Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They sit side by side on the bus. 

This is a first, at least for Aziraphale and Crowley anywhere except when particularly drunk in the bookshop, and hardly ever then. Toliman and Lia, of course, have had a habit of gravitating toward each other since Caligula’s Rome, and Aziraphale has had a habit of not thinking too hard about that. But then, there are a great many things he’s had a habit of not thinking about too closely, aren’t there? 

He hasn't even had time to think about how monumentally foolish he’d been, aside from his brief admission to Crowley that he’d made a mess of things, but he ought to have known better. Not about all of it — he still doesn’t think running away would have worked, for all that he’d wanted to go with a desperation that frightened him into outright cruelty — but about most of it. He’d been wrong, and he’d been cruel about it, and — 

“Can hear you thinking, angel. Just… stop for a minute,” Crowley grumbles from where he’s slouched in his seat next to Aziraphale. Before Aziraphale can respond, Crowley tilts sideways, just enough that his head lands on Aziraphale’s shoulder.  This… never happens, at least not for more than a moment when they’ve gotten very drunk, but Crowley doesn’t move. The light is too dim to be sure with Crowley still wearing his sunglasses, but Aziraphale thinks he’s fallen asleep. 

When Toliman drops out of their favored fennec fox shape and into a miniature version of the Serpent of Eden, sliding off Crowley’s leg to the dirty floor in a limp coil, Aziraphale knows they’re both asleep. “Lia?” he murmurs, but she’s already moving, because of the two of them she’s always been smarter than he has, even before she was much of anything at all. 

She doesn’t like monkey shapes, never really has for some reason. But she takes a monkey’s shape now, so that she can hop down and pick Toliman up, setting them back on Crowley’s leg and keeping a hand on their back, careful to touch only Toliman and not Crowley. They didn’t know until today what it feels like to have someone else who is not a daemon have intentional physical contact with Lia, at least not without express permission. Lia’s small hand brushing Crowley’s leg probably wouldn’t harm either of them — certainly nothing like relentless angelic hands pinning Lia’s wings — but it’s a cruel risk to take.

If it feels even remotely like — 

Well. Lia is careful, and she’ll keep Toliman from falling without letting her hands slip even a little, Aziraphale is sure of it. And he can keep still, and they can let their friend, their — well, they can let Crowley and Toliman rest for a little while, that’s what they can do. 

“I called Toliman darling,” Lia mutters. “They definitely noticed.”

Aziraphale considers swearing for the second time in six thousand years, but he’s exhausted too, and can’t seem to find the energy for that. So he just tilts his own head back and stares up at the dingy ceiling. “We can’t possibly be in more trouble than we already are,” he says at last. “I don’t imagine anything we were afraid of is even relevant at this point. Except…” 

“Except being told no, if we somehow make it out of this?” Lia says, voice very dry. “We could have handled that running off together business better, you know.” 

“Yes, don’t you think I’ve considered that, Ophelia?” 

“That’s not my name.” 

“Not quite, no, but Lia simply isn’t long enough for the tone I was trying to set.” 

Lia huffs, and Aziraphale has to bite the tip of his tongue to stifle a sudden hysterical burst of laughter. What a ridiculous thing to be bickering about now. Or… perhaps not. The question of names has always been a sensitive one between them. That thought stills his hysteria immediately, and he turns his head enough to make sure he only touches Lia when he strokes an apologetic finger down her spine. 

“There has to be a reason you caught that prophecy,” Lia says, leaning into his touch as if to say all’s forgiven. “Any ideas? Choose our faces wisely…” 

“Nothing clear yet,” Aziraphale says. It’s his turn to come up with an actual solution that will get them out of this mess, if he possibly can. And he thinks he’s better suited to it this time, because while he’s not as imaginative as Crowley, their best hope seems to lie with this last prophecy. He and Lia had spent a good bit of mental focus, recently, on deciphering the prophecies of Agnes Nutter, and he feels that the solution is there, only just out of reach. 

They have a little time, after all. Gabriel and the others will be distracted for a bit, getting everyone settled again, and he would imagine that Beelzebub and the Hell-equivalents of Michael, Uriel, and Sandalphon — perhaps one of those is Dagon, the one who spoke to Crowley over the radio after Warlock’s party? — must have their hands equally full. Which means there’s a little bit of time. Not enough to dawdle, but enough to think instead of panic. 

Choose your faces wisely…  

No. They couldn’t, could they? Inhabiting corporations isn’t that much different than possessing someone, he knows that now, but… 

Perhaps there’s a way to manage it, but Aziraphale isn’t certain he’s familiar enough with the mechanics of these things to work the details out on his own. Once Crowley wakes up, they can discuss it. 

“It’s a pity we don’t change as easily as you or Toliman,” Aziraphale murmurs to Lia. “Then it would be simple.” 

“Maybe you do, have you ever tried?” Lia suggests. 

“Well, no, dear.” 

“Change what?”

Aziraphale looks over to see Crowley's glasses have slipped down his face and he's opened one eye, yellow-gold glowing faintly in the darkness of the bus. “I may have an idea as to how we’ll get out of this particular mess we’re in,” Aziraphale explains carefully. “But I should think we… may want to hold off on discussing it properly until we’re at your place.” Remembering that he never said yes, and that Crowley has… far too many reasons to have changed his mind, Aziraphale adds, “If the offer is still open, that is.” 

“Course it is, angel, don’t be an idiot,” Crowley mutters, closing his eye again and pushing his glasses back into place. “You’re right though. ‘S long as we don’t turn on anything electronic, they can’t tap in, and Above can’t find it. Made sure of that.” 

“I thought you might have.” Aziraphale had made his bookshop — oh, God, if there is a later he’ll let himself grieve for that but there is no time to lament his lost home now. He had made his bookshop as secure as he could manage, a place for Lia to be free in whatever form she chose, a place where Crowley and Toliman could come and be as near to safe as possible. 

If he, blinkered and foolish as he’d been until this very day, had thought to do such a thing, then of course Crowley would have secured his own home in every possible way. Aziraphale’s wards might, possibly, have been more complete, but that would only be because they’d have had much more time to set in and because he’d enjoyed tinkering with them, adding things. And they hadn’t helped against a perfectly mundane candle, had they? At least, he assumes that’s what must have happened; he doesn’t actually know for sure. 

“You could rest too, if you wanted. I’ll keep watch,” Lia says, and the thing is, she can, can’t she? Even now, as near to a human-daemon pair as any celestial beings can ever be, there are certain facets of the typical bond that don’t apply. One of those is that, while sleep usually overtakes a human and their daemon within minutes of each other, with Lia and Aziraphale, one of them can be fully alert while the other naps. 

Typically, it’s Lia, napping in the sun and looking for all the world like any other bookshop cat, because Aziraphale doesn’t sleep. But, just this once… 

Tentatively, he leans his head against Crowley’s, half expecting to get pushed away. Even though he’s not sure if Crowley’s even still awake. What he gets is a soft huff of breath that sounds almost like a laugh, and nothing else. 

Aziraphale closes his eyes, trusting his daemon to keep watch for them all. And if he doesn’t quite sleep, being so out of practice that he doesn’t remember how, he does drift. There is so much in his mind to lose himself in, after all. 

And so, in the quiet of a bus going the wrong way in the night, a demon and his daemon sleep, while an angel and his daemon remember.

Chapter Text

She doesn’t exist yet, in the Garden. 

Adam and Eve and their daemons know that the others they see are angels, after all. There is no need for Aziraphale to manifest a second-self, not then, and for some time after it becomes the wise choice, it is only necessary sometimes. This changes after the Flood, when the rebellious Watchers are cast down, their Nephilim children wiped out with everyone else, save for Noah’s line. After that, the Watchers who remained loyal retreat from Earth, leaving only Aziraphale. 

He cannot seem to be anything but human, now. 

There are rules, of course. Second-selves — daemons — are natural for humans. They are body-spirit-soul, and it has been ordained that their souls shall exist outside them in the forms of animals. After the apple, daemons also settle as humans reach the age at which they begin to become adults, their daemons’ final forms shaped by the personality of the human in question. 

But angels are not meant to be beings of two minds. They are to be one, and whole, beings of spirit-soul. Because Aziraphale must blend in, he is the exception to this rule, but only so much as is necessary. So she has her own awareness, and she can speak to her angel. Like humans, they can make use of the advantages to never being alone, to always having a companion to speak to. 

(Gabriel almost denies this request, but Michael thinks Aziraphale’s point that it will help him to blend in is a good one. Aziraphale isn’t sure how to react about that; since the War, Michael is silent more than they speak, and as far as he knows they’ve never paid him the slightest notice before, but the important thing is that his request is granted, right?)

And so, she exists. She exists apart from her angel, as long as they walk the Earth. She never sees Heaven with her own eyes, though. She has all of Aziraphale’s memories, of course, so she knows what Heaven looks like, but angels are not meant to be two selves, and so whenever they return, Aziraphale must take her inside again. 

They both try, for a long time, to convince themselves it’s a relief to be properly one again. But of course, if it was, they wouldn’t feel as if there were two of them at all. 

She cannot ever exist apart in Heaven. She cannot ever be any shape but a bird. As a bird, there are only certain colors she can be. White, ideally, though creams and pale browns or greys are acceptable. No bright colors, no dark colors, and she is to be as silent as possible. She is not truly real, they say, and she is not to act like it. She is part of Aziraphale, manifested for practicality’s sake, and she is not to act as if she is anything in herself. 

So, of course, the very first rule is that she is never to have a name.

<><><>

Aziraphale does his best to abide by the rules. He knows as early as the Ark that he isn’t a good angel, because when Crawley stood next to him and said “you can’t kill kids” with such horror and “were you going to say ineffable?” with such disgust, Aziraphale’s instinct had been to agree with him. And he knows for a fact that there was no active demonic influence making him do that — that would be bad enough, that would make him too weak to defend himself from demonic power — but it hadn’t been necessary. 

He’d simply agreed. And he shouldn’t have, because that was questioning God’s plan.

It hadn’t been any better at Golgotha, where Aziraphale could only say that he wasn’t consulted on policy concerns. He isn’t, actually, which is probably for the best because he’s certain he would have gotten himself into terrible trouble by now if he were. 

There are times he thinks his being in trouble would be worth it if it meant he could do something before the punishment comes, but they’ll never ask him so what does it even matter? It doesn’t, obviously, and what he needs to do is learn how to stop thinking like this. He is an angel, and it is not for him to question.

But there’s his second-self, and she is… She’s… 

She isn’t supposed to be anything. Oh, Aziraphale argued, as soon as he manifested her, that she ought to work like the humans’ daemons, as much as possible. A true consciousness, not the illusion the other angels use so as to fool the humans when duties bring them down here temporarily. Aziraphale lives here every bit as much as the humans do, and if he is to be guiding them, then he needs to understand them. 

Humans live as a pair, self and second-self, human and daemon. It just makes sense for Aziraphale to live the same way and to do it properly, as far as is appropriate. He’d never consider naming her, of course, but there is something useful in never being alone, in always having someone to speak to who knows everything about you.

Aziraphale sometimes catches himself in the action of reaching out — reaching out for what , he doesn’t know, but somehow simply lowering his hand only unsettles him further. Stroking his daemon’s feathers, on the other hand, brings comfort. It’s still not —- he knows he was not reaching for her, even if that’s all he knows, but it helps. He feels less alone, with a piece of him outside of himself and maybe not entirely him anymore. 

He’s not sure what hurt it is they’re trying to soothe, when he pets her or when she preens his hair. But it works, and surely that’s what matters most, isn’t it?

<><><>

The first time she breaks any rule at all is after the Ark but before Golgotha, when they are in the Library of Alexandria. 

She doesn’t like the Ptolemies any more than Aziraphale does, but the Library, oh . The Library is one of the most wonderful things they have ever seen, one of the most wonderful things the humans have invented. They both love the scent of the scrolls, papyrus or parchment and ink, the texture against Aziraphale’s fingers. She doesn’t touch the scrolls, just admires them from her perch on his shoulder. 

There is something truly lovely about Alexandria and the way it collects people of many cultures. Oh, it isn’t perfect, though they do their best, as they go about the city, to will away the tensions and prejudices among the different communities. It’s frustrating that they can’t do anything lasting, but that isn’t what they’re meant to do here on Earth. They are here to thwart demonic schemes and spread low-level blessings, unless given a specific assignment to do more than that. 

Just now, there is no such assignment. 

The Ptolemies don’t improve things in their city, but they do respect their Library. Aziraphale has been here for some time, and since he prefers to change his appearance as little as possible, it is her job to make them seem like someone new every few decades. Not that they spend all their time here, that would be dereliction of duty, but they can’t help coming back. Right now, Above wants them to stay here for a while. Queen Cleopatra and her consort, Mark Antony of Rome, are figures of note. They are coming into conflict with the young Octavianus, who rules Rome, and it is believed that their eventual battle will shape the world for many generations to come. 

So she and Aziraphale are here to observe, now. They can stay here until things end, one way or the other. And the queen sends her children to the Library, sometimes. They have their own tutors, but those tutors are Library scholars, and sometimes only the Library itself will do. Aziraphale and his daemon know the sight of the children well, by now.  

The oldest, young King Ptolemy Caesar, is a bright boy who only does better once he has a companion in Antony’s son Antyllus. Of the younger royals, Antony’s children, the smaller boy is too young to come here, so Aziraphale has only seen the elder, Alexander Helios, and his twin sister, Cleopatra Selene. 

She’s the one angel and daemon like best.  Her brothers seem to be reasonably well-behaved for their tutors, and they listen politely when Aziraphale sees an opportunity to teach them a little himself, shaping their morals as he ought to do, since they may well be leaders in the next generation. 

But Selene and her Asteria are different, not least because they’re one of the rare same-gendered pairs. The nameless daemon and Aziraphale never had a particularly soft spot for children — they don’t think of Crawly, how Aziraphale found him hidden away on the Ark with all the children he could collect — but children who like libraries are kindred spirits, of a sort. The two of them ask questions, child and daemon together bubbling over with them, staying as late as they can get away with to read more. Aziraphale and his daemon do their best to answer, though it turns out that children can ask questions as impossible as a demon can. They do their best, all the same.

(They haven’t seen Crawly since the Flood; sometimes they wonder if he has a daemon now too, and what it might be like to talk to someone even a little bit like they are. Except no demon can ever be like them, it’s a ridiculous thought and they don’t really entertain it. It just… pops up in their minds, from time to time.)

It all goes poorly for Egypt, of course. Aziraphale is expecting to be reassigned any day, but Selene still comes to the Library. Her daemon is quiet now and so is she, the growing fear in the city stifling two young minds. 

Aziraphale’s daemon just wants to draw a little smile out of them. They’re so young, no one will think anything of it if they tell a fanciful story. And so she takes off from her angel’s shoulder, circling Selene and Asteria, feathers shifting from color to color like God’s rainbow. Bright, vivid colors, until child and daemon laugh with delight. 

“How do you do that?” Asteria asks, flying up as a sunny yellow bird herself, to join her in flight. 

“Just a bit of magic, little one.” 

They are, of course, given their reassignment the very next day.

The nameless daemon doesn’t want to go back to her usual colors, after that. “It would make us blend in even more if I had some color sometimes, you know.” 

“We can’t do that. The rules are very clear. What you did with the children is… Well, we could say it was a kindness, and therefore acceptable as a one-time thing, but we cannot do that! Now, get rid of that ridiculous red plumage and go back to being white!” 

She does, but she doesn’t like it. It’s the first time they’ve had separate opinions on something. It’s a very strange feeling, and she can’t help but wonder what it means, not to agree with her other-self. It happens to humans with their daemons all the time, of course, but she and her angel aren’t mortal. She isn’t even truly real. It isn’t supposed to happen. 

What does it mean, that it is happening?

She doesn’t say this aloud, though, because there was someone else who asked questions once, and now all that’s left is the lack of that person.

They say that the pain of the Fall itself wiped most of the memories of Heaven from the demons’ minds. Whether this is true or not, she and Aziraphale wouldn’t know, but for those who remained in Heaven, when the damned Fell a shock wave coursed through the holy ranks, and now all the angels’ clear memories are of the War and what came after. Oh, memories from Before return quickly when it comes to other living angels, because the others are still there to prompt it; the memories are always a little soft-edged compared to memories from After, but they do come back. 

She and Aziraphale, when they were still truly one being, had a — a someone, someone they cared for deeply and now cannot remember clearly (a starlight friend, says the back of their minds), but the very fact of their not remembering tells them far more than they wish to know. Dead or Fallen, those are the only possibilities, and both options hurt enough that it’s just… better not to think of it. 

They see Selene a few times more — the reassignment was to Rome, just in time to watch Caesar Octavianus march a bright little princess, her twin brother, and their little brother through Rome, bound in golden chains that almost send the smallest boy toppling off his feet. The last time is in Mauretania, when Selene is a queen building her own library, when she and her husband King Juba seem to be trying to make their city Iol-Caesaria into a new Alexandria, or so it looks to the nameless daemon and Aziraphale.

They saw that king marched in chains too — Octavian, now Augustus, took his cue from Julius Caesar, who put a four-year-old boy in his Triumph. Children marched as prizes, and then adopted into Roman ways, and now a pair of them have crowns of their own together. There are crueler things to do to children, of course, so perhaps angel and daemon judge too harshly, but the young princes vanished, didn’t they? And their older brothers never even made it to Rome. 

On the whole, the daemon and her angel don’t like Rome when they have to stay near the Palatine Hill, which is a pity because they’re so often required to be there. The women of the imperial family are well enough, steadfast Octavia and clever Livia, the quiet intelligence of the two Antonias and the high-spirited Julia. Selene visits them from time to time, having been raised among them (anyway, the Antonias are her half-sisters), and she never stops being curious and witty. Their daemons shine as bright as they do, so that even when life turns them one against another the unnamed daemon and her angel can’t help but like them all.

But none of them come to happy ends, they die in pain or they die too young or they die too alone , and those who rise in their place have not half of their redeeming qualities, in the opinion of both the nameless daemon and her angel. Michael thinks they should stay close to the imperial family — except when they need an observer for a special assignment, which is how they don’t get to see the Christ child born but do watch him preach, and do watch him die and return — but by the time Tiberius leaves the city to Sejanus, the daemon and her angel leave Rome as often as they can.

When they can't, they spend as much time as possible among the general population of the city, which they like much better. First, to do their jobs with small blessings and healings, but more and more…

They like living here, on Earth. 

They probably shouldn't, but they do.

<><><>

Aziraphale doesn’t like to sleep, and this is one area where he and his daemon are in complete agreement. 

It’s wasteful, for one thing. They love the world, perhaps more than they should, and there’s always something new to see, always a new book to read or a new food to try. Giving up hours to a nothingness they don’t need is — is — Well, why would they ever want to do it? 

And then there are dreams. Humans talk about dreams often, seeking meaning in them. Sometimes, of course, the Almighty does use human dreams to send a message, and guides someone to be able to explain it — dear, clever Joseph had even offered to interpret Aziraphale’s dreams for him once, because while keeping an eye on Joseph, Aziraphale had been inspired to give sleeping a try. 

He hasn’t heard the voice of God since he lied about the flaming sword. Deep down, Aziraphale knows he had been hoping to hear Her again, for if a pharaoh who didn’t even believe in Her could receive divine messages in his sleep then maybe… 

It hadn’t worked, of course. His daemon had said they ought to have expected it wouldn’t. 

But they had dreamed. 

Dreams are nonsensical, jumbled things, and neither the angel nor his daemon like them at all. A lot of them are bits of memory, so far as they can tell, tossed together and stirred up into something new and messy and impossible to understand. They don’t have to be lived memories, either; Aziraphale is quite sure elements of stories he’s read or plays he’s seen made their way into the jumble as well.

But at least he can name those things, more or less. There are other things, things he can’t put a name to. An echo of laughter that seems to ring in his ears for hours after he wakes, a bright warmth he can’t remember ever experiencing for real, though it feels a little like a hug feels to humans and a little like sunlight’s warmth on a corporeal body’s skin. 

And eyes. 

The starmakers all carried their task in their eyes. Aziraphale knows this, even though he wasn’t one of them. He was… they called it a collector, then. A collector of stories, which for angels meant that Aziraphale used to watch the ones assigned to various duties, and then he would preserve the memories as records. It’s why he’s been told that he can be very confusing when he uses his words to share his memories. He’s used to simply… willing them into the crystals where they were kept, crystals that any angel could pick up and experience the story through his eyes. When he tries to use words, he starts too soon or goes on tangents or gets things hopelessly tangled, and he can’t seem to prevent it.

One thing he loves about books, paradoxically, is that they’re much less simple than the crystals. Everything is filtered through word choice, and sometimes through the circumstances under which a book was written. It’s why he develops a fondness for misprints, especially misprinted Bibles. In Heaven, there is no way to hide anything which means there’s nothing to discover.  

Still, he misses it sometimes. He’s not a collector anymore, and Gabriel told him they don’t want crystals of his time on Earth. “If they could see it through our eyes, maybe they’d like it more,” he tells his daemon once. 

“I don’t think they want to like it. It’s just a place to vie with Hell for human souls, for them. Small battlefields until the big one,” she says, and something deep inside Aziraphale tells him that’s probably true, but he’ll just have to get better at telling stories in other ways. Reading more will help with that, he’s sure of it. 

Well, with most of it. There is, after all, one story he will never be able to make sense of. Their lost starlight friend, and those eyes . 

Aziraphale knows he followed the starmakers for a time. The starmakers, the cloudweavers, the earthsculptors, he’d been fascinated by them all. And there were a few he befriended, at least a little, but the only one he remembers clearly now is Yarael, a cloudweaver he used to go flying with when they were taking a break from spinning mist. Like him, Yarael doesn’t really remember any of the other friends they once had, which means that, like him, they lost them to death or Falling.

And it’s one of those losses that haunts him. Haunts them , because Aziraphale knows his daemon is as unsettled by the half-memories as he is. Warmth and laughter and vivid red, and long lazy conversations, full of questions because they could ask each other, as long as no one else heard. And usually no one heard, floating in the blue-purple-pink-red of their friend’s favorite nebula. 

“We’re like binary stars, you know.”

Aziraphale and his daemon remember those words. Only those words, out of countless conversations. The words, but not the voice. 

They remember that all the starmakers had space in their eyes. Stars or planets’ rings, or…

They can’t remember a name, and as far as they know, they never will. But they remember those eyes , those green-and-gold nebula eyes. 

And they stop sleeping, because they don’t need it, because there are better things to do, because Michael said last time Aziraphale saw her that they’re getting too human, and he doesn’t think she told Gabriel but she could whenever she wants to. Not sleeping is a way to be less human, one that won’t draw suspicion but that they can use if anyone ever questions their behavior. They stop sleeping because they don’t even like it anyway.

But really it’s because of this: because they always dream of that laugh and those eyes, and they simply can’t bear it.

<><><>

The other daemon isn’t a bird. Or a snake, for that matter.

Of course, the nameless daemon shouldn’t have expected a demon’s daemon to be a bird like she has to be, but she did rather expect that Crawly — Crowley’s daemon would be a snake. They were, after all, the first time she saw them, at the Crucifixion. A bright blue snake coiled on Crowley’s shoulder, almost glowing against his black robes. 

This time, they’re a cat. A small, spotted cat with bright green eyes, like the ones she remembers seeing when she and Aziraphale had an assignment in the jungles of the southwestern continent twenty years ago.

Under the table in Petronius’ restaurant, she hops a little closer, awkward on feet meant for perching, not moving. Over the daemons' heads, their other halves are comparing notes. Caligula is apparently already worse than demonic influence could have made him, and Crowley seems to find Aziraphale's idea to get Nero interested in music very funny.

She doesn't care about that, though. She has questions.

“What’s it like?” she whispers, knowing that Aziraphale will be aware she’s speaking to Crowley’s daemon, but not of what, exactly, she’s saying unless he focuses on it. And from the sounds of his voice and Crowley’s, they are both too absorbed in each other’s company to care about their daemons. 

“What’s what like?” the cat says, and they sound utterly confused. 

“Being a cat. I imagine being a snake was familiar for you, but cats are so different, isn’t it strange?” She wants to try a cat form for herself, but she can’t think like that. It’s not possible, and this is probably just demonic temptation in a more subtle form. But she can’t help her curiosity, and there’s no harm in asking how something feels, is there? 

No more harm than sharing a meal with their hereditary enemy must be, anyway. 

The cat’s ears go flat against their head. “Haven’t you ever tried anything but birds?” 

“I’m not allowed,” she sighs. “I did make my feathers all bright colors once. Stuck with the red all the rest of that day and the next, till Aziraphale reminded me I’m not to do that either.” Actually, the shade of red she’d picked had been very close to Crowley’s hair. Odd, that. She hadn’t even realized at the time, but it is a very vivid color, so it must simply have stuck somewhere in her mind. 

(It’s close to another shade of red too, but she doesn’t think of that. Can’t even begin to contemplate the questions it might raise.)

“You’re not allowed? That’s — for Satan’s sake, that’s crippling! How bloody stupid — right, bird, what’s your name?” 

Oh. That hurts, actually. How foolish, that the question should hurt, and yet it does. “I don’t have one of those either. We break up Aziraphale’s name for aliases when we must, his and mine, but I’m not to have a name. I’m not really separate, after all, this is just for appearances.” 

The cat hisses, their back going up. She is in the form of a light brown pigeon right now; a prey animal even to a cat as small as this one. She hops back in alarm, only just stopping herself from taking flight. It’s odd, sometimes, how she has animal instincts, stronger even than the human impulse to try pleasant experiences that Aziraphale indulges in more and more as he stays in a corporeal body. 

“Oh, stop that,” the cat says irritably. “I’m not going to hurt you. What would even be the point? I just can’t believe they’d do that to you. Or that your angel would let them.” 

“Well, we don’t have a choice, you know. If we got caught breaking those rules, I don’t know what would happen. I don’t want to know.” As much as she wants to try colors, as much as she wants to try other shapes, as much as she desperately wants a name, there’s no point to such risks. 

“One reason to be grateful for Falling then.” The cat sounds so bitter, and she carefully hops closer, until she can tap their muzzle lightly with her beak. 

“It’s all right, really. Do — do you have a name, then?” 

“My name is Toliman.” 

“Toliman. It’s a pleasure to meet you properly.” 

“Well, it isn’t proper yet, angel-bird. But you never know,” Toliman says, and she doesn’t dare to ask exactly what they mean by that. 

“Hell doesn’t have rules for daemons?” she asks instead, curious in spite of herself. “I mean, you have a name.” 

“Hell doesn’t care. It’s suicidally stupid to have a daemon out where someone else could reach, sure, but there’s value in having a second pair of eyes looking at a problem when you’re safe in your lair,” Toliman explains, and she isn’t sure if they’re joking or not about any safe spaces in Hell being lairs. “And up here? We do as we like, so long as the job gets done.” 

The job. She and Aziraphale are supposed to be preventing Crowley and this Toliman from doing their job, and instead they took them to dinner. Although, from a certain point of view, distracting them from their job might count as a method of thwarting demonic scheming. Uriel wouldn’t approve, Gabriel would probably just be puzzled, Michael’s reaction to almost anything is hard to predict, and Sandalphon might just smite them all. Raphael, being a healer and thus more accustomed to looking at things from different angles, would probably laugh at them. While technically Raphael is as much a commander as her siblings, she doesn’t bother about that, and typically thinks whatever solution solves the problem is best. 

But still, technically, they shouldn’t be doing this. She knows it, and her angel is more aware of it by far. And yet, she doesn’t shuffle back from the sleek cat. And yet, Aziraphale doesn’t try to bring the night to a close. 

And yet, and yet, and yet. 

What exactly are they doing?

<><><>

Aziraphale would like to say that he never gives Crowley’s ridiculous suggestion that they work together any further thought, but that would, unfortunately, not be strictly true. He tries very hard not to think about it, and in fact once he returns to Camelot he proves to be very good at distracting himself. Even when he hears of the Black Knight causing trouble. 

“He’s not human, I’m sure of it,” Sir Kay says once in Aziraphale’s hearing, his hound daemon pacing as Merlin binds his wound.

“Or you were reckless, again,” Merlin says acidly. 

“Ah, it’s gotten me through this long, hasn’t it?” Kay laughs.

Aziraphale says nothing, only frowns down at his hands. Merlin gives him a sidelong look, his daemon — a griffin, because wizards are such showy beings, aren’t they — soaring above their heads. When Kay and his hound leave, Merlin says, voice very mild, “Kay’s right, though, isn’t he? The Black Knight is no more human than you are. Though I’ve noticed, he causes more rumor than damage.” 

“He likes to start trouble and let it grow on its own,” Aziraphale’s daemon says when he says nothing. Aziraphale frowns at her, but doesn’t bother to hush her, thinking of an apple and a garden, and the fact that she’s right. Trying not to think about a conversation on a wall and wondering if what he’d thought was kindness might have been something crueler. 

Merlin knows too much about them as it is, he doesn’t need to know that Aziraphale and his daemon don’t always agree on everything, does he?

“You’ve met before, then?” Merlin asks. 

“Occasionally,” Aziraphale says, voice clipped, and the odd thing is that, displeased as he is that this has come up at all, it’s almost a relief to be able to say something about it to someone. To admit that Crowley and Toliman are — that they are part of living here, as much as anything else about Earth. And Merlin… Merlin more than most is not like the others. Oh, practitioners of various kinds of magic never are, the ones who aren’t charlatans anyway, but Merlin sees things he ought not, sees past illusions and through the veil between worlds.

Aziraphale can’t be sure if Merlin knows he’s an angel, but he does believe the wizard suspects. 

“An old friend or an old enemy?” 

Friend can’t be true, so saying that would be a lie, but even though Crowley is the Enemy, somehow Aziraphale doesn’t want to say it. He thinks of Toliman as a small spotted cat, their green eyes and Crowley’s yellow-gold eyes, thinks of how his own daemon spent that whole night at Petronius’ taverna cozied up with Toliman under the table. 

“Just a familiar face,” is what he settles on, at last. “He has his work and I have mine, but our paths cross, as these things sometimes do.” 

For once, Merlin doesn’t press the point, which is a miracle truer than anything Aziraphale has ever performed. And soon after that, the Black Knight seems to vanish. Sir Gawain says he “chased the villain away” but as far as Aziraphale can tell, Crowley and Toliman simply… left . Gawain is a bit of a braggart anyway — it’s harmless, if irritating, and he’s got a good heart — and Aziraphale assumes Crowley was simply reassigned. 

It’s for the best, really.

“We were just canceling each other out, where’s the point of that?” he tells his daemon. She flutters her wings irritably. 

“Some might say that our canceling each other out makes it fairer for the humans, you know,” she says. 

“Oh, well now. That’s just ridiculous,” Aziraphale says, but now he has another thing about that compromise idea to try not to think about. 

Aziraphale is reassigned from Camelot for a time — Arthur is secure on his throne, with his wife and his favorite knight by his side. And if there are those who question the way Arthur, Guinevere, and Lancelot’s daemons are near-inseparable, well… Aziraphale does a small blessing the day before he leaves, so they won’t question it too much.

He hears, later, that his blessing wasn’t thorough enough. He knows the truth of them, because he can sense love and with all of them at close range it had been easy to spot that the three of them were together. But he’d rather thought they were wise enough to be discreet. The daemons, he’d assumed, couldn’t help themselves when their humans had to be so circumspect, which is why he’d focused on them.

But no, Guinevere and Lancelot are condemned for adultery, though they are able to flee just in the nick of time. And Aziraphale requests permission to go back, to see what he can do, but they tell him no. Camelot was never meant to hold, not forever. It’s meant to become a dream, an ideal for mankind to aspire to. 

“They need goals, Aziraphale!” Gabriel says firmly. 

They need kings who care, Aziraphale wants to say, but he says nothing at all. Surely Gabriel must be right. It’s all about guiding. How can anyone strive to be good without examples of what good means? If free will means the humans have choices, well, then they have to know what their choices are. 

But there’s nothing he can do. 

“Temptation is about setting up the choices,” Crowley says the next time they meet, which is in England again, for some reason. 1020, in the back of a tavern, and neither of them are actually on assignment, they’re just passing through.

“It can’t be as simple as that. You spend years working on souls, making sure they go Downstairs,” Aziraphale’s daemon says. She’s in the form of a pigeon again — he knows she doesn’t like birds as much as she’s supposed to, but she seems to prefer pigeons as much as possible. Aziraphale doesn’t mind; he rather likes pigeons himself, after all. They follow humans to cities, clever things, as smart as cats and dogs to stay near the humans where there will always be food and places to perch. 

“No, that’s the standard job,” Toliman says. They’re a mongoose today, fur a rich dark brown instead of black or the vivid blue from the snake shape, but their eyes are bright green instead of a mongoose’s normal beady black. The vivid contrast between dark fur and brilliant eyes makes something prickle under Aziraphale’s skin, along his unmanifested wings, but he isn’t sure why. “It’s not really our style.” 

“Oh, and are you all about style?” Aziraphale’s daemon quips. 

“Angel, I think your daemon is trying to flirt,” Crowley drawls, and Aziraphale sits bolt upright. 

“What — I never —” he stammers, and then Crowley bursts out laughing and Aziraphale scowls. “Honestly, you’re impossible. Fine, then, what is your style?”  

“Like I said. Set up the choices. Sure, I go around and make things that much more miserable, but in the end, people still choose what they do with that. Anyway, aren’t you the one with the lunatic idea that the worse off people start, the better, because it gives them more chances to be holy? You literally said that when we were drinking here last night.” 

“Ah. Well,” Aziraphale says. “First, again, it’s not lunatic, it’s ineffable . Second, are you trying to tell me that you don’t tempt people to damnation?” 

“Usually, no. Not all the way. They can always turn back, angel, they just usually don’t. You know that, isn’t that the whole theory behind your lot encouraging people to repent? They can always change their minds till they die, and in the meantime the humans do enough to each other that it hardly matters what I do — or what you do, for that matter.”

“That can’t be true.” 

“Sure it can. Who did the good thing and who did the bad one, remember? Eating from the Tree was bad, but look what they’ve done with Knowledge. As much good as bad, right?”

“Adam killed a lion with our sword. We gave it to him to make fire, to keep his family warm, and as a deterrent… but we didn’t expect him to kill with it,” Aziraphale’s daemon says, quietly. Before Aziraphale can tell her not to talk about that, or… or anything else, Toliman settles around her so she rests in the curve of their form, tucked against sleek dark fur. 

Aziraphale has to choke back a gasp, and Crowley’s glasses have slipped just enough that even in the dimness he can see those yellow-gold eyes widen, gleaming slightly in the shadows. Because he can feel the warmth of Crowley’s daemon pressed up against his own, can almost feel the soft fur brushing against his skin, can almost — 

It feels, in the first moment of contact, almost like two angels brushing wings. And it should hurt, it should burn — Aziraphale got into a close-up fight with a demon during the War and their wings tangled by accident. It had hurt. But this doesn’t. This makes his head spin, his needless breath catch in his throat, but it doesn’t hurt.  

And even when the sense of contact on another plane of existence fades, the warmth remains. Warmth like a hug between humans, like spinning in nebula light with someone he can’t remember anymore. It feels warm, and it feels right. It shouldn’t, but it does, and neither daemon seems inclined to move.

Neither angel nor demon says anything else. Aziraphale isn’t sure that he can speak, actually. 

He and his daemon don’t agree to the Arrangement that night. But three days later, Aziraphale finds himself trapped in a circle drawn in ground-up crystals, meant to capture fae. They’re real, of course — a lot of things in human myth and superstition are, if not necessarily accurate to the stories told most often — but Aziraphale didn’t know something like this could hold him. His daemon flutters her wings irritably on his shoulder. 

“Well, I don’t see you having any ideas,” Aziraphale grumbles. 

A bright laugh makes him turn around just in time to see Crowley, right before he uses a stick to break the circle. “How did you get into this mess, angel?” 

“Bad landing, it pulled me in,” Aziraphale sighs. “Thank you. Why are you here?” 

“Oh, I was going to mess with this lot’s heads a bit, but if that thing can hold you I’d best not take my chances.” Toliman, Aziraphale notes, is a snake again, bright purple this time and much smaller, almost delicate-looking where they’re wrapped around Crowley’s neck like a necklace. 

It’s a good look for both of them. And that is relevant to precisely nothing. 

But, three weeks after that, Aziraphale and his nameless daemon are the ones to find Crowley and Toliman in a bit of a bind. Literally, as it happens, caught in an honest-to-God snare. “How on Earth have you not just miracled yourself out of this?” Aziraphale asks, tilting his head in confusion. Crowley and Toliman hiss in unison, and then Aziraphale sees why. 

“Oh dear. What were they trying to catch?” It’s not holy, but it is definitely enchanted. 

“A basilisk,” grumbles Crowley, and Aziraphale has to bite his lip to keep from laughing, because — 

“Didn’t you pretend to be one of those once?” He’s actually not sure if basilisks are real, or just a game of Crowley’s that got a little too much attention. Not that Aziraphale can talk; occasionally, the myth of Prometheus has a variant that sounds a little too familiar and makes him quite uncomfortable.

“Oh, just keep laughing, why don’t you,” Crowley huffs. 

Aziraphale says nothing, just bends down and unties the rope. The spell prickles against his fingers; it wasn’t meant for a being at all like him, or even really like Crowley, but the snake connection made it work on Crowley anyway. “There you are.” 

“Hm. Favor for a favor, just proves my point, angel,” Crowley says as he gets to his feet, brushing grass off his clothes, and those yellow eyes seem to bore into Aziraphale. What they see, no one knows, but Aziraphale — 

Toliman is still in that slender snake form, their purple scales vivid against the grass and Aziraphale’s daemon, whose cream-colored feathers stand out too, but more quietly. She’s checking them over, fussing in a way that Aziraphale ought to disapprove of, and yet… and yet…

“Well. All right. Stay out of each other’s way, lend a hand when needed, and cross paths from time to time to keep it all straight?” he says before he can talk himself out of it. 

“We have a deal, angel,” Crowley drawls, and offers his hand to shake. Aziraphale takes it, and for a moment feels that same shiver along his wings from the first time their daemons touched, such a short time ago in that pub. They have a deal, and there’s something about it all that feels… right , even though it absolutely should not. 

Aziraphale thinks he would know if he was being tempted toward Falling, so at least he knows that’s not why he feels so… settled, knowing that he and Crowley have an accord. 

Maybe it’s just that, though they are not the same, they are the only nearly-true immortals living on Earth full-time. Perhaps that in itself creates some kind of kinship, or maybe, as humans have both divine and infernal instincts, the only way for either of them to be effective is to help each other out. 

But regardless of the Arrangement, there’s something about the conversation from that night in the pub that lingers in Aziraphale’s mind. There’s something in it, maybe, about setting up choices, about tools that can be used for good and evil, and he doesn’t have the shape of it, isn’t sure he ought to dare trying to find it, but it never quite leaves him. 

His daemon doesn’t mention it, but he knows it never leaves her, either. 

<><><>

There’s only one time that the nameless daemon sees Heaven with her own eyes, in the five thousand years from her first manifestation to the End Times. 

It’s the height of the Black Death, and she and Aziraphale have been pouring out healing miracles. Purifying the air and the water, trying to radiate it out from their bodies because they think that will do more good than healing individual people until they drop. “I also hope it will be a little less noticeable,” Aziraphale murmurs to her when they’ve had to stop to rest. They got in trouble for ‘healing indiscriminately’ during the Plague of Justinian, after all. 

Just a reprimand, but the thing about the strongly worded notes Heaven sends is that there’s always an… implication, that things could be worse than that next time, if one isn’t careful. 

Still, the idea of simply accepting this suffering is one that simply cannot be entertained, not by either of them. And if she occasionally thinks bitterly that Crowley and Toliman had the right idea when she and her angel last saw them, when they said they were going to sleep away the rest of the century, well… 

She and Aziraphale are a principality, a guardian. It wasn’t her angel’s first job, or even his second, but it’s the one that they have now, and they can’t just… hide away from one of the worst disasters the world has ever seen. 

And though Aziraphale never says this, she is his daemon and he doesn’t have to. He was good at being a soldier, when the time came to be one. He was horrified that he was good at it. 

It is far, far better to redirect the things that made him a good soldier into making the pair of them a good guardian. One of these things may, perhaps, be a somewhat faulty risk assessment when it comes to themself. Another is their sheer stubborn determination, once he’s finally decided on a course of action for them (she usually decides sooner, and has to wait). 

Some decisions come easily, though, and doing their best to help as the world falls apart around them is one of the easiest. It’s almost as easy to keep going, in fact, until Aziraphale is stumbling in the street and she flutters to the ground a moment before he falls heavily beside her. 

She remembers another plague, hazily. Galen’s, he was the one who identified it, so they put his name on it… she remembers his clever raven daemon… but she remembers when she and her angel fell just like this in a Roman back alley, she woke up to Toliman in the form of a monkey large enough to hold her gently in big hands, and Crowley was leaning over Aziraphale, trying to wake him. 

But they’re sleeping, they’re hiding from this terrible century and she doesn’t blame them as she and her angel slip into the black, but oh , she wishes they were here.

As if her fading wish conjured someone , the last thing the nameless daemon is aware of is a sense of gentle, lifting warmth… 

It’s all so bright when she opens her eyes. Far too bright to be anywhere on Earth, she knows that instinctively, and she brings her paws up — 

Oh. Oh dear. 

“You’re not supposed to look like that, no. But then, you’re not supposed to be up here, either.” 

The nameless daemon has always known, in the way she knows everything Aziraphale has experienced while she is not manifested, that Raphael is his favorite of the archangels. He’s supposed to love and respect them all equally, as fellow angels and as his superiors, but Raphael is the only one who… 

Well, she cares more about making things work than formalities, which makes sense for a healer. The word is that she’s also the only archangel to occasionally wander the Earth, though the nameless daemon and her angel have never managed to confirm this. 

“How did we get up here?” she asks Raphael, because she seems amused, not disapproving, and anyway they didn’t do this on purpose. 

Except that all Raphael’s amusement drops away at the question, her lips twisting into a frown. “You drained yourselves radiating curative miracles. I sent Yarael for you — one of my best at fetching injured angels, that one. The cloudweavers always were a quick bunch, and Yarael knows Aziraphale of old. But because the damage was incurred while you were separate, I thought it best to heal you that way.”

Raphael eyes the nameless daemon and her still-sleeping angel for a long moment, thoughtful. “He’s in enough trouble already without the two of you being separate when Gabriel comes, but I almost hate to do it. Especially since… Well, the truth is, it’s always felt wrong to see Aziraphale alone. It always used to be I never saw him without that clever little starmaker in easy reach… But that was a long time ago, and I didn’t restore your health just to see Gabriel or Michael punish you by doing with cruelty what I can do gently.” 

“Do what?” the nameless daemon asks, frightened. She is a cat, she realizes suddenly, a cat with silky white fur and a tail now twitching with anxiety. But it’s all right, because Raphael isn’t angry, is going to help, the daemon just doesn’t understand how she is going to help. 

“He can’t take you back inside now, but if you let me, I can guide you,” Raphael says. “I won’t, if it truly frightens you,” she adds when the daemon’s ears go flat against her head. She doesn’t know what guiding would be, but she knows that mortal daemons touched by unfamiliar humans for more than an accidental brush in a crowded space suffer for it. 

“I will not do this without your agreement. I can force Aziraphale to wake instead, but truly, he needs all the rest that he can get, and you will be able to rest more too, once it’s done. But you do not want Gabriel or Michael to see you here, please trust that much, at least.” 

The daemon considers this, but Aziraphale has always trusted Raphael. He’ll never admit it — she isn’t sure he consciously knows it — but he does not trust any of the other archangels at all. She and her angel are still one person at the core of things, as much as they are also separate minds, and she feels most of what he feels. Sometimes, she feels it more clearly than he does, in fact. 

“All right,” she says. “Thank you for the help.” 

“Good. Now lie on Aziraphale’s chest. Perhaps take a smaller form — I can’t be sure, but I think that will help.” 

So she transforms into a small white bird, settling just over her angel’s heart. Raphael nods, then presses a hand down onto the daemon’s head. It’s meant to be gentle, she can feel it, but it’s still an ache, all through her… 

And then she is no longer a she, but simply a part of the whole that is the Principality Aziraphale, and what happens next, the nameless daemon only understands in flashes. Gabriel’s violet eyes, Michael’s cool tones, an unfamiliar voice and light blindingly bright even for Heaven… 

Something cold that surrounds the hollow where she resides, but doesn’t quite touch her. They don’t — they don’t know she’s here, they don’t understand, and so whatever they’re doing doesn’t reach her. She’s grateful, and doesn’t know why, and this is the first time she’s been within Aziraphale and still existed, it should feel good but she’s too frightened of what the cold might mean.

And then there is nothing, awareness stripped away… but the cold still never quite spreads.

When Aziraphale manifests her again, back on Earth, they are in what will one day be called the New World, one day called North America. Far from the plague. “Are we just going to leave Europe to suffer?” 

“It is not for us to interfere,” Aziraphale says coolly, and the indifference is wrong, wrong, wrong . 

It is thirty years before he permits her to be anything but a pure white dove. It takes the rest of the century and part of the next to pick away at his strange coldness, to see her angel be gentle with humans again, to enjoy their cleverness and their indulgences. 

When they see the printing press in action for the first time, though, Aziraphale smiles a true smile again, and she takes to the air as a white dove and comes back down as a kind of magpie they once saw in China, white and brown with wings and tail of a pale greyish-blue.

She wonders if seeing Crowley and Toliman again would bring her angel back faster, because even now he’s still not quite himself. He’s reading again, and eating again, and allowing himself to spend time among humans just because he likes to do it, but there’s still… He doesn’t talk to her the way he did before they went to Heaven, he doesn’t touch her. 

And she’s afraid of what he might do, like this, to their demon and his daemon.

<><><>

Aziraphale never intended to betray Crowley, actually. He understands now that the Arrangement was wrong — does he? He did, at first, but as the years go by Heaven’s cool clarity seems to fade again — but he still gave his word. Betrayal is also wrong, and beneath an angel, even if the person one is betraying is a demon. So he was never going to smite Crowley, or turn him in. He was simply going to end their deal, and their habit of meeting up for conversation. 

They are an angel and a demon. Hereditary enemies. He used to forget that sometimes, and it was unacceptable behavior. Wasn’t it?

He’s felt so dreadfully confused for some time now. Since that moment of giddiness at watching the printing press work, really. Oh, he’d been shaken before by the bad behavior of his daemon, who should not really be behaving with any individuality at all, but it had been his own sheer excitement at such a human thing that rocked him. 

Something is not right. Aziraphale knows this, understands it, but he doesn’t know what it is. And with every passing year, he finds himself more grateful not to catch a glimpse of flaming hair, of black fur and black clothes, that would mean Crowley and Toliman are about. He doesn’t know what he would do if he saw them, and he doesn’t want to know. Because what he ought to do is end their association once and for all, but the idea seems more and more terrible every time he reminds himself it’s the appropriate choice. 

“What happened during the plague?” he asks his daemon once. 

“Raphael had us brought up to Heaven to be healed. She let us be separate at first, but then she put me back into you. It… wasn’t pleasant, but it didn’t really hurt. She said Gabriel and Michael were angry enough with us. After that… I don’t remember much, it’s all hazy impressions.” 

“Oh, well, they were angry,” Aziraphale remembers. “Reminded me over and over how I’d overstepped my bounds, how the plague was —” He stops, almost choking even though he doesn’t need to breathe. “They said the suffering would bring Heaven more souls, and that my quiet, constant help wasn’t doing anyone any good. That exhausting myself on trivialities was irresponsible. And then… They said there was someone who could help me do my job better, but I don’t…” 

It’s not like the foggy memories of life before the Fall. Those are maddening because Aziraphale can retrieve bits and pieces of them, but never enough to tell him anything useful. This is… a blank. Blinding whiteness and a chill all through his true form, except not through all of it because his daemon tells him the cold never quite reached her . 

And anyway, when he tries to describe the emptiness, blazing white and cold, his throat closes up. Apparently, he isn’t supposed to speak of it either.

They spend a lot of time in warmer climates once Aziraphale remembers that chill, because then he can’t shake the feeling that it’s still there , like ice under the skin of his corporation. He’s found himself oddly attached to England but intermittent civil war makes it a hard place to be, and the chill inside him means he has to keep leaving for a while, though he always ends up back there again. 

Seeking warmth is what finds them in Seville, walking past a tavern just as a familiar lanky redhead staggers out, his daemon — a marten — draped around his neck. 

Aziraphale freezes, unsure of himself, and Crowley’s glasses slip down his nose when he looks up, so that yellow eyes are clearly visible, bleary as they are. “Angel… come to see what I did?”

“What you…?”

But then, Aziraphale knows what’s happening here in Seville. Of course he does. And all he’s been able to do are tiny acts of mercy. Putting those tied to the stake in sleeps that look like passing out from the smoke, so that at least they won’t feel the flames. Or making the fire flare up so fast there’s no time to feel anything. 

He can’t save any of them. He actually did try, and it hurt , and it didn’t even work or he’d have pushed through the pain. The miracles failed, the ice under his skin grew colder, and Aziraphale’s fear of it increased. Wrong, wrong, wrong . He’s been meaning to leave Spain, actually, warm or not, and head even further east or south, but he hadn’t yet and now… 

“You didn’t do this,” Aziraphale says, reaching out instinctively to steady Crowley. Normally, he knows, he might have believed Crowley — he wouldn’t have accused him first when it’s the Church doing this — or expected Crowley to blame him, but not now. Not with the demon like this, drunk and stumbling, and much drunker even than he looks because Toliman is a motionless drape of fur and Aziraphale’s never seen them like that before. 

“Nah, but — but they think I did! Gave me a commendation and all!” Crowley laughs, wild and terrible, and people are starting to notice them. Aziraphale wants — he rarely misses his flaming sword, but he wants it, suddenly, wants it to march down to Hell and turn it on whoever sent up this commendation, not because they approved of horrors but because of what being praised for a horror has done to Crowley —

And the heat of anger, of something deeper fueling it that Aziraphale dares not name, dares not even truly notice, it does what the heat of southern Spain could not, and it’s as if the ice is finally melting away inside him. And he can’t explain why, or perhaps he simply can’t risk doing so, but it hardly matters because people are noticing them. People are noticing , and when Crowley takes a step he trips over his own feet and Aziraphale catches him without thinking twice about it. It’s the work of only a moment’s thought to transport all four of them to the small room Aziraphale keeps here, and he’s careful as he settles Crowley in the bed he himself uses only as somewhere to sit.

“They’re so still,” his daemon says, and it’s true. Aziraphale can’t remember seeing Crowley ever quite this still, actually — Toliman can be, depending on their form — and that includes previous times he’s seen Crowley passed out drunk. It’s rare for either of them to manage that level of inebriation, and Aziraphale personally avoids it for the same reason he avoids all sleep, but Crowley does reach it occasionally. But even then, he usually shifts or murmurs in his sleep, not this quiet motionlessness. 

“Why do I feel less cold from worrying about Crowley?” Aziraphale asks softly. 

His daemon shakes her head. “I have no idea. But — you know — it — it has to be a punishment. The coldness, the way they changed your mind.” 

“Heaven’s clarity can’t be…” Aziraphale trails off with a sigh. “Angels are supposed to be loyal by nature. Forcing it is… I’m sure they think it’s helpful,” he says, and though it tastes like a lie surely that’s only because it’s hard for him to think of something so unpleasant as helpful. But it is, it must be, because if it isn’t, then… then… 

“It was a punishment,” his daemon says flatly. “You know it, and I know it. It doesn’t matter if it’s supposed to make us better at the job. It was also supposed to hurt. That makes it a punishment, whatever else it might be.” 

She’s never argued with him so insistently before, but then… She’s right. Aziraphale knows that. Oh, he deserved it, obviously, but she’s still right. It was a punishment, even if it was an efficient one designed to ensure he behaved better, not just to try and scare him into it. It was still… He thinks of the relentless chill, he thinks of failing miracles, and he can’t deny that it was cruel, in its way. 

Good is not always kind. Light can burn. He knows this. He should simply accept that he deserved it, and be glad they didn’t do something stronger that would have changed him irrevocably. They might do that yet, if — 

Oh. Oh no.  

“What will they do if they find out about the Arrangement?” his daemon asks, echoing his own thoughts. “Will they erase me, erase everything from you that makes us who we are?” 

You aren’t anyone, Aziraphale wants to say, you aren’t supposed to be, but the truth is that she is someone. Whether they ought to be or not, they are a true pair, just as every human and daemon are. How can it be otherwise, after all this time? He sighs instead, pressing a hand over his eyes. “Probably,” he says wearily. 

In the bed, Crowley shifts, muttering incoherently, and Toliman makes a soft keening sound. Aziraphale drops his hand as an even worse thought occurs to him, and he barely notices that his daemon has become a bird small enough to preen Toliman’s fur, trying to soothe both of them. “If Heaven will do that — will simply… erase us and begin again,” he says, voice beginning to shake. “What will Hell do to them if they find out about the Arrangement?” 

She doesn’t answer him, but then, she hardly needs to. Heaven’s punishment is cruel; Hell’s must be worse, and as far as Aziraphale can see, there’s only one thing worse than what will probably happen to him.

Crowley has always acted as if no one will ever find out about the Arrangement. Flippant and blase about every risk. Aziraphale has never understood it; Heaven can find out anything they want from an unshielded location. They just have to have a reason to go looking. Surely Hell must have a similar capability? 

Well. Aziraphale isn’t about to risk any of them. At least he knows that what Heaven will do to him is survivable. Perhaps he would even be recoverable , given enough time; perhaps something about having a daemon for so long protects him and her both from the worst of it. But Hell… They’ll destroy Crowley and Toliman if they find out, won’t they? Which means that someone in this affair is going to have to be cautious, and previous behavior shows that it will not be Crowley. 

“We can’t remain here,” Aziraphale says, standing up and straightening his clothes with sharp, almost jerky movements. He wants to stay, and his daemon wants to even more, given the way she hasn’t budged from Toliman’s side even as Aziraphale is clearly preparing them to leave. She’s even still preening their fur, and Aziraphale is both exasperated and… and… Well, quite frankly, envious, which is ridiculous .

“Dear girl, really,” he says to her, but he does pause to pull the blanket up over Crowley. 

He catches himself just before he can brush a bit of hair out of Crowley’s closed eyes. He can’t — for one thing, it’s inappropriate, for another thing it’s just rude to take liberties when you haven’t been given permission, and above all he’s just realized that he has to keep his distance, now is a terrible time to let himself slip up.

He pulls his hand back, cradling it to his chest with his other hand as if he has to physically stop himself from reaching out again. Maybe he does. Oh, this is foolish. “We have to limit the risks of getting caught,” he tells his daemon, voice tight and unhappy. “So come along now. They — they’ll be all right.” 

A simple miracle ensures that much. It will dissipate when Crowley and Toliman are well enough to leave, and hopefully… Hopefully they won’t even remember seeing Aziraphale and his daemon. That would be ideal. 

Aziraphale tells himself that often enough, as he leaves Seville and heads further south just as he planned. Eventually, he almost believes it.

<><><>

She can’t ever explain — and Aziraphale can’t either — why England grows on them so much, and yet it does. 

They don’t stay there, of course. They have assignments and they have the general fact of their duty, and it takes them round the world. But, somehow, they do always keep finding themselves in England, one way or another, after that time with King Arthur. 

(After that time they ran into Crowley and Toliman.)

Crowley suggested the Arrangement here, and it was here where it was finally agreed upon. Aziraphale categorically denies that’s why they keep coming back here, but the nameless daemon is less sure of herself. Aziraphale isn’t nearly as sure as he sounds anyway; it’s just what they both need to believe, right now. When they come, they usually end up in the monasteries, helping to preserve and record knowledge for future generations. The Church has the libraries now, and it helps to be part of it. 

(Neither of them like to think of the day the Library of Alexandria burned.)

And so it goes, and so the nameless daemon and her angel keep coming back to this rainy island. They hear, vaguely, that Crowley’s still banished from Ireland — oh, he and Toliman insistently deny any such thing happened, yet somehow multiple job swaps have found the nameless daemon and Aziraphale trying their hand at temptation in Ireland — but somehow, in England, they cross paths more easily than ever, and even when they don’t… Even when they don’t, just being in England is less lonely, somehow, than anywhere else.

It’s foolish, so she and Aziraphale never speak of it, barely dare to think of it, but there it is.

The years pass as years do, and the angel-daemon pair find themselves watching England fall apart in the Cousins’ War, that history will know as the Wars of the Roses. They could leave, and they do when assignments beckon, or when they think going somewhere else might do them good like when they found themselves in Seville. But they stay when they can, trying to help the wounded after a battle, trying to do… something. 

When it ends, when the unlikeliest of kings, Henry Tudor, is declared, it’s something of a relief… until, at the coronation, they have company. They’ve asked for this, to meet only in crowds. She and Aziraphale don’t know precisely how Heaven’s observation works but being among people at least gives an excuse for why they might be standing together instead of fighting. Her angel can always claim that he was keeping close so that Crowley could do no harm, but chose not to fight so that no humans could get caught in the crossfire. 

Heaven probably won’t like the reasoning as much as they should — would probably say he should put smiting a demon above a handful of mortal lives — but that might even be better. A lesser infraction to reprimand him for should keep them from looking closer. That’s what she and Aziraphale are hoping for, anyway.

So they’re glad that Crowley and Toliman listened about meeting in crowds, but it’s still… They’re nervous around the demon-daemon pair, and it doesn’t all feel like fear of Heaven and Hell. It feels like something unclear, unnameable. It’s too soon after Seville, and the longing they can’t name, don’t even fully understand , is still too close to the surface. But to leave, to run away - it’s simply not possible.

“Think they’ve finally stopped this mess, angel?” Crowley asks by way of greeting. 

“I’ve no idea, but I do rather hope so. I thought you were in Florence.” 

“I was, but I was curious. I thought you were in Japan.” 

“Finished that assignment off, and I thought I’d check in here.” 

“Oh,” Crowley says, and then silence falls between them, as if neither angel nor demon, nor their respective daemons, can think of anything to say. The nameless daemon tries not to tremble with a sense of growing tension, like some kind of strange storm. 

“So, we’re in the middle of a humans’ coronation,” Toliman whispers, and the moment breaks. They’re in the form of a wolf today, rangy and lean, fur a ruddy brown. The nameless daemon is in the form of a grey goose — she likes pale grey, these days, or light brown, and tries to avoid the whites and creams Aziraphale chooses for his clothes — so they’re both on the ground, face-to-face. 

“And what is your point, Toliman?” She knows what their point is. It’s been their point every time they’ve seen each other since the Arrangement began. She should have expected to have a conversation like this from the moment Crowley and Toliman appeared, standing outside to watch Henry Tudor’s coronation procession, his hawk daemon circling over him as if to declare herself as much as him. 

They say he will wed Elizabeth of York, they say this is the end to civil war — it’s an event, just the sort of thing the angel and demon of Earth should both see if they have the time. And, since they’re outside on the streets of London, the demon and his daemon actually can .

“My point, birdy, is that no one here is paying enough attention to notice you shifting form, and your bosses can’t just show up here without risking being noticed themselves. Perfect place to try out a different form, don’t you think?” 

“No!” she hisses back. 

“Honestly, Crowley, control your daemon,” Aziraphale mutters over their heads. 

“Angel, relax a little. Toli’s not hurting anything. What would be so bad about her getting to lose the feathers for a little while?” 

Aziraphale doesn’t answer, and she tucks her head under her wing so that Toliman will understand that she doesn’t want to talk. After a moment, something nudges her and she lifts her head to find Toliman’s gotten closer, their nose still brushing gently against her side. 

“Relax, birdy. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to do.” 

“You’re a demon. Well. Half a demon. That isn’t exactly comforting.” It isn’t, but the gentle way they nudge her is. She wants to shuffle over, rest against their side, and just sit like that for a while. She can see Aziraphale’s hand above her head, sees his fingers curl into a fist. If she wants that, then… then he… then they both… 

Oh, this is so difficult. And they would all be in so much trouble, but at least she and Aziraphale would survive their punishment. What Hell might do to Toliman and Crowley doesn’t bear thinking about. But they can’t seem to help it, can they?

She tucks her head back under her wing. 

They spend a lot of time in Italy, as the Renaissance blooms. But as ever, they keep coming back to England, off and on through the reigns of two Henrys — they see more of that Great Matter mess than they might have liked, for one thing. And all the religious feuding that comes after, which becomes very sincere for a conversion that began because a king wanted to change wives. 

(They still aren’t quite sure who set Luther off in the first place; if it was the pair of them, Crowley and Toliman, or simply Luther and his daemon completely on their own. There may have been a long winding conversation involving all six of them two days before he nailed his Theses to the door, so it is and shall always be something of an open question. Heaven and Hell both send commendations, which doesn’t clarify the matter at all.)

There are other places to go, other things to observe, other assignments to complete or swap. The nameless daemon and her angel do their jobs as they’ve always done, or do their counterparts’ job and try not to wonder what it means that they’re actually not half bad at the tempting thing. Or, in fact, what it means that Crowley and Toliman are good at doing angel assignments. 

(They find one grey feather in Aziraphale’s wings, in the 1500s. They don’t talk about it, and when he next molts, the feather grows in white anyway, so they try to forget it ever happened.)

But, as ever, they circle back to England. This time, they’re there when Queen Mary I dies — and that hurts; she’d had such potential and she’d survived so much grief, but despite all hopes and early days luck, queenship brought little but more pain to her and to everyone else, by the end — and find themselves once again standing amongst other Londoners, watching the procession of a Tudor royal. 

Elizabeth’s hair is a reminder of her grandmother, Elizabeth of York, but her face is her mother’s, every bit as much as the hawk daemon soaring triumphantly over his human’s head is a reminder of her grandfather. A different breed, but near enough to the same.

And here are Crowley and Toliman again, finding her and Aziraphale like they have some sort of magical skill for it. 

Actually, she wouldn’t put it past them. 

Toliman is a fox this time, sleek and black, their eyes as bright a yellow as Crowley’s behind his dark glasses. They’re more of a matched pair this time, and so are she and Aziraphale. She’s relented, and is a white swan today. It makes her taller than Toliman, and they yip in annoyance when they realize that. 

“I wish you would get down here,” they grumble, and —

The thing is that she doesn’t do it on purpose. Or she doesn’t think she does. But the next thing she knows, she’s shrinking, and she’s growing ears, two more legs, and fur. She stands on four soft paws, she has a nose that can pick up so much more than her beak could, and she’s — 

“Oh. What happened?” she says, lifting up her feet to stare at them. 

“You’re a fox, birdy,” Toliman says, triumphant. “Still white, though.” And then they lick her nose. She yips in what really should be alarm, but is — is — Well, all right, actually it was rather nice. She’s going to blame the form for that.

She ought to change back. She can feel Aziraphale’s fear that even now, even at such a bad time for it, Gabriel or Michael or someone will appear next to them and see — see them breaking how many rules at one time? And then they’ll be dragged away from Earth to some dull punishment work, and it could be even worse, they’ll smite Crowley and Toliman too if they can, or find a way to notify Hell so that — 

“Change back!” he hisses down at her, but he’s frightened, not angry. Because he knows how much she’s wanted to do this, so much that she did it by accident, and he wants it for her. He’s just so frightened, and so is she… but she leans against Aziraphale’s ankle as the white fox she now is, and he doesn’t try to make her change. 

They can’t really have this, but for just a moment they can pretend, right? 

She feels Toliman lay their bushy tail on top of hers, and that feels much nicer than it should. She’s noticed it before, the gentle prickle every time she and Toliman make contact — of course she has, the first time it startled all four of them so much none of them could talk . It should hurt, but it doesn’t. It feels good, like a quiet little thrill, all the more so because they just keep touching, for as long as they all stand there. 

And at the inn, later that night, she’s still a fox, lying across from Toliman with their noses touching. 

“You have to turn back, my dear,” Aziraphale says once they go their separate ways, scooping her up in his arms. She yips sadly, curling closer to him. “I know you don’t want to but we really can’t do this. For our sakes and for theirs, we — we just can’t. And I don’t think you should listen to Toliman anymore.” 

“He didn’t convince me. It just happened, I can’t explain it. How can we be sure I’m not supposed to do it? Maybe it’s… natural.” 

“We’re not human! It’s not natural for us!” Aziraphale insists. “Now, you have to change back. We both know you do. So just — get it over with.”

She turns into a brown sparrow, shrieking her unhappiness and flying over his head, refusing to land on him for days after that. She knows he’s right, but she can’t help resenting it. 

She’s so angry that she doesn’t realize the tingle of contact with Toliman hasn’t fully gone away, and by the time she is calm enough to notice it, she’s gotten used to it, so she still doesn’t work it out. 

<><><>

“So did you have something to do with the coup?” 

Crowley’s voice in Aziraphale’s ear makes him jump — he had seen the distinctive red hair earlier, but this is a masquerade ball so there was always the possibility it was a wig, someone going the extra mile beyond a mask. Also, Toliman isn’t in one of their usual dark-furred shapes; instead, they’re wrapped around Crowley’s bicep in a snake form again, vivid green this time. 

The dark glass covering the eyeholes on Crowley’s mask is not as dark as that which he has for his glasses, and so Aziraphale can just see the faintest glow of yellow-gold. Gold and green, Aziraphale thinks, aching, and pushes the thought aside. His daemon, perched on his shoulder, turns her head to run her beak through his curls, just over where his mask ties around his head. They don’t know , they’ll never know, but sometimes they wonder. And Aziraphale, for his part, wishes that might explain his — his — fondness for Crowley, but the truth is that he thinks they would have ended up in this situation regardless. 

Whether they knew each other Before or not. Whether, in some other version of time, it was Aziraphale who Fell and the angel who Crowley used to be that didn’t. They would still be here, doing whatever… whatever this is. The pair of them and the daemons they shouldn’t have. And it’s wrong, Aziraphale knows that, except that it’s the only thing that always feels right.

He wonders if ineffability covers this. It must do, right?

“No,” he tells Crowley when he realizes he’s been silent too long, voice clipped. “Of course I didn’t have anything to do with the coup, what do you take me for?” 

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?” Crowley asks, lounging against the wall next to him. “And she’s a clever little thing, a natural scholar. I thought you might be on her side.” 

“I do like Catherine,” Aziraphale concedes, and it’s true, he does. He’s been in Russia often enough in the past decades — first, he was here to investigate the claims that Tsar Alexei or the Patriarch Nikan might be the Antichrist. Oh, it was a certainty neither of them were that, but Heaven likes to check into rumors of that sort just in case something else occult or demonic is going on. 

Occasionally, it even has been. Those assignments tend to be both interesting and unpleasant, though Aziraphale does find it usually leads to meeting some interesting humans with a talent for various kinds of magic themselves. 

And he’d been back again, more than once, to check on the progress of Peter, now called Peter the Great. Powerful and impressive, remarkably intelligent, and equally remarkable in his cruelty, passionate in both love and hate. His daughter Empress Elizabeth had been the same, his grandson Peter III, well… 

From what little Aziraphale was able to gather, the poor boy never had a chance to be anything but a rather pathetic little monster, tossed about and ignored and mistreated until there was nothing else he could be.

Now Peter III is dead, and his wife sits the throne. Aziraphale has always had a soft spot for Catherine, the neglected royal wife who loved books, and he’d even… Well. Perhaps it had been inappropriate of him, to send a bit of good luck her way as she fell into love affairs. But he’s always wondered if holding people to fidelity is actually fair in arranged marriages. 

Anyway, anyone with the opportunity to share their hearts ought to be able to do so safely, whether it’s to love outside an arranged match, to love one of the same gender, of a different class, or to love more than one person at a time. There are other reasons, changing between societies and eras, but those are the ones that seem to crop up most. He has a habit of sending well wishes in the way of humans in such circumstances, he can’t seem to help himself. 

“And why do we care so much about that?” Aziraphale’s daemon had asked the first time he admitted as much aloud.

“Does there have to be a reason?” Aziraphale had snapped, and that had been that.

There is a reason, but they’ve never looked at it closely enough to name it. They both know better than that.

“I like her,” Aziraphale continues now, “and I’ve talked books with her more than once, but frankly, I didn’t even know it was coming. I mean, I knew something was coming, everyone did, she and Peter hated each other long before Elizabeth died, but I’m not in the empress’ inner circle. Just a strange man on the edges of court society who is always happy to talk of books. Did you have anything to do with it?” 

Toliman hisses in affront, and Crowley huffs. “Course not. If anything, my lot wanted more Peter. Poor drunken sod didn’t deserve to be murdered but he was a chaotic little mess, wasn’t he? I was sent up here to see if I could get him to cause even more trouble, but really he was doing it all himself and then suddenly a coup! Humans beating us to it again, eh? Anyway, with no new assignment, I just stuck around. She’s interesting, if nothing else.”

“Technically, I’m meant to encourage the humans to be the ones making an effort, thus they aren’t ‘beating me’ to anything,” Aziraphale says mildly. “But I see your point. And yes, I do believe she is.” 

They stand together in silence for a bit. For once, even their daemons are quiet, and Aziraphale isn’t sure… 

He’d found a copy of Hamlet here. In Russian, even. It’s not that unusual, but he hadn’t expected it, hadn’t been looking for — and the thing is, he seems to find Hamlet everywhere. Translated into multiple languages, and it’s not the only Shakespeare play he finds that way but Hamlet pops up everywhere he goes. 

And, all right, he… buys a copy every time it’s in a language he doesn’t have yet.

And every time, there’s a moment when his senses pick up a flicker of warmth, like the last lingering echoes of an old magic. Like crackling flames and the whisper of scales on stone, but to the tune of a long-lost starsong. Aziraphale should ask, part of him longs to ask. Why did Crowley push it so far? He’d offered to make Hamlet a success as a favor to Aziraphale — my treat, he’d said — but there’s success and then there’s a well-wishing strong enough that the echoes of it linger in a translation over a century removed, in the book tucked safely into an inner pocket of Aziraphale’s jacket.

He reaches up, taking his daemon in his hands before she can ask. She doesn’t have his control, and he knows he was right to collect her because she pecks his thumb hard enough that they both wince. 

“Having an argument?” Crowley drawls. 

“Nothing serious,” Aziraphale says. 

“Good, then you should dance with us,” Toliman says, abrupt and oddly cheerful. Crowley stiffens. 

“Toli…” he mutters. “Stop that.” 

“Two men might draw attention…” Aziraphale says carefully. What he should do is refuse outright, but, well. No one from Heaven has checked in beyond notes since the Black Death, and Aziraphale is beginning to hope that maybe, just maybe, he can relax again. Still, dancing is… 

Crowley looks back at him, and is it a trick of the light, or are his eyes glowing brighter? “As if we can’t avoid that,” he says, pushing off the wall and offering a hand. “What the heaven, why not, angel?” he continues. 

Aziraphale’s own hands shake as he lets his daemon go and she flies back to his shoulder. They shake as Crowley stands there with his hand out, and Aziraphale doesn’t remember deciding, not really, but just as Crowley’s hand begins to drop, he reaches out. His fingers tremble, still, as he laces them with Crowley’s. “I don’t know how, you know.” 

“I’m not exactly good at it. But it’s a party, isn’t it?” 

They aren’t good at it. They don’t know the steps. All that saves them, really, is that they move together easily, if not accurately to the dance. Aziraphale doesn’t know when or how or why it happened, but somewhere, in spite of the different ways they carry themselves, he learned to match his pace to Crowley’s. And in attempting to dance, they discover that the same holds true here. They fit, even when they fumble what they actually mean to do.

It is simply one of many things he knows that he should not think about.

<><><>

“So why are you opening a bookshop?” Crowley asks, when they’re eating crepes. “I knew you were planning on it, but you never said why. Isn’t it going to make blending in more difficult? Not to mention, the idea of you two giving up some of your precious books is laughable.” 

She almost has a name, these days. The bookshop they’re working on belongs to Ezra Fell, whose daemon is called Azi. It isn’t a real name, of course, but “Azi” likes it well enough. It’s probably going to be a name she can use for a while, which makes it the closest to a real name she’s ever had. She doesn’t say as much to Toliman, though; she thinks they would still disapprove of it. 

She’s a small hawk today, feathers mostly in shades of smoke-grey and silver-grey that’s… showier than an angel’s daemon really ought to be, but still technically within the rules. She’s been doing that more and more, trying colors just a little more vibrant than expected, shades a little deeper than recommended. Aziraphale knows exactly what she’s doing, of course, but at this point… Treading the line is what they do, it’s what all four of them do, it’s the whole point of the Arrangement, isn’t it? 

Walk the line, keep your balance, and you get a friend out of it, the only paired beings in all of creation to walk the same roads, if not in the same direction, as it were.

And so “Azi” is a smoke-and-silver hawk, and Toliman is a sleek black pine marten, eyeing her on Aziraphale’s shoulder from their own place draped over the back of Crowley’s neck. It’s those eyes on her — green today, startling on their small dark face, they do love having eyes that don’t match their shape — that makes “Azi” say, “It’s for me, mostly.”

“I don’t follow,” Crowley says, leaning back in his chair. “Azi” can feel Aziraphale glancing down the length of him in that… outfit. Good Lord, they both echo at each other, again, within the privacy of their shared bond, though “Azi” is thinking more about the contrast of green eyes to black fur, and wondering if Toliman’s shiny coat is as soft as it looks. 

“Well,” Aziraphale says, fiddling with his fork. “If I have a home base, certain… privacy wards will be considered acceptable, and if that home base has an officially public section, even more so. I’ve also made the case that it will allow me to draw those who need a little angelic nudge closer without always having to find them, which is perfectly appropriate for an undercover agent.” 

“And why, angel, do you need privacy wards? I thought your lot were all love and light, you do keep telling me so.” 

Ha. Love and light. Well, they are, but “Azi” has long since admitted to herself that angels like, oh, Gabriel, are the kind of Goodness that burns, light that you can’t look into for long or you hurt your eyes. They’re the good guys, Heaven is the good guys, but Goodness hurts. It’s ineffable, Aziraphale always says, there must be a reason for it all, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need a breather. 

Aziraphale doesn’t like that they can just sneak up, out of nowhere. But he doesn’t want to tell Crowley that , “Azi” can feel it, because they both know Crowley and Toliman will take full advantage of the opening to argue that Heaven isn’t as good as she and Aziraphale think it is. 

There are times she almost thinks — but no. There are questions that can be asked, and questions that cannot, and while Crowley and Toliman are proof that even Falling need not be wholly terrible, if she and Aziraphale Fall, they won’t be here anymore, and so — well. It’s a selfish reason not to Fall, but aren’t most of them, to a point? 

So she speaks up, to spare them all another debate on the matter. 

“It’s for me. If we have some privacy, then I can try out some other shapes.” 

Toliman sits up. “Birdy! That’s an excellent idea! I like the silver, by the way.” 

“Well, well,” Crowley drawls. “Learning to bend a few more rules, hm?” 

“Oh, do leave it alone, Crowley,” Aziraphale huffs. “It suits us both, if you must know. And it suits… our Arrangement, as well. Once I have things set up, we should be able to meet there, in the areas off-limits to any customers.” There is some risk involved in this, but the thing about the set-up they have in mind is that as long as they’re at their bookshop, any angelic visitors will have to come through the front door, which should give enough warning for “Azi” to shift forms or for Crowley and Toliman to make themselves scarce. It’s the best plan to keep things running smoothly that she and Aziraphale have ever had. “Azi” thinks they ought to be quite proud of it, really. 

Figuring out how to avoid selling their books is going to be a bit tricky, but worth the benefits. 

With two of said benefits sitting across from them, it really is impossible to deny that. 

This conversation is also when she realizes the faint tingle to which she’s grown accustomed since Elizabeth’s coronation is about Toliman. She realizes this because it turns to a warmth all over her body when she sees Toliman face-to-face, and goes back to being a tingle once they and Crowley leave. She doesn’t tell Aziraphale. He must know, on some level, but they don’t speak of it. 

What it means… she could probably figure it out, but it seems wiser not to do that.

And that’s where she leaves it, for almost seventy years. She doesn’t want to examine what she and her angel feel too closely, and if she doesn’t want to, Aziraphale certainly doesn’t. Sometimes “Azi” thinks she exists in part to be Aziraphale’s questions, contained in a mind semi-detached from his own.

But then comes the St. James Incident, which is…

Well. 

All right, it’s bloody fucking horrible, is what it is. And she doesn’t use those words lightly.

She’s going by “Rapha” when it happens, because Aziraphale is claiming to be the first Ezra Fell’s son now. The plan is to go to initials next, and she doesn’t know what name she’ll use then, frankly. This business of breaking up her angel’s name to have something she can use for a name is getting tiring. Also, she just… doesn’t like it. 

She wants a name. Has done for a while, but it’s never seemed worth the fight. Especially when one of the reasons she wants one is so that one day she can tell Toliman, see their reaction. That is a particularly dangerous reason to want something that, being forbidden, is terribly dangerous to want all on its own. She shouldn’t want to share her name with a demon’s daemon — with a demon, she and Toliman are not real, they’re not, they’re not , however real they feel they aren’t — but she does. 

She wants to share it with them almost more than she wants the name for herself. 

Almost.

The day they meet in St. James’ Park, “Rapha” is feeling particularly rebellious. Also, there’s a strange quality to the prickle along her skin, making it almost uncomfortable for the first time. Taking a shape she really shouldn’t is part peace offering, part distraction, because her edginess is making Aziraphale quite anxious. 

So she’s a cat, her fur a warm shade of brown striped in darker brown. She’s tried dozens of forms in the privacy of the bookshop’s back rooms, sometimes with Toliman there making suggestions while Crowley and Aziraphale get drunk together. That’s how she ended up being a dragon the night before they actually opened, and still had wings that weren’t exactly feathered when they almost got recalled to Heaven the very next day. 

She kept them closed, and no harm done, but after that she and Aziraphale agreed, no mythological creatures. Those shapes are sticky . Toliman, it turned out, had known that, and she bit them for not telling her. No regrets. 

Even though Toliman and Crowley had been the ones to get them out of said reassignment, Toliman had conceded they deserved the bite. Crowley had not , and had dumped a glass of wine over Aziraphale’s head for it. Aziraphale had rolled his eyes at all of them and miracled it away.

So far, she’s been careful to remain a bird when out in the open. But today, in St. James’ Park, she is a cat and Toliman is a bird. Now, “Rapha” has seen Toliman in more forms than she can count, but they are never, ever a bird. Until today, when they are a raven, to be precise, who sits on Crowley’s shoulder only for a moment at a time before taking off again, circling as if looking for someone. Crowley does that a lot, circling around them as if checking for threats, but Toliman usually stays close to her while his demon does it. 

Crowley also isn’t usually standing ramrod-straight at the bridge rail, either, and it all just seems wrong even before…

She doesn’t see the note. Not directly. But Aziraphale projects it to her even as he looks at it, as panic blasts through both their systems. Sheer, dizzying panic. Because whatever Crowley says about it not being a suicide pill, about being insurance… How can it be anything but a suicide pill? If Hell comes for him and Toliman, surely they’ll do it the way Heaven would, if only because neither Head Office would ever let a traitor get away. They'll come silent and quick, so there's no chance to run. At best, he'll be able to use the water to take some of them out with him.

She and Aziraphale still don’t think Above will kill them, if they’re caught, though they understand that they will pay, severely. That… is one more reason for the bookshop, actually. To give them a moment to collect themselves, should that happen. Should the worst come to pass, they would say, except even now that they understand their punishment will probably be much worse than reassignment, there is still one thing worse than anything that might happen to them even if execution was on the table.

And now Crowley is asking them to help him be able to make that one worse thing happen.

She knows Aziraphale says something about how dangerous it is. She knows that when that fails, he babbles on about the rules because it’s the only thing he can think to say. She can come up with something else to say, though, as she morphs without thinking into a turtledove, taking flight to catch Toliman in one of their circles. “Don’t make us help kill you, please.” 

“Your angel’s made it clear this is all about the blessed rules, birdy. Don’t even try it,” Toliman hisses, a snake voice coming from their raven’s beak, and their wing only just misses clipping “Rapha” as they turn mid-air to fly in the other direction. For a moment, the warmth under her skin burns like flames.

It’s not about the rules, we love you! We can't help you die! “Rapha” almost says, realizing even as she’s thinking it, even as Aziraphale is storming away and she has no choice but to follow, that it’s true. Realizing, and yet she already knew, they both did, because it didn’t happen just now, it’s been happening and they just — just didn’t notice, just never brought the truth out to a place where they had to see it. 

And now Crowley and Toliman did that for them, asking for the one thing that means she and Aziraphale could truly lose them… 

And there’s no way to keep the truth hidden somewhere below conscious thought now, is there?

She and Aziraphale love Toliman and Crowley, and not in the “angels love all God’s creations” way, either. That would still be… less than appropriate, given that the demon-daemon pair are Fallen — and why did Aziraphale bring that up today, why are they both always so stuffy when they’re afraid? — but it would be… salvageable. 

An angel falling in love with a demon, though, well. That is — that is something else entirely. 

There are angels who pair off, or even bond in clusters, who are happy together. It’s seen as a bit eccentric, but acceptable enough. There are angels who have loved humans, mostly in the early days when more angels walked the Earth from time to time. It’s frowned on, and siring or bearing Nephilim strictly forbidden, but romance with mortals is not against the rules. It’s only that one way or another loving a mortal simply never ends well. The very worst mess was the Nephilim, but even without that, humans die . And even the human souls in Heaven aren’t… angels aren’t supposed to spend much time in the afterlife sections, so one way or another it goes wrong in the end. 

And so “Rapha” and Aziraphale have never crossed the line to finding a lover, because the effort involved doesn’t seem worth it unless you truly, deeply want it, and how could you want that with someone you can’t truly share yourself with?

But then, in all the Earth, in Heaven or Hell, who else could they, as a pair, share themselves with except Crowley and Toliman? Looked at like that, there’s a certain inevitability to it all, but that is cold comfort at best. 

“Something must have happened,” Aziraphale says when they’re back in the shop, tucked away in the back room. He has his wings out and wrapped around them both, a defense against the world, and she is still a cat but a larger one now, a lynx big enough to sprawl over her angel’s lap and cuddle closer to him. 

“Something must have happened,” Aziraphale repeats, “and now Crowley’s worried. And now we’ve gone and — we have to stay away from them for a while. It’s as simple as that. It’s the only way to keep them safe.” 

Except that after that, weeks and months go by, and then years turn to decades, and they don’t see Toliman and Crowley at all, so staying away is a moot point. If it wasn’t for the tingling sense of Toliman out in the world somewhere, she and Aziraphale would be afraid that they’re dead. It’s something, to know they’re alive, but the thought that Toliman and Crowley probably hate them now, that the friendship they wanted to protect — the friendship they can barely dare to have, that is all they can ever risk — is gone by their own actions… It hurts, but there’s no way to fix it that either of them can think of.

“There was nothing else we could do,” Aziraphale says, on the New Year’s Eve when 1899 gives way to 1900. 

He’s mostly right; they probably could have phrased it all better, but they still don’t see how holy water could have been anything but a suicide pill, even if Crowley didn’t want to use it that way. They couldn’t bear to be a party to that, and they’re both agreed on that much. The thing is, though, that isn’t what she wants to talk about right now. That isn’t what she needs to say. 

They’ve lost their only true friend in this world. May the consequences be damned, she will have the one thing that has been denied her longest of all, because she is so tired of half-measures.

She is a fox again, a fox with fur shading silver-smoke- black and eyes the color of jade, when she looks up at her angel and says, “I want a name.” 

Chapter Text

They bicker about the name for over a year. At first, Aziraphale isn’t sure he wants to agree, but she stands firm, and finally he seems to understand that he no longer has the right to deny her a name. Perhaps he never did, but then again, she wasn’t always her own person, not like she is now. They are still two as one, like all paired beings are, but two as one still means two , in certain ways. She hasn’t always had all of those ways, but she does now, and so he can’t deny her the proof of it anymore. 

Of course, once they’re agreed on that much, they spend all their time arguing about what name she should pick.  And then one night Aziraphale says, “Fine. Ophelia then.” 

She goes very still, because they both know why Ophelia, and they both know he’s had the name in his head all along, just never dared to say it. They both remember the favor from so long ago, to make Hamlet a success, the way a hint of old magic clings to copies of Hamlet even to this very day in 1902. They both remember the lines Burbage as Hamlet was saying that day, the four of them standing together and listening, for just a moment. As if it were relevant, which to her and Aziraphale, at least, it was in the end. 

She almost agrees, because it’s fitting. It gives her what she wants, and in a roundabout way it declares what they cannot say aloud, even to each other. But in the end, she thinks of Ophelia floating dead down a river, her rosemary and rue drifting about her. She thinks of Toliman’s raven shape, their eyes for once not a striking contrast to the rest of their form, and she thinks of how she and Aziraphale haven’t seen Toliman and Crowley since that day in 1862. 

And it’s all just too sad. She enjoys tragedies if you can close the book or leave the theater when the story’s done, but she doesn’t think she can bear to carry the name of one. 

She likes the idea behind it, though, even if it’s a little pathetic to pine like this. They are a little pathetic, if they’re being honest, and there’s nothing to be done about that. Also, in spite of everything, it was sometimes fun to break apart Aziraphale’s name to find new ways to name each other, and so if she honors their old tradition as well, then maybe… maybe…

“It’s too sad,” she says aloud. “And maybe too obvious, if we ever see them… well, I think it’s too noticeable, that’s all I mean. But I like Lia. What do you say, Aziraphale? Am I your Lia?” 

Aziraphale strokes her head gently. “I do believe you are, my dear,” he says. “It is a pity you can’t tell Toliman about this.” 

“You knew about that, then?” 

“As you know of the things I dare not say, I think.” 

The day Lia is named, she’s a cat again. It’s her preferred form, she’s come to realize, and she likes this particular cat most of all. Silvery-grey fur again, with rosette spots in a darker grey, her eyes a pale green. If it occurs to her that she bears a certain resemblance, in pattern if not color, to Toliman the first time she saw them as something other than a snake, well… That’s its own quiet declaration of sorts, isn’t it? 

She’s a bookshop cat, that’s all. Anything else is just preference. She likes the colors, she likes the spots. Nothing else is relevant.

And so they carry on, through the Great War and the flu epidemic — and another epidemic, the sleeping sickness, which they are expressly forbidden from investigating even though the disappearance of one of the Endless affects the world that is Aziraphale’s charge, and should be in his purview to at least check into. He was allowed to confirm when one of the other ones simply quit, after all. But the message telling him to stay out of it sends Aziraphale to his knees, and that’s with only the voice of Michael ringing in his head, not even an archangel being actually present. 

So he and Lia stay out of it, and carry on through the Great Depression and the first rumblings of another world war, with their safe space the only place on Heaven or Earth where they can relax at all.

The bookshop… collects people, sometimes, as if they too can sense the safety built by every ward Aziraphale has ever learned. As if they crave it too, and Aziraphale and Lia discover that they don’t mind this, so long as those people aren’t customers . People who need a refuge are welcome, and every now and then Aziraphale and Lia can even part with a book for those people. It’s less of a wrench, when one goes to someone who will love it just as much. Also, luckily, it’s never been one they only have a single copy of, so it works out for everyone in the end.

They do their angelic duties, and they fill their other hours with things they enjoy, and they pretend there’s nothing missing. They don’t like using the couch in their back room, though. The chair is better. And if they remember when someone else used to take up the space on that couch… well… 

It’s safer for everyone this way. 

There is one other thing they do. They check on Crowley and Toliman in 1905, and the pair of them are asleep. With an assignment from Hell waiting. Aziraphale and Lia take care of it, and several others, leaving careful notes on the matter so that when Crowley wakes up he will be able to pretend he did it. Lend a hand when needed, and it is — it is the only apology available. But it also means that Aziraphale and Lia know that Crowley and Toliman wake in 1920, and they hear nothing. So… so they have ruined it, and there’s an end to it, isn’t there? 

It’s safer. It’s much safer. But oh , it aches, and Lia knows it’s why Aziraphale flings them so hard into trying to do what they can as the world starts turning darker again. Darker, and darker still, until the world is once again at war (and worse than war, in camps that many will later pretend not to have known about, but while not exactly universal knowledge, it was much more widespread than anyone admits later).

Lia doesn’t mind. She agrees with Aziraphale that it’s best to keep busy, and when Heaven blocks them outright from using too many miracles again, well, they still do what they can, where they can. That doesn’t mean she approves of every scheme he gets them into, of course.

“Is getting involved with British Intelligence and pretending to sell books to Nazis really the best thing we could be doing with our time?” Lia asks as Aziraphale packs the small bag full of books. “I’ve said this before, but I really don’t think we should, Aziraphale. This is exactly the kind of situation that could get us into trouble.” 

“Nonsense, my dear. Now, shall we?” 

There are times when Lia truly wishes she wasn’t right about a situation. There are other times when she wishes she could have been more right. The utter mess with the Nazis is the rare occasion when both of those things are true, because if she had been more right, she would have figured out that their ‘backup’ was just another Nazi. 

She hadn’t liked the scent of Rose’s — well, Greta’s — monkey daemon, but she never saw this coming. 

“Ow! Ow! Ow!” 

What --- 

It’s Crowley. Hopping his way down the aisle, talking about consecrated ground and how it’s like “being on the beach in bare feet.” Toliman is in the form of a black lemur, clinging to Crowley’s back with their face peering over his shoulder. Toliman’s eyes are electric blue, bright enough to glow a little in the dim church. Lia, in her favorite cat shape by Aziraphale’s feet, can’t look away from those eyes even though she knows she ought to. 

They came. They’re back. Maybe she and Aziraphale haven’t lost them after all, maybe they’re still friends after all.

“The mysterious Anthony J Crowley,” Glozier says. “Your fame precedes you.” 

Anthony? Lia thinks, though she still doesn’t look away from Toliman, who is staring at her just as intently. The tingle that covers her turns to heat , not burning, just… stronger than the warmth she remembers.

“Anthony?” Aziraphale says, echoing Lia’s silent thoughts. Really, why has Crowley added a further name? He never did before. 

“You don’t like it?” Crowley asks. 

“I’ll get used to it,” Aziraphale says, but Lia can feel his amusement, fond and bright. He doesn’t understand why Crowley’s gone and tinkered with his name again, but it’s so like him to want to do it that they can’t help liking it. They’d like any name he or Toliman picked, probably.

Greta is apparently a fan of Crowley’s, enough to regret killing him, but all Lia and Aziraphale want to know is, “What does the J stand for?” 

“What, you’re talking together now?” Toliman says, their first comment. 

“Just a J, really,” Crowley says, before he’s distracted by the holy water — oh no, not again — and the Nazis go back to being about to shoot them. Until, that is, the bomb lands. Lia and Aziraphale flex their power to cover all four of them from the explosion, and also to cover that font because Crowley and Toliman are far too close and a single drop could — 

Really, it’s no wonder they forget about the books. 

But then Crowley reaches down and comes back up with the books in hand, handing the bag to Aziraphale. “Little demonic miracle of my own. Lift home?” 

It’s Aziraphale who’s struck this time, standing like a fool with the bag in his hand. Lia nudges his ankles to get him moving, because she had the same thought he just had, she’s thrumming with it, but right now there’s something she wants to focus on even more. 

She and Toliman are in the backseat of the Bentley. They’re a fox now, but not one she’s ever seen them be before. Still black, but with huge ears. A desert fox, Lia thinks, what’s it called… Oh! A fennec fox. “Were you in the desert often?” she asks, tentative. 

“Not too much, birdy, but I like this shape. Great hearing. What’s the alias now?” 

And she’d been waiting for that question. “Actually, I have a name now. My name is Lia.”

Toliman jumps to their feet with a happy yip. “Well, it’s about blessed time, b- Lia. Nice to finally meet you properly.” They cross the distance to where she’s sitting, and settle down next to her, tucked close for the rest of the ride. Lia doesn’t need to breathe, but she’d barely be able to if she did, so aware of the current between them. 

Angels and demons aren’t truly solid, and they are a little less insulated by their corporations. It’s even more true for their daemons, and so to have Toliman curled up with her... This close, for more than a moment at a time, after so long apart… It feels like flying, without moving at all.

“You could… come in for a nightcap,” Aziraphale suggests, tentatively, as he and Lia are getting out of the car. “This area should be safe tonight.” 

“Don’t think that’s best at the moment, angel,” Crowley says. “Hey, Lia! Congratulations on the name. We’ll be seeing you.” 

It stings, but not as much as it might have. Because the thing of it is, why would Crowley save the books, why would Toliman be as transfixed by Lia as she was by them, unless… unless the pair of them love her and Aziraphale back? 

Nothing can come of it. Worse, they’ll probably have to push back against even friendship before too long, just to make sure this doesn’t become even more dangerous. But they did come back. Aziraphale and Lia haven’t lost them after all. They may have to pretend it all matters less than it does, pretend they don’t love, pretend they don’t know their love is returned, but… 

But they know what they know, and there is still a connection, there is still something to hold to. Knowing that, love can be a warm thought to hold close, a secret to keep safe between a daemon and her angel. 

They live in Soho. They hear things. 

It’s actually the young woman Crowley’s hired that spills the story. Not to Aziraphale, but to her lovely girlfriend who is one of the aspiring writers Aziraphale and Lia like to let into the bookshop. People like that, or like Robert and Lynna, an unaging human and his fox daemon who’ve dropped in from time to time since the shop opened, are visitors who treat the collection as something of a secret library. As long as they don’t take the books, that’s perfectly acceptable to both Aziraphale and Lia.

(They’re both fairly sure that Teagan boy is using human magic to copy some of the books when he stops in, but Liam’s very courteous for an American, while his daemon Alastrina is a friendly, mischievous genet. Aziraphale and Lia have always liked the mischievous ones more than they should. And anyway, someone copying their books, by definition, is still not taking their books.)

But back to the point, the description of the man hiring people to rob a church is unmistakable, especially when it’s noted that his daemon is a black fennec fox with particularly striking green eyes. “Came up to Sally bold as brass,” Abigail says, stroking her white crow daemon with a shake of her head. “I should tell her to get out of the life, I know, but my mum always said good girls love the bad boys, and I might like the ladies but apparently that just means I go for bad girls. You ever have that trouble, Mr. Fell? Sad liking for the troublemaker?”

Aziraphale does not answer that, because he tries not to lie outright any more than he has to. Lia sighs, and hisses half-heartedly at Abigail’s Helios, who is looking at her like he knows something.

Aziraphale closes up the shop an hour later, and he doesn’t put on a record, or collect a book and a drink, or do anything but sink heavily into his office chair. “They’re going to get themselves killed,” he says, the words so bitter he can nearly taste it. “I should have seen it coming, though. Crowley brought it up in 1941, I should have realized he wouldn’t just let the idea go.” 

“A whole fontful of holy water! It doesn’t even have guards!”

He closes his eyes against the memory. Of course he hadn’t thought about that for too long, he’d been too caught up in — it’s mostly a good memory, that’s the problem. If he lets himself dwell upon what it had been like to see Crowley and Toliman again, to understand their friendship wasn’t broken forever, to realize that — that maybe, that just perhaps — 

He and Lia still believe that Crowley and Toliman wouldn’t have saved the books if they weren’t in love with them too, if this mess wasn’t mutual — though of course they don’t know for certain, any more than they can let Crowley and Toliman know how they feel. There’d be nothing for it except to ignore it anyway, what would be the good of finding out for sure? More than that, Aziraphale is afraid of what might happen if they dare to acknowledge it. Afraid that the knowing might, in itself, doom them.

He can’t be sure, of course. 

Frankly, there’s a great many things he’s not sure of, and that includes just what, besides rank, may set archangels apart. Aziraphale is a principality, and if he truly wished it, there’s more power in him than he lets on. He doesn’t really know or care where he fits in the larger design that way; he has the ability to do what he must, and to protect those that he’s… somewhat inadvertently claimed. He can do all the little miracles that make his life simpler, with time and study he was able to lay the wards on his bookstore that make it a sanctuary. Those are the things that concern him, and beyond that he doesn’t care about power and he never has. His own or anyone else’s.

But unfortunately that means he doesn’t know the full breadth of what archangels can do, and if he were to ask now that would only draw their suspicions. And so, he doesn’t know exactly how they watch. He can sense love; what if they can trace it, follow someone’s love back to whoever it’s directed at? It’s too late, he can’t… stop loving Crowley, that’s not possible, but he’s thought, well, if he hides it under other things, if he’s contrary enough that even Crowley doesn’t know where they stand, then perhaps he can confuse the trail, as it were? 

Lia, for her part, thinks it’s a terrible idea. Aziraphale suspects she’s right, but as neither of them have a better one, it doesn’t really change anything. They do it anyway, because they can’t just do nothing. 

There are no good choices here; there is only hoping that whatever one chooses won’t be the worst of a bad bunch.

Technically, holy water is holy water. The blessing alone is supposed to be enough to ensure it’s fatal for any demon it touches. In practice, that may or may not be entirely true. It’s difficult to say because, quite frankly, there hasn’t been a lot of opportunity to test it directly. There are other creatures holy water is a defense against, and water from any old font works a treat on them, but they are… lesser beings, in their way. 

Aziraphale chooses to believe, or at least hope, that Crowley means the holy water as a weapon and not as a suicide pill. He isn’t entirely clear on how that would be possible — he knows that there are toy guns children use to shoot water at each other which might be a useful method, but they didn’t exist yet, as far as he knows, when Crowley first asked — but if it’s true… 

If it’s true, then Crowley needs the blessing to be as strong as possible, so that the water can work quickly. 

If it’s not true, if Aziraphale’s fear is the real truth, then… then…

Then the quicker it’s over, the less pain there will be. 

If he were human, that thought would make him sick. As it is Lia makes a choked sound and Aziraphale has to close his eyes, but the facts remain. Sometimes doing something terrible cleanly is the only kindness, the only mercy there can be, and he won’t allow his own horror to make him hesitate. 

The very strongest of blessings has nothing to do with the water. Aziraphale can use water from his own rarely-used sink, and he does so. Perhaps the human tendency toward superstition has had its effect on him, and using water from his bookshop gives him some silly hope that Crowley will somehow know and… that it will matter to him and Toliman, for some reason. Aziraphale knows better, knows himself to be clinging to fools’ hopes, but what else is there?

Tap water from Aziraphale’s bookshop, and the blessing from Aziraphale’s own lips, Lia’s paw resting delicately on the surface of the water. Then Aziraphale pours it out of the bowl and into a tartan thermos — another likely-pointless gesture — before twisting the cap on as tightly as it will go. 

They know when the meeting is, and really, did Crowley and Toliman pick their location out of spite? As some kind of taunt? It certainly feels like a slap in the face, but Aziraphale ignores that to keep a watch outside his window. He doesn’t strictly need to, because as a precaution he told that young man from the Witchfinder Army that he really did need to take this particular job his old friend had told him about. 

Take the job, and keep the redheaded man running the burglary talking outside, just for a few minutes. 

From here, Aziraphale can see that Lance Corporal Shadwell is succeeding quite well, though what he’s chosen to discuss with Crowley, who can say? Shadwell’s daemon, a nondescript mutt of some kind that looks far friendlier than her human, sits at his heels, while Toliman has climbed up to Crowley’s shoulder, huge ears pricked forward. 

Aziraphale sees them go their separate ways, and in the moment where Crowley opens the Bentley’s door, he moves — 

And materializes in the front passenger seat, the thermos in his hand below Crowley’s line of sight and Lia on his lap, curled up in a miserable little ball.

"What?" Crowley demands, and oh, he hardly even seems surprised, did he and Toliman plan this? 

“I live in Soho, I hear things,” Aziraphale says, fighting to keep his voice as steady as possible. “I hear that you’re planning a — a caper. To rob a church. Crowley, it’s too dangerous. Holy water won’t just kill your body. It would destroy you completely.” And the humans would have no notion of the risks, no idea that they should be cautious. 

As Crowley himself once observed, fonts of holy water are out in the open. A splash would be so easy to cause. A splash would be enough.

Crowley’s face is set, Toliman growling faintly from somewhere in the footwell. “You’ve already told me what you think,” Crowley says, voice flat. “A hundred and five years ago.” 

“And I haven’t changed my mind,” Aziraphale says, as Lia curls up even smaller in his lap. “But I won’t have you risking your life. Not even for something dangerous. So you can call off the robbery.” He swallows hard against a tightness in his throat that shouldn’t be there, because he doesn’t typically have bodily reactions that he doesn’t choose, as he pulls out the tartan thermos.

“Don’t go unscrewing the cap,” he says, voice clipped to keep the words from turning into a plea. Even so, he can hear the unsteady note in his own voice. Damn it all. 

“It’s the real thing?” Crowley asks, as Toliman sits up, peeking around Crowley’s bony knee to examine the thermos. And then those green eyes turn toward Lia, but only Aziraphale sees that. Lia stays curled in on herself, her face hidden against her own side. Toliman watches her, their ears slowly going back as Lia doesn’t so much as twitch. 

What did you expect? For us to be jumping for joy? And you, Crowley, you think I’d lie to you about it? Aziraphale thinks, so bitterly it almost makes him ill. “The holiest,” is all he says aloud, because none of it matters, does it?

“After everything you said,” Crowley murmurs, almost sounding awed, and that is — that is the worst thing, how can he be reacting as if Aziraphale has given him a gift, as if it’s something… This time Aziraphale only nods, but when Crowley asks if he should thank him, he forces himself to respond. 

“Better not.” 

A short silence, and then Crowley says, “Can I drop you anywhere?” 

Aziraphale doesn’t think he can bear another moment in this car, frankly, and Lia apparently agrees, shifting form quickly to a tiny bird that can sit on his shoulder, rigid and staring straight ahead so that Toliman can’t catch her eye. Aziraphale, for his part, turns Crowley down, and babbles about a picnic or the Ritz, feeling an idiot really but hoping that it… 

He can’t say, don’t use the water. Please, don’t leave Lia and me here alone. We couldn’t bear it. So he talks about something safer instead. Lunch plans are one of his favorite things, Crowley and Toliman know that, they won’t suspect anything, won’t know that he’s asking for them to still be here later for such plans to exist.

“I’ll give you a lift,” Crowley says, curiously insistent. “Anywhere you want to go.” 

What Aziraphale wants is to scream at him to stop it. What he says is, “You go too fast for me, Crowley.” 

Too fast. Too fast to pretend he and Lia didn’t just give a suicide pill to the pair they love, too fast to pretend they aren’t falling apart inside. From the way Toliman hisses and Crowley’s mouth thins just a little, Aziraphale has the sinking feeling they understood it differently, but he can’t do anything about that. He can’t bear any more of this. So Aziraphale and Lia leave the Bentley without another word, watching as Crowley drives away. 

But Toliman is in the back seat, watching them from the rear window until the car turns out of sight.

Lia turns into an eagle, so that she can soar up toward the stars they can’t see and shriek . Aziraphale should stop her, but he rather feels as though she’s screaming for the both of them, and so he simply waits for her to come back down, standing on the sidewalk under a neon light blinking in and out.

The funny thing is, when Aziraphale said, in 1862, that he’d be in serious trouble if he gave Crowley holy water and it got him caught, he’d been… 

Lying is the wrong word, Lia knows. It had been more that neither of them really thought that would happen, had seen it more as a last-ditch effort to make Crowley take back the request. Only he hadn’t, and in the end she and Aziraphale had given him and Toliman what they wanted, and now… now…

Well. Now, with their worry for Crowley and Toliman still weighing on them, Aziraphale has been summoned to Heaven. Because the power of his miracle to make the holy water was unusual.

"They're going to do it again," Lia says. "And then what will we do?"

"Well, we know that even when I was at my coldest, I didn't admit to the Arrangement. I considered it dishonorable to go back on my word, even to a demon. Perhaps... perhaps... it will be for the best," Aziraphale says, and Lia yowls, furious.

"No!" she says fiercely. "I know loving them isn't safe but letting that be erased isn't better! Anyway, it'll come back. But by then we'll have lost them for good."

Aziraphale sighs. "Well, then what do you suggest?"

Lia has an idea, though it's a fairly awful one. She and Aziraphale aren't bound to remain within a certain distance like most humans' daemons are. But they've never tried being on different planes before. She knows that humans separate from their daemons by crossing over spaces that mortal daemons can't cross, and she knows the process hurts.

And there is a worse process. Severing. To truly break the bond.

It's possible that if she stays on Earth while Aziraphale goes to Heaven, it will Sever them. But she doesn't think so. And if it does, unlike mortals, she thinks they'll heal. That used to happen to mortals too, actually. Damage, not as complete as a Severing, that healed over time. She thinks that's the most likely outcome, and if she's right...

Even the last time they did whatever they did, she was not truly touched by it, because Heaven doesn't understand daemons. If she isn't there at all, it stands to reason that whatever it is won't affect her. That should mean she'll be able to fix it in Aziraphale, rather than having to let it wear off naturally.

"And what if they notice?" Aziraphale demands when Lia tells him her idea.

"There's no rule that says I have to be with you. The rules only say I can't be up there separate from you."

"Well, that much is true," Aziraphale sighs. "And I didn't care for that particular sort of assistance. I don't think they can know how... difficult that is. Or, rather, I certainly hope they don't." His face is troubled, and no wonder; Lia can't help thinking as she did then, that of course they knew and that was the punishment of it. But then, it can be so hard to figure out just what Heaven understands about their experience here on Earth. Maybe an angel who spends most of their time in Heaven would react differently.

She finds this less likely than Aziraphale does, but they don't know . Heaven is supposed to be all that's good, after all, and they just don't have any real ground to stand on.

So, Aziraphale goes to Heaven alone, and Lia stays in the bookshop, as safe behind the wards as she can possibly be. That had been Aziraphale's tweak to her plan. "If the idea is to prevent the effects getting to you, we may as well stack the odds as much as possible," he'd said, and it was a good idea.

She doesn't feel it at first. Oh, she can sense her angel's physical form getting further and further away from hers, she's always able to do that, but it doesn't feel like anything in particular. It's just an awareness. But then, abruptly, there's a tugging deep in the center of her, getting worse and worse every moment...

At some point, Lia knows she starts to scream. At some point, the pain stops increasing, but it's so overwhelming that she can't stop, writhing on the floor in the backroom in shape after shape, before sinking into something formless. She might be an actual puddle of the tears she can't shed, and still she screams. Desperate, shrieking cries, and she remembers another scream, not hers, she remembers when she and Aziraphale were still one, they didn't know where their beloved friend was until that horrible cry. And then it was too late, too late to catch him, to tell him to go back to the stars and hide, he didn't really like most of the rebels, he couldn't really want to go with them, could he?

She screams .

And when the pain stops? When it stops, she slides back into her favorite grey-spotted cat form, sprawled weakly on the floor. She's still whimpering with the aftershocks, and she feels frozen inside. But she's still herself, she's still...

"Oh, stop that racket."

Aziraphale's face is blank, his eyes as cold as an archangel's, and Lia knows they did it to him again. "No..." she whispers, because she doesn't think she has the strength to get up.

"Back inside me, now," Aziraphale orders. "There are no humans here to see, and I can't be distracted. I must do something about that holy water, it was careless enough to make it, much less to give it to a demon. What was I thinking, I let that one get far too inside my head, it can't..." Aziraphale trails off, fingers skimming over the spines of his collected copies of Hamlet . So many copies now, different editions, different languages, and Lia knows they all carry an echo of flames and scales, dark fur and starsong.

An echo of Crowley and Toliman, down through the centuries.

Crowley and Toliman, who were so insistent they needed the holy water. Who would never expect a betrayal from Aziraphale, not now. Crowley and Toliman, who they love, who might love them, who --- who ---

She doesn't remember finding the strength. She doesn't remember deciding on a shape. The next thing Lia knows, she's on her feet, her hands pressed to Aziraphale's temples. Her hands, because she's standing before him in human shape.

There are human legends, of people whose daemons settled in the shape of humans. Technically, humans are animals, after all. Lia doesn't actually know if there's any truth to the stories, or to the tales of daemons leading their other halves out of danger, back to themselves after some terrible curse.

"No!" she says. "My name is Lia, I am your daemon, I stayed here so I could undo this, and I'm going to do that!"

"You will not. This is how I should be," Aziraphale says, but his fingers are still pressed to the books, he's blinking at her a little blearily. Lia doesn't really know what to do, so she just pushes against the chill, welcoming it as a pain grows deep in her center. The pain of a wounded bond, she thinks dizzily. But she pulls on it, until she cries out again but Aziraphale does too, and then for a moment she can see herself as she is in this form.

Strawberry blonde waves of hair, jade green eyes that turn slowly to the same pale shifting shades as Aziraphale's eyes. The hair stays, though, flickering to Aziraphale's white and the impossible colors their true form used to glow, in the days before the War, but back to strawberry blonde. It hurts, it hurts, but Lia thinks it hurts like a broken bone being set, as she flings all the truths of their heart at her angel, until they hit their knees, two as one lost in a sea of ice, in choking pain.

When Lia's herself again, she's back to being a grey cat, and Aziraphale is lying on the floor with her on his chest, blinking up at the ceiling. "I do not want to have to do that again," Aziraphale admits weakly.

"You would have broken everything, if we didn't," Lia says. "Are you sure it's supposed to help us?"

"I'm not sure of anything," Aziraphale admits. "Except that there's nothing else for it."

Unfortunately, that's also the only thing Lia is sure of.

There is a school, now, where the church was in 1941. If this was one of Aziraphale's books, there would be some message in that, but if there is it's not one he can find. Just the message he and Lia find on Earth, over and over and over again. Life goes on. Humans take the rubble and the barren land and they build something new with as much determination as they destroyed it before.

Sometimes it's even the same humans.

The stone of the building is a similar shade of grey, though. Idly, he wonders if some of the stone was salvaged and reused for the building.

Aziraphale and Lia don't linger. They walk a particular path, when they get to St. James' Park, one they've not taken since a fateful day in 1862. Aziraphale stands by the rail where he and Crowley stood that day, and rests his palms lightly on the cool metal. Lia presses her head gently against his ankle, and perhaps he ought to suggest she become a bird again. They've had a narrow escape, paid for in an ache that still lingers all through his corporation, echoed by a dull throb deep in the core of his true form. They really shouldn't court more trouble, though he supposes Heaven won't look for a while since they think they've corrected him properly.

But he is too bloody tired to bother, as Crowley might say. Let Lia be a cat if she likes, what does it even matter?

"We could just walk away," Lia says, as they leave the park.

"Oh yes, and how would that end?" Aziraphale asks. The trouble, of course, is that they don't know how that will end. Aziraphale suspects that if they need to keep reconditioning him, they'll just give up at some point, but he doesn't know what will happen then.

He doesn't wish to Fall, of course, and in truth he doesn't think he really can. Falling requires a lack of trust in God, and that trust is something Aziraphale has never lost. He can't seem to be the kind of angel Heaven wants him to be, and that is his fault somehow, only... Only, God doesn't make mistakes. Her plans and goals are ineffable, unknowable, but she has them.

Aziraphale has held to this idea for a long time, and it has guided him: God does not make mistakes. He's said it, or something like it, quite often over the years, because... Because angels have their own flocks they watch over, even one like Aziraphale who has an assignment to keep an eye on the Earth as a whole. It's just something angels do. Though of course it's rarely official, and certainly isn't in Aziraphale's case.

But some people, in esoteric circles both religious and occult, have picked up on the idea that Aziraphale is the guardian angel of queer people and star-crossed lovers. Despite not being true in any official sense, it has rather become something of a truth, more or less, due to the nature of angels and the nature of Aziraphale himself. Not that he and Lia have ever realized that anyone noticed. Not that he and Lia have ever said aloud, even to themselves, why it’s both of those groups, which overlap quite easily but far from constantly.

And so, Aziraphale has told humans time and again that their love isn't wrong, that the person they know themselves to be is who they are, even if the world would tell them their physical form means something else. Because God does not make mistakes. She just... creates longer journeys for some.

"If we are all as we're meant to be, then we haven't done anything wrong," Lia says when they're settled on a bench in Soho Square and she's curled up as a fluffy white cat in his lap. "That means Heaven shouldn't be trying to fix us."

"But they aren't meant to see that, I don't think," Aziraphale sighs. "We're different, because we were always meant to be here. It means something, or it will, and now we've figured out the loophole so that what they do doesn't work... it hurts, yes, but we'll heal, won't we?"

"I'm not so sure," Lia says grimly. Aziraphale isn't either, but only time will really tell.

"We're meant to love, as an angel," is all he says. "We --- it isn't wrong. They aren't --- we know it's not as simple as the rules say, it's just that no one else can know." Not even Crowley and Toliman. Especially not them, especially not now. Aziraphale and Lia can get away without even being truly punished, now.

"My lot do not send rude notes."

Crowley even told him, didn't he? It's quite clear Hell deals out painful punishments, and Aziraphale and Lia's new trick won't help Crowley and Toliman there. So it's more important than ever that Aziraphale and Lia keep the true depths of their feelings hidden. There's too much at stake to do anything else.

They stay there as the sky darkens to night, and Aziraphale tips his head back to look up at the night sky. In London these days, you can't really see the stars anymore, but he knows they're there. And he thinks of green-gold nebula eyes and red starfire hair, he thinks of golden snake eyes and burnt crimson hair in countless styles over centuries, of green eyes bright against night-black fur.

Sometimes, he wishes he and Lia could know for sure . It wouldn't change anything, but it would be nice, for clarity's sake, to know if they lost their heart to the same person twice, or to different people. They'd be here anyway, but sometimes it seems rather unfair to always have that question.

Not much of a one. The echoes are loud, and it seems likely that isn't just coincidence.

But it isn't given to them to truly know. It is given to them to carry on. Crowley and Toliman will come round eventually. They got what they wanted, and whatever bothered them about what Aziraphale said, the tension was nothing to the anger of 1862. It will be all right, and they'll settle down. For as long as settling is possible, anyway.

The world won't last forever. But they'll have till then. It's more than they had last time.

The day all of it falls apart is an entirely unremarkable day, for Aziraphale and Lia. 

Life has been… much as it often has, since 1967. Aziraphale and Lia didn’t see Crowley and Toliman for a few years, and then one day they were all just… in St. James Park, and things went back to normal. Meetings off and on, Arrangement deals or social calls or both, and otherwise… 

Well. 

Not to say that times haven’t been difficult. The 1980s were bleak on many levels, even before… Aziraphale and Lia aren’t human, and so they aren’t quite sure how much they can lay claim to human terminology on some things, but the pair of them always been drawn to those who love differently, or whose true selves don’t match what their physical bodies “imply” to most observers. They’ve always been here, under so many different names and terms, but… 

Laws against them, and then a sickness cutting so many people down, while those with power simply watched, or actively abetted the harm. Aziraphale and Lia did what they could, which was only so much before Gabriel or occasionally Uriel popped down to make it clear that if he didn’t stop doing all he could as an angel, they would make him stop, by whatever means necessary. They did what they could as a paired person, after that, with quieter miracles where they could get away with it. 

There have been horrors before, and there will be others, and even in the worst times there are pockets of hope, of love, and that’s what Aziraphale and Lia hold to, as they always have. And to Crowley and Toliman’s company, though they’re careful how often they admit that to themselves. Crowley and Toliman don’t know the depths of their feelings, and that’s one layer of defense, but it doesn’t do to dwell. Who knows what might happen.

And as the years turn there are good things. Some good things. They do eye some of the side effects of modernity with some concern — yes, of course, Armageddon is coming, the humans don’t have as much time as they think, but surely it isn’t a good idea to muck up the Earth so much while they still have it? But still, a lot of things are getting better, and after the last couple decades, it’s a welcome thing.

Lia gets a bit careless, she admits that. Her favorite form is still the grey spotted cat, but that’s her bookshop form, by now. Oh, she’s still a cat most of the time when they’re out and about — it’s been ages since other angels came to them anywhere but the bookshop, and the wards give the warnings they’re supposed to for that — but as part of Aziraphale pretending to be a succession of Mr. Fells, she currently has the form of a calico. 

No, it’s not an excuse to be shades of red and black as well as white and cream, that would be idiotic. 

Lia is not as prone to denial as her angel, but she is not free from the impulse either. 

She’s sprawled lazily at Aziraphale’s feet, with him slipping bits of sushi down to her from time to time, when the faint shiver runs through the air. Lia doesn’t move, expecting Toliman to slink up next to her, but what she gets instead is a sharp nudge with someone’s shoe. 

“Gabriel,” Aziraphale says, voice pitched up in alarm. 

“Why is your prop a cat, Aziraphale?” 

Miracles, Lia thinks desperately, not daring to try and communicate more than that in case Gabriel hears her, but it’s apparently enough, because Aziraphale manages a weak laugh and a sheepish expression. “Oh, it’s the miracles,” he explains. “I’ve tried very hard since my last reprimand on the matter to limit my miracles and altering my… prop is a simple way to prevent humans from using the records they keep these days to realize I’m the same person I’ve always been.” 

“Hm. And why do you consume that ? You’re an angel,” Gabriel asks scornfully, pointing at the sushi. Aziraphale opens his mouth to explain, then glances down at Lia and clears his throat before meeting Gabriel’s cold purple eyes. 

“It’s what humans do. Another way to keep up appearances. And some of it is… nice. It helps me connect with humans to know those things. Would — would you like tea?” 

“I do not sully the temple of my celestial body with gross matter.” 

“No. Of course not,” Aziraphale agrees with a tremulous smile, and a part of Lia that sounds a lot like Toliman thinks acidly, no, but you like the designer suits, don’t you. 

Which makes it a bit unnerving when Aziraphale says more politely, “Nice suit,” and Gabriel agrees that he does like the clothes. 

But not half so unnerving as what he says next. “Pity they won’t be around much longer. Though that’s good news for you — you won’t need to break rules to budget your miracles properly much longer either, so we’ll let this one slide.” Well, that’s a threat if either of them have ever heard one, but there isn’t much to be done about it now, and what he’s implying beyond that is even more concerning. It sounds like…

But no. Not yet, surely.

“Ah… they won’t? I won’t?” Aziraphale asks, and Lia sees his fingers flex against his thigh. She knows he wants to reach for her, knows he doesn’t dare. And she doesn’t dare sit up to press her head to his ankle, doesn’t dare move. The toe of Gabriel’s shoe is still against her side. Not pushing, not hurting, but there, a promise that it could hurt, if he wanted it to.

“We have reliable information that things… are afoot,” Gabriel says. 

Gabriel’s comments about Crowley, the way he apparently still fully believes Aziraphale has managed to keep an eye on him without ever interacting, would be almost funny, and definitely something of a relief, under any other circumstances. Under this one, however… 

Once he leaves, and Aziraphale and Lia are on their way back to the bookshop, Lia shifts form into a lioness. It’s too showy for her most of the time, but it is a convenient size of feline for talking to her angel as they walk. She can’t talk properly on his shoulder as a housecat, even when she makes herself small enough to sit there. She tends to fall off. So, big it is, at times like this. Really, she should probably go back to being a bird after what Gabriel just did, but she can still feel the pressure of his shoe against her side, and the idea of being small, a bird tiny enough to talk comfortably in her angel’s ear, feels like another violation. 

(Not that it was a violation. It wasn’t serious enough for that. She’s comforted humans’ daemons still shaking and ill from the touch of unwelcome hands, this is nothing like that, nothing at all. Just archangel posturing.)

(As noted, Lia is sometimes as capable of denial as her angel.)

“He didn’t say Apocalypse,” Aziraphale says, using a long-dead language just in case.

“Can’t be anything else, though, can it?” Lia grumbles, taking comfort from the way Aziraphale strokes a hand down her head and back. Another advantage to being big, for now, is that her angel can pet her while they walk. It’s good for both of them.

“No, I don’t believe it can,” Aziraphale agrees. “If Crowley and Toliman are involved I’m sure we’ll hear from them soon, don’t you think?”

“As soon as they can manage it, yes,” Lia sighs. Though she can’t see what help it will be. There’s nothing they can do, right? It’s the end of the world, the Great Plan. Can’t be stopped. There’s nothing to be done, and though Lia already knows that Aziraphale will insist that it’s a good thing that Heaven will win, they’re happy about it, really they are… 

They like Earth, they’re more at ease here than they’ve been in Heaven since after the War. Things might have been different before, with… with… but afterwards, things were never quite right. Not until Eden. (Not until a conversation on the wall of Eden.)

She won’t exist anymore, if Heaven wins. They’ll lose Crowley and Toliman, if Heaven wins. 

They aren’t allowed to want anything but Heaven’s victory, so where does that leave them?

As it turns out, where it leaves them is with Crowley and Toliman talking them into being godparents to the Antichrist and his daemon, to try and balance out good and evil influences so that he turns out human. Normal. 

As Aziraphale and Crowley set themselves to getting drunk a second time, Lia creeps over to Toliman. They’re not a fennec fox right now but a pine marten, curled up on one of the bookshelves. Lia, though she crept up as her favorite cat form, curls up next to them in the exact same shape, her fur white against their black.

“We haven’t matched forms since old Bess was crowned,” Toliman says lazily. 

“Do you mind?” Lia asks softly. 

“Nah, birdy.” They still call her that, just like Crowley calls Aziraphale angel, and sometimes Lia wonders just what the words mean out of their mouths, now. But she doesn’t ask. She never has and probably never will, but she can twine her form around Toliman’s, and they can rest together while their other halves get completely sloshed again. 

It’s something, isn’t it? And if they lose it all in the end, at least they had this much?