it's going to explode and implode at the same time. His heart aches for the child but Crowley's voice fills him with something entirely different. It makes him imagine Crowley as an angel before the Fall. What a thought. Crowley, the snake of Eden, the slick tempter in the Armani suit, the driver of the Bentley that terrifies all London… Surprisingly, Aziraphale doesn't have this much trouble imagining it. His voice is just so... Warm. But then again, it doesn't sound like it belongs in a Heavenly choir. It doesn't belong in Hell either. Just like the demon himself, it belongs here.
God bless mommy and match box cars
God bless dad and thanks for the stars
God hears "Amen," wherever we are
And I love you
Godspeed, little man
Sweet dreams, little man…
As Crowley's voice fades, the boy on the bed is already asleep. Aziraphale strokes his cheek one last time. Then he turns and does the same to the demon who is now sitting next to him.
"Thank you, my dear," he says quietly. "You know, sometimes… very rarely, but still sometimes I think you would have made a better angel than me."
Crowley shakes his head.
"Don't go there. What's done is done. I'm not sorry. I just did this for you. Whatever I was before, I'm not an angel anymore."
Aziraphale shakes his head as well.
"Maybe not only. But you know I believe everyone has an inner angel."
Crowley smirks.
"And a guardian demon?"
Aziraphale chuckles.
"Yes. And a guardian demon. I know I have one."
And there's something in his eyes that finally convinces Crowley he doesn't need to be an angel again, even for a moment. Because everything that he remembers as good about Heaven can be found down here anyway.
# 35 Wash
"What's so funny?"
The grumpy-looking demon was standing in the middle of the room arms crossed and dressed in nothing but a pair of pink Kelvin Kline underpants. The angel who had just walked in was currently on the floor laughing his head off.
"Dear boy, how did that happen?"
"Some idiotic priest managed to catch me off-guard with a prayer that robs me of some of my powers," the demon explained sulkily, "So I'm stuck with real clothes for at least a few more days. And I obviously dropped my red tie in the washing machine along with the underwear."
Aziraphale laughed even harder.
"So now all of your underwear is pink?"
"Except for the black pairs, obviously, but they are being washed right now."
"Well, not to worry, dear. You look cute in pink."
Crowley blushed slightly and gave him a supposedly evil glare.
"Bugger off. When the effects of the prayer wear off I'm donating all of these to you."
"Oh, don't worry; I already own a few pairs like these."
"Seriously, you bought pink underwear?"
"No but I also happen to wash my clothes. And it's the first rule of washing that even if you only own a single red article of clothing, there is an 80 per cent chance that it will get mixed with the whites."
Crowley struggled to maintain his bad mood but in the end he gave up and chuckled. He couldn't help it. He was now stuck with the image of the two of them being seen by the forces of Heaven and Hell trying to load a washing machine in matching pairs of pink undergarments.
# 36 Stop
It had happened. Without warning, without a chance to react. Michael had found out Aziraphale was disregarding his order and the angel had been taken back to Heaven. Crowley might have hoped it wasn't permanent if another angel hadn't immediately been sent as a replacement. He was haughty and stupid and didn't even like Earth. Crowley hadn't even bothered to remember his name because what did it matter?
He had just woken up one morning and found the message.
'Crowley, they are taking me back. There's nothing we can do. Please, please don't come after me! I won't be able to live with myself if you got hurt again because of me so, please, just take care of yourself. Be careful with my replacement, he might not be so open-minded. But if you two manage to work out some kind of… arrangement… I'll be happy and I won't have to worry.'
Crowley had released a shocked, disbelieving laugh at this. An arrangement? With anyone else? No. There would be no arrangements. There was only The Arrangement and it involved a particular angel.
'Farewell, dear…' his ansaphone said finally.
There was a long pause.
'I love you.'
And after that morning Crowley's universe had halted. He didn't feel the movement he had always felt while he was on Earth. He didn't hear the world rolling, as Aziraphale had once put it. He was caught in this horrible, hopeless moment and couldn't move.
Everything had stopped.
# 37 Time
All of this time…
He had never felt time weigh him down so much before. Not even when they were waiting for the Apocalypse. Now every minute passed with unbearable clarity. He felt like he was waiting for something and had to constantly remind himself that nothing would come. Perhaps if Aziraphale had been taken from him at another time, say a decade ago, it wouldn't have been quite this bad. He would have been miserable but not completely destroyed. Things would have looked rather gloomy but not utterly hopeless. But now he thought he knew why Heaven had taken so long to act. They had been biding their time, waiting for the most painful moment. Waiting for Aziraphale and him to realize they wanted something and then take that very thing away. Maybe this was the real price of Falling and they had simply waited until now to collect it. He hadn't been that devastated when he had Fallen. Maybe it was because he hadn't been punished properly until now.
All of this time…
Was it only when one was in love that things looked so desperate? His rational mind was telling him that he was an optimist, that he should put himself back together. But he couldn't. He simply couldn't. It was terrifying to want one thing as much as he wanted Aziraphale back. It was consuming. He wanted to finally kiss him, to be able to say 'I love you' back, Hell be blessed if they protested. Why now? No - why ever? They weren't doing anything wrong! They weren't hurting anyone. Well, at least not outside the standards for a demon and an angel. If they had only realized earlier… But earlier it couldn't have happened. They had only just fallen in love. They had been friends for a long time, acquaintances forever but they had only just started to love each other like this. It was all of those years together that had made it happen.
All of this time…
At the start they had only tolerated each other's company for lack of alternatives. But time had worked its way over the rough edges of their relationship like the waves smoothed the pebbles. They had slowly shaped one another, discovering and reinventing until they fit perfectly together. And now you could easily tell when one part of the puzzle was missing.
Time… Time would dull the pain. Time would let him forget. How long would it take? Another six millennia to balance the ones they had spent together? It didn't matter. He would sit here and wait for his soul to stop hurting. Time would take care of it.
# 38 Sudden
England was a dark place these days. There wasn't any kind of war going on or even a particular increase in crime but something seemed to be sucking the joy out of life.
That something had a name and it was A. J. Crowley.
With his angel gone, he had nothing to do but focus on work and rediscover the darkest corners of his mind. It wasn't very showy - that wasn't his style. There were no great disasters, buildings didn't fall on young children and husbands didn't kill their wives because of him. But he found inventive little ways to make people unhappy. Not irritated, not angry or scared as before but genuinely unhappy. There were fewer children playing on the streets, the colors seemed duller and everything was quieter, grayer… unexciting. Life felt like moving trough glue.
Crowley wasn't even aware he was doing it half of the time. He was running on autopilot. He couldn't fall asleep anymore but he existed in some kind of apathetic dreamy state. The new angel tried to thwart him, of course, but Crowley was better, smarter and far more experienced. And that wasn't even the reason why all England was pretty much in his grasp. The reason was that most of the time the angel didn't even realize anything was wrong. He just thought that Earth was normally unpleasant. He looked for big events, usually trying to deal with things that Crowley and even Hell had nothing to do with. He considered it his great triumph that the demon wasn't tempting anyone. The actual reason for this was that Crowley couldn't come up with anything that seemed particularly tempting to him. The little pleasures of life brought him no pleasure so he couldn't advertise them enthusiastically enough for it to work.
And so it went for what seemed like forever.
And then one day…
"Excuse me, sir…"
He looked up from contemplating his tea. He was in some non-descript café in the center of the city. He never went to the Ritz anymore. A pair of dark eyes were staring at him. They widened when he looked up. He quickly pushed his glasses up his nose but the young owner of the eyes had already seen.
"It's you!" he whispered in astonishment.
Crowley glared at him, trying to remember if he had seen him somewhere. Perhaps one of his victims had caught a glimpse of his eyes at some point and…
"I always knew you were real," the stranger continued in the same low whisper, "Where's the other angel? For that matter, where have you guys both been the last few years? Everything's in a pretty bad shape here! Not that I'm accusing you or anything… Oh, by the way, I never managed to thank you for the song."
Song? Then it hit him. It was the boy. The boy from the hospital. The one they had thought wouldn't live. Grown up, plus a few pounds and much healthier looking but still recognizable. Godblessit. One of his own blessed good deeds was standing right there in front of him! It had been a favor to Aziraphale and he hadn't thought there would be any living witnesses besides the angel but it was still a good deed. Then again, he liked to think it was Aziraphale's doing rather than his. Only the angel could make Crowley do something like this.
A little piece of their past that had grown roots into the present. Just a brief flash of light. It would disappear eventually. After all, humans didn't live very long. But for now it was here.
"So what's been going on with you two?" the young man asked again.
He was surprised to hear his own voice answering.
"I'm preoccupied. The other one is gone."
The boy frowned.
"Gone? As in he's never coming back?"
Something hit Crowley's chest with the force of a falling asteroid. It was so sudden and strong that he barely managed to stay upright.
"Never," he said mechanically. "He's never coming back."
"Oh… That's too bad. But then could you take care of things yourself? I have a daughter on the way and I wouldn't want her to live in a world like this one. Too little fun in it."
A very pregnant woman called from the other side of the street.
"I have to go. Well, I hope I'll see you around."
With a wave, he was gone.
For a long time Crowley just stared at his tea. Then he paid the bill (something he hadn't done in a long time), got into the Bentley and stepped on the gas. He hadn't driven so fast in a long time either.
He was so mad at himself! How had he dared try to forget? Aziraphale did not deserve this! The Arrangement wasn't over. No one could end it but the two of them and they certainly hadn't. What had he been thinking? He hadn't known what to do and he hadn't done anything. It wasn't like him. What had happened to him?
And come to that… what the Manchester had happened to England? It was as if he was looking around for the first time. Was this his work?
He had always thought the two of them didn't matter much but take one angel away, leave one demon with no enthusiasm and you get something worse than Hell and humans together could have cooked up. Maybe Earth needed them at least a little bit after all.
Aziraphale and him. The two of them. But there would never be the two of them again, would there?
Never. Never. He's never coming back.
Crowley repeated it like a mantra as the Bentley stopped in front of the boarded windows of Mr. Fell's bookshop. He went into the dusty silence almost taking masochistic pleasure in the sharp stabs of memories that flooded his mind.
"He's never coming back. He's nev- He's never- He's- Fuck it all!"
And Crowley screamed.
He screamed until every bit of hurt, every suppressed feeling was out in the open. Anger, pain, loneliness, desperation, hope, love… It all poured out into the world pushing at its very fabric, making it roll again.
An undeterminable amount of time later, as he sat in the back room on Aziraphale's old couch, completely exhausted, he slowly discovered he could breathe again. Really breathe. Freely, deeply without thinking about it. Lately he had only resorted to consciously making his lungs work whenever he needed his breath to speak. But this was different. This was the real thing. He smiled faintly as he listened to the steady rhythm. The next thing he did was fall asleep.
When he awoke it was early morning. The date on his watch told him it was only the next day. He picked himself up from the couch and cleared the dust from his suit.
He felt better. His favorite magic word was spinning in his head.
Never. Never. Never.
It was just a matter of time before the word was proven wrong yet again. Meanwhile he would be busy fixing the whole mess he had made. Compensating wouldn't be easy but he could do it. A bad deed here, a good one there… It would all be fine.
"For when you get back," he whispered to the empty bookshop.
Then he went out into a world that was all of a sudden just a little brighter.
# 39 King
Aziraphale is happy in Heaven. After all, as a place, Heaven is much less fragile than Earth. If you accept Heaven as your home, there's not much of a chance that you'll ever be homeless. On Earth you have to constantly worry about Heaven or Hell or the humans themselves destroying it. And it's nice in here, with all the light and the pearly gates and everything. It really isn't as bad as Crowley has once tried to convince him. He can live without sushi restaurants, can't he? And Elgar is after all pretty good.
As for Crowley… It's the end of an era, for sure. But going their separate ways was inevitable anyway, wasn't it. Nothing to cry about. It's not like one of them is dead or something. And the demon seems to be doing okay. At first Aziraphale has been on edge, waiting for something to happen, for Crowley to be extremely stupid and come looking for him. But thankfully nothing like that has occurred. Thankfully. And the angel has calmed down just like his superiors have been convincing him he would. Everything is fine.
And then one day a new soul comes to Heaven. A kind-looking old man. There's nothing remarkable about him and he comes with thousands of other souls. None of the other angels notice anything strange. But some of the human souls hear him sing. So does Aziraphale. He's humming under his breath as he walks around. The souls who stop and listen are those who are begging to be sent back to Earth as Guardians. They have left loved ones behind, people who need them. The quiet songs trigger memories. Aziraphel has heard them before, too. Almost everyone who has been to Earth has. They are so famous that they are now considered clichés and people usually sing along on automatic without actually paying attention to the lyrics. But not in here. In here they listen to the words as the old man sings in his rich velvety voice:
Love me tender,
love me sweet,
never let me go…
Aziraphale, too, stands there and listens, although he is not a human. He can't figure out why until the very last verse.
Love me tender,
love me dear,
tell me you are mine.
I'll be yours through all the years,
till the end of time.
And what, he suddenly thinks, if things are not all right?
What if Crowley hasn't accepted that this is the end?
What if he's waiting for him?
The demon is so stubborn that if he puts his mind to it, he would wait for that little bird to wear down not one but ten mountains.
Most of the souls who want to go back to Earth will get their wish. But you can't go and ask to become the Guardian angel of a demon. It just doesn't happen.
The angel raises a hand to his cheek when he feels something tickle his skin.
Tears.
It's not until he is already crying that Aziraphale realizes he is completely miserable.
But tears of misery are so out of place in Heaven that no one even notices.
# 40 History
For how long can you mope when you have forever? Eventually you have to get up and do something. Especially if you're an angel and you can't just lie down and die. Aziraphale decides to take a page from Crowley's book and Be an Optimist and Not Give Up and Formulate a Plan. He turns to something familiar – books.
Heaven doesn't have fiction. Just archives. Those are incredibly boring but Aziraphale dives into them with a passion. He's looking for some kind of loophole, a precedent, a rule that would allow him to go back to Earth.
As he searches, he realizes that it's not just him - angels are more like humans than they realize. As he reads accounts of events, both in Heaven and on Earth, he frowns more than once thinking 'that's not how I remember it'. The History of Existence written in Heaven is just as subjective and incomplete as any human history textbook.
What is the truth behind everything? How much of what he knows to be solid fact is only someone's view on things? He finds a short note about Crowley's Fall which says that he has 'renounced God' and 'surrendered his soul to the enemy'. Aziraphale has never asked directly but he highly doubts this is the case. Knowing Crowley, he probably hasn't given much thought to God at all, let alone officially 'renounce' Him. And he has definitely never cared too much for Lucifer either. The two sentences in the book make it sound so personal!
And the Apocalypse? It's written that the 'Powers of Good bravely averted disaster and saved mankind'. Bullshit! An 11-year-old human child, one that came from Hell no less, simply decided he liked the world the way it was. Heaven had had absolutely nothing to do with it.
Angels shouldn't question but Aziraphale does. Does Ineffable also mean Unchangeable and Infallible? Because if it does, and if his fate is predetermined, what the Hell does anything matter? Trying to be good and moral is a waste of time because you either are or you aren't and God already knows which. And if it isn't unchangeable, if angels and demons have their free will even if it is restricted by rules…
Then he is risking Falling merely by thinking these thoughts.
But this also means that what he does matters. And that's the only thing that gives him hope. It means the only thing left to worry about is what History is going to say about his actions.
Quite honestly, he couldn't care less.
End of Part 4