Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Adam hesitated.

The thing was, he was waiting. There was the dark undercurrent—ever-present, whispering, ready—and the Plan, and everything wound up in it.

The trouble, though, was the Plan. The whisper seemed to know there was some inscrutable clause in it, some unnamed thing that needed to happen at the appointed moment.

And Adam, as distressingly tired as he was after a day of saving the world, didn’t know what.

So he waited, which for some unspecified reason involved letting his eyes dart in the direction of Hell’s earthbound agent. Not so much a demon, that one, and never quite what he seemed.

“For a moment there, just for a moment,” said Crowley, to the angel, sitting with his head in his hands, “I thought we had a chance. He had them worried. Oh, well, it was nice while—”

“Excuse me,” said Aziraphale, getting to his feet, which drew Adam’s attention instantly. “This Great Plan,” he went on, narrowing his eyes at Adam in return, and then at the Metatron, “this would be the ineffable Plan, would it?”

Adam glanced at Crowley, who had stuck his finger-tips in his mouth and looked ready to die of embarrassment. Adam knew the feeling, he reckoned. School was like that.

“It’s the Great Plan,” said the Metatron, stiffly, glaring at Heaven's wayward agent. “You are well aware. There shall be a world lasting six thousand years, and it will conclude with—”

“Yes, yes, that’s the Great Plan all right,” Aziraphale said, with a stubborn air that Adam found impressive. “I was just asking if it’s ineffable as well. I just want to be clear on this point.”

“It doesn’t matter!” said the Metatron, with snippy impatience. “It’s the same thing, surely!”

Adam watched Crowley widen his eyes and begin to grin with sudden, fragile-seeming hope.

“So you’re not one hundred percent clear on this?” asked the angel, edging closer to his friend.

Friend, Adam thought, and time slowed to a standstill. Maybe it has to do with…

“It’s not given to us to understand the ineffable Plan,” the Metatron intoned meaningfully, “but of course the Great Plan—”

Crowley sucked in his breath, a curiously human affectation, and stepped up beside Aziraphale.

“But the Great Plan can only be a tiny part of the overall ineffability. You can’t be certain that what’s happening right now isn’t exactly right, from an ineffable point of view.”

It’s almost right, Adam thought, glancing at Beelzebub to see if Hell would weigh in.

“It izz written!” screeched the emissary, and Crowley shrank a fraction closer to Aziraphale.

“But it might be written differently somewhere else,” the demon said, anxiously seeking support from his counterpart. “Where you can’t read it.”

“In bigger letters,” Aziraphale asserted. His hand twitched at his side, almost brushing…

Oh, cor, Adam thought taking a step toward them, still in slow motion. I see.

“Underlined,” Crowley went on, clearly emboldened by this quite peculiar turn of events.

“Twice,” added Aziraphale, and his hand twitched again. He was reaching; did he know?

“Perhaps this isn’t just a test of the world,” Crowley challenged, stepping forward to meet Adam, and Aziraphale’s pinkie caught empty air. “It might be a test of you people, too. Hmmm?”

“Yeah, well,” Adam said hesitantly, feeling something snap and flood between the emissaries behind him, something distinctly not good, “it’s a test all right. A test of you.”

Crowley swallowed, blinking rapidly at Adam, and then turned to Aziraphale. “Angel, what—”

Just like that, the angel folded and recoiled, wringing his hands in dismay. “My dear, I don’t—”

Adam heard the thunderclap before he saw it split the sky, felt the emissaries’ presences behind him unfurl wings as broad as the horizon. And then there was the wind, wild and unforgiving.

“Oh no,” Crowley whispered, the armies’ advance reflected in his sunglasses’ lenses as he grabbed the hem of Aziraphale’s coat and yanked with all his strength. “Get down!”

Curiously detached, in whatever degree of muted separation he had set himself from the proceedings, Adam watched as the sunset ignited. Archers’ arrows, flame-fletched.

“Don’t!” Adam shrieked, but his voice was lost to the wind’s roar and the armies’ advance toward the very point where Aziraphale and Crowley knelt and shielded each other with shuddering wings. “I didn’t say you could do it, it’s not like this is what I wanted—”

And he was swept up by the wind, in a cloak of inky terror as the armies made landfall below.

WHAT YOU WANT IS IMMATERIAL, said Death, holding them aloft over what must be the best view in Creation. YOUR CHAMPIONS FAILED THE TEST.

“I didn’t want them to fail,” Adam insisted, feeling almost like he might cry, “but they had to want to pass, didn’t they? It was close. I could feel it.”

Death appeared to nod somberly, but there was a hint of amusement, too. HAND IN HAND.

“Wait, so it was what I saw,” Adam gasped. “Like they almost made it. Aziraphale tried to—”

IN MATTERS LIKE THESE, Death replied, grinning maniacally, THERE IS NO TRY. ONLY—

“Only do, yeah, I saw that movie,” said Adam, impatiently, realizing that the armies’ clamor and the humans’ shrieking probably meant no chance of reversal. “What can I do?”

Death tilted his head, and they drifted a fraction lower. They were suspended directly above the angel and the demon, whose wings hadn’t been spared the archers’ volley.

“Hey,” Crowley coughed, swiping off his shades so he could look Aziraphale in the eye. “So…”

Aziraphale had been, up till that moment, trying to tug an arrow from the juncture of Crowley’s wing and shoulder. The endeavor had gone poorly; their hands and faces were bloody.

“I am trying to get us through this in one piece, dear boy,” said the angel. “If you’d—”

“If nothing,” said a taunting voice from behind them, because the combat, now hand-to-hand, had begun to close in around their island of relative calm. “Aziraphale, is that you?”

Adam didn’t like the look of the red-haired angel with what looked like a complicated spear.

“Listen,” he said desperately, tugging at Death’s ragged, star-studded cloak as it whipped around them, “I have an idea. They mentioned something, that—that ineffability?”

Death inclined his head, tugging his cloak out of Adam’s trembling hand. I’M LISTENING.

“That, well, it’s like…it’s a kind of clause, isn’t it?” Adam forged on. “Like an escape route. They were about to take it, take each other’s hands, yeah? But they missed it.”

Laughing, Death tipped his head back to the maelstrom Heaven’s army had left in its wake.

YOU NOTICED THAT THEY MISSED IT, he conceded, spreading his arms, obscuring the seething clouds. WELL DONE, ADAM YOUNG. YOUR MOVE?

Adam chewed the inside of his cheek, watching as the angel with the spear-like weapon approached Aziraphale’s back, which was turned to him. Or was the angel a her?

“Yes,” Aziraphale was saying wearily, as if no time had passed since the other angel’s greeting.

“What are you doing?” Crowley hissed. “That one’s trouble, that one’s always been—”

“Oh, Az, you didn’t,” drawled the red-haired angel, raising the weapon. “That’s just adorable.”

Aziraphale drew a shuddering breath, refusing to turn, refusing to tear his eyes from Crowley.

“I thought we had a chance, too,” he said urgently, “and, Crowley, listen, I want you to know—”

“You know how this ends!” called another angel, one Adam hadn’t noticed. “Join us or fall!”

CLOCK’S TICKING, Death said. ODD AS THIS SOUNDS, I DON’T HAVE ALL DAY.

“This Ineffability Clause,” Adam replied, swallowing hard. “That’s my move. The minute they die, your clock resets. Since Crowley moved before they could touch, he gets to try over an’ over again till he gets it right. I mean, Aziraphale can help, I s’pose, but he can’t know. Every time Crowley fails, though, the clock, see—it’s got to restart. Not to this morning, I reckon. It all moves so fast once it gets going. Wednesday, maybe. Before all the fuss started. Wednesday night. You can pick what hour, even.”

Death’s eyes flashed in unashamed amusement. COMPLINE, THE NIGHT-TIME PRAYER.

Adam shook his head. “You’re going to have to tell me what time. I don’t know that old stuff.”

ABOUT NINE O’CLOCK, Death said, shaking one bony hand side to side. GIVE OR TAKE.

“That’s my bedtime,” said Adam, glumly, “but I reckon it’s got to be sometime, so why not.”

YOU DO REALIZE, Death continued, THAT THIS WILL BE TORTURE FOR CROWLEY? TORMENT THE LIKES OF WHICH HELL HAS NEVER EVEN CONCEIVED.

Adam knew that Death had a point. The whisper in him ebbed, and then swelled, suggesting that he had a place in the atrocities below. A place of absolute command, his birthright.

“He’s just got to stick it out, hasn’t he,” Adam said, “since I’m sticking this out an’ everything.”

Someone shrieked down below, and it wasn’t one of the humans.

Adam peered at the source of the sound, his heart skipping a beat at the terrible sight.

Crowley, despite Aziraphale’s desperately spread wings, had taken an arrow square in the chest.

“That wasn’t very sporting of you, dear girl,” Aziraphale seethed, glancing over his shoulder.

“Not really,” said the pale-haired angel, tilting her head at the spear-bearer. “Do the honors?”

Crowley spat blood in the dust, pitching forward before Aziraphale could ask what he was doing.

“Whatever you wanted me to know,” he rasped in agony, wings beating to keep balance as he threw his arms around Aziraphale’s neck, “it can’t…have been very important, can it?”

“No, my dear,” Aziraphale whispered, clinging to him in kind. “It can’t very well have been.”

Ghastly, to watch them smile at the futility of their wistful joke. Even worse, to watch the red-haired angel meet the fraught gold of Crowley’s defiant gaze and finally lunge forward.

The complicated spear lanced through Aziraphale and Crowley like they were tissue paper.

Adam looked away, fixing his stinging eyes on Death’s. Remembering Crowley’s defiance, he extended his hand and worked. The Ineffability Clause, their terms, all of it.

“There,” Adam said, sealing it with a forceful turn of his palm, trying not to cry. “It is Written.”

Nodding, Death extended his skeletal fingers, firmly clasping Adam’s. YES. SO IT IS DONE.

Chapter Text

“We’ll be in touch, then, shall we?”

Crowley blinked, and then blinked again, ears ringing.

He was leaning out the window of the Bentley, calling after Aziraphale. His sunglasses had slid down his nose, just enough for the light of a streetlamp to blind him.

“What?” said Aziraphale, in obvious befuddlement. “Oh. Oh. Yes. Fine. Jolly good.”

Crowley fought a sense of rising panic, certain that something was off.

“Aziraphale—”

Clutching the young woman’s book to his chest, the angel slammed the bookshop door.

“Right,” Crowley said, feeling distinctly alone. What? Where am I, didn’t we just—

That red-haired Archangel, surging forward with cruel glee in his glance. A moment of painful eye contact. Icy metal slicing through his chest, so cold that the pain almost didn’t register. Blood on Aziraphale’s lips, running down his chin as he fought to form words.

Crowley’s sunglasses slipped off and hit the pavement, gunshot-loud in the silence.

Crowley flinched. For a moment, he didn’t move, couldn’t move. Something was wrong, so badly wrong that it pinned him in place for a moment.

His hands were shaking, but the door unlocked at his touch anyway, ominously clicking open.

He stumbled out of the car, managing a single shaky step before his knees buckled. He fell forward against the bookshop door. Pounded on it, wondering if Aziraphale would even hear.

Either he didn’t, or he didn’t care.

Crowley tried to call Aziraphale’s name, but the words withered and died in his throat, almost choking him. This was revenge for all those plants he’d culled and abandoned, wasn’t it?

He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t breathe.

Somehow, he ended up behind the wheel of the Bentley again. Somehow ended up driving.

He’d left his sunglasses on the pavement outside Aziraphale’s bookshop. Had he done that the first time, or had he lifted his head sooner? He must have, because he hadn’t lost his sunglasses until they had melted away inside the burning bookshop.

Crowley wanted to go back. Go back and warn him, or just be there. He wanted to, so badly that he almost did without even thinking.

Something held him back. Maybe the decaying greenery cutting off his voice, maybe the realization that he sounded like an utter madman.

Maybe knowing that if Aziraphale didn’t open the door to his frantic pounding, he wouldn’t open it at all. Or at least not until he was ready.

Crowley drove home, or as home as his Mayfair flat could be. Home was just where you hung your hat, after all, and Crowley wasn’t a fan of hats. They did hellish things to his hair.

He parked so crookedly that he was ashamed of himself, but there was no point in fixing it. He couldn’t anyway, shaking so badly that it was a miracle that he even succeeded in getting up the stairs.

Crowley fell through the door of his flat and stumbled to the sofa, waving on the nearest lamp. He stared at the glassy surface of the coffee table for a solid ten minutes, reluctantly pondering what he had managed to gather about the situation.

Armageddon had gone ahead. He and Aziraphale had died, and it had sent them back to one of the worst moments in an already harrowing week.

The question was whether Aziraphale—or anyone else involved—could remember the way that Crowley could. The thought that he might be alone in his recollection was intolerable.

Dying, then. That might be important to consider, especially given who the perpetrators were.

Not that he’d ever cared much for Aziraphale’s co-workers to begin with, but he held a special place of mistrust for Archangels, the whole lot of them. Gabriel and Michael were, respectively, intensely annoying and unfathomably cruel. On a bad day, both descriptors applied to each of them.

Crowley’s lungs seized at the mere thought of encountering those two. Small, grim mercies.

Unless he’d mixed them up, he was quite positive the redhead with the pollaxe had been Raphael and the unnerving, pale-haired archer had been Uriel. Pieces of work, sure, but in less predictable ways. He could remember Aziraphale speaking fondly of them.

It didn’t change the fact that the two of them hadn’t hesitated to shoot and strike down not just an agent of the Adversary, but also one of their own. They’d been quick about it, at least.

Maybe dying had sent him back to Hell, and this was an especially clever machination of Hell’s design. Beelzebub had definitely promised that torments were in store for him. What better way of accomplishing that than to eternally replicate the worst experience of Crowley’s existence?

The thought of having to face the Archangels again in three days, whether real or hallucinated, was enough to force a choked scream past Crowley’s metaphorical foliage.

Once he’d spent a sufficient amount of time curled into the corner of the sofa and panicking, it occurred to Crowley that there was one really surefire way of determining whether he was in Hell or not. It involved a phone book, his landline, and several bottles of wine.

A bottle and a half along was sufficient for Crowley to start methodically flipping through.

He dialed the first sushi restaurant he encountered. He kept the perplexed employee on the line long enough to determine that no demon could do that sharp an impression of explaining an entire menu, what when they didn’t even have the kind of establishment in question.

Crowley then proceeded to repeat the experiment another nineteen times, swilling wine all the while, drunker and drunker with each interrogation. It was a good job none of them had a mind to call Scotland Yard, because he was making a right nuisance of himself by picking complicated rolls at random and demanding to know not just the ingredients, but construction methods.

At some point, he must have finally passed out. He woke up with the phone book over his face, the phone receiver on the floor, and three empty bottles on the coffee table.

Still, the evidence did bear out. Twenty sushi restaurants couldn’t be wrong; he was on Earth.

Groaning, Crowley shoved the directory onto the floor and rolled onto his side. The phone’s morose, repetitive dial-tone had begun to grate on his nerves, so he grabbed the receiver and, using the cord for leverage, yanked the blessed thing out of the wall.

“This is not on,” Crowley announced to his assemblage of inanimate objects. “Unssspeakable.”

When at last he slept, it was fitful and filled with unsettling dreams. The Garden again, this time populated with London’s overgrown ruins. An ending instead of a beginning.

The leaves in his throat belonged to the swift-creeping vines, and they swallowed him, too.

He woke still choking on them, writhing to get free. Still half in the dream, Crowley threw himself sideways, and barely avoided hitting his head on the coffee table on his way down.

With his face pressed into the plush carpet, Crowley considered his options.

He could always continue as he had the first time, carry it through and see if anything changed. Up until the end, it had almost gone right.

Oh good, Crowley thought, once he stopped hyperventilating. I can breathe again. The choking on metaphorical plant matter thing was temporary.

Slowly, he rolled onto his back, staring up at the white ceiling. He could try again. Or he could get the hell out of dodge, so to speak. He could.

Crowley sat up, fixing the landline and banishing the empty bottles to the kitchen with a wave of his hand. “Major failings indeed, eh?”

He wasn’t sure what day it was, but it didn’t really matter, did it, not this frustratingly far along. No harm in preparing, not when he knew exactly what he needed to do.

With the same anxious care, he replicated the Holy Water trap; he was too guilty to run, maybe, but not too guilty to save his own skin. He had the sneaking suspicion that attempting to save Hastur and Ligur didn’t fit into the overall scheme of his success.

Strangely calm, Crowley stripped off the PVC gloves, sat down on the sofa, and waited.

It all went rather quickly, now that he knew the script. Too quickly, even; he was doing ninety miles an hour out of Mayfair before he started wondering where it had gone wrong, if he’d missed the failure-point already. He was following the script too closely, it turned out.

It was almost funny; seeing the bookshop in flames sent the same jolt of terror through him the second time.

Crowley slammed on the brakes and ran for it. He didn’t stop this time, dodging the fireman who tried to intercept him, shoving through the door.

The book was right where it had been last time, remarkably intact. Crowley snatched it up and bolted, managing to avoid both the fire hose and the ceiling’s collapse, though an over-enthusiastic fireman almost tackled him on the way back to his car.

That boyish face under the soot-smudged helmet reminded him uncomfortably of underage soldiers. What was it about young men and throwing themselves into danger?

Nonetheless, he managed to get back on the road without any mishaps, and turned the Bentley around a corner so sharply the tires screeched.

The same script, but cutting corners, then. Maybe it would make a difference. Maybe he—maybe they were damned no matter what.

With any luck, he’d remember the way to Tadfield without needing to stop for directions.

The drive was easier, somehow, even if nothing else was. It was pointless to worry about Hell when he was in a version of it already. At whose mercy he was, exactly, it didn’t really matter, what with there being no mercy to speak of.

In Tadfield, unsurprisingly, everything went exactly as it had gone the first time around. Crowley could credit himself with slight variations in phrasing, but hearing everyone else hash it out verbatim was sobering in a way he hadn’t quite been prepared for.

Crowley was too busy wondering whether the look on Adam’s face had changed to remember how fast the arrows fell, so that wasn’t different, either. Right down to the patterns of blood on Aziraphale’s forehead as he shoved his hair out of his face and tried to tug the arrow from Crowley.

Raphael’s expression, at least, was exactly the same. Smug, just barely on the composed side of unrestrained glee. Uriel’s arrow still sunk into Crowley's chest just shy of his heart, so no difference there.

It’s almost like acting, Crowley mused, closing his eyes as Raphael started to lunge. So blessedly dramatic for everyone else, but for me, downstage center, it’s just the end of the show. Standing ovation, curtains close, back again tomorrow.

Chapter Text

“We'll be in touch then, shall we?” Crowley said, and didn’t bother to listen for Aziraphale’s response. Funny, how quickly even a script as fraught as this one stopped being interesting.

The equivalent disasters of the last two attempts were enough to convince him that following the script wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

Maybe that was the inspiration behind this time-loop business. Maybe he’d been too careful, not creative enough. The point was human nature, a balance between Heaven and Hell.

That’s what Adam Young had been getting at, before the whole thing tipped over on its side.

That’s what Crowley had been getting at, in a conversation he and Aziraphale had been having since Babel, if not since Eden. That’s what made humans what they were; not any inherent nature, but their defiance of it.

“I’ll show you bloody defiance,” Crowley muttered. “Not that there’s anything I can really do, having to start at nine at night.”

He almost took a different route home, just for the sheer pettiness of it. It didn’t seem worth the bother, if only because he was so tired that it was all he could to do remember his usual way.

There was something bitter curled up in Crowley’s chest, and it wouldn’t let him sleep. He paced around his flat, taking out the prickly discontent on his plants for as long as he could manage, until his fingers shook so badly that he dropped the plant mister.

“This is really bloody happening, isn’t it?” Crowley muttered, half to himself, half to the orchid he’d been verbally battering for the last five minutes.

Abandoning both mister and plants, Crowley sprawled on the sofa and tried to think. He wished he could be angry, wished the bitterness coiled behind his sternum would burn even a little brighter.

Aziraphale would have mustered some kind of righteous fury. But Crowley wasn’t Aziraphale, wasn’t even human, was just himself, chosen by some unknown force, for some ineffable reason, to set it right.

“Ngh,” Crowley muttered. It was all that he could manage. The bitterness had grown into vines, unfurled its leaves into his throat once again. He draped one arm over his eyes, annoyed.

If he was going to get creative, maybe he didn’t need to pay attention to every human in sight.

Maybe he just needed to be paying attention to a bunch of very specific humans in a very specific area. Even as tired as he was, that location was an absolute no-brainer.

Besides, he couldn’t get Aziraphale off his mind. In circumstances such as these, Aziraphale would probably have suggested a drive to clear his head. Get out of the city, dear boy.

Crowley would have voiced his agreement out loud if his voice box hadn't been tendril-bound. His inner Aziraphale was right—few things settled his nerves as effectively as driving did.

Lower Tadfield was outside the city, far enough from anything that he could really drive, practically flooring the accelerator. The Aziraphale running commentary in his head let out a terrified squeak.

It was barely midnight by the time Crowley reached Tadfield. He pulled the Bentley over into the grass and took off his sunglasses, rubbing at the bridge of his nose. He was tired.

“Good night,” Crowley muttered, pleased at the lack of foliage in his throat. He drew his knees up to his chest and leaned back in the seat, curling in on himself. Now that everything was quiet, he could hear a faint buzz of static from the radio.

Something settled over him, something he might call contentment if it had been intrinsic.

Someone really loves this place, he thought he heard Aziraphale saying. I can't put it any better than that. Especially not—

Not to me, I know, Crowley thought, too tired to do more than recite the script.

He wasn’t sure at what point he fell asleep, but when next he opened his eyes, someone was rapping their knuckles on the driver’s side window. Gobsmacked, he shoved his sunglasses back on his face and rolled it down. He recognized the interloper, and a few seconds later realized that the interloper in question wouldn’t recognize him.

They hadn’t actually met yet, and they probably wouldn’t—given the fact that driving the same route for three days in a row would rather eliminate the need to ask for directions. Surreal.

“Young man,” said the gentleman, adjusting his spectacles as he peered at Crowley, “are you lost?”

Oh, what a question that was. “No.” Crowley fought down the urge to laugh. “Not lost. Just visiting the area. Didn’t want to splash out for a B&B, if you know what I mean.”

The gentleman sniffed and drew back a fraction, which agitated the small dog he had on a leash.

The beast, no hellhound by even the most liberal of standards, began to yap its tiny head off.

Crowley ducked down, pretending to fetch something from the floor, and covered his mouth to muffle a burst of hysterical laughter. If life was inherently ridiculous, then his was a riot.

“Shutzi!” the gentleman scolded, sounding so scandalized that Crowley only laughed harder.

Crowley straightened up, immensely glad that he’d put his sunglasses back on. They provided a barrier between himself and whatever telling-off he was about to get from a man who obviously assumed he was Crowley’s elder. That was almost enough to set him off again.

“I’ve never owned a dog,” said Crowley, as soberly as he could. “House plants are enough grief.”

The gentleman’s concerned look intensified, probably because such a statement would be sufficient to get any average person sectioned. His worry for Crowley was touching.

“Yes, well,” said the gentleman, clearing his throat. “Funny weather we’re having, isn’t it?”

Crowley thumped the steering wheel and broke down all over again, this time in amazement. The script would take any opportunity to force its way in, even if out of order.

Speaking of opportunities taken, the gentleman, now thoroughly convinced he was speaking to a madman, decided that this burst of hysterics was a good excuse to move on.

Shutzi kept yapping until they were well out of sight. Quite the set of lungs that creature had.

Crowley laughed until it hurt, and only then managed a wheezing inhalation. He held his breath until the urge to laugh—or maybe scream, he wasn’t entirely sure at this point—had passed.

Shedding his jacket and rolling up his sleeves, Crowley clamped the Bentley’s tires with a gesture, got out of the car, and walked toward Tadfield.

At the outskirts of town, not far from the churchyard, Crowley happened across a holiday let that had a sign on the gate. JASMINE COTTAGE.

I’ve been here, haven’t I? he thought. This whole village looks different in the dark.

That girl with bicycle, what-was-her-name. Anathema Device. This was where she’d decided to stay while tracking ley lines and other such nonsense. Where he and Aziraphale had left her.

Deciding that knocking things out of order for one of the major players might not be the best idea, he veered away from the cottage, considering his options. He’d do well to make himself as unobtrusive as possible, and as far as his choices on that front were concerned…

This transformation, at least, wasn’t anywhere near as taxing as the one he’d used at Tadfield Manor to frighten the hapless paintball participants. This was second nature by comparison.

In a village like this, he couldn’t imagine anyone would feel hostile toward a common grass snake. They ate insects and such, sometimes mice if they were large enough to swallow them.

Focus, Crowley, he reminded himself. It’s second nature, not your core nature.

Slithering through the fields and orchards of Tadfield was enjoyable, if a bit ticklish. They weren’t much for lawnmowers out here.

Slight thirst had guided him, tongue-led and unaware, to a duckweed-infested pond behind someone’s farmhouse. On the bank, there was some kind of commotion in progress.

“Don’t see why me and Brother Brian should have to do all the work,” said the boy with glasses. “I reckon it’s about time she got off and we had a go. Benedictine in a decanter.”

“Why have we stopped?” demanded the blonde girl, who sat on an oddly-rigged plank, green to the waist with algae. “It’s just like a seesaw. Whee!”

“I’m going to go home unless I can have a go,” muttered the grubbier of the three boys. “Don’t see why evil witches should have all the fun.”

It took a moment to recognize the first voice—mostly because the mangled Latin made him cringe—and the faces he could see. If he’d been in a form that permitted it, he would have started laughing again. There were coincidences, and then there was this.

“It’s not allowed for inquisitors to be tortured, too,” said Adam Young, with mock sternness. “All right, all right. You’re a witch, all right, don’t do it again, and now you get off and let someone else have a turn. Oh lay.”

“What happens now?” asked the small blonde one, and the red-haired girl cuffed her playfully.

Crowley experienced a moment of awful dissonance, to the point of closing his eyes and shuddering. If they’d known the first thing about the real Spanish Inquisition, they would’ve sworn off this business altogether.

When he opened his eyes again, the mock-Inquisition had devolved into a boisterous splash-fight. Only the boy in glasses wasn’t completely soaked and stained green.

Why he hadn’t noticed the dog before, he wasn’t sure. But it was there sure enough, sitting obediently in the grass, its tail thumping merrily as it watched its Master play.

If he concentrated, Crowley could remember the same dog at the air base, sitting almost exactly the same way. For a hellhound, it was shockingly well-behaved. Shockingly small, too, but one wouldn’t expect an eleven-year-old to want a dog bigger than he was as a playmate.

Hellhound-sized it may not have been, but Crowley found that it no longer mattered as soon as the dog spotted him and immediately dove forward, barking at only a slightly lower pitch than Shutzi. The only size that mattered after that was bigger, and Crowley wasn’t.

As soon as Crowley took off at the swiftest slither he could manage, the dog gave chase with aplomb. And that meant the children had to follow, shrieking and scolding the dog.

Whose name, if Crowley’s ears weren’t playing tricks on him, was, in fact, Dog.

Once they’d cleared the field and made it halfway up the lane, there were a decent number of houses in view. In one of the yards ahead, a figure stood with its arms sternly folded.

The closer Crowley got to the safety of an empty picket-hole in the line of the yard’s fence, the more apparent it was that Dog, dashing faster, now had a new target. Yapping excitedly, Dog cleared Crowley in a single bound and ran to the figure in the yard.

Mr. Young seemed none too happy to have his son’s pet jumping and slavering for attention.

Crowley stayed in the hole until dusk, glad of some peace and quiet. He dozed intermittently, and, once it was dark, slithered into the empty road.

He resumed human form and walked back to the Bentley, which was right where he’d left it.

While his jaunt into Lower Tadfield had been entertaining, it ultimately changed nothing. He tried pestering Aziraphale the next time around, which only got him snapped at and given a half-hearted cold shoulder when they reunited.

The fifth go-round, he got the Holy Water into the plant mister and waited in front of the door, taking out both Hastur and Ligur. The bookshop wasn’t alight when he got to it, but there was a fire eating its way across the floorboards, and Aziraphale was already gone.

That and the chalk-marks explained Aziraphale’s impromptu body-sharing, but it still didn’t make a difference.

Chapter Text

If there was anything that Crowley had learned in six thousand years of having Aziraphale around, it was that time and proximity could breed camaraderie with even the most unlikely of company. And, of course, they’d both learned by human example.

The sixth time Crowley found himself staring over the bloodied arch of Aziraphale’s wing and into Raphael’s taunting eyes, something in him shifted on its axis. A hunch.

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, removing his sunglasses like he had every other time. “This is going to sound weird and desperate even for me, but...can you let me handle this?”

Aziraphale released the shaft of the arrow stuck in Crowley’s shoulder, frowning intensely.

“I am trying to get us through this in one piece, dear boy,” he said faintly. “If you’d—”

“If nothing,” said Raphael, close enough to glare at Crowley. “Aziraphale, is that you?”

“Oh, it’s him all right,” Crowley agreed, coughing when what he’d intended to do was laugh. “Say, do you remember me? Long time no see, eh? How long’s it been, three thou—”

Raphael swung his pollaxe around so that the blunt end was right in Crowley’s face. He pressed it up against Crowley’s throat, forcing a gasp from him. Any kind of change was progress.

“What the fuck are you doing?” asked Uriel, lowering her bow as she stepped up beside Raphael.

“This one’s getting fresh, darling,” said Raphael, with a hint of amusement. “Can’t have that.”

Crowley smiled thinly, raising one hand to shift the non-business end of Raphael’s weapon away.

“Something to do with thwarting, probably,” he said. “Encounters with your sort usually do.”

Raphael blinked, taking a step back so he could showily reverse the weapon’s direction again.

“You mean when this one,” he said, using the flat of the axe-portion’s blade to tap the back of Aziraphale’s head, “was remiss in his duties. Which, when it came to you? Was always.”

“I’d like to state,” Aziraphale said, his voice harsh, “that, from my perspective, it was never.”

Crowley’s heart stuttered in his chest, and the pain of it must have shown in his face.

Uriel raised her weapon and aimed at him, but, unlike the previous times, she hesitated.

“It doesn’t matter what you do,” Crowley said, glancing from one Archangel to the other. “We’re just pawns in this, do you get it? You’ll probably die after you kill us, so—”

“As if we hadn’t accepted that,” Uriel challenged, drawing her bow-string till the arrow’s fletching brushed her sooty cheek. “It’s been a good run, or whatever. I’m tired.”

“I’m tired of it, too,” Crowley said, looking her square in her narrowed eyes, and then glanced at Raphael. “I think we’re all bloody tired, pardon my French. Aren’t you?”

The corner of Raphael’s mouth quirked. Something in Crowley’s snide delivery had hit home.

“Getting out of this alive was never my priority,” he said, “but then—the trouble with your kind was always an excess of everything, wasn’t it? Doubt. Desire. Hope.”

“Ssstrange you should credit me with such a virtue,” Crowley hissed, briefly baring his teeth.

“Crowley, what are you playing at?” Aziraphale whispered, and the hitch in his breath clued Crowley into the fact that Raphael had set the spear-point bit of the pollaxe right between Aziraphale’s wings. “We’re not long for this world as it is, why—”

“As a reminder,” Crowley cut in, nodding at Raphael, as much of a gesture of respect as he could muster. “Your friend here, see, he remembers that hope’s a thing we didn’t lose, Fall or no.”

“Stop it!” Uriel gasped, and the agony in those two words was sublime as she released the string.

Crowley hated that Raphael’s unblinking stare was all he ever got in that moment of excruciating impact, but he held it unflinchingly as Uriel’s arrow just missed his heart. He wheezed.

“Hey,” Crowley said to Raphael as Aziraphale set a hand on the second arrow, trying to determine if he could remove it. “I think she might be talking to you, too. Just a hunch.”

Raphael’s features contorted in rage, but there was more confusion than hatred in it this time.

“Mercy,” he said, drawing the pollaxe back and up at an angle, ready to strike. “Don’t forget it.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale sighed dully, his head falling forward against Crowley’s shoulder.

Crowley nodded curtly, knowing he’d only got as far as he’d expected to this time around.

“I assure you,” he replied, watching as Raphael began his graceful lunge, “I will not.”

The chilly evening air that filled Crowley’s lungs as the seventh repetition began felt like a kind of victory. He’d learned thing or two about his and Aziraphale’s killers.

Raphael had more awareness that demons were just Fallen angels than Gabriel and Michael combined. That was a leverage-point if Crowley had ever seen one. Uriel, on the other hand, had revealed more in those two anguished words than she even knew.

Crowley scarcely listened to Aziraphale’s distracted goodbye and the slamming of the bookshop door. The key was somewhere in what he’d gleaned this time, perhaps. If he could manipulate the Archangels, maybe prevent them from taking their shots, he could buy more time.

As it was, he’d kept them talking for longer than he had dared to hope possible. Hope indeed.

Crowley skived off all but the bare minimum of his usual preparations for the next forty-eight hours, because what he really needed to do was think. He needed to remember every single time he’d ever had contact with one or both of these particular Archangels.

He needed more leverage, was what he needed, and he was sure that he could find it.

Raphael, to Crowley’s recollection, liked shoving either end of that ridiculous weapon in people’s faces more than he actually liked using it. The trick with Raphael was that he was mostly smoke and mirrors, shapeshifting and illusion. Even his body defied convention.

Uriel was a sniper. Not used to doing her business up-close and personal, not used to her kills being sufficiently in earshot to engage her. And there was the whole Dominion Over the Souls of Men thing, too, basically being in charge of the humans that ended up as ghosts.

Death, there it was again. Death and dying and the nature of death. What was it about…

Crowley drummed his fingers on the door of the Bentley, sitting back in his seat. It was not just death he needed to consider, but Death. Death-with-a-capital-D, Azrael death.

He thought of Adam Young’s exchange with Death in the wake of his companions sending the other Horsepersons off where they belonged. It had been a conversation between equals more than it had been another scared kid improbably fending off an immortal entity.

Under those curious terms, Crowley sensed a theme. Adam was connected to Death, and Death, perhaps, had a connection to Uriel. It wasn’t a lot to go on, but it intrigued him.

The hours until his next confrontation with the Archangels passed swiftly, which was, in its odd way, a blessing. Contrary as it seemed, he had something to look forward to. Another shot.

Aziraphale almost succeeded in dislodging the arrow in his shoulder this time. His near-success was interrupted by Raphael’s habitual interjection, which Crowley mouthed along with him.

Raphael was too shocked to know what to do with that, so he zeroed in on Crowley right away.

“Is that mockery, Serpent?” he said condescendingly. “Is that wise in your position?”

“You might have to give me some pointers on that,” Crowley coughed. “My position, I mean.”

Unexpectedly, Uriel burst out laughing so hard that she outright dropped her bow and arrow.

“Oh man, Rafe!” she howled, pointing at Crowley. “This one’s got your number. Are you sure you and Az weren’t, like, time-sharing him on the sly?”

Crowley had no idea which angel looked angrier, or for what reason. Raphael’s and Aziraphale’s expressions were more than sufficient entertainment for the rest of eternity.

“I appreciate the humor,” Crowley said wearily, avoiding Aziraphale’s gaze, “but that’s a no.”

“Then you should’ve thought twice before seeking my advice, darling,” Raphael said, his tone deceptively sweet. The real poison was in the way he brought the pollaxe’s spear point down to the hollow of Crowley’s throat this time, leaving a stinging scratch. “Last words?”

“This is a nice switch-up,” Crowley said earnestly, hazarding a smile. “I was sick of getting skewered second, if you know what I mean?” He looked to Uriel. “One arrow instead of two’s a refreshing change, too. Not to be that customer, but I never asked for sec—”

“How can you be like this?” Aziraphale cried, catching Crowley’s elbows. “At a time like this?”

“Because if you’d been through this as many times as I’ve been through it,” Crowley said, finally looking him in the eye, “you’d make your own fun, too, mark my words.”

Aziraphale’s brow furrowed, and Raphael’s spear-point withdrew as swiftly as he’d placed it.

“I have no idea what’s going on here,” said Raphael, flatly, “but I intend to stop it right now.”

Uriel was quiet, her face an implacable mask where, seconds ago, it had been one of hilarity.

“What did you say?” she asked, pushing Raphael aside. “Something about how many times…”

Crowley let his smile fade, scooting closer to Aziraphale so he could regard her more intently over Aziraphale’s shoulder. It meant that Aziraphale had little choice but to put his arms around Crowley; given how close they were to collapsing, Crowley welcomed it.

“I did say something to that effect,” Crowley agreed, and there was no need to feign the emotion in his voice, not with Aziraphale breathing harshly against his neck. “What does it matter?”

Trembling slightly, Uriel doubled over, bracing her hands on her thighs. She looked dizzy.

“I have the strangest feeling,” she whispered, “and what you said is exactly what it feels like.”

Crowley’s mouth fell open in shock, which wasn’t the kind of unscripted reaction he needed.

That gave Raphael enough time to shove Uriel back out of the way and take his usual aim.

“You might be onto something about the fun part,” he said. “This is the most I’ve had in ages.”

Crowley bit his lip, sliding his arms as tightly around Aziraphale as the angel’s were around him.

“Pity we didn’t get to hang out more,” he said by way of a parting shot. “It might’ve been—”

The last thing Crowley heard was Uriel’s shriek of You motherfucking ass, I said stop!

Chapter Text

Once the eighth iteration started, as the bookshop door slammed, Crowley didn’t move. He pushed his sunglasses into his hair and leaned into the Bentley’s cool leather, closing his eyes.

The agony of being run through was always gone when time reset itself, but the shock of dying stuck around. He’d almost grown accustomed to it; waiting for the numbness to leave his fingertips, shaking off the feeling that he shouldn’t exist any longer, much less here, much less now.

He’d gotten it wrong again. Not just wrong, but so wrong that the optimistic fatalism he’d managed to pull around himself had peaked. Laughing in the face of repeated near-death experiences, how human of him. Mocking circumstances he would call hellish if he didn’t find Hell less ghastly.

It hadn’t quite hit him until now that all the moments he’d been focusing on—Aziraphale tugging the arrow from his shoulder, the bloody banter, these variations on the same death—might have been distractions, and irrelevant besides.

He hadn’t just been getting it wrong. He’d been failing to address the underlying cause entirely. Which was something that cut so deeply he couldn’t bear to consider it, much less articulate it.

The world had ended seven times already, and all Crowley had managed to do was let it happen in seven equally terrible variations of the same scenario. To add guilt to the bitter equation, Uriel, who had less of a choice than him, was being dragged in deeper every time. The realization that he was failing her, too—not just Aziraphale—was intolerable.

And now he was on shot number eight, with forty-eight hours left until he’d inevitably fail again.

Crowley opened his eyes, blinking through the windscreen at the empty street. He wasn’t of any use to anybody sitting there, much less in the thick of a battle whose events he couldn’t alter.

There had always been a knot in his chest, right where the arrow hit, since the second time he’d found himself in this moment. The ache had spread upward to his throat and down into the pit of his stomach, insidious as the vines in his nightmare.

Turning the key in the ignition, Crowley made a decision. He sped off without saying a word, which he regretted, but what use did Aziraphale's distracted ears have for a goodbye?

His flat was silent when he arrived, suffused with an eerie hush, save for the ticking of a clock somewhere upstairs. Fitting, that this particular sound should accompany his actions.

Maybe, for once—just for once in the entirety of this—the ticking would stop for good.

Gathering the requisite materials was as tedious a process as ever, but the thought of altering their purpose was a curious comfort. He donned the PVC gloves with more confidence this time, and he even got the safe open in record time. No need for the bucket, not anymore.

Once he’d marched upstairs to the office, Crowley set the flask of Holy Water on his desk. He took a few steps back and paused, examining it. How mundane it seemed.

With uncannily steady hands, Crowley straightened it, centering it on the desk. He shifted a few papers while he was at it, mindlessly arranging his space as if for another typical work-day.

After that, he sat down in his comfortable swivel-chair and calmly peeled off the PVC gloves, tucking them neatly under the desk.

The lid of the flask was cool to his touch, in mockery of the sheer volatility housed beneath. He’d never had occasion to see Holy Water in action on one of his kind, but he knew how it worked in theory. Nonchalantly, he unscrewed the lid, set it aside, and peered into the flask.

The question now was really method. Up-ending the entirety on his head seemed crude, if effective. Somewhat too Wicked Witch of the West.

Drinking it would be suitably dramatic, but he’d have to do it quickly. It might dissolve his mouth and throat faster than he could swallow, and wouldn’t he look like a fool then?

Injection would have taken far more gadgetry and preparation, which…no, that ship had sailed.

It would only take a drop, really. Applying it to the eyes or another mucous membrane was probably the way forward, letting it leech through his cells at the speed of righteous fury.

Righteousness, now there was a joke. Aziraphale hadn’t even had the decency to own it.

Crowley hissed, pushing himself backward as hard as his leaden limbs could. The chair obliged, carrying him as far as collision with the wall.

The flask remained steady despite the force that he’d used to propel himself away from the desk, but the water inside sloshed upwards, nearly to the rim. Barely a moment ago, seeing the tranquil movement of the water had soothed him. Now it was a grim reminder.

Aziraphale was counting on him, even if he had no blessed idea that’s what he was doing.

Uriel was counting on him, too, and her idea was forming, stronger with each repetition.

“Shit,” Crowley muttered, pressing the heels of his hands against his forehead.

After taking a moment to collect himself, he fetched the PVC gloves from where he’d stashed them and put them on again, flexing his fingers. He might as well be efficient and go fetch the bucket; the flask was open now, so he wouldn’t have to do that a second time.

“Make my day,” he said, re-examining the sound of it under his breath. He’d been debating whether to stick with that, because even Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry grew dull with repetition.

Still, you knew where you were with the classics. There was a reason they had staying power.

Chapter Text

Repetition #9 did not sound as good as Love Potion #9 as potential song titles went.

Crowley went into this one swinging, insofar as he decided, hey, why should the Archangels get to have all the fun? He had no idea whether he’d be qualified to wield a weapon, any weapon he might find lying around. And he didn’t mean the tire iron, either.

He dodged Uriel’s first arrow, mentally projecting a desperate apology in Aziraphale’s direction. Changing the script meant fighting back in ways he hadn’t previously attempted, and literally fighting back was one of them. His hand fell on somebody’s spear.

It didn’t incinerate him, let alone cause him searing pain, so he shrugged, grabbed it, and got to his feet. He’d forgotten what an advantage wings lent toward propulsion.

He’d forgotten, in his complete and utter despairing desperation, that flying was an option.

There was a second layer of fighting in the low-lying clouds overhead, which explained a hell of a lot about the falling bodies. Some things, you just had to tune out when you didn’t have the energy to investigate them. Now, from overhead, Crowley was seeing things in a new light.

Uriel hadn’t been following Raphael on foot; she’d managed to swoop down impressively each time and land a footfall behind him. He knew that now because he was looking her in the eye.

“I didn’t think you’d leave him,” said the Archangel, nocking an arrow, but not in any rush.

“What makes you think you know me?” Crowley asked, awkwardly brandishing the spear.

“I don’t know you as such, but I know your type,” Uriel said ruefully. “The type that sticks by their man to the bitter end. Jeez, don’t look so shocked. I have eyes.”

Crowley shoved his shame down as far as it could possibly go, making a reckless lunge for her.

Uriel dodged him easily, but she’d let her arrow fly too soon, and in the wrong direction.

“You tried to stop him last time,” Crowley said, deciding the gamble was worth it. “Why?”

Clearly not getting his drift, Uriel growled in frustration before drawing another arrow from her quiver. She attempted to nock it and fumbled her bow in the attempt, almost losing both.

“They say you never made sense,” she said plaintively. “No angel who ever got to know you.”

“Then that doesn’t say terribly good things about my man, does it?” Crowley asked in defeat.

“I’m not counting Aziraphale in that population,” Uriel said darkly. “I mean the ones that got to know you in passing. As far as the Principality’s concerned? Hah, he knows you.”

“Not in the sense of knowing that you imply,” Crowley replied, unable to hide his wistfulness.

“I don’t know what to do,” Uriel said quietly, gesturing at his spear. “What should we do?”

“Well, I could kill you,” Crowley suggested, but his heart wasn’t in it. “Just for a lark.”

Uriel laughed at that, actually laughed. “Somebody did tell me you were funny.”

“You must be quite the gossip,” Crowley said, but he didn’t even get the chance to smile.

The pollaxe, already red with Aziraphale’s blood, caught his neck brutally from behind.

At the start of number ten, Crowley found himself gasping as he hung over the side of the Bentley. He’d never wanted to find out what decapitation felt like, yet here he was.

Aziraphale froze in his tracks and turned, having already brushed Crowley off. “What in the…”

“Sorry,” Crowley gasped, slapping the Bentley’s door in frustration. “Don’t, ah, feel so well.”

With healing intent, Aziraphale sighed and waved his free hand vaguely in Crowley’s direction.

“Perhaps some sleep would do you good,” he suggested, and spun on his heel. “Good night.”

Crowley was too shocked to respond. It was the first time Aziraphale had broken the script.

If Aziraphale is experiencing something like what Uriel’s experiencing, he thought as he drove, then it might mean I’ve shaken something loose. Maybe I need to do it in stages.

That hopeful thought got him through the night, but not without dreams of Aziraphale that were, while thoroughly wonderful, inappropriate to the circumstances. He went through the motions of Thursday and Friday without sleeping another wink, because he couldn’t risk…

Wait, no. He’d been the fool to end all fools, hadn’t he? Maybe his emotions were the key.

That idea, he rejected as quickly as it took him to imagine confessing himself to Aziraphale just in time for the pollaxe to land. What did he think this was? Shakespeare? Disney?

No, what he needed was to get to the root cause. And if not a missed action on his part, then the cause was something else. External, from elsewhere. Someone else.

Crowley very much wanted to be sure, so he went into battle on Saturday evening with intent to dodge Uriel’s arrows again. The bird’s eye view had done him some good; he could think more clearly above the battle’s clamor. He’d just need to stay out of Uriel’s way.

Unless she wanted to find him again, of course. Whatever was happening to her, he felt sorry.

During the confrontation with Metatron and Beelzebub, Crowley couldn’t help but notice that Adam seemed more fidgety than usual. His fingers twitched at his sides, as if he wanted to reach and manipulate what he was witnessing—as if he hadn’t already done it with his will.

Crowley jerked his hand in surprise, brushing one of Aziraphale’s fingers. He’d almost got the shape of it, almost grasped the outline…

He had missed all his lines this time, every single one of them. The Hosts were descending.

And Adam Young was no longer anywhere in sight, which he ought to have investigated sooner.

“Gosh, I’m sorry about this,” he said to Aziraphale, nerves alight with epiphany, yanking him out of the path of Uriel’s first arrow. “There’s something I’ve got to take care of, and I wish—

“Go with all my best, Crowley,” Aziraphale murmured, squeezing his hands. “All my prayers.”

Soaring as fast as his wings could carry him in a straight line skyward, all Crowley found was a patch of inky black interference. He attempted to breach it, but was pitched back as if he’d collided with an especially elastic brick wall. He recovered himself mid-fall.

Staring at the patch of nighttime in the midst of an otherwise flame-licked sky, Crowley had the most terrible epiphany he could imagine. He hated himself for having previously missed it.

There was, indeed, an explicable cause. And it wasn’t so much underlying as overlying.

Chapter Text

On the eleventh go-round, Crowley grabbed Adam by the wrist before he could disappear.

“What’s going on?” Adam asked, curious and forlorn. He dashed after Crowley of his own volition after they’d cleared the edge of the battlefield, making for the guard booth.

Crowley had to vanish his wings to fit inside. Once Adam had made it, he slammed the door.

“So this is your doing?” Crowley clipped every word as short as his shaking voice would allow. No sibilants this time, no hiss. Not rage—no, he couldn’t even manage rage the first and second times, and all he could muster this far along was something cold and tiredly bitter.

Adam nodded, shrugging one shoulder. There was a touch of reluctant apology in the gesture.

“You two didn’t get it right the first time, so I made it so that you’d have to. Rules are rules.”

“We—wait, we didn’t get it right? Us?” That could've been fury, couldn't it, if Crowley’s chest had ached less. “Why us? In case you hadn’t noticed, you’re the only one with any power around here.”

“Heaven and Hell—that’s you two—have to be in balance an’ suchlike for the ’pocalypse to not happen,” Adam said. “That’s how we Wrote it.”

“We? There it is again, only this time you don’t mean us,” Crowley said, jabbing a finger at him. “You have a co-author in this mess?”

Adam chewed on his lower lip, pensive. “Technically you two came up with the ineffability part.”

“Do you mean while we were stalling?” asked Crowley, sarcastically. “Scared out of our wits?”

“Yeah,” Adam said, scuffing the guard’s empty chair with his shoe. “That Ineffable Plan stuff. An’ I’m sorry for, for just...dissapearin’ like that in the middle of it, every single time, but you’ve got to look at it like this. I’ve got to keep my co-author in his place, you see. Up above everything so he’s distracted an’ whatnot. He’s dangerous.”

That explains the formless black void, Crowley thought grimly, unable to remain silent.

“Let me tell you a thing or two about ineffability,” he said. “It isn’t helpful. It doesn’t care. That’s the whole point. That’s why it’s ineffable.”

“I was just hoping to give us a chance.”

“Us,” Crowley echoed. “There’s that us thing again, only this time you’re included?”

“You sided with us!” Adam shouted. “With humans! That’s pretty well an us, yeah?”

“It stopped being us when you decided being like your father wasn’t good enough. You had to play the same games as—as Him.”

Adam frowned, seemingly struggling to recall something. “Him.”

“It’s up to you. That’s the whole point. The fate of the world is up to you. For all of two minutes, you’re God. You get to decide how it all goes. And, and just like God, instead of doing the work yourself, you set it all in motion and made someone else…made me do the dirty work that you were born to do. Couldn’t just say no to it, could you. You had to take it one step further, wash your hands of the whole thing.”

Adam’s brow furrowed, as if he was processing Crowley’s tirade as fast as his young mind could.

“Gosh,” was what he finally said, his eyes wide. “Were you the one that delivered me up here?”

Crowley pinched the bridge of his nose and spent ten seconds trying to regain his composure.

“Way to miss the point by a mile,” he said finally, at a loss, “but yes. That sort of makes me your godfather, doesn’t it? I understand that’s an awful lot of fathers in the equation, but since I’m your godfather, you should bloody well take a minute to listen, don’t you think? In the time I have before I’m dragged right back in? Since evidently I’ve failed again.”

Adam nodded solemnly, as if he’d continued processing. “I’m sorry it’s got to be like this,” he said, “but it’s just got to. It’s not fun for me, either, over and over.”

Crowley considered that and felt fractionally better. “At least you’re stuck with me, I guess.”

“Thing is, though, that I can’t stop this now,” Adam said with regret. “You’ve got to.”

“You’re a hypocrite, Adam Young.”

“Ole Picky says hypocrites go to Hell.”

“You’ve made Hell. Right here, just for the two of us.”

“I guess maybe it’s three of us,” Adam said philosophically. “Or four, what with—”

“Your co-author, and anyone associated, is stuck in this loop till I break it. Major design flaw, considering. D’you have any idea how far out of my way I’ve gone to avoid breaking things?”

“Yeah,” Adam said. “You grow things an’ breathe ’em back to life. It’s got to be a challenge.”

“You could have fixed it from the get-go,” Crowley pleaded. “Can’t you even see that?”

Wistfully, Adam shook his head, reaching for the doorknob. Outside, the din was horrific.

“Seems to me all we’ve got now is a thing only you can fix,” he said, hard-eyed. “So do it.”

“It’s Written now. Re-Written. I can’t just cross it out like Aziraphale and I wanted to.”

Turning the knob, Adam spared Crowley one last glance before stepping out into the smoke.

“Then find a thing you can grow? This is Eden. I thought serpents were s’posed to be wise.”

Desolately, Crowley stared after him, leaning against the control panel as the seconds ticked on. He might as well stay right where he was, all things considered. By this point in the proceedings, Aziraphale was already gone.

Any moment now, mercifully, he would be gone, too.

Chapter Text

Crowley sincerely hoped that the twelfth go-round would be a charm. He seriously wasn’t keen on how gaudily superstitious tipping into a thirteenth would be.

This time, it was second nature to greet Raphael and Uriel as something approaching old, antagonistic friends. From this short distance, their approach looked the same, so Crowley decided maybe he’d shake things up a bit sooner than usual.

“Hey!” he called over Aziraphale’s shoulder, swatting Aziraphale’s fussy hands away from the arrow lodged in his own. “If it isn’t just the Archangels I’ve been waiting to see!”

Raphael looked amused enough that he lowered his weapon the moment he got close enough to touch them. He saluted Crowley, which was a bizarre and encouraging response whether he was flattered an enemy would want to see him, or his subconscious was catching up.

Beside him, Uriel looked paler and less certain than usual beneath the ashy smudges on her face. Her bow was slung over her shoulder, and her arrows were safely stowed in her quiver.

“Sensible enough to wait, darling,” said Raphael, and proceeded to pat Crowley on the cheek.

Rather than Crowley who flinched at the touch, it was Aziraphale. For the first time in twelve iterations, the angel got to his feet and looked Raphael threateningly in the eye.

“He’s not yours to touch or to finish,” Aziraphale said, “so kindly find someone else to kill.”

Uriel shifted uneasily from foot to foot, but she cracked a smile and waved. “Hey there.”

Aziraphale gave her the stoniest look Crowley had ever seen him give any living creature.

“Should old acquaintance be forgot,” Raphael sing-songed. “What a happy reunion, Az.”

Taking advantage of the distraction Aziraphale had provided, Crowley got to his feet, too.

Perhaps miffed, Uriel turned to him instead, blanching even further. “You’re Crowley.”

“Er, yeah,” Crowley said, swaying slightly on his feet. The arrow’s poison was torture.

Uriel gave Raphael and Aziraphale the side-eye, and then defiantly snapped her fingers.

“Ugh, sorry about that,” she said under her breath as the arrow dissolved to nothing.

Crowley glanced sharply over his shoulder, amazed that even the pain had subsided.

“Clever girl,” Raphael said. “Aiming for a fair fight, are we? That’s sweet of you.”

Uriel gave him a withering look, then snapped her fingers at Aziraphale, too. “Sure?”

Aziraphale still looked disheveled and distressed, but he certainly wasn’t bloody now.

Crowley was too startled to take in the implications at first, but the way Uriel was stalling, helping, signaled to Crowley that something had changed. Something big.

“I quite fancy a duel,” Aziraphale sniffed, gesturing as if to lay out the proposition to Raphael.

“Kind of hard without your sword,” Crowley muttered, rubbing the back of his neck, “or my, uh, weapon of choice, for that matter. We lost track.”

“Some things never change,” Uriel remarked. “It’d be no fun if you didn’t have them, though.”

Crowley nodded, letting her take the lead. If she was asking for trust in the covertest fashion available, then Crowley was going to trust her.

Raphael, ever the quick thinker, had stepped away to fetch a sword from one of the fallen. He handed it off to Aziraphale, nodding in approval as it flared in Aziraphale’s grasp.

“How sporting of you,” Aziraphale retorted, brandishing the blade before him. “En garde?”

At the first clang of ethereal ore on whatever the hell the handle of Raphael’s pollaxe was made of, Uriel grabbed Crowley and hauled him in the direction that Crowley had taken Adam during the previous iteration. Crowley’s heart kicked in his chest; she remembered.

The guard booth was even more cramped with two adult-sized, human-shaped beings in it.

“It’s possible I’m going to be in so much fucking trouble for this that I’ll never see light of day again,” Uriel said urgently, “or Heaven, or anywhere. But please listen to me.”

“Your buddy back there has no clue how hard I’ve been trying to get through to you, has he?”

“His behavior’s changing because he can read the shifts in mine. But I don’t think he knows.”

“You can spare me the who’s-behind-it business,” Crowley said. “I already know about that.”

“Yeah, and I know that you know, because I saw you bring the brat in here for a talking-to,” Uriel replied impatiently. She set her hands on Crowley’s shoulders, searching his face.

“You’ve figured out what I need to do, haven’t you,” Crowley said. “And you can’t tell me.”

Uriel made a pained noise and glanced out through the bulletproof glass, where Raphael and Aziraphale were hacking each other to bits for all they knew. She squeezed Crowley harder.

“How much longer till this freaky déjà vu resets again?” she demanded. “I always lose track.”

“Around a minute,” Crowley said. “Maybe slightly more than that. I just wing it, mostly.”

“Funny,” said Uriel, unamused. She let go of Crowley and stood up to her full height, which was so atypically short for their ilk that Crowley couldn’t fathom how imposing she had once seemed. “Here’s what we do,” she said, turning the doorknob, taking Crowley by the collar. She hurled him to the ground with shocking strength, unshouldered the bow, and nocked an arrow quicker than Crowley could blink. “Keep responding to me. I don’t care what. If anyone looks over, they’ll see me taunting my kill, got it?”

“Sure,” Crowley said, doing his best to assume an attitude of defeat. “Gotta kill the time, too.”

“You need to tell me when there’s, like, two seconds left, okay?” Uriel said, sounding nervous.

“Okay,” Crowley said, swallowing hard. Her anxiety was contagious. “I can totally do that.”

Uriel nodded, shifting on her feet, glaring down at him. “You’ll need to remember the last thing I say to you,” she threatened. “Sleep on it.”

“I have plenty of time to do that once this shebang ticks over, believe me,” Crowley shot back.

Uriel nodded, permitting herself the ghost of a smile. She let her bowstring relax, took the arrow in hand, and got down beside Crowley in the dust. She shoved the arrow-point beneath his chin, leaning so close their noses almost brushed. She looked afraid.

“Five seconds,” Crowley whispered, finding that he didn’t have to fake his terror. “Hurry up.”

“Next time,” Uriel said with fierce deliberation, pleading with him, “stay the fuck put.”

Chapter Text

“It doesn’t matter!” said the Metatron, insufferably prissy as ever. “It’s the same thing, surely!”

It was a Weary and Hopeless iteration as opposed to a Sarcastic and Punchy one, Crowley decided. The clock was ticking, and he could at least dodge Uriel’s arrows.

Wait, Crowley thought, deciding he could do worse than look at Adam. Uriel.

“So you’re not one hundred percent clear on this?” asked Aziraphale, edging ever closer to him.

Uriel had said something to Crowley yesterday—or, at least, for certain values of it—hadn’t she?

Adam tilted his head, fixing Crowley with a searching look that gave him the creeps. But he didn’t say anything, just stood there like he always did and watched.

Next time, Uriel had said, hopeful joy flashing in her grey eyes, stay the fuck put.

“It’s not given to us to understand the ineffable Plan,” the Metatron continued pedantically, “but of course the Great Plan—”

Crowley swallowed and stepped up beside Aziraphale. He was already standing, so he couldn’t stay put sitting, that much was clear. If this didn’t work, then next time he’d try sitting.

“But the Great Plan can only be a tiny part of the overall ineffability,” he said. “You can’t be certain that what’s happening right now isn’t exactly right, from an ineffable point of view.”

“It izz written!” Beelzebub screeched, and Crowley couldn’t help shrinking closer to Aziraphale.

Adam hadn’t blinked in over a minute. It was as unnerving as when Aziraphale didn’t move for hours.

“But it might be written differently somewhere else,” Crowley insisted, ready to attempt a gambit so mad it required inaction over action. “Where you can’t read it.”

“In bigger letters,” Aziraphale asserted. His elbow bumped Crowley’s, a sudden distressed jerk.

For the first time, Crowley glanced down, and he saw the anxious twitch of Aziraphale’s fingers.

“Underlined,” Crowley forged on, struggling to keep his voice level. Oh, he had been a fool.

“Twice,” added Aziraphale. This time his hand turned, palm toward Crowley, pinkie extended.

Stay the fuck put. Well, then, he would. Uriel hadn’t forbidden him from improvising.

“Perhaps this isn’t just a test of the world,” Crowley said as convincingly as he could, trembling as he turned his hand just so. “It might be a test of you people, too. Hmmm?”

Aziraphale’s pinkie brushed his thumb. For a moment of sheer relief, they prolonged the touch.

“Yeah, well,” said Adam, smiling like he never had, “it’s a test all right. A test of you.”

“God does not play games with His loyal servants,” said the Metatron, sounding rather worried.

Crowley couldn’t believe his ears. That line definitely wasn’t in the script, not as he knew it.

“Whooo-eee,” he gasped, curling his thumb so Aziraphale couldn’t withdraw his hand just yet, and he felt the tension in Aziraphale diminish further. “Where have you been?”

Crowley looked at Adam again, as did everyone else, because they didn’t seem to have a choice. The boy was thinking, his brows knit in fierce concentration, still smiling.

“I don’t see why it matters what is written. Not when it’s about people. It can always be crossed out.”

Crowley sagged into Aziraphale, jarring their fingers apart. And as far gone as he was, suffused with the sheer disbelief of having broken the pattern, it seemed fine to grab Aziraphale’s arm.

“You know what happened?” he hissed in elation. “He was left alone! He grew up human! He’s not Evil Incarnate or Good Incarnate, he’s just…a human incarnate—”

Aziraphale turned to him then, his expression indescribable, and set a finger against Crowley’s lips. The Metatron was saying something, as was Beelzebub, but it wasn’t important.

“Hush, my dear,” he said softly, letting his touch linger unnecessarily. “We had better listen.”

It turned out Aziraphale had an excellent point. There was the spectacular show of the Metatron and Beelzebub vanishing, the grim what-might-have-been if Shadwell’s shot had found its mark.

There was quite a lot more chatter with these humans than Crowley had energy for, so Aziraphale held him up. He kept his upper arm braced against Crowley’s, unwavering.

When the ground began to shake and the humans got nervous, Crowley, to his shame, tried to run. But Aziraphale followed him doggedly to the Jeep and set a hand on Crowley’s shoulder.

“There are humans here,” said the angel, gently, and his fingers tightened fierce as a promise.

“Yes,” Crowley agreed, sheer terror of reversion welling up in his chest. “And me.”

“I mean we shouldn’t let this happen to them,” Aziraphale pleaded. “Crowley, please think—”

“Oh, I’m tired of thinking,” Crowley sighed, turning sideways in the driver’s seat. Aziraphale’s hand was still on his shoulder, still holding fast, and it was too much. “Fine.”

Which of them was most shocked by the brief, fierce kiss Crowley initiated was anyone’s guess.

“You don’t mean we should actually try to stop Him?” Crowley whispered breathlessly.

Aziraphale drew back, stunned, fingers flying to his parted lips. “What have you got to lose?”

“Everything,” Crowley said urgently, sliding out of the seat, unsteady on his feet. “You.”

All the same, he turned around and rummaged under the driver’s seat. A tire iron probably wasn’t ideal in a pinch, and it wouldn’t do the same flashy tricks as, well.

Aziraphale had picked up War’s abandoned sword. He hefted it, smiling ruefully at Crowley.

“Gosh, it’s been years since I used this,” he said, turning the gleaming blade from side to side.

“About six thousand,” Crowley replied dubiously, hoping he hadn’t come off as too sarcastic.

“My word, yes,” Aziraphale said. “What a day that was, and no mistake. Good old…”

Crowley couldn’t help glaring at him a little, and it was satisfying to hear him trail off.

“Ah. Yes,” said Aziraphale, swallowing. “Too much messing about. Point very much taken.”

“Yes,” Crowley agreed, relieved, hefting the tire iron. Far too much, more than you will ever know. “Say, didn’t that thing used to—”

“Flame like anything?” Aziraphale asked, grinning as he held it up. The blade went blue-white.

“Show-off,” Crowley muttered, but he couldn’t stop smiling, either. “Come on, angel.”

“Once you’ve learned how to do it, you never forget,” Aziraphale said, and his grin softened. “I’d just like to say,” he went on, “if we don’t get out of this, that...I’ll have known, deep down inside, that there was a spark of goodness in you.”

“That’s right,” Crowley said, the thought of losing now too bitter to bear. Was this really the only difference, the two of them as the sacrifice to spare the world? “Make my day.”

Aziraphale extended his hand, slowly and without hesitation. “Nice knowing you,” he said.

Crowley took it without hesitation. “Here’s to the next time,” he said. “And...Aziraphale?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale said quietly. It wasn’t even a question, and that stung above all else.

“Just remember I’ll have known that, deep down inside, you were just enough of a bastard to be worth liking,” Crowley replied. Loving, he ought to have said, but it was done.

Shadwell, ever the wrecker of tableaux, at least didn’t use the blunderbuss to get between them.

One glance exchanged with Aziraphale over the infuriating man’s head was all it took. Time to drop the charade, time to reveal themselves at the last. Crowley stretched his wings skyward. He didn’t turn his head again, but he felt the tickle of feathers as Aziraphale’s wing brushed his.

In the midst of the scuffle—Newt Pulsifer joining the fray with nothing but a pin, that made Crowley feel more secure in his choice of self-defense—Adam was motionless.

He looked around at them all, raised his hand, and made a curious motion with it in mid-air.

Whatever happened to the world just then, the humans didn’t react. For Crowley, the ground might as well have shaken again, rattled him to his core. Propriety be damned, he latched onto Aziraphale’s arm and turned sidelong, using his wings to shield them both.

“Bit of an overreaction, don’t you think?” Aziraphale murmured, nodding at the rather mundane car that had appeared on the previously-quaking spot of ground. “It’s his father.”

Briefly, Crowley imagined the point of an arrow buried between his scapula and wing joint.

“I’ll give you overreaction,” he groused, fighting an urge toward hysterical laughter. Burying his face in Aziraphale’s shoulder seemed like a permissible option, so that’s exactly what he did.

“It’s all come right,” Aziraphale said, maneuvering awkwardly so that they were chest to chest.

“If you knew how wrong,” Crowley gasped, wrapping his arms around the angel for all he was worth, “how absolutely, bloody wrong it could’ve—how wrong it went—”

“Shhh,” Aziraphale whispered, and the feel of his hands in Crowley’s hair, his pin-feathers, everywhere, was almost too much. Was too much, within a moment. Brief, desperate contact he could bear, but not this. “My dear, what happened?”

Crowley laughed, clinging even tighter. “I’m too sober to explain, I can tell you that much.”

“Well, then,” Aziraphale said, pressing what felt an awful lot like a kiss against Crowley’s cheek, “we’ll just have to see what can be done about that. Château Margaux? Lafitte?”

“None of your red French swill,” Crowley said, wiping at his eyes as Aziraphale stepped away, set down the sword, and spread his coat on the ground. “White, or I’m leaving.”

Aziraphale sat down with a huff, produced a bottle out of nowhere with genuine showman’s flair, and patted the spot beside him. “Will white Bordeaux do in a pinch? Still French, I fear.”

“Since balance is what this mess was about,” Crowley sighed, joining him, “sure. Why not.”

Aziraphale set the bottle down, reaching for him with impossible ease, drawing Crowley close.

“I shouldn’t have left you alone the other night,” he said softly. “Should've asked you to stay.” And then, softer still: “I’m sorry. I’d do it over if I could.”

“No,” Crowley gasped, feeling as if all the air had been punched from his chest. “No, Aziraphale, you really wouldn’t. You wouldn’t have to. I’m the one who got it wrong.” Got it wrong, got it wrong, and got it wrong. Twelve whole times, I got it wrong.

“I can’t understand how that could be true,” said Aziraphale, perplexed. “It’s all right, Crowley.”

“You know the worst stuff they can do to you Down There and Upstairs?” Crowley asked. “Well, imagine…imagine that…” Abruptly, his throat closed. “For me, it was…”

Aziraphale shushed him again, tilting his head until the tips of their noses lightly touched.

“Then it was my fault,” he said with quiet certainty. “I’ve said as much. You can let it rest.”

“Not entirely yours, not entirely mine,” Crowley muttered. “That Adam Young. Human Incarnate. I always said they were cleverer, didn’t I? Crueler.”

“Why he’d mess you about and not me,” Aziraphale said angrily, “is what I’d like to know.”

“Because you got it right the first time, angel. You reached, but I didn’t meet you halfway.”

“But you took my hand when I offered it,” Aziraphale insisted. “Both times, even. More.”

“This time.”

The penny dropped, or some semblance thereof. Aziraphale was horrified, and that was enough.

“What can I do,” he whispered, his arms tightening. “What can I possibly do to make this…”

“You can finish what you’ve started,” Crowley faltered, drawing back just far enough to pointedly remove his sunglasses, “and by that, I mean right here, right now.”

Aziraphale chuckled ruefully, bringing one hand up to cup Crowley’s cheek, using the pad of his thumb to brush away a tear Crowley had missed.

“You’re sure?”

“Is it really that unreasonable to expect reciprocation?” Crowley sighed, wearily closing his eyes.

“I think unreasonable is the least of our worries,” Aziraphale said patiently. “Open your eyes?”

As if anything delivered in that voice could be a question. Crowley blinked at him expectantly.

“Crying’s never been a good look on me,” he said, “so why in the world you’d want that—”

Aziraphale kissed him without further hesitation, soundly and adoringly, drawing it out like he’d been waiting forever to do so. He didn’t taste like wine, not just yet.

If the International Express delivery man was as befuddled by the kissing as by the half-drunk wine, well. That was ineffability for you, and Crowley had a feeling their definition was best.

Chapter Text

Adam ran.

He ran and ran until he couldn’t anymore, although doubling back through the air base showed him exactly what he needed to know. Heaven and Hell weren’t just in balance; they were curled up on Aziraphale’s camelhair coat, passing back and forth a bottle of wine.

It was a mistake, stopping long enough to watch them kiss, because that was when Adam’s father caught him. Just like in the movies, there was a lot of reprimanding involved.

Dog flattened his ears and whined the whole way home. Which was all right, Adam supposed, because these situations usually called for somebody’s ears to suffer.

Adam’s father wanted to shut him in his room without supper, but one tut from his mum suggested that wasn’t going to happen. Sulkily, he ate alone at the table while his parents spoke in hushed tones in the living room. Dog paced fretfully about the kitchen.

“You might as well sit down,” Adam said conversationally, gulping down some of his milk.

Dog whimpered and trotted over, stationing himself alongside Adam’s chair. He growled.

I HOPE YOU MEANT ME, Death said, stepping out of the shadowed pantry. His pinpoint eyes studied the seats available at the table. He shrugged and sat down across from Adam.

“I meant the both of you,” Adam said, pushing around his peas. “That’s called bein’ efficient.”

YOU’RE A QUICK LEARNER, Death said, folding his bony hands. YOUR FATHER SHOULD BE PROUD. AS FOR WHICH ONE, I’LL LEAVE THAT TO YOU.

“My father’s mad as anything,” said Adam, glumly. “I don’t see what pride’s got to do with it.”

YOU HANDLED THIS WITH WISDOM AND TACT, Death replied. AND DEVIOUSNESS.

Adam nodded at his plate, realizing he hadn’t done much more than disassemble its contents.

“I wanted to ask you about that, I s’pose,” he admitted. “See if I passed the test, too.”

Death made a noise that might have passed for a snort, but the lack of nostrils made it sound odd.

IT IS NOT FOR US TO KNOW IF WE TRULY PASSED, he said, OR TO WHAT PURPOSE.

“One thing I do know,” Adam said, “is that a bunch of stuff got crossed out, an’ for the better.”

PERHAPS YOU OUGHT TO CONSIDER A CAREER IN EDITING, Death replied soberly.

“Matchmaking’s more like it,” Adam said with mischief, “just like old Agnes Nutter, yeah?”

THE PROPHETESS DID HER PART, said Death. NOTHING MORE, NOTHING LESS.

“That must be reassurin’ at least,” Adam retorted. “No try, only do. You’d like Yoda.”

IT WILL BE DECADES BEFORE THAT FRANCHISE IS SPENT, said Death, irritated.

“Must be lonely, doing your job,” Adam said, finishing his milk. “I wouldn’t trade.”

MY JOB HAS PERKS, Death protested. I TRAVEL AND MEET INTERESTING PEOPLE.

“An’ I guess you aren’t alone all the time,” Adam mused. “That one Archangel helps.”

THAT ONE ARCHANGEL HELPED MORE THAN YOU KNOW. ONE MIGHT EVEN ARGUE SHE CHEATED. MESSED PEOPLE ABOUT.

“Listen, I don’t know anything about any messin’ about, except what we did.”

WISE, ADAM YOUNG, said Death, rising from his seat. MOST WISE. CAN I GO NOW?

Adam set down his fork and stood up, brushing his hands on his shorts. He offered his right.

“No offense or anything, but I hope I won’t see you for a while. A really, really long time.”

Death shrugged and accepted Adam’s hand. He shook it once, courteously, up and down.

IF THAT IS WHAT YOU CHOOSE, SON OF MAN. YOU MIGHT YET ESCAPE ME.

Adam grinned and winked, opening the back door for him. “Where’d be the fun in that?”