Chapter Text
2147 B.C.
“What an interessssssting sssituation you’ve got here, angel.”
Aziraphale jumped as the voice seemed to come from everywhere in the dark, mildewy room he was not, apparently, alone in.
“Crawly?” he ventured cautiously, once his corporation’s chest had stopped seizing up in shock.
A broad, toothy grin and keen turmeric eyes, followed shortly by the rest of Crawly, melted dramatically out of a shadowy corner that Aziraphale was quite sure wasn’t actually that shadowy. “That’s what they’re calling me, for now.”
Aziraphale was still clutching at the region where something had tried to leap out of his chest. “Don’t scare me like that, you fiend!”
Crawly’s expression turned into one of mocking concern, with the corners of their mouth still turned up, and they sprawled dramatically sideways onto a stool that Aziraphale was certain hadn’t been there before. “I’d recommend a better inn, personally. There could be anything in all these dark corners. How’d you end up in here, anyway? Nice little angel like you, I wouldn’t have thought ‘festering underground prison cell’ would’ve been your scene.”
Aziraphale sighed, and turned his gaze down to glare mournfully at the prickly rope looped rather excessively around his wrists. The flickering light of the one guttering candle made it look even crueler, like a nest of thorns and shadow. “A very silly sort of mix-up that I haven’t yet had any luck un-mixing, as it were. I seem to have been falsely implicated in a murder.”
“Really,” said Crawly’s voice, which sounded more delighted than surprised.
“Yes, the gentleman who handed me the sickle was quite enthusiastic in speaking to the patrolmen.”
“Well, then it seems like a pretty cut-and-dried affair. You’ve got a perpetrator and a legal system raring to bring him to justice, if they just knew who they were really after. Why are you still in here?”
“Oh, the humans of this city have turned too far down the paths of sin and corruption, apparently,” Aziraphale sighed. “Some kind of ultimatum has been issued, I believe. At any rate, a memo’s been circulated which expressed quite emphatically that under no circumstances are any miracles to be performed in the city until further notification.”
Crawly made a sympathetic noise. “Sudden policy changes from Head Office getting underfoot, are they? I had the same happen back when someone deep down decided domesticating cats wasn’t evil enough to work on, anymore. A hundred and thirty-eight years, I worked on that!”
“Sounds terribly frustrating,” said Aziraphale politely. He was starting to find the whole interaction a bit odd.
“Anyway,” said Crawly, perhaps starting to think the same themself. They shifted a bit, as though the stool wasn’t entirely comfortable, and crossed their legs. “Already in here when the news came, were you?”
Aziraphale hedged. “Not… as such.”
Now Crawly looked properly surprised. “Not as such? Well, how’d you get here, then?”
Aziraphale shifted, because the rushes matting the floor weren’t comfortable, which he felt was very understandable given he hadn’t manifested them himself.
Crawly raised their eyebrows, waiting.
“...there’s a particular kind of spiced date that originated here, and all the merchants in the villages stopped selling them once word about the unrighteousness got about.”
Crawly’s voice went oddly strangled, like a strange mix of humor and pleading. Their face had contorted into a wide-eyed expression that Aziraphale had no hope of interpreting. “Datessss?!”
“Yes, well, what about you? Why are you here?” Aziraphale snapped. He was sure there was some reason human bodies had been designed so that so much blood could rush to the face at once, though he hadn’t yet figured it out. Nevertheless, it was remarkably uncomfortable.
Crawly grinned again, regaining some of their decadent sprawl. Their ankles peeped out of the blackness of their robes in an inexplicably indecent manner. Aziraphale had to look away.
“Oh, you know. Heard about this little town, good cheese, lots of wickedness and immorality, had to come check it out. Imagine strolling in and hearing about this odd white-haired chap who got himself arrested two days after arriving.”
“Ah. You’ve come here to gloat, then,” Aziraphale nodded to himself. This was business. That would make all this more comprehensible. He felt oddly disappointed at the thought, though, and couldn’t figure out why.
“Not necessarily,” said Crawly, pulling Aziraphale out of his thoughts. At Aziraphale’s questioning look, they added, “We’re old acquaintances, aren’t we? Get to check up on each other from time to time.”
“Old enemies,” Aziraphale corrected, despite the little rush of warmth blooming in his chest. (Chests were rather finicky things, he was finding.) Things on Earth did get awfully lonely from time to time. Especially when one was stuck in a subterranean cell.
“Old whatever.”
They both sat in silence for a minute or two, comfortably contemplating this happy little development. Then Crawly asked, “Have you got any ideas about getting out, then? Anything like a plan for how you’re going to get out of here?”
“Oh! No, not as such,” Aziraphale replied, and started worrying at his hands again. He didn’t suppose he was going to be let go without some sort of miraculous intervention. The guards he had so far encountered didn’t seem particularly inclined to listen to explanations, and sadly the city’s wickedness didn’t seem far enough gone to punish murder with a slap on the wrist.
He could feel the weight of Crawly’s eyes regarding him. “Being stuck underground really doesn’t suit you, angel,” they said finally.
Aziraphale looked up at them, but before he could figure out some kind of response Crawly’s demeanor changed, eyebrows drawing down as they leaned forward, inspecting him. “No, it’s more than that. Something’s off…”
Those yellow eyes raked all over Aziraphale, and it set off a very strange sensation in his stomach.
“...Your ring! That’s what it is!” Crawly sounded genuinely surprised. “Every time I’ve seen you, you’ve had that ring, even back… Why’d they take your ring?”
Aziraphale couldn’t help a heavy sigh. “I suspect they might have sold it.”
Crawly hissed. “I’m sssure they haven’t.”
Aziraphale blinked, confused, but before he could think of anything to say Crawly was twisting round on the stool, sniffing in the direction of the door with a hard expression.
“Those men coming down the hall certainly don’t bear you any good will, angel. Any last-minute revelations?”
Aziraphale took a fortifying breath. “Erm. No,” he admitted.
Crawly’s smile had a sort of sharp-edged relish to it. “Looks like a little demonic interference wouldn’t go amiss, then, would it?”
Aziraphale’s chest briefly malfunctioned again under the magnitude of the implication, and Crowley waited with a patiently expectant expression while he located his words.
“I suppose I — I couldn’t really do anything about it if you decided to — well...”
“Good. That’s settled.” Crawly settled back in the chair with a satisfied sort of wiggle and changed the subject completely. “Have you tried this ‘gender’ thing they’ve come up with, by the way? It’s brilliant! Trust humans to take something as simple as minor biological variation completely the wrong way, and then make something so fantastically absurd out of it. Honestly, it’s like alcohol all over again.”
Aziraphale was still worried about his impending fate, and also had rather less interest in gender than Crowley seemed to. He hummed noncommittally, trying to disguise his lack of enthusiasm for politeness' sake, just before the door started making the sort of noises that usually immediately preceded bursting open.
The door burst open.
Four men strode in, three of them wearing entirely too much weaponry for Aziraphale’s liking. Aziraphale scrambled to his feet as best he could.
The city’s judge wore a blue robe, and ate too much pickled anchovy, judging by his breath.
“You!” he barked. “The stranger with no name. Your judgment is upon you.”
Crawly made a face like they were fighting a smirk. “No name?” they asked, smirking at Aziraphale with their eyebrows.
“Yes, well, being as I’m not technically supposed to be here —” he hissed, pointedly brushing off his robe, before he was cut off by the loud exclamation of one of the guards, who all seemed to have just noticed Crawly was there.
“Who are you, then?” demanded the loud guard, hand falling threateningly on his sword.
“I’m ssssssso glad you asssssked.” Crawly turned and rose, and by the time they were on their feet they had pulled their demonic presence around them like a cloak, staring down the humans from the center of a spot that suddenly seemed to be drawing in and devouring all the light in the room.
One of the guards toppled backward in terror, landing on his arm and biting off a cry when it made a quiet crunch.
Aziraphale thought this was quite understandable. He himself was having a hard time moving the air that had got caught in his throat.
Every inch of Crawly radiated infernal charisma. Their eyes burned like sulfur, their expression mingled wrath and effortless command, and their movements were unearthly and strange. Their hair glowed like a halo of fire. They seemed to shine with darkness.
They loomed impossibly before the humans, and when they spoke it was with a deep and resounding sibilance that stole the movement from the already pale faces.
“I am the serpent who brought misery and wonder to the world. I am the terror of rich men. I am the trembling of kings in their beds and the oath of the liar. I am the pricks of whispering starlight which lead men out into the night."
Crawly drew back their power a bit, though the enormity of their presence still kept Aziraphale’s throat from working properly.
“But mossssst importantly, I am the friend of this man you have falsely arrested.”
“We — we’re dispensing justice,” stammered the judge, who seemed to be the first to recover the capacity of speech.
Crawly snorted derisively, and Aziraphale couldn’t help staring at the working of their throat. “You’re putting on a pantomime.”
“H-he’s a murderer!”
Crawly snarled. “He’s a scapegoat. The murderer’s walking the streets, probably because of the bag of coin he slipped your patrolmen.”
The terrified human fell silent.
“Now,” said Crawly. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. You are going to escort my friend here up to your office, where you will give him his ring and two bottles from your cellar.”
Crawly paused to indolently regard the humans’ frantic nodding. Aziraphale couldn’t look away from the imperious tilt of their head; they looked down at the men with the air of absolute authority, Aziraphale thought distantly, of a king standing before a group of errant lords. The lines of their body were loose but not relaxed, and they still shone from within with tenebrous power. Aziraphale could see so clearly in them the serpent they were at Eden, coiled and ready to strike in less than a moment, and, oh, it was dazzling.
“Then you’ll let him go, with a pass ensuring him immunity from any more of your men’s ‘peace-keeping’.”
Crowley glanced over to Aziraphale, who found it within himself to smile weakly back at them.
“What do you think, angel?”
Four sets of terrified eyes turned to Aziraphale, who hardly noticed.
“Oh — oh, it’s — that sounds very nice, of course. Although — I did also have some writing tablets...?” he ventured.
Crawly grinned broadly at him. “You’ll return those, too, of course,” they added, before they turned back to the men, and their smile sharpened into something tempered with menace.
“Then you —” with a pointed look at the guards “— are going to come with us while my friend leads you to the real culprit, whom you will arrest so that your ‘justice’ system can perform some actual justice. Does that seem reassssssssonable?”
The humans hastened to supply scattered assents.
Crawly smiled. “Exssssssscellent.”
In an instant, the magnetic potence was gone, and Crawly looked deceptively human again. (If anything, the men looked even more awestruck. Aziraphale thought that was understandable, too.)
Aziraphale suspected something may be wrong with his corporation; his chest had gone all tight and funny again, and it gave an extra pang of something when Crawly turned to him with a satisfied look and gestured toward the doorway.
“After you.”
He managed another smile, and started hesitantly toward the door, while the guards ducked out of the way with scrupulous politeness — until he caught sight of the one still sweating and writhing fitfully in the corner, curled around his arm.
“Oh, Crawly —” he turned back to them (the rope around his wrists had fallen away at some point, when had that happened?) and found them closer than expected, looking at him with a surprised sort of attentiveness.
“I — well, I don’t suppose —” he said, nodding shortly in the direction of the man. “I suppose it would be very wily to perform what looked like a divine miracle in a city where there weren’t supposed to be any…?”
“I — you — ff —” Crawly looked incredulously between him and the guard for a moment, before making a strangled noise and striding over to crouch down near the man, who didn’t look much happier about it than they did.
“I’m going to have to cause so much trouble to smooth this over Downstairs,” they grumbled, giving the arm in question a sharp rap and watching in dramatic resignation as the bones visibly snapped back into place.
“Stay out of Uruk for the next few weeks,” they muttered to the stupefied man, who nodded silently, looking more dazed than entirely conscious, before lifting themself up to give Aziraphale an expectant look.
“Thank you,” said Aziraphale, feeling a little dazed himself, though, again, that could probably be blamed on the fact that all the blood in his corporation had tried to rush to his cheeks at once.
Crawly smiled, seemingly despite themself. “Let’s go get you those dates, then, angel,” they said, nudging toward the door again. “Oi! You oafs! Let’s get this over with, yeah?”
Aziraphale returned the smile helplessly, and kindled the little tongue of warmth flickering within his breast.
——————————————————————————————
638 B.C.
“Humans really are the most marvelous creatures, aren’t they?” Crawly crowed by way of greeting, dropping into the seat across from Aziraphale with a tremendous grin and very little warning.
“Crawly!” Aziraphale hissed, lowering his hands, which had been hovering over an unconscious man sick with some sort of pestilence that had been sweeping the area. Aziraphale wasn’t sure why pestilences had been invented if he was just going to be sent around to cure all of them, but it must be part of the Plan, which was, of course, unknowable. All Aziraphale knew was that he kept getting sent to drive them out of places and it was all getting a bit irritating. “I’m trying to work!”
Crawly gave the man on the bed a sympathetic grimace that didn’t actually seem all that sincere. “Obviously. We’re always working. Both our Headquarters seem to think we’re fine being worked to the bone. And there just keep being more humans, which, honestly, I just don’t see how this is meant to go on, if they just keep heaping everything on us.”
Aziraphale made a carefully noncommittal noise. It wasn’t that he wasn’t glad to see Crawly for the first time in about three hundred years, but Crawly had a tendency to say things that made him nervous. He squared his shoulders and raised his hands to try again, and Crawly went back to grinning. He was in a good mood, then.
“What’re you working on?” Crawly asked casually, as soon as Aziraphale had started to concentrate.
Aziraphale dropped his hands again and sighed, shooting Crawly an irritated glance as he tried to parse out whether it was safe to tell him. Crawly didn’t look particularly chastened.
“I’m supposed to heal the town of a sickness that’s passing through. You wouldn’t know anything about it?”
“Nah, not my style,” Crawly said flippantly. “Why’re you working on them one at a time? Thought angels were supposed to be good with the healing?” he continued, before Aziraphale had a chance to ask what a style was.
“I could heal them all at once, technically,” Aziraphale admitted grudgingly, “but with this many people it leaves you with the most abominable headache. More pleasant to go through one by one. Even if it is horrendously boring.”
“Ah, neat. Anyway! You should come away to Assyria for a bit. There’s this chap Ashurbanipal who’s trying to collect all of human knowledge in one place. Imagine!”
“They’ve done that before, Crawly. They’re called libraries. Mostly ‘all of human knowledge’ turns out to be tax records and lists of war trophies. Hardly worth going all that way for.”
“No, no, Aziraphale, this one’s different. This one’s collecting stories as well. And science and things. All the fruits of humans poking their little heads about, trying to figure out what goes on and why, all in one place!”
Aziraphale paused. “Are they really?”
“All those questions, angel, all that where does it go and how does it work and why doesn’t it do this instead — do you know, they’ve started wondering what the world is made of? I’m not sure She’s designed the universe in great enough detail for them.” He smiled with all his teeth.
Aziraphale sniffed and turned away.
Apparently, however, Crawly’s excellent mood was not to be derailed that easily.
“Oh, come on, angel,” he cajoled in a low and wily voice, “think of the sssstories. Fantastic things. All that divinely gifted imagination, thousands of lifetimes of it — and blessed if they haven’t started reinventing them! One person thinks up something good — or sees it, must have done, must have been one of the guards — anyway! One person thinks up something good, and suddenly everyone’s cottoned on, tweaking and exaggerating and resetting the thing, making it all bigger. The most fantastic sense of drama, humans. Honestly, both our sides are dust in the wind compared with the way they can develop an idea.”
“Humans are rather good at coming up with things,” Aziraphale agreed mildly.
And that had been that, or so Aziraphale had thought — until he had finished with the sick townspeople and they had ended up in the nearest tavern with a rapidly emptying jug of barley ale between them, and Crawly said, out of the blue:
“The hero’s a very human thing, innit?”
Aziraphale’s nose wrinkled. “I suppose?”
But Crawly had apparently already made up his mind, and was rapidly getting into a roll. “No, but — just — listen. A hero’s an opposite to evil, right, without being divine, either. Does things as opposed to being things. All these valiant quests, daring rescues, valorous deeds, fueled by passion, loyalty, love, rather than holiness or the will of God. Like — right. Not once, in an extra-temporal eternity, could either of our sides come up with the idea of adventure, could they?”
“Probably not,” Aziraphale ceded.
“Exactly! And there’s a sort of excitement to the idea, it’s exciting, isn’t it? You don’t get that in — in the ‘forces of God versus forces of Hell,’ do you? Dreadful stuff, from a storytelling view. Not too wild about it the rest of the time, mind, but that’s work for you. But heroes, right, that’s different. There’s a — a romance to it.”
“Romance,” Aziraphale repeated dubiously, thoroughly lost.
Crawly seemed too wrapped up to pay him any heed. “Hero goes somewhere dangerous, does something… y’know, hero-ey — saves the being in distress, sets things right, gets something nice for their trouble, end of the day, everyone goes home happy. There’s something — wonderful, about that, don’t you think?”
He was looking at Aziraphale earnestly, now, or about as earnestly as one could when one was leaning about thirty degrees to the side.
Aziraphale was still lost, but something inside him felt as though it understood something very important. “Yes,” he said, looking into the deep saffron color of Crawly’s unblinking eyes. “Yes, I imagine I might.”
“Yeah,” said Crawly, sounding very drunk indeed. “Me too.”
Aziraphale looked down at his cup. “We should probably sober up soon.”
Crawly made a horrible face and slouched down in his seat so he could put his dirty feet on the table. “One more hour.”
Aziraphale nodded, reluctant to give up the enjoyably tingly feeling he suddenly had. “That seems reasonable.”
“Cheers,” Crawly grunted, and knocked back his glass.