Eight - Philosophy
Crowley had changed his mind about teleportation: it was awful. It felt like motion sickness when you moved with the speed of light. The teleporting itself only took a split second, but as soon as they landed, he felt as though his stomach was going to come up through his throat.
He really shouldn't have had those pancakes.
Aziraphale let go of his hand. He'd done that each time after they landed, but now Crowley wished he could hold on for a second longer, because the world was spinning around him. He tried to remain upright, but his legs buckled, and he fell on his hands and knees in the sand.
He remained there until the world came to a standstill. Then, swallowing bile, he looked around.
Aziraphale had brought them back to the desert. The sun had set and the sky above them was darkening. In the distance, Crowley could see the villa. They had landed about a mile away from it. 'Your aim's gotten worse,' he said to Aziraphale.
'It's been a long day,' Aziraphale murmured. He was watching Crowley with a worried expression. Aziraphale had always looked sweet when he worried about something, but it was a new experience for Crowley when that something was him. It felt warm. For a heartbeat, a tiny moment of weakness, he felt like leaning into it.
He'd had a few too many of those moments lately. It was starting to become a trend.
He sprang to his feet. 'Let's go, then.' He swayed with another wave of dizziness, but managed to remain upright this time. Blinking away the black spots in his vision, he began to walk in the direction of the villa.
After a moment, Aziraphale caught up with him. They trudged on through the desert. The loose sand was hard walking, and with each step Crowley's legs felt heavier. The worst of the after-effects of the Stripping (the loss of his powers and immortality not included) had subsided, but after seven teleportations in one day, he felt feeble from head to toe.
That didn't mean he wasn't going to firmly pretend otherwise. So he stubbornly walked on.
They were about halfway when he tripped. He smashed face-first into the ground, gaining a mouthful of sand in the process. He spat it out, swore, scrambled up, and began to walk again.
Aziraphale, who had rushed to help him but stopped short when Crowley got up, hesitated a moment, then burst out: 'I can heal –'
'I'm fine!' Crowley said immediately.
'You're not fine!' Aziraphale said hotly. 'You look awful, you're swaying on your feet, and... and you're human now, Crowley –'
Crowley stopped and turned around. 'Oh, really? I'd forgotten,' he said sarcastically.
Aziraphale took a step towards him. 'Crowley, listen –'
'No,' Crowley hissed. They were doing this now? Fine. Fine. He had some things to say as well. Aziraphale could be the one to listen now.
'You don't get to worry about me. You gave up that right when you chose Heaven,' he said between his teeth. 'We had something. Together. And you blew it up.' Suddenly it all came spilling out: everything that had been buzzing against the back of his mouth since their parting in the bookshop. The tension had been building up since Aziraphale had first arrived here, and now Crowley was going to say it all too. 'You made your bed, now you can damn well lie in it. You didn't want to come with me –'
'I did want that!' Aziraphale said, cheeks flushing.
That stopped Crowley. He blinked. 'Really?'
'Of course I did!' Aziraphale's blush deepened.
It took Crowley a moment to gather himself again. 'Then why didn't you?'
'I – I had an impossible choice –'
'You didn't seem to agonize over it very much,' Crowley said caustically.
Aziraphale was silent for a moment, taking in Crowley's words. He bit his lip and nodded, and Crowley knew his point had been taken. Aziraphale looked at him pleadingly. 'But I had to do the right thing. Don't you understand?'
'No,' Crowley snapped. 'I don't understand.'
He'd thought he had known Aziraphale. Through the centuries, he'd always made some perfunctory objections whenever he had to do something slightly or entirely illegal, but he'd always been willing to change his mind. At some point during their last conversation in the bookshop, Crowley had realised that this time it was different – Aziraphale's choice had been made. But Crowley didn't want it to be that way, so he'd thrown himself at Aziraphale in a desperate attempt to change his mind, with all the results that had yielded.
'Well, I don't understand your decision either,' Aziraphale said. The pleading note was gone from his voice, but there did remain a certain desperation when he said: 'Why on Earth did you choose to be Stripped!?'
'This isn't about me!' Crowley was not going over that again. He'd chosen wrong, all right – and it was all Aziraphale's fault in the first place. If he hadn't come to Crowley with a plan to stop the Second Coming, Crowley would never have chosen to go back to Earth and to Aziraphale. (Crowley realised this was crooked logic, but he was too angry to admit it). 'You chose your nice position in Heaven over me. Over us.'
Aziraphale looked down. 'I had to go,' he said quietly. 'And you wouldn't come with me.'
Crowley harrumphed.
Still looking at his shoes, Aziraphale swallowed, then added: 'And you shouldn't have kissed me. It made it all the more difficult.'
'That was the point,' Crowley said sardonically.
Aziraphale met his eyes again. 'Well, I don't regret it!' he said, suddenly vehemently. 'If I hadn't accepted the post of Supreme Archangel, we wouldn't have known anything about the Second Coming, and the world would be headed towards disaster!'
'I never gave a damn about the world!' Crowley shouted. 'I cared about us! The world can go to rot for all I care!'
Aziraphale looked at him. Crowley's heart pounded in his ears. The words lay between them like a smouldering bomb.
Then Aziraphale took a step towards Crowley, his expression even. 'I don't believe you,' he said calmly.
Crowley pointedly looked away. 'That's your problem, not mine,' he growled.
'I know you care,' Aziraphale insisted. 'When Armageddon was first set in motion, you came to me to save the world. And every single instant before that, you went out of your way to help humans. You are no longer Hell-bound, Crowley. You can say it freely.'
Crowley didn't answer. Aziraphale's words hit home hard, but he was trying to make a point.
Aziraphale walked around Crowley, entering his field of vision again. His hair shone silvery in the starlight. His eyes were wide and earnest. 'When I first met you, I saw these stars reflected in your eyes,' he said in a low voice. 'Look at me now, and tell me that you don't care about the world.'
Crowley stared at him.
Aziraphale was right, of course. He knew Crowley far too well. But that was not what occupied Crowley's mind at this moment.
Go on, kiss him. The urge was blazing in his mind. You know you want to.
But there was another thought in his head. No. Not like this. You know he's not ready.
For several heartbeats, Crowley stood paralysed, holding the two thoughts in his head, tearing him in two directions. Then, after a long moment, he averted his eyes.
'Come on,' Aziraphale said. Crowley could hear the smile in his voice. 'We're nearly there.'
They walked on, again without speaking, but the heaviness in the air seemed gone. Crowley did not yet know what this new silence signified.
But, as they neared the villa, he realised one thing clearly and inescapably: the part of him that wanted to remain angry forever, had lost this battle. He shook his head at himself. For all the things he still couldn't understand, Crowley was hopelessly, irrevocably falling for Aziraphale yet again.
In some way, it was a relief.
Six of the names on Aziraphale's list had been successfully crossed out. Only one name remained, and the coordinates that accompanied it, showed that its bearer lived only a few hundred miles away. So when the next morning came, Aziraphale suggested they take the car. They had a day and a half to get to where they needed to be – the Conception was to take place tomorrow at noon, according to Aziraphale's planning – and they could afford to travel by land.
Crowley, who had been eating his breakfast with a face like he was afraid he would throw it all up again after the first teleportation, did not object.
And so they made ready to leave. Aziraphale packed lunch, snacks, sweets and drinks for the journey.
As he did so, his eyes kept drifting towards Crowley, who was giving the car a quick check. He was steady on his feet again, and seemed to have regained all his vigour. Aziraphale was terribly relieved that the Stripping seemed to have no lasting effects – if you ignored the loss of Crowley's powers and immortality. But Crowley himself had not changed. The eyes may be different, but it was still his Crowley looking out from them.
His Crowley – Aziraphale realised he'd never really stopped thinking about him that way. And now... Something had happened last night. Aziraphale still couldn't understand Crowley – or feel understood in return – but the air seemed cleared a little. Their cards were laid on the table, and Aziraphale did not yet know how the game would play out.
What he did know, was that he wanted Crowley. And he would make work of it. As soon as they had stopped the Second Coming...
A voice startled him from his reverie. 'Long trip ahead?'
Aziraphale whirled around. Behind him stood the elderly human woman in her niqab – Gee, Aziraphale recalled. Where had she been? He hadn't seen her in the villa since he'd left to meet with the Metatron, two days ago. But she couldn't have gone somewhere else, because she would not have found the villa again – his miracle had made sure of that.
But he thought it rude to ask, so he said: 'Yes. About nine hundred miles.'
Gee raised an eyebrow, amusement shining in her eyes. She nodded at his supplies. 'And you're only bringing a bottle of pomegranate juice and... one half-empty one of sparkling water?'
'Yes, why?'
'You're going to be driving through the desert for hours,' she said. When he didn't say anything, she added: 'You're not going to be finding a lot of cafés along the way.'
'Don't worry, we'll be fine,' Aziraphale said, smiling.
She shook her head. 'I'd best come with you.' And without waiting for his answer, she walked on into the atrium, opened the back door of the Bentley, and got in.
'Wait!' Aziraphale called. 'You can't just –'
Crowley appeared from behind the Bentley. He was grinning a wicked grin. 'Ah, let her come. It'll be fun.'
.
And so, when they drove away from the villa a few minutes later, there were three of them. Crowley drove, Gee sat in the back seat, and Aziraphale in the passenger seat. He kept his eyes on the road, which was empty for now. Crowley was driving nigh on 150 miles per hour, like he always had. Aziraphale really wanted to tell him to be careful, but Crowley's eyes were shining, and Aziraphale didn't have the heart to tell him to slow down. So he watched the road carefully, ready to miraculously save them from any accidents Crowley might cause. And they rode north, to their last candidate.
From the back seat, Gee chatted cheerfully away. Aziraphale's initial misgivings about her coming with them were quickly appeased, because only ten minutes into their journey, they found out they held a shared interest in books.
She turned out to have read most of Aziraphale's favourites, and he hers, and so the hours passed by unnoticed as they discussed – with Crowley chipping in from time to time – the details of The Republic, Don Quixote, and Pride and Prejudice.
Gee proved to have a violent streak when it came to literary analysis. 'Yes, it is romantic, but at some point I just want to bash their heads together,' she said about the latter. Crowley laughed out loud. Aziraphale shook his head in disbelief.
'What are you reading now?' he asked some time later. The sun had reached and passed its highest point, and the desert around them was blisteringly hot. The road seemed wet from the trembling air. Aziraphale had had to refill their bottles several times already, which was not easy to do while hiding it from Gee. She had not yet commented on the fact that they were somehow still miraculously supplied with water.
He took a travel sweet and offered Gee one too. She took three. 'Not a lot of fiction, at the moment,' she said in answer to his question, putting one sweet under her veil. 'I'm reading a bit about new economic models. Given the state of the world, I think it is evident that we can't go on like this. I'm partway through a book about circular economy.'
'Hm,' Aziraphale said noncommittally, in the hope that Gee would not expect him to have a discussion about that topic. He was interested in human society only up to a certain point.
But she continued: 'Oh, and I've been reading a lot of philosophy lately.'
'Who?' Aziraphale asked, glad to continue on that subject.
'Ahmad ibn Faisal. 12th-century Egyptian philosopher.'
'I've never heard of him,' Aziraphale said, surprised.
'No, he's not very well-known. I don't even think his work has ever been translated,' Gee said pensively.
That sparked Aziraphale's interest. 'Really? What does he write about?'
'The nature of the Universe, mostly,' Gee said. She ate another sweet. 'I just finished his last work, which is about the nature of spiritual beings. Like angels and demons.'
'Oh? What does he write about them?' Aziraphale said. He always liked to hear the theories humans thought up about them. They sometimes really came up with the weirdest ideas. He had once had a conversation with a woman on the street, who had told him with absolute certainty that she could see angels with her third eye, and that they radiated pure goodness and filled your heart with joy at the sight of them, and, upon being asked, that there were none here in this street at the moment.
'So, his main theory is that angels and demons are different from humans in that they are pre-programmed,' Gee said. 'Angels always have to do good, and demons –'
'Let me guess: they always have to do evil?' Crowley said sarcastically. Aziraphale chuckled. Crowley met his eyes in the rearview mirror and grinned – then swore loudly and swerved to avoid a truck that had been driving at a normal speed.
'No, they always have to do what they want,' Gee said. 'Which may still very well be evil, because they don't tend to have the moral compass that angels do. So demons are always compelled to follow their desires, and angels are always compelled to do the right thing. Like a ship with more oars on one side will always deviate towards that side. Ibn Faisal goes into a long discussion of why that is the case, which is rather boring, but the conclusion is that neither can ever choose freely.
'That has its implications, of course. One of which is that there is not always only one right thing. And it's... ineffective. Ibn Faisal uses the metaphor of crossing a river. You want to get to the other side, but instead of going a mile out of your way to cross a bridge, you walk straight into the water. Then the current sweeps you away, and you end up even further from the point where you wanted to be.'
Gee took another sweet. 'Very interesting, in all,' she mused, gazing out the car window. 'No way to know if he's right, of course, but still, it makes you think about what it means to be human... Hey. Why are you two so quiet, all of a sudden?'