Disclaimer: Aziraphale, Crowley, and Good Omens are created and copyrighted by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. This is a fanfic, intended only in the spirit of fun. Tons of love and thanks is owed to the amazing and wonderful Daegaer, who provided tons of feedback for the first half of the fic, and then ended upsomehow volunteering herself as a beta-reader and a proofreader, and who helped me correct many of my Americanisms with proper British English. And thanks to y'all for reading!
Ordinary Miracles
by Nenena
Chapter 01
Celty, Ellen V. and Ray, Anna. 1922. Feeding and Care of the Domestic and Long-Haired Cat. F.B. Harrison Printing Co, Cleveland. SF447.C4
It was December. That meant choir practice.
Aziraphale was not technically capable of hating anyone or anything, per se - but he was capable of very, strongly, intensely disliking. Right now he was very, strongly, intensely disliking the idea of fluttering about like a ninny and singing praises about the coming of Jesus. Especially when the weather was so bad. Especially when a certain angelic choir director had gotten the brilliant idea of—
The angel next to Aziraphale sneezed. Then she looked horrified. "Oh no--"
"God bless you," Aziraphale said automatically.
"Thanks," the angel sniffled as she poked her soul back up her nose with one long, slender finger.
There was blowing wind and freezing rain and occasionally, big, crunchy hailstones pelting the heavenly chorus. Normally, pre-Christmas choir practices were held inside clouds because a certain angelic choir director thought that clouds were the only thing that could prevent human ears from hearing an "unfinished product" being rehearsed. However, a certain angelic choir director also couldn't tell the difference between harmless, fluffy white clouds and the churning black thunderheads that constituted a winter storm system.
"Once more, from the top," a certain angelic choir director said as he waved his glowing director's baton around. He was still immaculately groomed and beautiful, and dry as a bone, even in the midst of a sudden gust of freezing rain blown his way.
They sang, a few of them occasionally gurgling if they were unlucky enough to get a mouthful of the slushy pre-snow being blown throughout the clouds. Aziraphale sang as long as he could, then stopped, snapping his mouth shut in order to hide the fact that his teeth were chattering. He clenched and unclenched his blue hands, reading music in his head, trying to get into the spirit of it all, really trying, trying to think about the glory of God and the love of Jesus Christ, trying very hard to get back into the whole musical Christmas spirit, trying extremely hard not to think un-angelic thoughts about where he would like to shove a certain angelic choir director's glowing director's baton.
"Stop!" the director exclaimed.
The angels stopped singing.
He swept his unearthly gaze across the shivering ranks. "Goodness, what's wrong with you all today? Liriel, you're soaked to the bone! Michael, your nose is all red! Can't you all--?"
Against his better judgment, Aziraphale raised his hand.
The director took one look at him, and sighed. "What now?"
"I think that we should go somewhere else to practice," Aziraphale said quite calmly. For the fifth time that evening.
The angelic choir director's face remained calm, blank, and beautiful. But behind his glazed blue eyes, something very close to rage was seething. Sleet blew across his body, and not a single drop dared touch even a single hair on his head. The other angels were hardly as lucky. "Here is fine, Aziraphale," he said. "We'll be singing our Christmas Eve concert around this area this year anyway, and--"
"Yes, well, about that, sir." Aziraphale struggled to prevent his teeth from noticeably chattering. "Er, I'm very flattered that you finally decided to perform over London this year. But really, sir, I think that it would be a better idea not to sing in the space immediately above Heathrow. The uh, the airport."
"Here is fine, Aziraphale," the director repeated again. It's fine because I chose this spot and it will forever be fine because I chose this spot, his eyes said. And I do not appreciate an angel such as yourself questioning my authority in front of all these others, his eyes also said. And I will report your cheekiness to the proper authorities, mark my words, his eyes also said.
Somewhere in the choir, another angel sneezed. The wind and the wind-born sleet lashed at the heavenly chorus. At least the hailstones were taking a moment of reprieve.
"With all due respect, sir," Aziraphale continued, "I think it should be obvious by now that, angels or not, not all of us can continue to sing in this weather."
"Whine, whine, whine!" the director mocked, waving about his glowing baton. "You pathetic lot of soft, whiney good-for-nothings! Surely a little bit of nippy weather isn't enough to do you in, is it? Have you all forgotten what you are? It's your duty to sing glory and praises to our beloved Father, and neither rain nor sleet nor snow should prevent you from doing so. Why, when I was in the chorus, I remember, one Christmas Eve I had to sing for fifty hours straight in the middle of blizzard over the Himalayan mountains, and I had to fly uphill both way to get to choir practice in the first place, and--"
Suddenly he cut himself off, and cocked his head to one side, one hand dramatically cupped to his ear. "Heavens! What is that strange new noise?"
The choir was silent, but the wind and the storm were still loud. Aziraphale listened. There was a low rumble building up, somewhere beneath the black and gray blanket of the clouds.
"I think that's a Boeing 767," Aziraphale said.
The choir director gave him a perfectly angelic, and perfectly impatient, look. "What is that, some sort of demon treachery?"
"No, sir, it's a flying machine."
The director scoffed. "Humans don't have flying machines!"
Aziraphale sighed. Some angels were just so out of touch with the present. "Well," he said loudly, "I'm leaving."
"You're what?!" The director's eyes glimmered with shock. "You're WHAT?!"
The rumbling was growing louder.
"I'm leaving," Aziraphale repeated calmly. He gingerly stepped around the gaping, horrified angels surrounding him, and out of the ranks of the chorus. He fluttered his wings. "I'd suggest that you do the same, too."
"If-- If-- If you skip out on choir practice," the director stammered with rage and shock, "then you won't be allowed to sing with us on--"
"--Christmas Eve, I know. Terribly sad, but," Aziraphale shrugged, "if I stay here a moment longer, I shall catch my death from pneumonia. Or something worse," he added, glancing meaningfully down below as a thunderous roar grew louder all around them. Then with one sweep of his wings, he was off. "Cheerio! Next year, then!"
"You--!" The director waved his glowing baton at Aziraphale's receding wings in a gesture of inarticulate fury. Then he whirled and stared in horror at his chorus - his retreating chorus. Angels were flying off in all directions, eagerly deserting the ranks of the choir.
"Wait!" the director wailed desperately. "Where are you all going? Where are you--?!"
The roar of the monster's engines became perfectly deafening at exactly the moment that the steel and aluminum behemoth broke through the black clouds, rivers of rain and ice streaming across its body and down its wings.
The choir director had just enough time to realize how much trouble he was going to be in when he would have to ask Heaven for another new body, before he was unceremoniously sucked into one of the 767's jet engines.
Crowley's plants had found Jesus.
Crowley would have been horrified to discover this, but Aziraphale was determined that he never would. He had been out of town for three months and, Aziraphale guessed, wouldn't be back anytime soon. Before he'd left, he'd asked Aziraphale to water his plants for him.
Aziraphale had fed the demon's houseplants mineral water and fertilizer. He had also begun immediately read the Bible aloud to them.
Humming to himself, Aziraphale pushed open the door to Crowley's apartment - he never actually needed a key, although the door was locked for anyone else - and hung up his coat on Crowley's coat hanger. He flipped on the lights, and blinked uncomfortably as the overhead fluorescents flooded the flat with a harsh, glaring brightness. He was used to dimmer, older, slightly crankier lighting systems, which, until the most recent hundred years, had meant candles. The plants practically trembled with joy to see him.
"I'm here, I'm here," Aziraphale muttered. He felt cold and wet and soaked to his bones, although he wasn't, not really. Dry as a bone, he was, now. Still, the feeling of escaping the center of an airborne slush blizzard did not leave one lightly.
He found Crowley's plant mister where had left it, filled it, and watered the plants. He cleaned the mister, replaced it carefully, and then sat down beside the plants, opening a copy of the Bible that suddenly appeared on his lap. Where were they today? Ah yes, Matthew, chapter two.
" 'Now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod the king,' " the angel read, " 'behold, there came wise men from the east to Jerusalem, saying, Where is he that is born King of the Jews? for we have seen his star in the east, and are come to worship him.' "
The plants rustled quietly. Aziraphale paused. "You like this story, don't you?" he asked them.
The plants said nothing, but Aziraphale knew that it was their favorite.
"It's a good enough story, I suppose," Aziraphale sighed. His personal favorite had always been Luke, the version where the angel appears before the shepherd boys on the hillside. But then again, the silly apostle hadn't even gotten the angel's name right in the first written draft of the book, and in subsequent revisions and translations, it had been lost altogether.
Aziraphale figured that one of these days, soon, he would just pick up Crowley's plants and take them home with him. Hopefully before the demon returned to London, that was. He was just tired of seeing them suffering; they deserved something better. Now that they were good plants and had been Saved, that was.
Crowley was gone because he was in trouble. Aziraphale had received a postcard from him from Columbia two weeks ago, and had not heard a word since. Aziraphale wasn't worried, however. This had happened before, at least twice that he could remember. There was that thing with Constantine in the 4th century. Crowley had gotten into a lot of trouble for letting that slip by, Aziraphale often remembered smugly. And then there had been that saint in the 6th century, someone completely forgotten by the annals of history now, but yet a single soul that Hell had thought was important... And Aziraphale had yanked him right out from beneath Crowley's nose. Saved and everything. Crowley had been furious at the angel, but not as furious as Crowley's bosses were at him. It had taken several more centuries worth of futile warring between them both before they had mutually decided that they could each do their respective jobs better if they started trying to stay out of each other's way. It was around that time that the Arrangement had first been born.
And, as far as Crowley's current punishment was concerned, these things followed a familiar pattern. Crowley would tell the angel that he had apparently angered the Powers that Be Below, and that he intended to run as far and as fast as his scaly legs could carry him before they caught up with him and gave him an earful. So long, sayounara, thanks for the lunch. It wasn't against the rules for demons to run from disciplinary punishment, per se. Anybody would be expected to run under those circumstances. And Crowley was a good runner, and a good hider, but still, the Earth was only covered in a finite number of hiding places. They would catch up with him eventually; then Crowley would disappear for a while, apparently while he was getting an earful from, well, his bosses. (Aziraphale didn't like to dwell too deeply upon what "getting an earful" actually entailed in Hell.) Then after a little while, maybe a couple decades or so, Crowley would be back, and in a bad mood.
Aziraphale didn't think that they would keep him that long this time, though. Everyone on both sides of the Great Cosmic Battle was getting a little bit jittery, what with Armageddon averted and the future suddenly so uncertain, and, well, so unwritten. Nobody knew what was going to happen next. That's why Heaven had been stationing more angels than usual on Earth, and Aziraphale had noticed that Hell couldn't exactly afford to spare the manpower they would lose if they took away Crowley, either.
Still, Crowley was probably in big trouble this time. Bigger trouble than any of the previous times, certainly. One did not just lose track of Lucifer Morningstar's only son and then expect a simple slap on the wrist for such negligence.
It was a week before Christmas.
Aziraphale was re-shelving his book collection when he heard the bell above his door ring. He was all prepared to glare at the potential customer, but then he turned around and saw who it was.
It was his neighbor. He was okay, because he generally wasn't interested in books without too many naughty pictures in them.
"Hey," Mr. Edwards said. "Slow day?"
"Naturally."
"I don't know how you stay in business with this place," Edwards commented in his oddly good-natured way.
"I don't," Aziraphale answered honestly. He wandered over to a closer bookshelf and continued his work, a stack of books in his arms. "Can I help you with something?"
Aziraphale liked Mr. Edwards, he really did, whether he was a porn peddler or not. It's not as though Aziraphale didn't judge what people did to make ends meet - it was his job to be judgmental - but he still wouldn't hold it against a good person like Mr. Edwards. He'd been a good neighbor for many years. They sometimes talked to each other. Aziraphale had once cat-sat Edwards' tabby for a week.
"Er... I hate to impose at this time of year," Edwards was saying nervously, "and I'm sure that you probably have travel plans and all, but listen, something suddenly came up, and I'm looking for someone who could, um, watch Margie for a few days. I mean, uh, she liked you so much last time, and it's terrible really, but she'll have to stay over with you again, she's not the type of cat that likes to be left alone--"
Aha, thought Aziraphale. He'd guessed it ahead of time. "For how long?"
"Two, maybe three days. I, um, I have to drive out of town..."
"What happened?"
"Er, a funeral."
"Oh dear. I'm sorry." And he really was. "Of course, I wouldn't mind taking in Margie again. She's a lovely little kitten."
"You wouldn't mind?"
Aziraphale turned his unsettlingly clear blue eyes upon the other man. "It would be nice to have some company over the holidays," he said quite pleasantly.
"Oh," said Edwards softly. Then he sighed. "Listen, um--"
The phone rang.
Aziraphale practically froze. There were only two places in the known universe where his telephone number was actually listed. One was in the personal leather-bound address book of a demon who was probably currently in Guatemala and was definitely too cheap to spring for long distance. The other place was, unfortunately, in Heaven.
"Excuse me a moment," Aziraphale said tersely as he set down his books and tried to step very casually over to the phone. He picked up the receiver. "Um, hello?"
"AZIRAPHALE! WHY DID YOU NOT INFORM US THAT THE HUMANS HAD DEVELOPED FLYING MACHINES?!"
The angel winced as he watched Edwards' eyes widening. Metatron did not just speak into a telephone. He shouted in a perfectly awe-inspiring, thunderous voice that could be heard clearly throughout the entire room (and probably all the way down the street).
Then, just for good measure, the coat rack beside the entrance burst into flame. Because seraphim liked dramatic effects like that.
The burning coat rack berated the angel, "WE ARE VERY, VERY DISPLEASED ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED TO BALTHIAL--"
"HOLY SHIT!" Mr. Edwards finally overcame his shock and had the presence of mind to scream.
Aziraphale sighed and dropped the phone from his hand, seeing as how a certain seraph obviously seemed no longer interested in using it as a channel of communication. He waved his hand in front of the human's face, and Edwards froze, standing rigidly with his eyes bugged out and jaw hanging open, staring at the burning coat rack with an expression of stupefied horror on his face.
"DID I JUST HEAR SOMEONE SAY THE S-WORD?!" the coat rack demanded.
"Yes. There. Is. A. Human. Here." Aziraphale took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. "And in my last three reports I mentioned the development of flying machines. I understand that are you are very busy with all sorts of important matters, Lord, and did you perhaps not have time to read them?"
"YOUR LAST THREE REPORTS? ...Oh, Very well then," said the burning coat rack, returning to a merely semi-awe-inspiring, more normal tone of voice. "We'll look those up right away."
"Thank you, Lord." Aziraphale had always suspected that nobody ever actually read his reports, but, well, the last thing that he needed was to have it rubbed in his face. That made him feel flustered, more than a trifle angry, very unappreciated, and a few other emotions that were dangerously, uncomfortably un-angelic.
"And one more thing," the coat rack added.
"Yes?"
"Our intelligence indicates that there has been a recent decrease in incidences of demonic activity in your area."
"Yes, well, that's because the demon seems to have migrated to--" Aziraphale hesitated for all of one tenth of a second. "--Africa," he lied.
"Excellent. Then surely you would agree that now would be an ideal time for you to take on an apprentice, correct?"
Now it was Aziraphale's turn to feel his jaw drop. He recovered from the shock and collected himself again. "Er... I've never actually, um, participated in the apprenticeship system before. I mean, er, there usually is a demon in this city, so don't you think that's a little bit, um, unsafe?"
"Well of course, we don't want the little ones having to smite any demons right off the bat. But they have to deal with demons eventually. Assuming that this one returns later, you can have your apprentice trained and ready for him when that happens. Right now, however, is a safe time. Correct?"
"I heard that there might be a demon moving in around Tromso," Aziraphale said desperately. "I was planning on--"
"Other angels," the coat rack continued pointedly, "have taken on apprentices before. Unfortunately, our records indicate that you somehow never have. Pity that we've skipped over you all these years, isn't it? Either way, we believe that it's only fair that you take your turn to do your duty."
"Well, I suppose that is fair," Aziraphale fretted. He fretted because it really was fair, and he knew that it really was fair, and that meant that he was now obligated to go through with the whole thing, because the last thing that he wanted was to be unfair. "Right, then. What shall I--?"
"We will have an agent send him to you tomorrow."
"Oh. All right."
"That is all."
And then, the coat rack wasn't burning anymore. It stood still and silent, utterly devoid of any divine presence, looking freshly polished, brand-new, and not at all like it had just been set on fire.
Aziraphale let out a long, slow sigh. Then he remembered poor Mr. Edwards, standing frozen where he had left him. Now Mr. Edwards just looked silly, staring at the perfectly harmless coat rack with that expression of utter horror twisting his face.
"Oh dear, oh dear," Aziraphale muttered, rushing over toward him. "I'm sorry, really, very awfully sorry about all this. And, just for the record, I really think it's reprehensible for people like me to be fiddling with human minds like this. It's not fair, you know. Really, it's just not fair. But, unfortunately, I can't let you remember any of what you saw or heard here," he finished sadly, waving his hand again in front of Edwards' face.
"--bring her over?" Mr. Edwards asked.
"I'm sorry?"
"What time shall I bring Margie over?"
"If you have to leave early tomorrow morning," Aziraphale said, trying as best he could to appear to be returning to business as normal, fiddling with a stack of some receipts next to the register, "right now would work best. I can take her in tonight."
"Right. Um, okay." Mr. Edwards was grateful for his neighbor's kindness. But oddly enough, he couldn't remember ever saying that he needed to leave early tomorrow morning.
Mr. Edwards left, running back to the flat above his shop next door, gathering up his cat and all of her needful things. Aziraphale sat behind the register on the only counter in the shop, sighed, and rubbed his temples. An apprentice?! Surely that meant a young angel, then. Or a young would-be angel. Which brought to mind the unsettling question: where did little angels come from? Aziraphale had largely avoided thinking about the issue before. He knew that officially, Heaven recruited the souls of dying humans to become angels, although only very rarely. But Aziraphale also harbored the suspicion that perhaps a cabbage patch or a stork was involved at other times, too.
Well, maybe he didn't want to know. He didn't want to start thinking too hard about where he himself had come from in the first place, either.
There was a flutter and a rustle of papers on the counter.
Aziraphale glanced up.
Well, well, well. There was now a postcard from Guatemala where a moment before, there had been nothing.
Aziraphale picked it up gingerly; the cardboard postcard still felt hot and smelled faintly of brimstone. On the front was a glossy photograph of mountains covered in lush shades of green. On the back was scrawled a short message:
Angel--
So glad you're not here to spoil any of my fun. Guerilla terrorists are lovely this time of year. Merry Christmas. Heard the Heavenly Chorus was doing London this year, so happy I'm on the other side of the world. I'll try to bring you back some chocolates.
It wasn't even signed, but then again, it didn't need to be.
Aziraphale held the postcard, stared at it, and debated inwardly whether to be glad that Crowley had not yet been caught by Hell's authorities or not. He didn't really want to exactly be rooting for a demon, but on the other hand, Crowley was his friend, of sorts, and he should certainly try to support his friend...
Aziraphale was still pondering this moral conundrum when Mr. Edwards returned with his cat. The chiming of the bell above Aziraphale's door and the sound of Margie's mewing brought him back to the present.
"You're sure it's not too much of a burden?" Mr. Edwards asked as he set Margie down and shifted the weight of a litter box and a bag of cat food in his arms.
"No. Really, it's not at all. And... Well, my only other Christmas plans were recently, ah, cancelled."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
"Don't be," Aziraphale said with one of his angelic smiles.
"I feel awful asking you to deal with all this, but I can't just leave her alone in my flat during the day, she really fears being alone," Edwards continued apologetically.
This, thought Aziraphale with a small twinge of disbelief, all coming from a man who runs a shop with a naked woman drawn in pink neon tubing hanging in the front window. And he owns an absolutely lovely cat.
Probably gay, the angel concluded (not for the first time).
"Hello Margie," Aziraphale said, kneeling down and sweeping up the cat in his arms. "Remember me?" Margie purred and licked his nose.
"I still can't believe how quickly she took to you last time," Edwards was commenting, piling up the last of Margie's things by the counter - a stuffed mouse and a water bowl. "Normally she's so skittish around strangers."
"Yes, well, most animals love me," Aziraphale said without a trace of modesty in his voice. And it was true. Animals had a way of sensing things that humans often could not; there was hardly a one of God's creatures on the planet that wouldn't respond to the calm, peaceful aura of an angel.
"Ah," said Edwards. "Well, thank you very much. I should be back for her the day after tomorrow. Take care. I owe you one, I really do."
"No, you don't."
"Of course I do. Really. See you later, then."
Mr. Edwards left, and stepped back into his own property next door, pondering all the while. His neighbor was definitely one of the more eccentric fellows he had met, but not in a bad way, per se - almost too nice for his own good, and wonderful with cats.
Well, he's probably gay, Edwards concluded (not for the first time).
Continued.