Chapter Text
They used to call him StarMaker. He had another name, of course, but it had long since been forgotten. No one used the names of the Fallen after they fell. No one remembered them. In the minds of all angels, Fallen or otherwise, there were large spaces in memories, big gaps in thoughts where their names should have been.
But the Fallen remembered the names of the angels. They remembered their faces, their roles, their shared moments and memories. They couldn’t remember their own, would never hear again the way that their names sounded rolling off of another’s tongue, but they could remember the names of the ones they used to love. Names, faces, laughs, smiles. Kisses, if they’d had them.
They remembered other things, too. Everything, really. They could remember every moment of Heaven, if they stopped to think about it. Singing, learning to fly, talking to the Almighty, doing their jobs.
And then there was Love, the worst of all remembrances. The most painful part of the fall was that every single one of the Fallen could remember feeling Love.
They could remember it in a full-color, surround-sound, phantom-touches kind of way. But they knew that they could never have it again. They’d lost it, had chosen to lose it, and they had no way to get it back.
Love had once been their greatest blessing, and so it was fitting that the intangible memory of it would be their greatest curse.
So, most of them stopped remembering it. Most of them found some way to block it out, some way to erase the memories that floated in every quiet moment. They immersed themselves in doing evil, created mundane tasks that didn’t need to be done just for the sake of having something to do. They had fallen, and they were Fallen, and all but one of them acted the part.
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When StarMaker fell, it was graceless, and it burned. He landed in a coil of scales and muscle, surprised to find that he still had a heart and that it was beating. It felt like dying, but he wasn’t dead. It felt like the end of everything, but it hadn’t been. He’d just swapped Love for Loneliness, Joy for Despair, Peace for Pain.
He’d chosen it, a little, because he had asked too many questions that his siblings hadn’t liked. Michael had always looked at him like he was crazy, and Gabriel had always had a habit of speaking to him like he was a child who needed a dressing-down. Others, too, would laugh at his questions, but he’d always thought that when it came down the end of things, they would help them. He’d thought that they’d loved him.
But now, with his soul sunk into a new body that fit him in ways that were all sorts of wrong, he felt a phantom pressure on an arm that he didn’t even have, and he remembered Michael’s face as they hurled him over the edge of Heaven into an abyss that hadn’t been there before.
They’d done this. Maybe he’d chosen it, but he hadn’t leapt over the edge like the First or the First’s closest friends. He’d been pushed, thrown, cast down.
For the first time in his timeless life, StarMaker felt grief, and he mourned. He mourned for the family he’d lost, for a life he’d chosen and yet not chosen to leave.
He couldn’t remember everything about Heaven yet, but his brain was waking up and winding back the tapes of his memory, back from the moment he fell, back from fragments of Michael’s face and Gabriel’s hands wrapped around a sword. There had been a hand in his, once, warm and soft and attached to someone he loved very much. Back further, through glimpses of smiles and songs, back and back and… yes, there. A memory of what he’d been.
He had been a StarMaker, the Starmaker, the one who learned how to spin burning gas into galaxies and bend dust into nebulas because the Almighty had built him to make the stars. He could remember himself as StarMaker because it was his job, and the Fallen could remember their jobs.
It wasn’t his name, but it was closer than nothing. Better than the nothingness that filled spaces in his memories.
StarMaker, he thought. I can still be StarMaker.
He allowed himself to find momentary solace in that, managed to pause the frantic rewinding of his memory for long enough to draw a long breath into unfamiliar lungs.
But it didn’t last. It couldn’t have, not after StarMaker realized that he could no longer make stars. He couldn’t do what he’d been created to do, not anymore. There was no starstuff here in the damp-cold darkness. This place was devoid of the beautiful things necessary to build the sky. And then StarMaker understood something more, something worse: even if he’d been surrounded by stardust, even if this place had been filled with it, he’d lost the hands that he would need to create anything from it.
StarMaker’s body was plunged once more into inky black despair, but he didn’t have time to linger in that, either. The First was calling them, calling the Fallen forward, so StarMaker uncoiled and followed the masses, wincing at the feeling of his belly sliding over discarded feathers and uneven ground.
As he moved, he tried to find familiar faces, but there were none. Everyone looked different. Nearly everyone had been given entirely different shapes, and even the few with normal-looking bodies had horrible disfigurements that made them unrecognizable.
The First was one of the latter.
StarMaker, like everyone else, remembered how the First looked in Heaven. He’d been beautiful - one of the most beautiful ones, maybe, and StarMaker had sometimes wished to look a bit more like him. The First’s skin had been smooth and unblemished, a softly-browned color that was rare even among the many skin tones in Heaven. He’d had long hair, golden and falling in perfect ringlets, and a smile that came easily and drew attention. His voice had been low and smooth, and he’d used it to tell stories that made the bustling motion of Heaven grind to a halt.
All of that was gone now. His skin was burn-reddened and pockmarked with scars (and in some places, things that looked almost like the same scales that covered StarMaker’s body). His hair was replaced by a crown of soot-colored horns, and his smile was jagged like a shark’s.
His voice, StarMaker noted as a tingle crawled its way down his spine, was almost exactly the same. It was a bit rougher, but not in an unpleasant way. It was somehow more attractive than it had ever been before, and so when the First spoke, all of what would soon be named Hell stopped wailing and moaning and listened.
It was almost oxymoronic, really, the way that the First sounded. His voice was a seductive melody that passed between sharp teeth and burned lips, and it was terrible.
If StarMaker could have closed his eyes, he would have. He would have liked to forget that the First had become a monster because it would have been easier to believe the First’s speech of new beginnings and words of hope. He might have been able to believe the First, maybe, might have been able to let himself be persuaded again, if the First still looked like something StarMaker thought could ever be safe.
It was with that silken voice that the First gave StarMaker a new name.
“Crawly.”
StarMaker became Crawly because the First told him to. He got a name because he’d lost one, but it fit like his body. Wrong, pinching in strange places, too small for him.
He was Crawly, and he wasn’t, but no one cared at all why.
It was then that Crawly’s mind chose to remember something that he’d never imagined he could forget. Something, many somethings, someone. White curls and blue eyes, pink-flushed cheeks and a body cushioned with softness. A laugh that brightened Heaven, warm hands that slid into Crawly’s, strong arms made to bear a sword he hated that found a new purpose in holding Crawly.
Aziraphale.
Memories of Aziraphale flooded into Crawly’s mind like snapshots of bliss. They filled his head, and all Crawly could do was thank Someone that he hadn’t lost this, that there were still things about Aziraphale that he knew.
Aziraphale couldn’t sing to damn his soul, but his laugh was music. Crawly had only met him because he had stopped working to watch Crawly make the stars with such regularity that Crawly noticed him. Noticed him, remembered him, thought him beautiful. He was a foolishly brave principality who dared to speak to an archangel. He’d stopped that archangel’s heart with his smile. Aziraphale had kissed Crawly a hundred-thousand-million times. He had walked with Crawly through half-formed nebulas, and he hadn’t ever laughed when Crawly asked questions.
Aziraphale was the love of Crawly’s immortal life, and Crawly was his.
Well, had been. Crawly had been his love, but he wasn’t anymore. Crawly knew this as certainly as he knew anything else, and he knew it because he could remember Aziraphale’s name. He could remember it because Aziraphale still had the name he’d been given, could remember it because Aziraphale was still in Heaven.
While the rest of Hell slept that night, the demon known as Crawly became the first and last snake who was able to cry.