Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

So I’m having thoughts about Alpha Centauri, and I haven’t seen any of them mentioned anywhere, so here goes.

It’s a common theme in fics that Crowley has some sort of personal attachment to Alpha Centauri, that maybe he made it, and that he really wanted to go there. I’m not saying it’s a bad trope. I’ve read very cool fics about them going for a trip to Alpha Centauri after Armageddon together.

I think we’re reasonably safe to assume Crowley has been to Alpha Centauri as an angel. He knows that it’s always nice this time of year. Now, it is a fairly flippant statement, but we know he helped built a nebula, so maybe he happened to pass by Alpha Centauri on his way to work or something. Maybe he helped make it as well. He doesn’t say, but he might have.

The other common theme about Alpha Centauri is the “it’s a binary star system, two stars locked in orbit around each other, and that’s a metaphor for their relationship”.

Science geek me isn’t quite satisfied reading that one, because it’s a triple star system. Alpha Centauri A and B are more or less sun-sized stars orbiting a common center. They’re pretty close together (their orbits would fit into the Sun/Pluto orbit, which really is pretty close for two stars). They’re orbited by the third star of the system, the red dwarf Proxima Centauri. It’s called “Proxima” because it’s the closest star to Earth. Out of the three components, Proxima is also the only one currently confirmed to have planets. It has two of them.

And that’s an interesting thing, isn’t it? It’s the star closest to Earth. Crowley says, while trying to talk Aziraphale into leaving with him “lots of spare planets up there, nobody will even notice us”. Lots of spare planets. The system he picks has two. By now, surveys for exoplanets have found lots of systems with planets, including systems with planets in their stars’ habitable zone.

The system he picks has one potentially habitable planet. It’s also, far as running away goes, a very interesting choice. Let’s run away from Heaven and Hell, as far as the nearest planet we can reach! … Because that’s it! It’s the nearest planet. Not one that’s far away, hidden in the far and wide stretch of the cosmos where nobody can ever find them. As far as running away goes, on a cosmic scale, Alpha Centauri is like running away from the law and moving in next door instead of fleeing the county. Surely nobody will find you here? One house down the road. Yeah, seems perfectly safe. Very good running away you’re doing.

It goes even further than that. Alpha Centauri A and B are visible to the naked eye from Earth. (Proxima is too dim.) If you were to live on Proxima’s planet, A and B would be the brightest objects in the sky at night by far, but know what would also easily be bright enough to see? The Sun. Our Sun. As a main sequence star a measly four lightyears away, it would be one of Proxima Centauri’s brightest night sky objects. You can’t only see Alpha Centauri from Earth, you will also see Earth’s Sun from Alpha Centauri.

My point here is, Crowley doesn’t choose a far away system to run away to, as would be probably smart. If you’re running away from Heaven and Hell, run away as far as you can. Instead, Crowley wants to run away just the bare minimum he has to. Just far enough to reach the next best star.

He doesn’t choose a safe place to run away to. He chooses a place to run away to from where he will be able to see Earth. It’ll be in his sky, every night. And if it goes up into a big puddle of burning goo, the flash of the explosion will spark on Proxima Centauri’s sky like a supernova. Crowley will be able to see the end of Earth. From a distance, yes, but it will be impossible to miss. Depending how the war goes, how long it lasts, the Heavenly and Hellish fires burning up the Earth might last month, years, centuries. And all this time, the spot in Crowley’s chosen sky where his former home planet was will burn bright and clear. Even without fighting, even after having run, he’ll bear witness. He’d be unable not to.

I think Crowley didn’t pick a star system he worked on eons ago, when he was still an angel. No, he picked the closest thing to Earth, the closest thing to the planet he loves, that he lived on for 6000 years, where he became the person he is now, where he met the only other being he wants to share his life with. He picks the closest thing to home.

To go to to watch home burn. All his plans to stop it have failed. He’s lost hope. He can only run. He wants to take his most important person along, but not really to a safe place. It’s a safer place, yes, by a margin, but it’s also a place where they can continue to do what they’ve done together for 6000 years. Bear witness to Heavenly and Hellish atrocities committed on Earth. Like they bore witness to the Flood and the Crucification. They might not be able to stop it, but they’ll witness it, lighting up the sky from the closest vantage point in the entire universe.

Crowley doesn’t pick Alpha Centauri because it has a lot of personal meaning to him. He picks it because Earth means a lot to him, and even if he leaves, he doesn’t go far.

Excuse the angst. To end not on a bleak note, I have another point to add: remember the thing about the three stars, not two? Remember the relationship metaphor? Suggestion for a new metaphor: the two main stars, A and B, are Crowley and Aziraphale, closely orbiting each other. The third star, always bound to both of them, is Earth/humanity. To say Alpha Centauri is a binary star system leaves out the constant push and pull of the third star on both of them. The system is only stable, and accurately described, if you consider the influence of the third component. Proxima Centauri is a vital component of the Alpha Centauri star system, and Crowley and Aziraphale wouldn’t work the same way, maybe not at all, without the gravitational pull of Earth and its humans.

O