Chapter Text
“Hello, yes, you. Could you please come here for a second?”
The 37th Class Scrivener, who had taken over the duty from Muriel once she had firmly settled at the bookshop and turned tail at every attempt of being brought back to duty, looked up, startled.
“Supreme Archangel?”
“Yes, dear,” the holographic head of Aziraphale spoke without looking at her. He was busy staring at something in his hands, “Could you come to my desk?”
“Is…” the Scrivener fumbled. This didn’t happen every day. Actually, this didn’t happen, ever. They must have…
“Oh, you’re not in trouble, dear,” the Supreme Archangel assured her.
He sounded kind enough, but the Scrivener felt no sense of relief. This was the archangel who had singlehandedly put an end to the Second Coming and exiled the Metatron to the farthest end of the universe, to be locked forever in a frozen star.
The Scrivener didn’t know whether this had been virtuous or sinful. It was way above their paygrade to wonder such things. All they knew for sure is that they never wanted to be called into the Boss’ room as long as they could help it.
“Actually…” the said Boss’ voice interrupted her thoughts. “Actually, I think we should have the conversation here. Through this,” he gestured at the holographic square. “You coming here to my room would be too… Anyway,” he looked up directly at them this time.
The Scrivener had seen this look before, this frown. And they definitely weren’t faring very well under this glare at all. They would have sweated buckets if they could but as of now, they knew not what sweat or buckets were.
“This requisition here doesn’t make any sense,” his frown deepened.
The Scrivener felt a cold chill run down their spine as they dove into the copies of the requisitions piled on their table.
“Pray, Supreme Archangel, which one…”
“Folio C21AE7899204.”
“204? Oh, 204. 204… Found it!” they finally felt like they could breathe again even though they didn’t need to. “Yes, Sir?”
“Yes, so…” Aziraphale tapped at the file a few times restlessly. “What does this mean really?”
The Scrivener, thankfully, had possessed the presence of mind to give the requisition a quick read by now. Though the question didn’t make much sense to them, it was fairly direct.
“It’s a requisition, Sir, to be human.”
The Supreme Archangel started at her blankly.
“The one who made the request isn’t, currently, a human,” they explained, feeling more clueless by the second. Why was he looking at them like that?
“Of course, they aren't a hu-” Aziraphale stopped himself from exploding by taking in a deep breath. “It says here that this requisition was filed by ‘The Hell Office’s Former Representative in London.’”
“Yes, oh…” the Scrivener delved into another pile of files under their desk now, “You’ll probably want the list of former representatives from…”
“There is no…” the Supreme Archangel pressed his fingers against the bridge of his eyebrows. “There is no list, dear. There were only ever two. Shax and…”
“Oh… right,” the Scrivener exclaimed, “How stupid of me! Of course, it cannot be Shax.”
“Why?”
“Oh, I thought you… anyway, a demon named Eric dropped a pint of Holy Water on her. She hasn’t been seen since. Eric’s the current representative on Earth.”
“With Muriel being Heaven’s representative… Dear Lord…”
The Scrivener wasn’t of course going to make a comment, but they had a feeling that the Supreme Archangel was skirting around an obvious fact.
“So, of course it’s Crowley, you know?”
“What?” he looked up sharply again.
“The one who made the requisition.”
“Why would Crowley file a requisition to Heaven to be human?” Aziraphale snapped for real this time.
The Scrivener found themselves momentarily frozen in fear. They had no plans for the future (because Heaven had no concept of anything besides the Present) but if they did, they would not fancy being locked in a frozen star for eternity.
It took them a while to unlock their jaw.
“Well… Sir… It’s just…”
“ANSWER!”
“It’s just that… the Book of Life is in Heaven, isn’t it? And after the Metatron, the only one who can make changes to it is… well, you. And Her, of course, but She…” their voice died down on its own. It was obvious that the Supreme Archangel wasn’t listening.
“Crowley wants me to make him human?”
The Scrivener remained silent. They were clearly not needed in this conversation anymore. But they also dared not to shut off the hologram.
Aziraphale shook his head, seemingly unconscious of what he was doing.
“Crowley wants me to make him… mortal?”
The Scrivener remained frozen in place. The Supreme Archangel was clearly having an emotional response of Earthly origins that the Scrivener was totally unfamiliar with. After all, the Supreme Archangel had spent several millennia in…
Aziraphale snapped his head up to look at them.
“Folio C21AE7899204 has never existed, and you or I have never laid our eyes on it.”
He snapped his fingers and in a second the said file on their desk was a tiny pile of salt. Aziraphale melted the original in Holy Water.
[Several decades ago: London]
A sudden splash of water jerked Crowley out of his reverie.
Could you call a fever dream a reverie?
He snapped his head up to glare at the source of nuisance.
A human infant of… five? Four? Who could ever predict human ages? stared at him from the second-floor window of the building he was currently slumped down against on the pavement.
Though the boy himself kept looking at him with deadpan eyes, a very frantic father soon appeared out of the front gate.
He, too, seemed to be stunned at his son’s actions.
“Told you not to do that!” he yelled at the boy upstairs who merely shrugged.
“He was burning.”
The father turned his eyes towards Crowley now. “Well, yes… to be fair, you were burning.”
Crowley rolled his eyes under his sunglasses. He would have thrown out a “Fuck you” and walked away, but the kid upstairs was still looking on, utterly unimpressed.
So, he decided to just walk away instead.
He had barely taken a step forward when he felt a hand grasping his shoulder to turn him around.
“Are you mental?” Crowley drawled. “Do that to the wrong people and you’ll get your hand torn off.”
“Yeah, sure, exactly, whatever,” the father acknowledged and ignored his threat in one breath. “Point is, are you alright?”
Now, that actually took Crowley by surprise. “What?”
The man lowered his voice conspiratorially as he kicked at one of the many empty glass bottles that had surrounded Crowley a moment ago. “You’re not doing so well, are you?”
“What sort of enormously, astoundingly, disgustingly invasive behavior is this?” Crowley blanched, “A man cannot pass out drunk off his ass in the middle of the street nowadays without being judged? In LONDON? You’re not one of those holier-than-thou vicars or something, are you? I cannot possible handle one of those this early in the morning.”
“I have a son!” the man sputtered indignantly.
Crowley have him an absolutely befuddled look, “Who just woke me up rather rudely. What does that have to do with anything?”
“You were burning,” the son reminded them dutifully.
“You can hear us?” the man started yelling again, “Nathan, go inside!”
“Well, it’s not his fault you whisper like an idiot,” Crowley pointed out. If the boy was pleased with the affirmation, he did not show it. He simply stood there for another minute before vanishing into the apartment.
“So… yeah, as I was saying,” the father continued steadfastly, “How can I possibly be a vicar? Vicars can’t have children.”
Crowley started at the man. He wasn’t much shorter than Crowley but didn’t seem to let that bother him one bit. He boasted of a strange combination of the self-assured air of a suburban father with the wildly disarrayed hair and distracted eyes of a forest fairy.
“How are you so confident in being so wrong?” Crowley found himself asking.
And that question… he has asked that before, hasn’t he? In a completely different way. To a completely different… entity.
Crowley jerked the man’s hand off his shoulder and started walking away at a furious pace.
It was too late, however. The familiarity had sunk its teeth in.