Chapter Text
It starts, as it would end, with a garden.
We’ve heard this tale before. We’ve seen it played out time and time again. So, let’s try something new.
It re-started, with no plans to end yet, in a garden.
A Supreme Archangel and a former demon stood under an apple tree in a bookshop, looking at one another. Some words were said, others were not. The entire weight of the universe and its souls rested on their shoulders. God had given them a choice; for once in their lives, true free will…but what to do with it?
Who would they save? Themselves, together at last? Or the entire universe?
“So, what do you want?”
“Me? Why me?” Crowley groaned out, pounding his fist against the tree.
“Because I only want one thing and…and I have been too selfish.” Aziraphale sighed and stepped forward, drawing the demon’s attention. “We were meant to be a team…you and me, shades of grey.”
Something shattered in both of them, like broken plates grounding into tiny shards.
“That’s…that’s all I want. All I wanted…” Crowley trailed off, turning away and threw his hands up in the air. “But then you go to Heaven and leave me behind! You knew I’d never take that offer.”
“It is no different to you kissing me!” the angel countered, chest puffed out like a pigeon until he softened once more. “But it doesn’t matter anymore. Not without a universe to care about.”
“No Ritz.”
“No crepes.”
“No nightingales…”
Crowley couldn’t help but throw a sad, watery smile over his shoulders. Then, he took a moment looking around what was a facsimile of a place he loved, a place that was a testament to Aziraphale. He did not like the flowers, the vegetation; Aziraphale may appreciate the odd plant but this was God’s work, not the angels. He did not like God’s meddling in any of this. No doubt She was watching their “private conversation”, consuming it like they were in a telanovella.
“Could we…could we start over?” tentatively asked Arizaphale, wringing his hands as he stepped closer to his only friend.
“From what? The beginning?”
“Yes!” In a few short steps, he was in Crowley’s body space, close enough to feel the remnants of the hellfire residing within the demon. “From the start. You and me.”
Crowley couldn’t help but stare at the angel in both sympathy and horror.
“We wouldn’t be us, angel. You wouldn’t be you and me…”He ran a shaky hand through his hair, further dishevelling ruined, red curls. “Even if I could avoid Lucifer and his gang all over again, would you even…I wouldn’t be me. Not as I am today.”
“Oh, you silly fiend…” Aziraphale smiled, soft, sad, wanting, all in one. His head tilted with aching fondness as he studied his only constant companion through his existence. “Of course you would still be you. You have always been you as I have always been me.”
The look Crowley gave him was painfully soft, wet around the edges - it was like he had been caught in an emotional downpour and had no idea how to remain dry. But then it sharpened, hardened as he turned, Aziraphale only seeing his side profile. There was a time where Crowley had been more open about his feeling.
“That’s not the point, angel. We are six-thousand years of bad habits and near misses and shared lunches. Rewind all of that and-” he swallowed. “No us. Isn’t that what this is about? Us?”
He vaguely gestured to the Not-Quite-Bookshop and then the space between them.
“Then we don’t go back so far then! Simple solution! Just where it all went wrong!”
A harsh bark of laughter echoed amongst the celestial ringing of the room, the former demon’s eyes wide with disbelief once again. He stalked over to an armchair, shaking his head as he sprawled into a familiar space. Aziraphale had to move around the tree just to keep an eye on him – it was like Crowley didn’t want to be near him as they talked and that…that hurt.
“Oh, I think we have very different definitions of where it went wrong.” He sucked his teeth, exhaling as if he could still breathe out smoke. “First, there's the rebellion. Then there’s the War itself. Mmm, eating a mouse instead of a rat that one time in Eden-”
“You ate one of God’s sacred creations? I can’t believe you – no, no, no, we are getting off topic.” The Supreme Archangel walked over to what was once his desk, pulling out the chair so that he could look at the redhead. “I mean where it went wrong with us.”
The silence was deafening; even that irritating hum and tingling in the air had dimmed down.
Crowley raised an eyebrow, crossing his arms.
“You seriously want to go back to then? Do you really think two years is enough time to stop everything? The Second Coming? Michael? Last time I checked, you can’t stop Michael once they’re on a warpath.”
“I know where I went wrong,” Aziraphale said with calm confidence, staring at his companion.
For a moment, Crowley could see the strategist, the general, peeking through the fluff of his hair and the softness of his body. It terrified him. But just for a moment.
“Go on then,” he said thickly, trying to hide his apprehension with a sardonic wave of his hand. “Enlighten me.”
“I didn’t have you.” The angel paused, watching, and studying. “You were right. We are a team. We only achieved what we have because we were together. Shades of light grey.”
The snake couldn’t help the small quirk of his lips.
“Or dark grey, thank you very much.”
The humming started up once more, the plants seeming to bristle and talk to one another as it became clear to the both of them what their choice was. They did not need to speak, you don’t really after spending your entire existence solely around another being. Still, some things did need to be said out loud.
“Do you trust me, Crowley?”
Another pause.
“Somehow, angel, after everything, I do.”
The world re-began, in an In-Between Space. Like it was before, but also somewhat different. The very fabric of reality had been torn apart and was now being mended by delicate, ineffable stitchwork.
With their ears ringing, Aziraphale and Crowley blinked. The former demon groaned, his jaw unhinging as he worked out the fluid in his ears, popping the bubbles. The angel just shook his head, his eyes scrunched up in the process.
Slowly though, the pair acclimatised, risking looking at their surroundings.
They were in a colosseum-like space, the rows of seating fading up into the aether above them.
“I know this place,” the demon grumbled, his shoulders rising up to his ears.
“Yes, it is quite hard to forget the Hall of Justice,” sighed Aziraphale, clasping his shaking hands together.
The Hall of Justice, where the rebels were paraded in for judgement, labelling, processing. It was a place of cold white sandstone, with banners decorated with symbols of Heaven. During the war, the tartan of the demons had been stolen and burned, causing the architecture to blacken with a layer of dirt that no holy water could remove.
This wasn’t the Hall any ethereal being once knew. The shadows were too dark and grimy, the light too bright and shiny. The banners were blank and where the masonry had given out from war and violence, botanicals grew.
“Angel…”
“I know.”
The pair looked at one another,
“Well then,” God said, still sitting in her chair. Her voice was commanding, as it always was, and it demanded for the pair to look at Her. “I may be God, but after what Michael did, it will take some time to organise things into their correct spot.”
Defensively, Crowley shoved his hands into his pockets.
“Soooo,” he drawled. “If we are actually doing this-”
“Which we are,” interrupted Aziraphale.
“-which we are…we need ground rules.”
It took a moment of the angel blinking before he turned on the spot to stare at his fiend, scandalised.
“You’re not suggesting that-”
“That God has some terms of engagement with us? Yes, yes I am.” The ringing in the air increased in frequency. “We’re not doing ‘find the lady’ again. We figure this out on our own. No changing what we know has happened or will happen.”
Azirphale would say that the Almighty was looking amenable; Crowley would argue that God was being a smug prick.
“You can do what you will.”
With that, the hum of the universe spiked into a blinding, deafening burst as time was rewound and matter redefined.
For a brief, horrifying moment, neither being could breathe – they did not need to breathe, they were made out of pre-universe matter and antimatter but their chests ached and their lungs burned.
Crowley’s hands were fisted in Aziraphale’s vest, and the angel’s body was tight with tension.
Reality continued to fold in and out, as if smoothing out crumpled paper.
Sound was warped, speeding up and down, twisting and turning.
Light became Dark, then Light again.
Through it all, they could feel one another. It was them. White and black melting and pooling into marbled grey.
Then-
Warmth.
Close.
Angel.
Demon.
Closer than they had ever been…but they had been once, in a different world.
Instinctively, they pulled apart.
The smell hit both of them first; old books, dust, tea…the trace amounts of myrrh from archangels and sulfur from grand demons. The bitterness of greed hadn’t interfered with the scents of Whickbar Street yet.
The bookshop.
Aziraphale made a small, shattered sound, his hand pressed to his lips as if tracing an old wound. The angel was staring at the demon as he had before, stunned and breathless, aching with so many emotions.
The shop around them was woefully unchained.
Words, bitter, bitter words hung in the air. Echoes from a timeline now burnt by Michael’s hands.
Do you hear that? I don't hear anything. That's the point. No nightingales. You idiot. We could have been... us.
I... I forgive you.
Don't bother.
Oh, it was maddening, dizzying.
Crowley was both walking out and staying in the shop. Aziraphale was and wasn’t joining the Metatron. They both were and weren’t kissing.
“I’ll be honest, I can see why Michael went-” Aziraphale was unable to finish his sentence, cutting himself off with a groan of pain.
His hands cradled his head, his palms pressing against his temples as if to contain the mess of aborted and restarted time lines. It was worse than what he went through during his Ascension to Supreme Archangel.
But then as quickly as it started, it waned away to a dull ache to nothingness.
They were just memories…
“Oh, great,” the Snake of Eden growled out. “Great timing!”
There was no answering celestial hum.
Outside of the bookshop, Maggie and Nina were in a coffee shop, speaking about the angels and demons they saw. Beelzebub and Gabriel were swooning in Alpha Centauri. Demons were scrabbling in the power vacuum in Hell and the Metraton…
“He’s outside, isn’t he? Waiting for you and me to argue?” Crowley asked.
His face contorted with a grimace as he thought for too long about the events that had-hadn’t happened.
“Yes, yes, he is…”
“Right then. Best we come up with a plan.”
If history, and the future, was anything to go off, Aziraphale and Crowley’s plans never went to plan. Then again, they do say being forewarned is forearmed.
In Heaven, the Archangel’s had dispersed, each tending to their duties.
Michael no doubt was going to have the agonising job of fixing all the issues Gabriel’s departure would create. And who would help them? No-one. Because everyone else was too involved, too arrogant, too vain to see the bigger picture. They doubted even the Metatron would assist in re-delegation of tasks.
They couldn’t help but wonder who the next Supreme Archangel would be as they wandered through the liminal halls towards their equally liminal office. Was it finally their turn? Would all their hard work finally be recognised…something is wrong.
They could smell in the air.
Michael hadn’t checked the fabric of reality in a very long time but…well, when needs must.
With a curious but confident hand, they reached up, their fingers waving and wiggling as they called upon the invisible threads only the highest ranking beings could see.
Then, they collapsed.