A/N: This first post is a 2 for 1 with the prologue. Also it's gonna start out with the Angst of course cause that's where we left everyone, but I promise you this story is a happy ending. I'm already hanging out there with post S3 Aziraphale and Crowley in a cottage on the South Downs. We just gotta wade through the feels first. Reviews and likes are amazing and feed my soul.

Disclaimer: As usual everything belongs to Neil, Terry, and Amazon. I'm just putting them through the feels for a bit.

Prologue:

It starts again as it will end, with a garden. Not the Garden this time–just a perfectly ordinary garden, only really worthy of mention because of its location or the events about to take place within it. Fate, it seemed, had a rather fond attachment to locating major and pivotal plotlines within architected greenspace. They felt it added a certain gravitas to their events.

Tonight, a man stands nervously at the edge of one such space, tan fingers twisting the edge of a dusty robe between them, and draws a shaky breath.

He could do this. He could do this to keep him safe. It was the right thing to do was it not?

Movement across the garden catches his eye, and he traces the fine features of his friend as he comes into view near the pergola, a circle of followers surrounding him filled with easy smiles and gentle laughter as they meet.

Yet one of them will betray him, one of them will send him to his end for the good of them all, and he cannot stand by and let that happen.

Not when it will mean never seeing him again, not when his friend so desperately wants to live and yet resigns himself to this fate. A martyr of his own happiness for the saving of everyone.

He forces his steps through the garden path, skidding slightly on the loose pebbles and soft dirt. Identify him, they said, simply a signal of acknowledgement and they could whisk him away to safety. No more heavenly obligations or marks of death.

The world may damn him for it, but he's willing to burn if it means making him smile again. For seeing him light and carefree and alive instead of a stone pious effigy.

He meets familiar sandals on the path before him and pauses, looking up into the warmth of his friend's gaze. Around him the others chatter and laugh, unaware of the slippage of time that allowed him to so quickly arrive here at this moment, this pivot that will redefine everything.

Soft lips smile at him as they have always done. Before he can lose his nerve he leans close and turns his head in a greeting they only ever acted out privately before, a benediction he now makes public, and presses his lips to a high boned cheek.

"Peace be with you," he murmurs, and feels a small intake of breath from the man next to him. He wishes he knew how to interpret the sound. He pulls back to meet the dark brown eyes he's lost himself to time and time again, but finds he can't determine what to make of the swirl of emotions he sees in them.

Has he saved them or condemned them?

Tomorrow, he will know this moment for its loss. For they will call him traitor and years from now will write him into a villain's story for 30 pieces of silver that he will find in his lodgings. A bargain he never agreed to make, yet cannot disprove, leading to a hangman's noose he will knot himself gladly. His name an epitaph for betrayal forever more.

Today, he will know it as love and a prayer that he can change the fate of a god.

Chapter 1: though i know my heart would break (put me back in it)

At first, he plans to drive off and sleep for a good century or two: ignore the world until he finds a way of dealing with the ache that's growing between his ribs, the tightness filling his chest that's making him feel like any second he'll discorporate from the sheer agony of it all.

Until he figures out how to exist without him.

Foolish really, a small voice chides him, and not likely since you haven't figured it out in the last 6000 years or more. Crowley misses the turn to his flat, but the Bentley makes no move to course correct, and instead he keeps on driving. There's no point to being in London anyway, really. Not if Aziraphale isn't there.

The road unfolds before him and the Bentley guides them out of London, across the M25, and north. At some point the radio switches back on and soft classical violin swells through the car; he doesn't have the heart to turn it off. Afterall, she seems to miss him too.

His face feels wet and his eyes are puffy, and he rubs furiously at both as the late afternoon sky gives way to dim evening light and a familiar town begins to take shape around him.

"No, no, NO. Absolutely not," he mutters firmly, pulling the steering wheel so that the car is forced to a stop next along the Holyrood park roadside. "Bloody sentimental machine."

He swings himself out of the Bentley with a sigh and looks around aimlessly, the crisp Edinburgh air filling his senses and reminding him with sharp pang of the top hats, graveyards, and the too- much-laudanum spins of the last time he was in this area of the world.

Grumbling, he throws himself into walking briskly up the hill for want of any other option–willing the mild ache in his thighs as he climbs to distract him, burn soft lips and words of forgiveness from his memory.

He reaches the summit just as the first stars are beginning to show across the darkening sky and drops his body heavily onto some of the flat stones that comprise Arthur's Seat. An irony he muses, since Arthur very much never made it here–too busy sowing good deeds in the damp wilds of Wessex to bother much with the Scots.

Is that you under there Crawly?

Nothing lasts forever.

His eyes burn again, and he blinks toward the heavens, trying to lose himself amongst the stars that pepper the black blue sky. Stupid angel, how could he not see the pointlessness of the Metatron's offer, the futile effort of trying to change heaven? His throat burns and he swallows against the lump rising in it. Is this how it's going to be from now on? He doesn't know how much of this he can take honestly.

"Aaah," a shrill shout cuts through the night somewhere over his left shoulder, and Crowley whips around, momentarily considering that perhaps Aziraphale might have been right about the spookiness of places, when he makes out the distinct shape of a woman sliding in the slightly muddy hillside near the summit.

"Blast it, why is this stuff so slippery?" The petite figure pushes herself back upright with a small huff and wipes her hands against the khaki of her trench coat before her eyes fix on Crowley's with a start,

"Oh hello, sorry, I didn't realize anyone else would be up here at this time." She hefts a small rucksack against her back with a shrug, and he notices the tripod telescope jutting from the top zipper. "I'm something of an amateur astronomer, you see. It's supposed to be a great night for viewing Orion."

Did you go to Alpha Centauri?

Nah…I lost my best friend.

Nope, none of that. On impulse, he waves a hand behind him and steps aside to reveal his own telescope, miracled (and thankfully undamaged by Shax) from his flat with only a small wobble at the intrusion. Well what else did he have to do now? And for Someone's sake he needed the distraction.

"Wouldn't you know? Same could be said of me." He offers what he hopes is a friendly smile. The woman's eyes search his face, lingering on his dark glasses, before she gives a returning grin.

"Oh wonderful, it would be so nice to have a partner."

He nearly lets out an unexpected sob at the wording and tamps it back down, easing himself back onto the rocks with a strangled sigh as the woman sets up her things and settles down next to him. He busies himself with focusing the scope on finding the nebula he knows is hiding in Orion's sword.

They sit side by side silently for a while, gentle clicks of telescopes adjusting and focusing, and Crowley loses himself slightly in the method of it. He hasn't looked at the stars in ages–didn't realize how much he'd missed it.

"They really are spectacular, you know?" Her soft voice pulls him back from his eyepiece to find the woman leaning back on her hands, head tilted up to take in the vibrant Milky Way band that has appeared.

"Yeah," he agrees, mirroring her pose. Curiosity seeps into him and he can't control the impulse to ask, "Do you have a favorite?"

She pauses, lips twisting to the side in thought before smiling, "The Carina Nebula."

It's easy to grin back at her, pride temporarily easing the ache beneath his chest, "Ah an excellent one if I do say so myself." He tilts his head back toward the sky, eyes seeking out the rough patch of stars where he feels it live, a trait of his that never quite burned away. "Bit hard to find that one though without something like the Hubble looking."

Her laugh sounds like a bell in the empty hillside, "I know! You'd think whoever made this place might have had better sense to put it a bit more in the middle of the show. It's infuriating! You can't even see most of the universe from here."

"Yes! Exactly what I've been saying!" He stares at her in amazement, feels his face hurt slightly from the force of his smile.

She gives him an impish grin that scrunches her nose before her eyes shift downward with a melancholic sigh.

"You know, until recently I barely looked at the stars," she pulls her knees up to her chest, resting her chin on the delicate hands placed upon her kneecaps. "I only thought of them as background decoration really." A sigh. "I've been doing that everywhere in my life it seems, not looking, not listening. Too wrapped up in my own plans and successes to actually stop and pay attention to how any of it was going."

"Ah," he struggles to find words to assist this shift in tone. Neither of them had ever been great at human emotion, but Aziraphale had definitely been better at comfort. "I'm sorry," he stutters, half a statement, half a question.

She waves a hand at him with a kind dismissive gesture. "Oh no, it's okay. I'm trying to own it." She raises her eyes again to lights twinkling above them, "Took a setback you might say to make me stop and look around, but I am…trying now. For whatever good it might do."

"Well I'm certainly no expert on trying," he gives a sardonic chuckle, "seems like all I do is try and fail." He raises his hand to count off his fingers, "Tried to change things with a few questions, got fired. Spent a few years going my own way trying to do good where I can, ended up homeless and almost killed. Tried to tell my partner how I feel, and instead here I am alone on a Scottish hillside."

A hand reaches out to pat his shoulder before pulling back, "Better to have tried and failed than to ignore it all, or so I'm learning. It's so much easier to see the path you've built when you at least look up every so often and take an active part with those shaping it," she gives a heavy sigh, "before you wake up and don't even know how you got to where you are."

She trails off, turning her face back up to the sky and for a few minutes they sit in a morose silence. Crowley traces the curve of the Big Dipper, recites the older names for the constellation that have been lost to time in his mind, and tries to imagine ever feeling satisfied with having tried. Wishes instead maybe he'd just ignored everything from the beginning.

Sure as hell would hurt less than this.

"Your partner, you think he'll come around?" her voice quietly snaps him back to Earth. The dim starlight catches with a shimmer on her short blonde hair, and his unhelpful mind supplies a barrage of comparisons to the softer, paler curls he's actively trying not to think about missing.

"I…" he hangs his head, clears his throat thickly. He wants to say it's over, that the angel made his choice, and there is no coming back. That there is no us. After all, it's never felt so final before. But hope flickers silently in his chest, a timid sensation that he can never quite get to die when it comes to Aziraphale, 6000 years of stubborn push and pull between them that has always somehow circled around to being just enough outside of either side to be their own.

He sighs, and looks back up to find warm, brown eyes fixed on him, "...I dunno, actually"

She shoots him a half smile, "You have faith still then"

"Ha," he chuckles wryly, and she's right he does; an existence full of doubts and yet he never could quite shake the habit of belief from his veins, "what d'ya know, I guess I do."

A sad look flickers across her features even as she smiles fully, gone in a moment as she glances down at her watch and gives a small gasp,

"Oh my, I seem to have lost track of myself and am now terribly late it would seem. Funny thing, time." She mutters the last part to herself mostly as she gathers her things together and makes to stand.

He nods along politely, feeling slightly bereft at the prospect of being alone with his own thoughts once again. She was warm in a motherly way he didn't know he missed. Which strikes him as a silly thought really seeing as how demons didn't have mothers. Well technically, they didn't have mothers who acknowledged them.

All the same though wasn't it?

Shaking himself mentally, Crowley makes to stand alongside her smaller frame, handing over her telescope as he goes. She sends him a small smile of thanks before continuing, "It really was lovely to run into you here…er…"

"Ah, Anthony," he fills in for her, "Anthony Crowley."

There it is again, the flash of sadness in her features that he can't place. Maybe she'd lost someone with his name. Humans were always losing someone and rediscovering their grief in strange places he'd noticed.

"Anthony," she repeats his name with a warm roll of vowels that erases the lines of sorrow from her features, "that's a lovely name."

"Thanks…um…"

"Edith," she supplies with a grin and an extension of her hand, "you can call me Edith."

He returns her smile with a crooked one of his own, "Well, thank you Edith."

Grasping her warm hand in his, he can't resist the impish urge to give an exaggerated shake and earns himself a laugh from his compatriot before she pulls her hand from his. Still grinning, she hoists the rucksack back onto her shoulder and begins to head back down the small slope, before turning back around with a small clang of jostled instruments,

"Oh, and Anthony?" He whips his gaze up from the ground he'd worrying with the heel of his boot,

"Hmm?" He opts for nonchalance, instead of the desperate eagerness he feels at being granted even a minute more reprieve from being left alone with the mess of thoughts he feels bubbling just beneath the surface of his consciousness.

She holds his gaze firmly, "I hope they prove worthy of it. Your faith."

The lump returns to his throat and his eyes burn behind the dark frames of his glasses; he nods slowly, and she gives him one last small smile before returning to her steady descent and moving out of sight.

He stands unmoving in the resulting silence, before realizing he's actually dropped quietly to the ground as he takes note of the grassy rock that's suddenly beneath his fingertips. His vision blurs beyond discerning, and he feels the first few traitorous tears roll down his cheeks as he loses the battle against the hollow knot in his chest.

"Me too," he whispers, a soft prayer into the night air.

And then for the first time that day he gives in and allows himself to truly cry.

A/N: Thanks for reading! Let me know your thoughts in the comments if you'd like, review alerts make my day :)