I decided to make this a more-than-oneshot. Huzzah!

Crowley was setting things in order. His rent would be paid, business connections maintained, down to the last miniscule detail. He was planning on going to sleep for a long time. Perhaps forever.

Martha and Ezekiel had left him pretty well alone since his reveal. They had dropped by only once about a month later in a much different frame of mind. They interrogated him, demanding to get a better look at his eyes and wings to make certain they weren't just contact lenses and clever body modifications.* He assured them that they were in fact quite real, going so far as to usher Ezekiel into another room where he removed his shirt and let the overly-curious son of an angel probe at the sinewy muscles connecting the wings to his flesh at the shoulder blades. Ezekiel, to be sure, was none too gentle in his examination. Crowley would never admit, not even to himself, how much this hurt and humiliated him.

Do you see what your kid is doing to me, Angel? Are you happy?

He was sure if Aziraphale were there to witness it, he would have read his son the riot act.

Crowley went to sleep on a pleasant afternoon in late May. He would not wake up for seventy-seven years.

It was raining when he woke up, but that wasn't what woke him. It was the noise coming from outside. He opened his eyes to find everything in the room covered in decades' worth of dust, the paint peeling from the walls from over seven decades of summers and winters during which time the flat's temperature control had been unused.

The first thought that struck him was that he should put a stop to the noise. The second was that he desperately needed the loo.

The water had been turned off, and had been off for quite some time, by the looks of things. He must not have paid the bill this far in advance. He'd have to call the landlord today.

The window was warped, but when Crowley finally jarred it open with a horrendous creak and poked his head out, he thought for a minute that he'd slept straight through the Apocalypse. The real one this time. The sky was gray, as was typical of London this time of year**. In his view were piles of rubble, concrete, and twisted bits of metal. And a bulldozer. That explained the noise. The building was being razed.

"Oi! You!" shouted a voice. In the street below, a man in a hardhat with a clipboard was waving at him. "Get out of there! We were about to…"

"All right!" bellowed Crowley. They were about to level the building. What had happened in the time since he'd been asleep? Mayfair was one of the most fashionable and wealthy London boroughs, and his flat was no exception. Why was it being torn down as though it were a tenement slum?

It occurred to him that the man must have thought he was a vagrant. He was dressed in pajama trousers and a t-shirt, which were absolutely filthy, dusty, and full of holes. Upon inspection of his closet, he found all his fine-tailored suits to be moldy and moth-eaten. Sighing, he wished himself clean and clothed in an impeccable black number and briefly lamented the loss of certain irreplaceable articles—his watch; battery long dead and corroded through the case, and his snakeskin shoes. Something had nested in them. He did, however, find his gold ring and the tie pin Aziraphale had given him for Christmas in 1947. He held it in his fingers for a long moment before turning to the hazy mirror and threading it through the black tie he had magicked up. He looked like an undertaker. It seemed fitting.

Wandering out into the lounge, he didn't know what he'd expected to see. All the plants he'd so lovingly cared for were dead and withered. There was a hole in the ceiling where the rain had gotten in, the floor beneath it sagging dangerously. Stereo equipment ruined, as was the da Vinci.

All this he could withstand, but he nearly fell to his knees and cried when he went down to the parking garage and saw what had become of his beloved Bentley. Crowley was surprised it was still there at all, but to get it back in working order would be almost impossible. It was worse than it had been after the Apocalypse that wasn't. A rusted out heap of a carriage had collapsed onto deflated tires, crushing the spokes of the wheels beneath its weight. All the windows were broken, lights and mirrors smashed, and it was covered in graffiti, the crowning glory of which was a bright yellow phallus on the hood. If he could, he would have found and killed*** whoever had done it.

In his mailbox were posted crumbling and faded final notices of all kinds, including one for all tenants to vacate the premises by the end of February. The building had been condemned and would be demolished. How long ago had that been? How had his flat been overlooked? Hadn't someone gone through them all when the building closed? He could have been assumed dead, as he didn't breathe when he slept, nor did he have a pulse unless he wanted to. But if that was the case, he'd have expected to wake up in a morgue…or six feet under.

Deciding not to ponder it further, he put on a pair of shades, jammed his hands in his pockets and began walking. It was cold. He cloaked himself in a thick wool coat and kept going.

Rip van Crowley had officially reentered the world.

Crowley walked all the way to Soho. He stopped in front of a familiar shop on the corner. The cheery red brick had been whitewashed but was now flaking in places. A flickering neon atrocity stood in place of the charming old wood sign. The former proprietor, a Mr. A. Ziraphale, must have been turning in his grave.

The place was a dingy café now. Crowley gave a sidelong glance down the street, which seemed to be entirely comprised of dingy cafes, save one smoke shop and a pub, simply called 'the Haven'.

He went into the café. A familiar old bell clanged over the door. After all this time, it was still there. Crowley's throat tightened momentarily as he half expected a voice to greet him with a curt "We're closed."

Instead he was met with a dead-eyed stare from a woman in a ratty jumper who stood behind the counter. After a moment, she went back to staring at some tabloid laid out before her and picked at her nails. The place smelled like stale bacon and old tea.

Crowley sat down at a table near the window. There was a yellowing framed newspaper clipping with a grainy photo of a fire. That fire. He drummed his fingers on the table and looked around. If old Zira could only see what had become of his beloved shop…Crowley could just hear the lecture about what the mere smell of grease could do to precious volumes such as his.

"Can I get you anything, love?" asked a grating Manchester accent, startling him. The woman had finally grasped that someone might come into this establishment for something to eat.

"Coffee and scones," he replied, gazing out the window. Then, he thought of something. "Have you a paper?" he asked.

"Sure, love." she said, bringing over the tabloid rag she'd been reading along with a plate of drop scones that could have passed as construction material, and a cup of weak coffee with a sheen of oil on the surface.

The demon tried his best not to cringe. "Thanks," he said.

He picked at a scone and turned the pages. A date….he needed to find a date.

Aha. November tenth. Give or take.

His eyes widened.

Seventy -seven years later.

Go—Je—holy—

Hell.

In his shock, he threw down some cash, hoping the currency was still…well, current, and left.

"Well, I wonder where he's gone off to in such a hurry." the woman said to herself.

Crowley had gone off to see if he could find any of his old haunts. The mouthful of stale scone had left a bad aftertaste, and he wanted a decent meal after being asleep for over half a century.

After a fair bit of walking, he found one. He couldn't believe it. A chophouse he and Aziraphale had discovered back in aught-six was still in existence.

He went in and ordered a steak and a glass of port. As he ate, he mulled over where he was going to go from here. He was effectively homeless and didn't have much in the way of money on him, not that he really needed it. He decided he would seek out a nice neighborhood and see what he could find in terms of housing. He'd never been uprooted quite like this, and not knowing what was going to happen next bothered him more than he cared to admit. Even when times were particularly bad, Aziraphale had always been there to—

But Aziraphale was gone. It was just him now, and that was how it had to be.

He couldn't remember ever feeling more alone.

The hotel room was cheap and smelled of cigarettes and damp. Crowley would almost have preferred going back to his dilapidated flat if it had still been standing. Go-Someone only knew what the bed was probably infested with. Uncharacteristically, he decided sleep could wait.

He spent the night sitting at the rickety table magicking up endless bottles of wine and getting gloriously plastered.

In the morning, he set out to look for more permanent accommodations.

It took a few days, but he eventually found what he was looking for in Fulham, a fair distance further away than he would care to be since he didn't have a car anymore. The landlord seemed wary of the tall dark man in the black suit with an odd way of speaking****, but led him up a narrow flight of stairs to a split-level flat that was smaller than his old one, but in better condition than anything he'd seen thus far. He'd been scouring the London boroughs for places to let*****and found each one to be in only slightly more livable conditions than his old flat.

This place, though…very Bohemian, he thought. But it would do.

Crowley spent the day scouring and dusting and setting to rights anything he judged faulty or out of place******. When he deemed it acceptable, he sat in the middle of the bedroom floor and stared out the window. He could see the Thames from here, and he was sure that come summer—if he stayed that long—he'd be able to smell it, too. He sighed. He missed his old place. True, he couldn't really claim he'd lived there, really. But all the same, it had been spacious and tasteful…and hadn't smelled like patchouli.

It didn't take long before Crowley was in possession of a sleek black sports car. It wasn't the Bentley, but the salesman assured him that anybody who was everybody was driving one. Crowley knew he was a liar right off the bat, but he needn't worry. There was a special place in Hell for people like that. He didn't need to handle him himself.

He felt a strange sense of accomplishment. He was getting his life together. He didn't need anybody. And, it seemed, nobody needed him. They were bad enough on their own. He wondered if it were possible for him to get away with living like a normal human being. No one from Below had tried to contact him yet. Maybe they'd forgotten about their once-best field agent.

One of the first things he decided to do was take a drive. There was someone he wanted to visit.

The angel's grave was grown over with moss and dead ivy. It looked like it hadn't been tended to since the day he was put in the ground. Crowley gave a disgusted sniff and began clearing away the encroaching foliage. His finger scraped away the last of the moss, and there it was:

Ezra Fell

Beloved husband and father

May he find peace

The world had taken him for granted, thought Crowley. And obviously no one had cared much for him after his death, either. A demon had come to mourn him.

That truly was something.

For the first time in perhaps a century or more, Crowley ate at home that night. Or rather, he cooked and sat down at the table. He didn't so much eat as he did repeatedly stab the jacket potato with a fork. He considered it stress relief.

At long last, he picked up a lamb chop and bit into it. It had gone cold, but he didn't care, nor could he find the energy to will it warm again. As a demon, of course, he had never been meant to care much about anything but causing havoc and mayhem. This was different. He didn't care about anything, and yet he felt that he should. He needed a purpose.

*The thought had occurred to him to try out colored contact lenses once when they'd first been made widely available, but they only turned his eyes a sickly shade of green and were immensely uncomfortable.

**He wasn't actually sure what time of year it was, but it was typical of London anyhow.

***Not only that, but make them regret the day they were born while he was at it.

****Crowley had noted that everyone he'd spoken with thus far had a Manchester accent.

*****Though he had avoided Whitechapel on principle.

******This included, but was not limited to, all the draperies, the 1950s Formica countertops, the mantelpiece, the dining table, the purple wallpaper in the lounge, and the hideous leopard-print stair runner.

Stay tuned, next chapter we'll get to find out what happened to Aziraphale.

As always, please review!

~Ciao~