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Chapter Text

Dr Robert Chase hadn’t expected so much waiting around when he applied to join the diagnostics team at Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. Waiting for patients, waiting for lab results, waiting for House to have a sudden stroke of genius and announce that they were all idiots for not realising the man with a runny nose and a slight temperature was actually dying of a rare brain disease only found in pygmy goats. That last one had actually happened the week before, and Chase still hadn’t recovered from the dressing-down he’d received for not immediately noticing the man had strange ears, which he had. Chase had just thought the man was ugly. Or at least his ears were.

Dr Gregory House was objectively a genius, but not a kind one. His aversion to seeing his patients in person was probably a blessing for all involved. Chase had once seen him verbally eviscerate a woman who had fed her child who was extremely allergic to nuts Nutella because she thought it didn’t have nuts in. Foreman still talked about the time House threatened to call the pound on a man who’d been eating dog food to lose weight.

So, yes, keeping House away from patients was generally a wise move—not that he ever volunteered to see them anyway.

At present, the two of them were seated in the diagnostics conference room, Chase flicking through an outdated copy of The Lancet with all the enthusiasm of someone watching paint dry, when the door burst open and Dr Allison Cameron strode in, waving a file triumphantly.
“I’ve got something,” she announced.
—
The man had arrived by ambulance after collapsing in a bar. While that wasn't especially unusual in a location that sold alcohol, he was apparently a well-known and well-liked regular, and the staff insisted this wasn’t normal for him.

Initial blood alcohol concentration: 0.54%. Most people would be comatose—or dead—at that level. Then there were the eyes. A nurse doing a routine neuro check had noticed his pupils were slitted, vertical. Like a snake’s. Poisoning or brain trauma was the obvious assumption, though there were no signs of injury. But the tox screen came back clean apart from the alcohol. No opioids, no benzodiazepines, no party drugs. No antifreeze, no heavy metals. Before they could wheel him to imaging, he sat up. Just like that. Eyes still slit. He’d blinked against the lights and told the orderly that the lighting was “dramatically fluorescent.”

Now, no one knew what to do with him. Vitals? Stable. Cognition? Sharp. Motor function? Intact. No visible impairment—except for the staggering BAC and the fact that his eyes looked like they belonged to a reptile.

They ran the blood alcohol again. It came back 0.20%. That kind of drop in such a short space of time wasn’t just unlikely; it was physiologically impossible without medical intervention. And he’d had none—no fluids, no charcoal, nothing.

A medical mystery.

A medical mystery who was insisting they discharge him.
—
“Nothing came back in his labs,” Cameron reported to the team. “In fact, they’re cleaner than when he arrived.”

Chase leaned over the file she’d passed him, brow furrowed with interest. Foreman looked intrigued as well.

“And he’s sat up and talking?” he asked. “No cognitive decline?”

“None. He’s actively trying to leave. The attending’s managed to delay him for now.”

“So we’re treating a patient who doesn’t want to be treated,” came the voice of their boss. Dr House was lounging across one of the chairs, lazily pushing himself in a slow circle with his cane. “I thought we cared about consent these days. Or is that just for the girls?”

Cameron ignored the barb. “There’s no way he has the capacity to make decisions,” Foreman said. “The man should be in a coma.”

“And yet he’s not,” House said. “Why?”

“Isn’t that our job to find out?” Chase replied.

Cameron shot him a grateful glance.

“Only if the patient consents. And he doesn’t. If the man wants to die on a bar room floor, who are we to stop him?”

“Doctors,” Cameron said firmly.

House stared at her for a beat longer than was comfortable, then sighed. “If you can convince Medusa in there to be seen, then we’ll keep going. And when the lawsuit hits, you can all tell Cuddy I said the word ‘consent’.” With that, he pushed to his feet and limped out of the room.

—
The patient had been moved to a private room, though he didn’t seem thrilled about it. His belongings had been returned, and he sat propped up on the bed, dark sunglasses in place. He hadn’t changed out of the hospital gown, which made for quite the sight.  His wild red hair sticking up in dishevelled tufts like an ageing punk rocker at the wrong end of a bender.

“Hi,” Cameron began, stepping forward. “I’m Dr Cameron. This is Dr Chase and Dr Foreman.”
Crowley gave a crooked smile and didn’t take her hand. “Doctor? Bit of a funny first name? Call me Crowley.” The long o in his accent stretched across the room.
“Oh, you’re English?” Cameron asked.

“No,” he replied flatly, offering nothing more.

Getting further information wasn’t much easier.

Full name? “Anthony J. Crowley.” No, the J didn’t stand for anything. Why would you ask?

Date of birth? “A millennium ago. I’ve stopped keeping track.”

Next of kin?

Crowley stilled. For a moment he said nothing, eyes hidden behind his dark lenses. Then, slowly, he shook his head.

It wasn’t dismissive. It was devastated. Like the air had left the room. Like someone had stabbed him in the chest without touching him. The sorrow radiated off him in a way that made all three doctors fall quiet. Chase looked away. Foreman blinked hard. Cameron found herself swallowing against the sudden lump in her throat.
She moved gently on to the next question.

When asked about his eyes, Crowley simply said he’d been born that way. Questions about light sensitivity, and visual acuity were all were met with a tone so uninterested it was clear he wanted to be anywhere else. Frustrated and uneasy, the team returned to the whiteboard. Without consent, they couldn’t run further tests. And without that, they couldn’t rule anything in—or out.

“Bad day at the reptile house?” House called as he strode into the diagnostics offices where they had gathered.

“Don’t call him that,” Cameron said firmly. “Crowley’s a person, not a reptile.”

House froze. His cane tapped once on the floor.

“What did you just say?”

“Anthony Crowley,” Chase said. “The patient.”

House stared at them for a moment with an unreadable expression. Then, without a word, he turned on his heel and strode out of the room.

If they didn’t know better, they’d think he was heading straight for the patient’s room.

Chapter Text

Contrary to popular opinion, Dr Gregory House had a heart. It might be more metaphorical than literal these days, but he did have one.

The heart that would become Gregory House was created at the dawn of time. Back then, it bore the name Raphael—the healer. Staff in hand, the heart walked among the Heavens with his siblings in peace. After all, what could possibly need healing in the Kingdom of Heaven?

Then God created the Earth—on Sunday, 21st October, 4004 B.C., at precisely 9:13 a.m. It was beautiful.

After that, everything went a bit pear-shaped.

Samael rebelled. Angels fell. War broke out.

Raphael learned what war was. He learned what pain felt like. He learned that, for some reason, it was now wrong to try and heal some of his siblings. They were Bad now. That was the rule. Raphael didn’t understand why.

He was given the trumpet to signal the beginning and end of the Great War—to herald Judgement Day. This was considered a Good Thing. An honour. The fact that many of his siblings would perish when he blew it no longer seemed to matter to anyone.

So Raphael waited. And waited. Until Earth got loud enough that he could justify “just popping down to help out,” which turned into “I can’t leave just yet,” and eventually became “Has anyone heard from Raphael recently?”

He came to Earth to stay. He studied in temples and sickrooms. He learnt how humans lived—not just how they survived. He became cold, and warm, and kind, and cruel. Throughout the centuries, Raphael lived. He collected bodies during the Black Death. Held the hands of women in childbirth. Wept tears of joy at the first vaccination. Wore a white feather in wartime and was shamed for it—as if any of them knew what shame truly was.

Every few decades, he changed his name and became someone new. At present, he was Dr Gregory House. His staff of office had become a cane. His trumpet, far smaller than before, was kept locked away in a tiny flat he never really called home.

Dr Gregory House was still a genius. But he was tired—so very tired. It had taken him millennia to feel this exhausted, and it would take longer still to find the will to recover.

But recently, he’d heard a rumour—someone up there had stood up to Heaven. Refused the order. Refused to be cruel. And that tiny rebellion whispered through the cracks between worlds, giving him hope. Not much. But enough.

-

House was in a good mood that morning. He'd managed to convince Wilson to go out with him the night before instead of pining after some girl he'd met in the hospital cafeteria. House had known from one look that the girl was dying. Wilson, the bleeding heart, would have fallen in love with her as he always did, only to break when they left by choice or not. Instead, he'd managed to distract his friend before he could go over to speak to her, long enough for her to collect her food and walk away. The two of them went to a local sports bar to cheer on some team that Wilson liked to support on occasions when he needed to feel more 'manly'. Probably some latent issues he had around his sexuality, not that Wilson would admit to being anything other than straight (despite having kissed House whilst drunk on more than one occasion).

So yes, House was in a good mood despite how boring the morning had been so far. Twirling in his chair, he debated how best to throw a cat among the pigeons with his baby ducklings. They were good doctors, but had yet to learn the truest skill all doctors needed, the ability to get back up when things didn't immediately go right without taking it personally. Case in point, Dr Cameron was walking with speed to their shared office space clearly trying to win back favour from her boss after being embarrassed over her diagnostic failure on the last case. Rather than being able to accept that she'd made a potentially fatal error and learn, Cameron would spend the next few weeks trying to overachieve and kiss ass in the hopes of 'forgiveness'. She could give Chase a run for his money with the pent-up guilt she held.

The case she had brought was not uninteresting. A man with split pupils, a potentially extremely fast metabolism, who should be in a coma but isn't. However, she had once again rushed ahead in her attempt to claim credit for the find and hadn't actually gotten the patient's consent, or even fact-checked any of her findings. A lab error was more likely than magical alcohol tolerance.

House let the ducklings investigate regardless, hoping it would either teach them something or, at the very least, give him a few minutes to catch up on the medical drama he was binge-watching. Unfortunately, they weren't gone as long as he'd have preferred.

House was planning to leave them to sort this mess themselves when he heard the name. Crowley.
Crowley.
It couldn't be...
Crowley...or Crawly?
Only one way to find out. He made his way with speed to the patient's room.

Chapter Text

The man in the hospital bed didn’t look like a typical patient.

For one, he was far too composed. People sitting in a hospital bed were usually having one of the worst days of their lives. There was no fear on this patient's face, no confusion. Just a quiet, simmering irritation, like someone who was being dreadfully inconvenienced by being here. He wore sunglasses indoors, which House usually considered a sure sign of either celebrity, concussion, or twattery.

This time, though, he wasn’t so sure.

The sunglasses might be concealing something else—something older, and far more dangerous.

House stood just shy of the threshold, cane tapping once on the tile floor, echoing like a clock counting down. He was staring at the name again. Crowley. Crawly. The Adversary of Principality Aziraphale. The snake who had whispered in the garden, who had made temptation an art form. The demon who ran Hell’s earthly operations with ruthless efficiency, who manipulated timelines and nations with a lazy flick of his fingers.

In every whispered report passed through Heaven’s golden halls when Raphael had still walked them, Crawly had been marked as a threat. A manipulator. A creature to watch, not because he was a brute force but because he was something worse: clever. Strategic. Unashamed.

The only one who had ever stood in his way? A minor principality named Aziraphale, who had been fighting with the demon since Eden was sealed.

And now here he was.

Lying in a hospital bed like any mortal. Gaunt. Pale. Energy hanging around him like frayed string. Not even enough left to pass for human properly. There was a dimness to him, like someone had dialled down his essence. Like something essential had been carved out and not quite healed.

House wasn’t sure what unsettled him more: that Crowley’s infamous reputation had crumbled into this slack-limbed mess, or that something about it made him want to help.

He wasn’t supposed to feel this. Sympathy. Worry. An old ache of recognition.

Demons were the enemy. Fallen, corrupted, unclean. Even now, with his wings buried beneath flesh and science and sarcasm, House could feel the part of him that remembered: demon = threat.

And yet… here he was. Considering a diagnosis, not a death sentence.

“Name?” House asked finally, voice even as he lingered in the doorway like a nosy ghost with a limp.

The man didn’t look up. “Already gave it to one of the other lab coats. Are you the entertainment?”

House gave the briefest smirk. “Only on Tuesdays. Today, I play God.” He moved closer, flipping through the chart as though he hadn’t already memorised the contents twice over. This, finally, earned a flicker of attention from the demon in the bed, a smirk playing across cracked lips.

There was no flicker of recognition in Crowley’s face. No spark of awareness. No sign that the man standing beside him was not just a doctor with a limp and a prescription pad, but an archangel who once mended broken wings under starlight.

Crowley didn’t know him.

And that... hurt more than House would ever admit.

“Crowley,” he said aloud, letting it hang like incense in the air. Watching for a twitch. A reaction. Anything. But the name brought nothing. “Unusual name.”

“Yeah, well. I liked it,” Crowley muttered, voice low and cracked like scorched earth. “Stands out.”

“You could’ve gone with something forgettable,” House offered, flipping a page lazily. “John Smith. Steve. Adam.”

Crowley huffed a laugh, bitter and hollow. “Don’t have the best track record with Adams.”

“Split pupils,” House continued, now mostly speaking to himself as he skimmed vitals. “Extreme alcohol tolerance. Should be in a coma, but somehow isn’t. No signs of trauma. No drugs. Labs mostly normal. Either you’re a medical marvel or I need to fire half the lab.”

“Lucky me,” Crowley said, the sarcasm brittle. “Maybe I’ll be dead soon. Save you the paperwork.”

House tilted his head. The bitterness, he’d expected. It was par for the course with demons, angels, and disgraced former deities alike. But this wasn’t the usual arrogance. This was deeper. Wearier. It pulled at something old inside him, something celestial and aching. He masked it with a sneer.

“Self-pity? Stylish.”

“You’d be self-pitying too,” Crowley said, voice quieter now. “If the one person who’s ever really seen you decided to go be Heaven’s lapdog instead.”

House stilled.

Aziraphale.

He’d known, distantly, that the Principality had been reassigned. That he'd left Earth. The whispers were vague—something about betrayal, something about desertion—but they hadn't interested House at the time. Had the demon and the angel become...close? Perhaps something akin to friendship. He wouldn't have thought that possible.

Now, he wasn’t so sure.

Crowley’s words carried the weight of abandonment, like someone who hadn’t just lost a friendly acquaintance but something else. A tether. A truth. A reason to keep going.

He looked worse than his vitals. And that was saying something.

House cleared his throat, his voice sharp again. “I’ll be overseeing your diagnostics, so if you could save the suicidal ideation until after I’ve saved your life, that would be swell.”

Crowley let his head fall back against the pillow, sunglasses slipping slightly down his nose. “Brilliant. Just what I needed. Another smug bastard with a God complex.”

House smirked. “Oh, you have no idea.”

Crowley didn’t bite. He just jabbed a finger vaguely at the open doorway. “What makes you think I’m going to stay here? What’s stopping me from walking out that door right now?”

“Why?” House raised an eyebrow. “Got somewhere better to be?”

Silence. Not the smug kind. Not defensive. Just... empty.

“No,” Crowley said eventually, voice like ash. “I suppose not.”

His skin had gone a little greyer. Less pallid, more... faded. Like something in him was being erased slowly. Worn down by something House couldn’t measure with a CT or an MRI.

“Then you might as well let me stick you full of needles until I find what makes you tick,” House said, trying for flippant and failing. It sounded too close to a plea.

Crowley barely reacted. He just nodded, slow and mechanical, as if the act of consenting was costing him energy he couldn’t afford to spend.

House turned on his heel, unsure whether that counted as a win or not.

He paused at the doorway, fingers tightening around his cane. His heart—no, not heart. Grace, long-muted but never truly gone, stirred uncomfortably.

Crowley was dying of something that didn’t show up in blood work. Something that didn’t add up on the charts. Something that leached away at his essence like an open wound in the soul.

If he had a soul.

He was a demon. House had every right—divine authority, in fact—to smite him. To let him wither away. Let Hell reclaim its failing creature. He didn’t even need to raise a hand. Just turn his back. Let the system fail him. Let entropy finish the job.

But Raphael had been a healer, once.

And even now, buried in sarcasm and bitterness and Vicodin, House still reached for answers. For cures. For reasons to keep people alive when everything else told him not to bother.

And Crowley wasn’t just anyone.

He was... important. Not in the political sense. Not in the metaphysical charts of power that Heaven loved to boast about. But important in a quiet, messy, undeniably human way.

Someone had cared about him.

Someone had left him.

And House—Raphael—couldn’t look at that without wanting to fix it.

Even if he didn’t know how.

God help him, he didn’t think he couldn’t help.

He leaned in the doorway a moment longer, watching the too-still figure in the bed. The sunglasses had slipped again, revealing the faint glow of something not-quite-human behind closed lids. His breathing was shallow. Barely clinging to the rhythm of life.

Something was unravelling.

And for the first time in a long, long while, House felt afraid.

Not for himself.

For someone else.

He turned back into the hall, cane striking tile with more force than necessary.

“Prep the full workup,” he barked to the passing nurse. “Endocrine panel. Neuro scan. Blood, urine, bile, sweat, hair. If it leaks, I want it tested.”

The nurse blinked. “What exactly are we looking for?”

House didn’t pause.

“A miracle.”

Chapter Text

Dr Lisa Cuddy was in a very bad mood.

She had already spent the better part of her morning grappling with three separate insurance companies, each seemingly locked in a competition to see who could be the most obstructive in denying necessary patient care. Then an irate accountant had stormed into her office, ranting about the hospital’s skyrocketing liability insurance premiums. And now, to top it off, House was missing. Again.

He was scheduled for mandatory clinic hours—a requirement that House treated more as a personal insult than a professional obligation. Normally, it would mean finding him holed up in Wilson's office, slouched in a chair and making sarcastic comments about humanity’s slow decline. Except, today, Wilson hadn’t seen him either.

Cuddy had thought reasonably that Wilson might be covering for his best friend, as he often did with that particular brand of enabling loyalty he passed off as exasperated tolerance. But when she'd seen the slight, unconscious droop of Wilson’s mouth when he realised House wasn’t hiding in his office, she'd been forced to reconsider. If anything, Wilson had looked… put out.

Suppressing a sigh, she'd conducted a rapid search of the usual places: pharmacy, roof, janitor's closets. Nothing.

Grimly determined to exhaust all options, she headed towards the Diagnostics Department, Wilson trailing after her like an unusually well-groomed, emotionally repressed spaniel. Realistically, the conference room attached to House’s office should have been the most obvious place to find the Head of Diagnostics. But reality was House’s sworn enemy, and predictably, he wasn’t there.

Instead, his team of minions were huddled around the whiteboard, engrossed in the feverish scribbling that usually accompanied trying to solve one of House’s more impossible cases. From the doorway, Cuddy could make out a chaotic mix of differentials scrawled in dense handwriting: hyperthyroidism, pheochromocytoma, neuroendocrine tumours, hypothalamic dysfunction. Scattered among them were a few unintelligible doodles—likely House’s contributions to the "discussion."

Cameron was perched behind a laptop, her brow furrowed in deep concentration. From what Cuddy could see, she appeared to be cross-referencing articles on extreme metabolic disorders and rare body modifications.

Catching Foreman’s eye, Cuddy called across the room, her voice sharp and cutting through the low murmur: "Where’s House?"

Cameron looked up, her expression the textbook definition of incredulous. "He’s seeing a patient."

Cuddy blinked. "House is dating a patient?!" Her stomach twisted. Goddamn it. Malpractice premiums were going to skyrocket again.

Chase grinned, always quick to find amusement in others' impending misfortunes. "Not dating. Examining one. In person."

There was a beat of stunned silence.

"House doesn’t do that," Wilson said from behind her, voice tight with disbelief. "He never sees patients unless someone physically drags him."

"Well, he’s seeing this one," Foreman confirmed, folding his arms. "Practically sprinted out of here when he heard his name."

"His name?" Cuddy repeated, frowning. "You think House knows the patient personally?

"Makes more sense than him suddenly caring about bedside manner," Foreman said dryly.

Wilson frowned at that. He knew better than most that House was not as heartless as he liked to pretend. Underneath the endless sarcasm, the chronic Vicodin haze, and the pathological refusal to admit he cared, there was a heart. A stubborn, battered one. Wilson had glimpsed it once or twice, usually when House thought no one was looking.

Still, this wasn’t normal.

Cameron flipped her laptop around to show them the case notes. "Male, mid-thirties, extreme hypermetabolism—weight loss of ten kilos over the past month, resting heart rate around 120 bpm, persistent low-grade fever. No thyroid storm, negative for adrenal tumours, clean tox screen, slightly elevated cytokines. The degree of metabolic acceleration is well outside standard pathologies."

"Could be a central issue," Chase offered, tapping the whiteboard. "Hypothalamic dysregulation. Maybe a rare mitochondrial cytopathy."

"Idiopathic hypothalamitis?" Wilson suggested, stepping closer despite himself.

"Possible," Foreman allowed, "but statistically unlikely."

As the medical discussion continued, Cuddy found herself watching Wilson closely. She noticed the way he stood just a little too tensely, how his hands disappeared deep into his pockets, and—most tellingly—the flash of something sharp across his features when Cameron mentioned the patient's age.

Jealousy.

Oh, she thought, amused despite herself. That’s interesting.

Cuddy had long suspected Wilson’s feelings for House went beyond friendship, though she’d never said as much aloud. Wilson, being Wilson, would probably spiral into denial so profound it could be classified as a psychiatric phenomenon. But the signs were there: the loyalty, the way he forgave things no one else would, the almost pathetic need to be House’s chosen confidant.

And now, Wilson was jealous. Jealous of a patient. A stranger, who had somehow—if only briefly—become the focus of House’s notoriously selective attention.

"You alright, Wilson?" she asked lightly, almost innocently.

He shot her a tight smile, the sort that looked more like a grimace. "Fine."

Cuddy raised an eyebrow but said nothing, content to let him stew.

"Anything unusual besides the metabolic symptoms?" Wilson asked, forcing himself back into professional mode.

"Photophobia," Cameron said. "Inconsistent though. Sometimes reports it; sometimes denies it."

"Could suggest raised intracranial pressure," Wilson said. "Or an early-stage neurodegenerative disorder."

"CSF pressure was normal," Cameron replied. "MRI shows nothing definitive. No mass effect, no demyelination."

"So House decided to go have a look himself," Cuddy mused aloud. "Personally."

The entire conference room seemed to pause for a moment, as if the absurdity of that reality had only just truly sunk in.

"Well," Chase said cheerfully, "if he comes back engaged, at least we’ll know why."

Wilson did not laugh.

Cuddy smirked to herself. She would have to keep an eye on this situation. Not for any ethical breach, although those were inevitable, but because it was rare to see Wilson so gloriously, miserably human.

"Keep working the differential," she instructed crisply. "If House decides to kidnap the patient or elope, I want to be forewarned."

She turned to go, her heels clicking smartly against the tile. Wilson lingered behind a moment longer, his eyes flickering to the empty office beyond the glass, a hint of longing he would never dare name.

Where the hell are you, House? he thought bitterly.

And why did it feel like every step House took towards someone else, even a patient, left him standing further behind?

Chapter Text

Raphael—no. House. He was House.

Even if there was a familiar, uncomfortable ache between his shoulder blades that he hadn’t thought about since the Spanish Flu broke out.

No. He was fine.

There was just a demon in his hospital, dying of some unknown affliction, and he had to decide whether to cure him or call down Heaven’s forces to drag him away. Worse, he wasn’t even certain the choice was his to make.

Rapha—damn it, House had been among humans for so long it should have stopped surprising him. And yet it didn’t. A nurse refusing to flee the frontline in France to leave her boys behind. A medic digging for hours through the rubble of a shattered city, just for the hope of finding life. An oncologist who believed in miracles. Humanity’s bloody-minded insistence on trying never failed to astonish him.

Perhaps it was time for Raphael to astonish himself.

He stopped at the end of the corridor, just shy of his office. Shaking off the lingering fragments of Who-He-Once-Was, he pulled on House’s battered skin again.

He’d chosen the name House for two reasons. The first was an inside joke, a nod to a fictional character that an old friend had once written, who was supposedly modelled on Raphael's love of solving impossible puzzles. The second was to remind himself of the point of it all. House. Home. The feeling he had always wanted his patients to feel: safety, warmth, belonging.

At least, he used to want that. Now the desire was no more than a glowing ember, buried under years of disappointment. Raphael hoped...prayed even that ember might catch again. If it didn’t, well, he might as well claim the bed next to the demon.

Wait.

Was it really that simple?

Angels were creatures of light, born before stars even burned in the void. Each had a Divine Purpose. A reason to exist. Raphael was a Healer. Michael, a warrior. Gabriel, a messenger. None of them had ever been allowed to forget it. Even those who had fallen had been made with a purpose, though their paths had twisted.

Could it be... could the demon be dying because he had no purpose?

It was a dangerous idea. Heretical. Hopeful. It was the kind of thought Raphael hadn’t allowed himself since... well. Since Jerusalem had been drowning in blood and he’d first turned away from the shrieking of Heaven to the small, broken prayers of the men and women on the ground.

He had been on Earth since the Crusades, wearing a thousand different faces, walking alongside humanity through plague and empire, famine and revolution. Some days he was a field medic, covered in blood and prayers; others, a doctor hidden in the smoky streets of Victorian London. Always changing, always patching up the broken, even as he slowly unravelled inside. Modernity layered itself over antiquity. He could quote Blackadder as easily as he could recite the Latin of the Vulgate Bible. His soul was a palimpsest of centuries.

And now, now, when he'd finally buried Raphael deep enough that even he rarely heard the echoes. Heaven was calling again. Dragging him back towards the war he had abandoned. Reminding him of what he was.

If a demon could die from lack of purpose, it meant the Great Divide wasn’t so great after all. It meant the war was pointless. It meant it could end.

If he could prove it.

But to do so, he needed to find the demon’s Purpose. And that would be near impossible. The Fallen had been stricken from all records; their names erased from every book and every mind, including their own. Names were everything to an angel. Without a name, you were a ghost. A shadow. Finding a Purpose without a name was a fool’s errand.

Maybe the Demon's Adversary, Aziraphale, knew something? Perhaps the angel had some inkling of his adversary’s true nature?

No. That was suicide. Aziraphale, for all his blustering softness, would undoubtedly choose duty over mercy. If House tipped his hand, the demon would be dust before he could gather proof. No, for this to work, he needed to stay hidden. Earthly.

House sighed and rolled his shoulders, forcing himself to walk, to breathe, to stay rooted in his human skin.

First things first: search the demon’s flat. Look for any evidence of what he was before he forgot. Hope to find a spark in the ash.

--

House strode towards the conference room, just as the argument inside was heating up. Cuddy, Wilson, and the ducklings were mid-argument.

"...doesn't fit," Cameron was saying. "MELAS usually presents earlier in life. Plus, he’s not showing stroke-like episodes or sensorineural deafness."

"His hearing’s fine, we just had a lovely conversation," House drawled as he shoved open the door.

Wilson turned with an incredulous look. "It’s true? You actually went to see a patient?"

"Aww, don’t worry, darling, I won't replace you. Even for a spicy redhead," House teased. Wilson flushed slightly, turning away from his friend's gaze.

House tossed Crowley’s keys into the air and caught them lazily. "Well, since I’m sure you've all got the diagnosis sorted, I’ll take myself off to investigate our new lab rat’s home."

"You want us to do the medical work while you go breaking and entering?" Chase said, surprised.

"Breaking and entering is illegal, my convict island friend. I have keys," House said smugly, jingling them.

He turned to Wilson, grinning. "Fancy a House call?"

"You want me to come with you?" Wilson echoed.

"Well, it’s not like you’re doing anything useful today," House shrugged.

"I’m very busy, you know!" Wilson protested, voice pitching higher.

"Sure. That’s why you clearly just spent twenty minutes helping Cuddy track down a grown man rather than doing the paperwork you've been claiming needs urgent attention for the past two weeks. Careful, dear. You're starting to look needy."

Cuddy folded her arms trying and failing not to look amused. "House, stop harassing your only friend before he sues us for emotional damage."

"Correction," House said, smirking, "my only needy, desperate friend."

Wilson flushed deeper, the tips of his ears pink now, but said nothing. Instead, he turned and stalked out of the room, letting the door slam behind him.

House watched him go, feeling a flicker of satisfaction. Stirring Wilson up was a hobby almost as essential as breathing. Without someone needling him into anger occasionally, Wilson might drown in his own repressed feelings and terminal niceness.

"That was cruel," Cameron said softly, though a smile tugged at the corner of her mouth.

"That was foreplay," House muttered under his breath, too low for anyone else to hear.

Grinning, he called after Wilson. "Come on, Wilson! The quicker you come with me, the quicker we can get back to hiding from Cuddy in your office watching reruns of Doctor’s! You'll even get to pretend you're still a respectable adult."

House knew Wilson hated disruption. Hated not being the centre of House’s orbit, even if he’d never admit it.

House grinned to himself. Maybe it was time they stopped pretending.

But first he had a patient to solve.

And maybe, just maybe, he had a war to end.

Chapter Text

Anthony hadn’t spoken since they brought him down to Imaging. Not properly. He’d made a few snide comments about the décor and complained loudly when Foreman secured the frame around his head. But otherwise, he lounged on the gurney like an ancient roman at a feast, not being prepped for an MRI.

Chase was watching the screen, arms folded. “A hundred dollars says this guy and House know each other.”

“Obviously,” retorted Foreman. “That’s a sucker’s bet. One-fifty says he and House committed a crime together and now have some sort of weird pact to have each other’s backs.”

“Maybe they’re friends?” said Cameron, which earned her an eyeroll from both men.

“House doesn’t have any friends.”

“What about Wilson?”

“That doesn’t count. Whatever weird codependency thing they have going on is above human understanding.”

“Don’t be mean,” Cameron insisted. “They could be friends.”

“Or exes,” chimed in Chase. At the looks he received from the others, he continued, “Oh, don’t look at me like that. It’s a reasonable guess!”

“House is straight.”

“Straight men don’t comment on my arse as much as he does,” retorted Chase.

“Besides, Anthony is definitely a bit… you know. He winked at me while I was putting in the IV.”

“He winked at me, too,” Cameron retorted.

“I think he just likes the attention,” Foreman said. “Or he’s trying to distract us.”

Chase smirked. “From what?”

“Maybe the fact he doesn’t seem to care if he dies,” Foreman said quietly.

They all went silent for a moment, watching the black and white pulses on the screen.

Crowley’s heart rate had been steady—too steady. Unnaturally calm for someone in a hospital, let alone someone facing a potentially fatal illness. He hadn’t asked what the tests were for. Hadn’t demanded a prognosis. In fact, he hadn’t asked anything except whether the vending machines sold real crisps or the “low-fat saltless lies” humans were into these days.

“He acts like none of it matters,” Cameron said eventually.

“Maybe it doesn’t,” Foreman said. “Maybe he’s terminal and just doesn’t care anymore. We see that sometimes.”

“Or maybe he’s just a narcissist who thinks nothing can kill him,” Chase offered.

On the screen, Crowley lay perfectly still, eyes closed. He looked younger like this. Softer.

Foreman flicked through the initial scans. “No sign of stroke, lesion, or tumours. If it’s neurological, it’s subtle.”

“Could be mitochondrial,” Cameron said. “We’ll know once we get the muscle biopsy results. Assuming House doesn’t set fire to the lab before then.”

“What about toxins?” Chase asked.

Cameron nodded. “No cocaine, amphetamines, or anything else we screened for. House said no alcohol on the breath, and no withdrawal symptoms. Could be something synthetic.”

The intercom crackled, startling them. Crowley’s voice came through, casual and bored.

“Are we nearly done, or is this some sort of elaborate human oven?”

Cameron pressed the mic. “Almost done. Please remain still.”

“Well, I’d love to, darling, but the whirring’s giving me a migraine. I feel like I’m trapped inside a particularly dull techno song.”

Chase chuckled despite himself.

The scan finished. The bed began sliding out with a mechanical hum. Cameron headed off to check the computer, muttering about pixel analysis.

Foreman glanced at Chase. “You want to get him out of there?”

“Sure.”

Crowley was already sitting up by the time Chase reached him. “Tell me we’re finished. I’m dying, not dead. There’s only so much stillness I can take.”

“You’re very talkative for someone dying,” Chase said, offering a hand.

Crowley took it lazily, sliding off the MRI table. “Oh, love, talking is easy. Dying takes effort. And commitment. Two things I usually avoid.”

Chase smiled, guiding him back to the wheelchair. But then—

He stopped.

Crowley swayed slightly, head tilting back for a moment like he was about to sneeze. Then, without warning, a thick black streak dribbled from his left nostril. It wasn’t blood. It was darker than that—like ink, but wrong.

Chase instinctively reached for gauze. “You’re bleeding—”

Crowley wiped his nose with the back of one hand and looked down at the stain on his skin.

“Damn it,” he muttered, more annoyed than alarmed.

Chase stepped closer. “That’s not blood.”

Chapter Text

House jostled the keyring at the door for a moment before finally unlocking it with a faint click. The keys themselves were a mess. A tangle of silver, brass, and gold, some rusted with age, others pristine like they’d been cut just last week. For a man who, according to the landlord, had only been renting the apartment for two months, Crowley owned an unnaturally large collection of keys. Some were tiny, others so large they barely fit the keyhole. A few had tags attached: Flat, Garage, Shop, Spare for Coffee Place. Funnily enough, the key labelled Flat didn’t even work in the door.

Wilson had commented on that, suggesting it belonged to a previous address Crowley had simply forgotten to remove. House, meanwhile, had been staring far too intently at a miniature devil keyring with tiny horns. Wilson had waited for a joke — something predictably crass, probably involving “horny” somewhere, but it never came.

That, in itself, was unnerving.

They stepped inside.

The flat was… sparse. The kind of sparseness that came with temporary living. The accommodation of someone who was just passing through, or someone who didn’t need much. Generic wall art hung unevenly, the sort one might find at IKEA or gifted by a well-meaning acquaintance. The sofa looked comfortable but untouched. Clothes were strewn across the floor and slung over furniture — a haphazard mess of black leather jackets and too-tight jeans.

He made his way to the kitchen, flipping light switches as he went. The cupboards were bare. The fridge, too. Not just empty. Unused. Pristine inside, with nothing more than the faint chemical scent of cleaning fluid.

"Are we sure this is actually his place?" Wilson called over his shoulder.

"Well, I certainly hope so,” came House’s voice from the living room. “Otherwise, we've just committed a perfectly good B&E for no reason."

"I thought you said we weren’t breaking in?"

"I said I had keys." He sauntered into view, dangling the bunch dramatically in Wilson’s face so they clattered noisily. “I never said where I got them.”

"You're impossible."

"Merely improbable,” House said with a grin. “I'm what's left when you rule out the impossible."

Wilson rolled his eyes but pressed on. “Speaking of improbable, are you going to explain to me why you randomly took on a patient today?”

"I'm a doctor, Wilson. Seeing patients is kind of my whole thing," House replied, far too breezily.

“You know what I mean.” Wilson crossed his arms. “You haven’t willingly spoken to a patient in years. What possessed you to suddenly make bedside visits again?”

There was a pause. House had picked up a book from beneath a discarded skirt, and was thumbing through it absently. It looked old. Pages slightly yellowed, spine cracked from long use.

“Never met him before today,” House said, eyes still on the book.

“Then why are you acting so strange?”

“I am strange, Wilson. Surely that’s not new information.”

Without waiting for a reply, House turned and pushed open the door opposite them. Wilson followed him into what was clearly the bedroom and blinked in surprise.

Unlike the rest of the apartment, the bedroom felt… lived in. Intimately so. Three duvets, a chaotic tangle of pillows, and a nest-like pile of blankets gathered in the centre of the bed. One throw was navy blue, embroidered with stars and tiny constellations, soft and worn from use.

"Huh," Wilson said, gesturing at the bed. "It looks like your place."

House stopped mid-step. "What do you mean?"

Wilson gave a crooked smile. “Oh, come off it. You’ve got more blankets than anyone else I know. I don’t think you can sleep unless you’re curled into a pillow fort like a Victorian poet with a consumption flair. Or a nesting bird.”

“Maybe I just like soft things,” House replied.

He held Wilson’s gaze a moment too long. The air between them shifted. Not hostile, not quite teasing either. Something quieter. Something uncomfortable. Or maybe… revealing.

Wilson looked away first, pretending to check the bookshelf instead. It held a peculiar assortment: a guide to astrophysics, a worn copy of Paradise Lost, several thin notebooks with no visible titles, and a battered mug holding pens shaped like rockets. The space theme was everywhere once you started noticing. A NASA keyring. A framed photograph of the moon. A candle shaped like a planet sitting in a half-unpacked moving box, lying on top of a colourful pride flag.

Huh.

Despite what most people thought, Wilson did know he was bisexual. He had known since high school, when a heady summer with the school theatre department had led to an awkward first kiss with someone not-a-girl. It had been thrilling. And terrifying. And mostly… complicated.

He hadn’t exactly hidden it, but he hadn’t made a point of announcing it either. Life had enough mess already. He was juggling three ex-wives, a career built on compassion fatigue, and a best friend who had the emotional availability of a cactus. The idea of throwing “gay couple” into the mix felt like one layer too many, especially when the person he caught himself thinking about far too often was House.

And House, well. He flirted with everyone — men, women, aliens in questionable sci-fi reruns. Wilson had never been able to tell if it was real or just another way to get under people's skin.

And now… this. House acting cagey, distracted, quiet. Picking at clues with the clinical precision of a man who had seen the shape of the answer and didn’t like it.

Wilson found himself staring again at the blanket on the bed, the constellation pattern stitched by hand. It wasn’t something you bought at a chain store. It was personal. Sentimental, even.

“Do you really not know him?” Wilson asked softly.

House didn’t answer right away. He turned the old book over in his hands, thumbing the pages like they might reveal something he hadn’t noticed before. Then his phone rang, shrill in the still air.

He didn’t check the screen before answering. “House.”

He paused.

“...He’s leaking what?”

House’s brow furrowed. Wilson saw his spine straighten, saw the tension snap through him like a live wire. Whatever had been said, it wasn’t good.

He ended the call and looked up. “I need to get back to the hospital.”

“What’s happened?” Wilson asked.

House hesitated, then shoved the book into his coat pocket. “You wanted a reason to be worried about this guy? Well, congratulations. He just started leaking tar from his nose.”

Chapter Text

Anthony was remarkably calm for a man with black… something pouring from his nose.

Once the shock had worn off, Chase had taken a swab and rushed to the lab for analysis, urgency clear in every hurried step. They needed answers.

The issue arose when a harried-sounding laboratory technician called him back and said, in no uncertain terms, that the substance was… nothing.

The lab returned a detailed report outlining precisely what the mysterious discharge wasn’t. Not blood. Not cerebrospinal fluid. Not brain matter. Not mucous, pus, lymph, or any other biologically plausible substance. They even tested to see if it was some kind of dye or ink. The results were, again, negative.

What unsettled Chase the most was the complete inability to break down the compound’s chemical composition. It reacted inconsistently to standard reagents. Under centrifugation, it separated and then recombined, as if mocking their attempts. When subjected to spectroscopy, it yielded unreadable spectra that didn’t align with any known organic or inorganic compound. Even the mass spectrometer gave readings that defied logic—molecular masses that couldn’t exist in known biochemistry.

The technician's voice trembled slightly as she concluded: “It doesn’t behave like matter should, Dr Chase. I don’t know what you’ve given us. We can’t classify it.”

Chase ended the call, staring at the phone in his hand with the heavy weight of failure pressing on his shoulders. There was something catastrophically wrong with his patient, and he didn’t even know what was causing a simple nosebleed.

Foreman had gone to the research library to scour obscure medical journals and pathology reports for any parallel symptoms—anything even remotely similar. Cameron was still caught on the possibility of body modifications, drugs, or even psychosomatic causes.

That left Chase with a man who, by all clinical assessments, should not have been well enough to swing his legs lazily over the arms of the visitor’s chair in his room, reading a dog-eared romance novel that a nurse had accidentally left at the station.

"Could you please get back in the bed?" the Australian implored, almost ready to beg

"Course I could"
Chase waited for a moment.

"Well?"

"Well, what? I said I could. Never said I would"

Chase stared at him. He might actually kill this man before the mysterious illness does.

“Get. In. The. Bed.”

Anthony peered over the top of his newly acquired book. Behind his glasses, something flickered in those eyes—inhuman slits, serpentine and deep as ink. Chase felt a jolt, like an ice shard down his spine. Every primal instinct he had screamed danger.

Without a conscious decision, he stepped back—then turned, almost running from the room.

--

Wilson and House returned to the hospital about an hour after they had left. House went to find his minions, likely to grill them about the latest progress.

Wilson said he was going to check on the oncology ward, but he found himself heading in the opposite direction instead. It took a moment to find the room of House's newest fascination. He was handsome, James supposed. His hair was a vibrant red, and his black shades gave the impression of an aged rocker. Somehow, the hospital gown didn't detract from the look.

The man in question was sprawled in the only seat in the room, talking to a young orderly Wilson vaguely recognised from around the hospital. The green hair was memorable.

"-n't really have a preference. Most people use 'he' and it doesn't bother me enough to correct them. I'm not a man and I know that," the man, Anthony, waved his hands as he spoke. "I am what I am, no matter what I look like on the outside"

"It's just so cool to meet you," said the orderly...Eli...Eliot...Elvis? "I don't know any older queer people. I was the only one in my town growing up"

"You'd be surprised, there's always more of us than you think" seemingly in time with his statement Anthony looked over at the door to see James hovering there. Following his gaze the orderly - Ezra! - made a beeline for the door without making eye contact.

"Sorry, I-I didn't mean to interrupt", said Wilson awkwardly.

"We were just chatting" said Anthony as he stretched into an almost impossible position in his chair. "You here to poke and prod me some more?"

"No," said Wilson, awkwardly stepping into the room, "I brought you this".

From his bag he removed a dark blue blanket with embroidered stars. Anthony's eyes set on it immediately.

"We went to your- I mean to say - the hospital blankets are terrible. I wanted to make sure you would be warm."

Anthony took the folded-up blanket reverently and held it to his face.

"Thank you" he said after a moment, "that was kind"

"Just doing my job", replied Wilson with false levity.

"No, you were being human. Thank you," Crowley seemed to have forgotten he was even standing there. Instead, he buried his nose into the fabric of the blanket and breathed deeply.

Wilson turned to leave, feeling abruptly awkward. He didn't know why he took the blanket before leaving that cold apartment. Seeing that pile of blankets so reminiscent of House's own had made his heart twinge.

The first time he had slept over at House's was after they had both gotten roaringly drunk at a retirement party for one of the senior doctors. Wilson had dragged his friend along and plied him with shots until neither of them could walk straight. Wilson hadn't wanted to go home to his wife drunk, so House offered to put him up. The apartment was utilitarian and bland, as it had been the first few times Wilson had visited. This time, though, he was led to the only room in the house he hadn't been in.

The bedroom.

Instead of cold white walls, they were painted in a warm blue. Soft blankets were piled on a super king sized bed. The mattress was equally soft. There were knicknacks on shelves and by the bedside tables. Old medical journals, thank you cards from patients, coins, even something that Wilson would later learn was trench art made by House's grandfather when he was sent to the Somme.

Little bits of House's heart were scattered around the room.

At the time, Wilson had barely taken any of this in, too focused on remaining upright. House had tucked him into the soft bed, bringing the blanket around his shoulders. He had turned to leave, only to be stopped by Wilson grabbing clumsily onto his wrist and pulling him into the pile of blankets. The two ended up sprawled out together and sleeping until midday. They had never spoken about it, but it wasn't the last time Wilson and House....James and Greg...had curled up around each other.

Seeing Anthony's room, Wilson couldn't help but imagine a different body in that hospital room, shivering under a thin hospital blanket.

Chapter Text

The small chapel at Princeton-Plainsboro was well maintained but unmistakably utilitarian. Clean white walls, a modest wooden cross above the altar, and rows of unembellished pews. There was a starkness to it. Practical and unadorned, the room was designed more for function than beauty. Stepping inside always left Chase with an odd feeling, a quiet ache he rarely allowed himself to dwell on. It wasn't quite homesickness, but rather a kind of spiritual nostalgia. He missed the high ceilings and arched beams of the church he had grown up in, the kaleidoscope of stained glass windows casting coloured shadows across flagstone floors. The faint scent of incense and candlewax lingered in his memory far longer than it did in his actual lungs. It reminded him of childhood, of Sundays in stiff collars, of faith that felt certain.

Years of serving as an altar boy had ingrained habits in him that never truly faded, no matter how long it had been since he’d stood at a lectern or knelt at a pew. Without thinking, he made the sign of the cross as he entered and let his knee touch the floor before sitting. The movement was automatic, a ghost of a younger version of himself who had once knelt with purpose.

The chapel was empty. A few candles flickered near the altar—recently lit, judging by the length of their stems and the gentle halo of heat still rising above the flames. Someone else had come seeking solace, not long ago. A fellow lost soul, perhaps. Chase sighed and leaned forward, folding his hands loosely. He wasn’t sure what had brought him here. Or rather, he was—and he didn’t want to admit it.

This case was bothering him. Really bothering him.

He didn’t normally come to places like this when a patient unsettled him. House would have had a field day if he found out, and in fairness, Chase didn’t believe prayer had much place in a hospital. His father, ever the pragmatic Christian, had drilled a particular parable into him when he first entered medicine: the story of the man trapped in a flood, turning down help in favour of waiting for God to save him. "The doctor is the boat," his father had told him sternly, over more than one dinner. "You are the help being sent. Don’t insult the divine by waiting for a miracle when you are the miracle."

Chase had carried that logic with him through most of his adult life. He rarely reached for spiritual answers when medical ones were available. But this... this wasn’t like other cases.

The patient, Anthony, was different.

There was something deeply wrong. It wasn't just the strange physiological symptoms or the inexplicable black liquid they’d found. It was the way Anthony looked at him. There had been something ancient in his gaze, as if something far older than the man himself had stared back through his eyes. It had chilled Chase to the bone and stirred something in him he hadn’t felt in years.

For the first time in a long while, he had found himself thinking about the rosary he used to carry in his coat pocket. It had once sat there like a comfort—an anchor. Eventually, he’d stopped carrying it. He’d told himself it was superstition, that the beads were just beads, the prayers just words. But earlier today, when Anthony's expression had shifted, when his voice had taken on that strange cadence, Chase’s hand had instinctively reached into his pocket. Empty.

He closed his eyes. “This is ridiculous,” he muttered under his breath, unsure whether he was talking to himself or to the God he wasn’t even sure he still believed in.

“Are you all right, my child?”

The voice came from behind him—gentle, lilting, distinctly British. Chase startled, jerking upright and twisting in his seat. An older man stood a few feet away, dressed in black clerical clothing, a white dog collar snug at his throat. He was smiling warmly, though there was something oddly distant in his expression, like someone watching the world from a great height.

“Sorry, Father,” Chase said quickly, embarrassed at being caught off guard. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

The priest waved a hand as if brushing away the apology. “No need to be sorry. It is only natural to lose yourself in contemplation before God. I ought to have been more careful not to disturb you.” He stepped closer and offered a hand. “Father Todd. I’m the chaplain here.”

Chase accepted the handshake, noting the man’s unusually firm grip and the way his eyes, pale and almost silvery, seemed to look straight through him. There was something mesmerising about them, a strange quality that made Chase forget what he’d been thinking a moment ago.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Chase managed, then added, “I was just... thinking some things through.”

“Ah,” said Father Todd, with a knowing nod. “A troubled mind. The most common visitor to any sanctuary, in my experience. Would you like to talk about it? Sometimes an outside perspective can be clarifying.”

“I’m not sure where I’d even start,” Chase admitted.

“Well then,” said the priest, his smile never faltering, “why don’t we get a cup of coffee? There’s a decent machine near the admin offices, and I find conversation is easier over something warm.”

Chase hesitated. He wasn't in the mood for small talk, and yet... there was something compelling about the offer, the kind of gentle suggestion that felt less like a choice and more like a command from someone who knew what was best for you.

“All right,” he said finally. “Coffee sounds good.”

Father Todd placed a steadying hand on Chase’s arm as they began to walk. The weight of his touch was oddly comforting, like the grip of someone who had lived through centuries of sorrow and had found peace on the other side.

As they exited the chapel, Chase failed to notice the bright noticeboard by the entrance. It was covered with colourful paper cut-outs and laminated photos of the current chapel staff. One of the larger photographs displayed a cheerful, youthful face beneath the words Father Todd - Chaplain. The man in the picture was dark-haired, mid-thirties at most, with a wide smile and kind eyes.

Nothing like the silver-haired priest now walking beside Chase.

They made their way slowly through the hospital corridors. The bustle of the wards seemed distant, muted somehow, as if they were walking through a quieter world. Chase noticed that staff passed them without so much as a glance, even the ones who usually greeted him by name. The fluorescent lights above flickered intermittently.

“Do you often find yourself drawn back to places of worship?” Father Todd asked, seemingly at random.

“Not really,” Chase replied. “I used to, when I was younger. But... things changed.”

“They always do,” the priest said softly. “But the need for answers rarely does. Even when we pretend we’ve outgrown the questions.”

Chase gave a non-committal shrug. He wasn’t sure he was looking for answers. Maybe just... something to hold on to. A framework. A pattern.

“Do you believe in evil, Doctor Chase?”

The question was so sudden it stopped him in his tracks.

“I—” Chase frowned. “I’m not sure. I believe people can do terrible things. I’ve seen enough of that. But evil as a force? As a presence? That’s harder.”

“Yet you’re here. Speaking to a priest. Feeling uneasy about a case that defies explanation.” Father Todd smiled again, but this time there was something sharper at the edge of it, something not quite right.

Chase shivered. He tried to push the feeling away.

“I suppose I just wanted to understand,” he said. “The patient, Anthony... there’s something about him. It’s not just medical. It’s like there’s... more. I know how that sounds.”

“You’d be surprised how often I hear that exact sentence,” said the priest, his tone almost wistful. “Some souls carry echoes that resonate with the unseen. It’s not madness to notice. It’s awareness.”

They had arrived at a small break room with a vending machine humming softly in the corner. Father Todd made them each a coffee with swift, efficient movements. Chase took his cup, the warmth grounding him slightly.

“There’s something else,” Chase said quietly. “There’s a black substance we found. Like oil, but wrong. It... it doesn’t belong.”

The priest was silent for a long moment. When he finally spoke, his voice was softer than ever.

“Some things hide in plain sight, Doctor. Darkness can take many forms. But so can light. Remember that.”

Chase looked up at him. For a fleeting second, he could have sworn the man’s eyes flickered. Not shifting in colour but something else. Like a ripple through a veil. It vanished almost as soon as it appeared.

“I think you’re more than just a chaplain,” Chase said slowly, not quite sure where the words came from.

Father Todd smiled, serene and amused. “I’ve been called many things. But for now, ‘Father Todd’ will do.”

They stood in silence for a while, sipping coffee that tasted faintly of ash and something sweet, like honey.

And back in the chapel, unnoticed and undisturbed, the candles had all gone out.

Chapter Text

Today was shaping up to be a very long day.

House had spent the entire ride back to Princeton–Plainsboro in uncharacteristic silence, his leg aching and his mind louder than usual. He wasn’t fiddling with his cane or flipping his GameBoy as he usually would when feeling the buzz of energy rippling down his skin. Instead, he was thumbing through the slim, worn book he’d taken from Crawly’s apartment. An antique astronomer’s guide from a century before Copernicus. It had that old-paper smell of dust and candle smoke, and the diagrams were delightfully, endearingly wrong. Mars was somehow larger than Jupiter. Saturn had five rings in the shape of a pretzel.

What truly caught his attention, though, wasn’t the charts. It was the handwriting in the margins.

Tiny, looping corrections and cross-references were scrawled in dark ink, as though someone had been quietly updating the outdated book over centuries. One note questioned the angle of a lunar eclipse in 1867. Another warned: Cherubs not to be trusted near comets—still owe me a wingtip.

House didn’t need to run a handwriting comparison to know it was Crawly’s. The same hand had signed the consent form that morning with an elegant flourish that didn’t quite match the rest of his shaky demeanour.

Of course, Crawly liked the stars. The apartment had been half NASA gift shop, half haunted library. But this book… this wasn’t a collector’s item. This was a notebook. Personal. Loved.

Crawly likely had been one of the angels who had painted the Heavens at the beginning of creation. Lighting the stars, sprinkling the asteroids, and painting the cosmos. To him falling must have been excruciating, being separated from his creations.

What House couldn't understand is why the creature was dying now? The serpent of Eden had been separated from his Soul for aeons now. Why was it causing problems now? And how the hell was he meant to fix it?

Showing him the night sky wouldn’t be enough. If it had been, Crawly would have stabilised the moment he was taken outside the bar, looking up into the darkness. No, there had to be something else going on. Something other. Something was happening to the very core of who the demon was.

And that was Raphael's domain. Not House's.

Back at the hospital, House limped past Wilson, raising the book as a goodbye and continuing down the hallway. Before seeing the team, he veered off toward the lab.

The door opened with a pneumatic hiss, revealing three techs squinting at a monitor with wide eyes.

A wave of his hand, and error messages started popping up on the screens everywhere. Red lights flashed and one computer started lightly smoking.

House waited until the lab coats were distracted, then palmed the remaining vial of black liquid that was sitting on the side and slipped it into his pocket. From his coat, he pulled a disassembled fountain pen, carefully replacing the sample with a cartridge of dark ink. Close enough in colour to pass unnoticed, at least until someone ran a real test.

He then slipped out, with no one looking up at his presence as if he'd never been there at all.

Miracles were meant to be rare. That was the rule. That was how Raphael kept from slipping. No wings, no glowing swords, no acts of divine intervention. No laying on of hands. Just diagnostics, diagnostics, diagnostics.

If he healed every patient, they'd send theologians and paparazzi to his door in equal measure. Best-case scenario, it got annoying. Worst-case? It made him a target. Again.

Still, this black liquid was something other. It didn’t match any human fluid, nor any celestial ones Raphael recognised. He didn’t know what. He wasn't exactly an expert on demon anatomy. Surprisingly, they didn't often come to him for treatment.

And yet here Crawly was.

Back in his office, House placed the stolen vial in his bottom drawer and slammed it shut just as Cameron knocked lightly on the doorframe and entered.

“The lab just called,” she said, frowning. “They said the equipment malfunctioned. Most of the samples from whatever came out of Anthony were corrupted. They're sending the spare to another facility.”

“What is it with scientists and their inability to turn things off and on again?” House sighed. “Tell them to check the calibration settings and sacrifice a goat, just in case.”

Cameron ignored the joke. “We’re still monitoring the patient. No new symptoms—except his temperature dropped slightly, again. Still nothing normal about that man.”

“Maybe he’s auditioning for Twilight,” House muttered. “Have you seen Chase or Foreman?”

“Foreman’s in the research library, digging through archives. Chase got a phone call earlier and left. He looked... shaken.”

“Shaken?” House raised a brow.

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything. Just grabbed his coat and left.”

House paused, then smirked. “Maybe he got word his subscription to Kangaroo Fancy was cancelled.”

Cameron didn’t laugh.

Instead, she stepped forward. “Are you okay?”

House stiffened. “What?”

“You’ve been off all day. Ever since Anthony was admitted. You’re... different. Your jokes are worse. You're not limping the same way. It's like you're trying too hard to be... you.”

House stared at her.

She pressed on, voice gentle. “Is there something we need to know? About the patient. Or about you.”

He looked away. “There isn’t. Go join Foreman in the library. Maybe he’s found a scroll that tells us what kind of demon bleeds tar.”

Cameron hesitated a moment longer, then left, the door clicking shut behind her.

House leaned back in his chair and exhaled slowly. The tension in his chest released with a faint crackle, like thunder behind his ribs. His hands flexed at his sides, fingers curling unconsciously in a half-blessing. He forced them still.

It was getting harder to supress. He felt like his skin was too tight, holding in too much. If he continued the way he was going there was no guarantee House would still live at the end of it.

All this for a Fallen.

Was it even worth it? Did he deserve to judge Crawly for what he'd done?

Raphael had fallen, too, in a way. It wasnt like he was still among the angelic choir. He had chosen this life. Chosen pain. Chosen medicine. Chosen humans.

Sometimes, he regretted that choice.

House couldn’t save Crawly, not as a human doctor. But if Raphael took over, he’d be too tempted to smite, to rebuke, to seek answers from powers that hadn’t spoken to him in a thousand years. He would ruin everything.

Crawly was dying.

He needed a doctor.

House pulled open his drawer and stared down at the vial. The liquid inside moved of its own accord, slow and swirling, like ink suspended in oil. It seemed to hum. Not audibly, but in the way a migraine hums behind the eyes, inside the soul.

“Time to decide what you are,” he muttered to himself, tapping the vial gently.

House needed to figure out if he was doctor enough, or angel enough, to deal with what came next.

Chapter Text

Despite what many would have you believe, the world doesn't stop turning just because there's a big metaphysical crisis underway. That’s why, despite there being a literal demon reclining in one of Princeton-Plainsboro’s hospital beds, Dr. Gregory House was still required, by law, God, and Cuddy, to fulfil his clinic hours.

And Cuddy had been very clear: skipping was not an option. Not again. Not after last week’s “accidental” fire alarm mid-shift. Not after the goat.

So there he was, sitting behind the tiny desk in Exam Room Two, trying not to bounce his leg too hard as patient number four of the afternoon stormed in with the kind of righteous fury only hormonal confusion and medical denial could brew.

"I'm telling you I can't be pregnant!" the woman snapped. She was mid-thirties, professionally dressed, and looked like she’d been restraining the urge to hit something since stepping through the door.

House didn’t look up from her chart. “And I’m telling you the test says otherwise. But what would that know? Cheap plastic. Manufactured in China, no doubt. You probably looked at it wrong. Or peed wrong.”

Her face reddened. “I’m on the pill. Religiously.”

“Are you also having sex... religiously?”

She faltered. “Well—yes, but—”

“And pills aren’t 100% effective. Especially when you’re taking antibiotics. Which you were, according to your file. Last month. For a UTI.”

“I didn’t know that could affect it!”

“Neither did your uterus,” House replied dryly, tapping the chart. “Congratulations. You’re either going to be a mother or have a very awkward decision to make in a Planned Parenthood parking lot.”

She opened her mouth to argue, then snapped it shut and stormed out instead.

House popped a Vicodin and didn’t bother watching her go.

Patient five was worse.

“I slipped and fell.” The man looked like he’d rehearsed the line.

He was tall, mid-forties, and hunched slightly forward in a sitting position with the kind of awkward rigidity that screamed embarrassment. His tone was overly casual. Too casual. Like someone trying to pretend there wasn’t something lodged somewhere it shouldn't be.

House didn’t blink as he pulled on a pair of latex gloves.

“Slipped and fell,” House repeated, deadpan. “Of course. Onto what, exactly? A conveniently placed, perfectly shaped shampoo bottle? Maybe an award-winning action figure? Or are we going full cliché with a lightbulb?”

The man glared at the floor.

“Fine. It was a shampoo bottle. I was cleaning.”

“Of course you were. Your colon’s never felt so fresh.”

By patient seven, House was actively considering faking a seizure.

“He’s not been himself lately,” said the worried father. He held his young son tightly, one arm wrapped protectively around the boy’s small frame. “He’s tired all the time. Barely staying awake for more than a few hours at a stretch.”

House took a sip of coffee. “Is he sleeping enough at night?”

“Well, I think so. I work the night shift, so I’m not there. The neighbour’s kid watches him.”

House arched a brow. “Neighbour’s kid?”

“He’s 15.”

“Right. The pinnacle of responsible childcare.”

The kid stirred as House gently poked his arm.

“So, kid,” House said. “You like your babysitter? They let you do cool things?”

The boy brightened immediately. “Yeah! He lets me play with his Oculus! I got to fight zombies! It was like I was really there!”

“Next time,” House muttered, turning to the dad, “maybe interrogate the babysitter before bringing your kid to the doctor. Or better yet, before leaving your kid with a budding Twitch streamer.”

Diagnosis: eyestrain and mild photophobia from excessive VR use, compounded by poor sleep hygiene and mild dehydration. Prescribed screen limits and actual supervision. Recommended a different babysitter.

Patient nine was a young woman with severe abdominal cramps, who admitted, after much prying, that she’d been following a viral TikTok “gut cleanse” involving charcoal, cayenne, and raw garlic smoothies.

House diagnosed her with gastritis, dehydration, and poor judgment.

He told her so.

House returned to his office after the final patient, a man with chest pain who turned out to be having panic attacks brought on by financial stress and Red Bull overconsumption. Not heart disease. Not even acid reflux. Just existential dread in a can.

He shut the door behind him and collapsed into his chair, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

His head was pounding.

Contrary to what most people thought, he didn’t actually hate patients. Well, he didn’t hate helping them. He hated being interrupted. He hated being lied to. He hated bureaucracy. But there was something deeply gratifying about the moment when the pieces clicked into place, when the body gave up its secrets and he could hand someone an answer and, sometimes, a cure.

The problem was the sheer number of them. Every soul that walked through his door with hope in their eyes or desperation in their voice was like a shot of caffeine laced with static. Too many in a row, and he started feeling like his skin didn’t fit right. Like his limbs weren’t moving quite human.

Raphael had always struggled with that. The compulsion to help, to fix, to heal—not as a physician, but as a celestial being designed for that exact purpose. Clinic hours were a special kind of torture. So many souls. So much pain. He couldn’t fix all of them, and he wasn’t supposed to try. That was the deal.

Stay quiet. Stay mortal. Heal what the science allows.

Not what the wings whisper.

And yet, despite all the distractions, one patient wouldn’t leave his mind. Crawly. The demon. The black tar that was still hidden in his drawer. The astronomical scribbles in the margins of that antique guidebook.

House stood abruptly.

A thought had just hit him. A ridiculous, improbable, House-level thought.

The symptoms Crawly presented—sudden collapse, memory lapses, erratic heart rhythm, low-grade fever—didn’t line up with any standard infection. Nothing bacterial or viral fit quite right. No fungal invader explained the erratic vitals. But what if it wasn’t an infection at all?

What if it was a reaction?

“To what?” asked a voice he hadn’t heard in a long time.

House froze. The voice didn’t come from the hallway or from the next room. It came from inside his head.

Raphael.

The angel didn’t speak like a memory. He stood in House’s mind’s eye, tall and luminous, golden-winged and impossibly still. Raphael the Healer. Raphael the Trumpeter. A being of precision, order, and light. The version of himself House had buried under cynicism, Vicodin, and twenty years of malpractice lawsuits.

They were two beings in the same body, one wrapped in lab coats and sarcasm, the other draped in something closer to eternity.

House limped over to the desk and pulled open a drawer. He retrieved the small vial they’d taken from Crawly’s belongings—a glass cylinder half-filled with shimmering black sludge. He held it up to the light, watching it swirl like oil and shadow.

“This crap is demonic in origin,” he muttered, more to himself than anyone. “But what if it isn’t just demonic in origin? What if it is literally demon?”

Raphael didn’t blink. “You think he’s breaking down?”

“What happens,” House said slowly, “when a being made of metaphysical energy gets crammed into a human-shaped bottle for too long?”

“You think he’s metabolising himself,” Raphael said quietly.

House nodded. “Like an autoimmune disorder. Except instead of the body attacking itself, it’s the soul. A metaphysical feedback loop. That would explain the systemic inflammation, the elevated cytokines, and the fever. His body is rejecting its own essence.”

Raphael tilted his head. “Then how do you treat something like that?”

House didn’t answer at first. He reached for the book Crawly had left behind—an astronomy journal worn with use, its corners dog-eared and stained with what he hoped was coffee. He flipped through the pages with a strange sort of reverence. Star charts, celestial alignments, coded notations and obsessive diagrams filled every page.

“He’s not just into the stars,” House said finally. “If he were one of the angels who painted the sky, then they are literally part of him, and he is part of them. The stars contain the original blueprint. If we can bring the stars to him, it might reverse the destabilisation."

“So your theory is… what?” Raphael asked. “You wish to cure a demon with a planetarium show?”

“Not just a show,” House said, his voice lowering—just slightly, just enough to pick up that odd, not-quite-human resonance that sometimes slipped through when he forgot to hide it. “A reorientation. Celestial re-synchronization. Like realigning a magnetic field. We don’t treat the symptoms—we treat the soul’s compass.”

Raphael’s gaze darkened slightly, contemplative. “How?”

House didn’t answer directly. He flipped to a specific page in Crawly’s journal—an intricate sketch of a constellation, perfectly aligned with a note scribbled in Latin. He pointed at it.

“I have an idea.”

He didn’t know what Crawly really was. Whether he was a demon in the biblical sense, a castoff celestial, or something else entirely. He didn’t know if he was the enemy. A threat. A time bomb waiting to go off.

But he knew one thing.

Crawly was dying.

And House—Raphael—had always been good at one thing:

Refusing to let someone die when there was still a chance not to.

Even demons.

Especially them.

Chapter Text

Crowley was beginning to regret allowing the doctors to poke and prod him to their heart’s content. They seemed determined to analyse every molecule of his body, as though dissecting him might reveal some great cosmic secret. They'd taken hair, saliva, blood. He was waiting for them to start picking out his teeth.

Only a few weeks ago, none of this would have been possible. The needles they used to draw blood would have bent or shattered on contact with his skin. He’d been almost indestructible. When the first nurse had managed to pierce his arm with a needle and extract a sample, Crowley had felt a flicker of surprise. It was the first tangible sign that he was deteriorating.

Not that he could summon the energy to care.

After Azir-
After.

First, there had been rage. Blistering, all-consuming anger, the kind that could level cities and blacken skies. How dare he leave? How dare he abandon THEM after everything? Then the rage had burned itself out, leaving only grief. Grief that came in great wracking sobs, until there were no more tears left to fall.

Now there was nothing.

He sat in the silence of it, a hollow shell with nothing left to fight for. The world had stopped existing. There was only numbness, and the vague, disinterested awareness that his body hadn’t caught up to the fact that he was already gone.

Time passed in flashes. Disconnected, disjointed moments that flickered by like a broken film reel.

He remembered leaving London. The bookshop (their bookshop) shuttered and locked, the keys handed over to the neighbours for safekeeping. What were their names again? Something with an M? Or an E? It didn’t matter. Nothing did.

He’d crossed the Atlantic in a fog of drugs and alcohol. He couldn’t have said why at the time. In hindsight, it probably had something to do with the symbolism. America, the proposed location for Armageddon. The end of the world. It felt appropriate. If the end had already come for him, he might as well be where the lights were meant to go out.

Most of the flashes after that were just drinking. Endless drinking.

Sometimes, he’d come back to himself long enough to realise he was lying curled up in the narrow bed of the flat he’d rented, wrapped tightly in a familiar blue blanket.

He used to love sleep. Used to nap often, stretching himself like a cat in the quiet sunlight beside his Angel-

A crash. He remembered the sound of it distinctly. He’d fallen off a barstool. That was odd in itself. He didn’t normally do that. Alcohol never really worked on him. His body processed it too quickly to ever get beyond tipsy. If he wanted to be drunk, properly drunk, he’d had to perform a minor miracle just to hold it in his bloodstream.

But miracles were beyond him now.

So, to fall off a barstool... it meant his system was slowing down. His body was weakening. Failing.

Perhaps, at last, he was heading for true oblivion.

The next flash came with a white ceiling, too-bright lights, and a sharp voice saying, “Can you hear me, sir?”

He was in a hospital emergency room. A nurse was shining a small penlight into his eyes. Crowley flinched at the intrusion. He hated hospitals. The smell. The sterility. The strange, enforced stillness.

Lab coats came and went, poking and prodding as they pleased.

Then he appeared.

A man with a limp and a sardonic expression, eyes too sharp and mouth too clever. He seemed unhinged. But there was something about him that tugged at Crowley’s faded memory. Like they’d once brushed shoulders on a busy street, or maybe played together once as children, building sandcastles under the watchful eye of their parents.

The madman persuaded him to stay at the hospital a little longer. Well, persuaded was generous. Crowley had no strength to resist. Observation, he called it. Monitoring. Crowley didn’t care what it was.

He floated in and out of consciousness. Time lost all meaning.

Now the man (House? Holmes? Something beginning with ‘H’, Crowley was fairly sure) was striding into the room and swinging a plastic carrier bag like he’d just won the lottery.

He stopped at the foot of the bed and started rummaging through the bag. Out came a cardboard box, which he opened with unnecessary flair.

“I’ve got something for you to try,” he said, eyes gleaming with manic energy.

Crowley blinked at him, slow and disinterested. “What is it?”

The doctor didn’t answer immediately. He produced a peculiar-looking device, somewhere between goggles and a visor, and began fiddling with its settings.

“I have been reliably informed,” he said, with exaggerated air quotes, “that this will feel like you’re ‘really there’.”

“Really, where?” Crowley asked, one eyebrow lifting.

Still, no answer. Instead, the man gestured for Crowley to lower his head. Bemused and too tired to argue, he obeyed. The visor was slipped gently over his eyes.

“What exactly am I meant to-”

He stopped.

His mouth fell open slightly.

Stars.

The Heavens stretched out before him in breathtaking spirals.

He was surrounded by galaxies. Turning, folding, drifting in impossible formations. He turned his head, and the cosmos moved with him, shimmering and expanding.

It was utterly silent. Utterly vast.

It took a moment before he realised where he was.

Alpha Centauri.

The perspective was unmistakable. He’d seen it from above once, long ago, when he’d been assigned to meddle with the orbit of a few inconvenient comets.

It felt... real. Almost painfully so.

He reached out instinctively, forgetting for a moment that he wasn’t actually there.

Crowley was so mesmerised, he didn’t notice the changes at first.

The way his heart’s rhythm had steadied. The colour that had returned to his cheeks. The way his fingers no longer trembled.

He was more present than he had been in weeks. His breath came easier. The crushing weight on his chest had lightened, even if just a little.

The stars were holding him. Grounding him. Reminding him of something ancient and essential.

He had always found meaning in the skies. The celestial map was his one constant. Amidst millennia of chaos, betrayal, and love too fragile to name, the stars had never changed.

They were eternal.

And for the first time in what felt like a very long while, Crowley felt...

Not better.

But not entirely broken, either.

He lifted the visor slowly, blinking as the hospital ceiling came back into view.

The man responsible watched him with a smug sort of satisfaction.

“Well?”

Crowley didn’t answer immediately. His voice, when it came, was hoarse.

“Do it again.”

Chapter Text

The hospital was quieter in the evenings. Or at least, fewer people wandered the halls. The low hum of machines, the occasional soft footfall, and the hushed voices of nurses became the symphony of the night shift. But a hospital’s corridors are never truly empty. With so many patients enduring the worst night of their lives, it wasn’t unusual to see a priest roaming the halls, moving from room to room like a shadow delivering last rites.

No one stopped him as he walked. A nurse even offered a kind, if weary, smile as he passed, assuming he was on his way to offer spiritual comfort to someone in their final hours. She would be wrong on all counts. The figure making his way through the maze of white corridors could not rightly be called a man at all.

Metatron moved with the certainty of someone who had walked these paths before. Purpose guided his every step as he paused outside a nondescript door, glancing through the window into the dimly lit room beyond.

Inside lay a frail figure, wrapped in a dark blue blanket. Just as the rathee anxious doctor had described him earlier that morning. Poor Dr Chase, desperate for someone who could offer solace when medicine had failed. Metatron had, of course, obliged. He had even encouraged the good doctor to take a well-earned break. Hopefully, he would come to realise in time that this patient’s passing was no great loss. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Metatron opened the door and slipped inside, closing it behind him with a quiet click.

The figure in the bed stirred at the noise, head lolling weakly to one side. But then his eyes focused, and suddenly he was sitting upright with a burst of recognition and alarm.

“You! What the fuck are you doing here?”

“Now now,” Metatron tutted mildly, “there’s no need for vulgarity. This is a place of rest, after all.”

Crowley’s eyes narrowed, his frame taut despite the gauntness. “Why are you here, Metatron? Who ... were you sent here?”

“Sent? By whom?” Metatron raised an eyebrow, voice calm and dripping with condescension. “Aziraphale?” He watched with cold satisfaction as the demon flinched. “No, dear boy. He’s far too busy to be dealing with trifles like one disobedient, deteriorating demon.”

Crowley sank back against the pillows as if the strength had gone out of him entirely.

“No,” Metatron continued, stepping closer, his footsteps silent, “I came of my own accord. Just tying up some loose ends.”

“What do you mean?” Crowley asked, though he already knew. He just needed to hear it said aloud.

“Well, now that Armageddon is once again set into motion, we can’t have the same meddlesome creatures delaying it a second time, can we? You’ve already had your fun disrupting divine plans. Your usefulness to either side is at an end. Hell has disowned you. Heaven barely remembers you. You’re in limbo, Crowley. And it’s time to go.”

“You’re not my master,” Crowley muttered with what might have once been defiance. “I’ll stay right here, thanks. What are you going to do, throw holy water at me? You know it doesn’t work anymore.”

“Oh dear,” Metatron said with mock pity, “I think you misunderstand. I’m not here to do anything. You’re already doing it for me. I’m just here to make sure you do it properly.”

Crowley frowned. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Look at yourself,” Metatron said, his voice now hardening. “You’re a ghost. A husk. Not the Serpent of Eden, but some broken thing trying to remember how to be angry. You’ve already begun to fade: no miracles, no temptations, no purpose. You're already ceasing to exist. I’m merely the witness to your final, pitiful act.”

Crowley’s lips curled into a weak sneer. “You’re a right bastard, you know that?”

“And you,” Metatron replied, unbothered, “are a dead man pretending he still breathes. And while you cling to this half-life, you drain the world around you. You are a weight. A smudge on the divine plan.”

Crowley’s mouth twitched at that. “Aziraphale-”

“His Holiness Aziraphale,” Metatron cut in sharply, “has more important things to concern himself with. He offered you a chance. Redemption, purpose, a path to grace, and you rejected it. Worse, you tried to drag him down with you. Tried to seduce him into mortal sins, into staying on this wretched Earth with you.”

Crowley’s voice broke, barely above a whisper. “It wasn’t like that.”

“It was precisely like that,” Metatron hissed. “The fact you weren’t struck down on the spot is proof of his virtue, not yours.”

Crowley turned his face away, shame creeping in like frostbite.

“Why don’t you just smite me then?” he croaked. “If you’re so eager to see me gone, do it yourself. Isn’t that what Heaven’s sword is for?”

Metatron chuckled, the sound thin and humourless. “Oh, I could. But why waste effort on something that is already happening? You’re dying, Crowley. And you’re doing it marvellously. The best thing you’ll ever do is die quietly, without fanfare. You’ll fade like a forgotten prayer. And soon enough, not a soul will remember you existed.”

Crowley was silent. His eyes fluttered shut.

“Even Aziraphale?” he asked softly, barely audible.

Metatron smiled. “Especially him. He has no time to mourn a mistake.”

At those words, the last of Crowley’s will seemed to slip from his body. His chest sagged, and the colour drained from his face. The heart monitor beside the bed let out a soft warning blip as the rhythm began to slow. The demon’s breathing grew shallow.

Metatron stepped back, hands folded, satisfaction written in every line of his face.

But before the heart monitor could flatline, a voice rang out from the doorway, sharp and furious.

Metatron turned, expression flickering briefly with distaste. There, leaning on his cane and glaring daggers, stood Dr House. His tie was askew, coat unbuttoned, and eyes calculating.

“Doctor,” Metatron said smoothly, “I was just providing comfort for this patient; he seems to have taken a turn for the worse.”

“We must have different versions of what comfort means,” House drawled, stepping fully into the room, his cane tapping "My version doesn’t involve a robed creep monologuing over their body like a budget Bond villain. Get out.”

“You’re hardly in a position to—”

“Oh, I’m exactly in position,” House cut in, already striding over to the monitors. “Because, unlike whatever the hell you are, I have a medical licence, an ego the size of Jupiter, and an unholy knack for keeping people alive just to spite others.”

He checked the vitals and clicked his tongue. “Look at that. Stress-induced cardiac instability. Fancy that. It's almost like someone came in here and crushed his will to live.”

Metatron said nothing. He was watching carefully now.

House reached into his pocket and withdrew a small vial. “Now, I don’t usually believe in miracles. They tend to involve too much paperwork and questionable sources. But this?” He tapped the vial against the side of the bed. “This is my kind of miracle. The kind that works just enough to piss you off.”

He administered the injection swiftly, with the ease of someone who had done this a thousand times. Crowley’s vitals stabilised. The heart monitor returned to a steady rhythm, though the demon himself remained still.

“Coma,” House muttered. “Typical. Won’t make my rounds easier.”

Metatron tilted his head. “You cannot save him forever.”

“No,” House replied with a thin smile, “but I can delay you. And that’s always been my favourite game.”

Metatron’s eyes narrowed. “You’re meddling in matters beyond your comprehension.”

“I do that every Tuesday,” House said, already turning away. “Now get the hell out of my hospital.”

Chapter Text

This was not good.

House had been halfway to the car park, thinking about painkillers and the questionable burrito he'd left in the staffroom microwave, when it hit him—a Bad Feeling. Not the normal kind, which usually meant someone on his team was being stupid, or Wilson was going to start another conversation about feelings. No, this was the kind that crawled under his ribs and whispered go now.

He turned on his heel and made for Crowley's room at a speed most people wouldn't associate with a man reliant on a cane.

As he approached, he slowed, blending back into the controlled, disinterested amble of Dr House. No need to raise suspicion. Not yet.

A priest stood just outside the door.

Only... he wasn’t a priest.

The collar was correct, the robes suitably solemn, but the presence—there was no mistaking that weight. That cold certainty that pulled the air tighter in his lungs.

When the figure turned, House saw the face.

Metatron.

That bastard.

The Voice of God. Arrogance given form. And, apparently, still going strong.

Raphael—currently hiding under the carefully curated mask of Dr Gregory House—felt his stomach clench. He hadn’t seen Metatron in centuries. Not since the fall of the last Great Order, when Heaven had turned its face from Earth and left the rest of them to tidy up the mess. And yet here he was, skulking around a New Jersey hospital with all the subtlety of a fire alarm in a library.

Why him? Why now?

Raphael couldn’t move. His limbs felt heavy, paralysed by the implications. If Metatron was here, then someone knew. Someone upstairs had noticed. Noticed him. Not House. Him.

Raphael watched, his heart beating loud in his ears, as Metatron turned away from the bed and began to speak in that same sanctimonious tone that hadn’t changed in millennia.

“You’re dying, Crowley. And you’re doing it marvellously. The best thing you’ll ever do is die quietly, without fanfare. You’ll fade like a forgotten prayer. And soon enough, not a soul will remember you existed.”

Crawly—fragile, exhausted—mumbled something inaudible.

“Especially him. He has no time to mourn a mistake.”

There was venom behind every word, and yet Raphael couldn’t help but notice: Metatron hadn’t laid a hand on him. No lightning, no fire, no divine fury. Just words. Words designed to unravel.

Crawly slumped, the last of his strength bleeding away.

If he went in, everything would be over.

The heart monitor began to slow.

No more Gregory House. No more sarcasm and prescription pads. No more bickering with Wilson about the ethics of lying to patients or stealing hospital coffee. No more limp, no more pain, no more pretending.

No more hiding.

If he went in, Raphael would stop existing only in theory. And Heaven...Heaven would not be pleased.

Beep. Beep.

No more burritos left half-burnt in staff microwaves.

Beep.

No more surgeries. No more cheap whisky. No more being a bastard with a stethoscope.

Beep.

No more Wilson.

Beep.

This life, this mortal shell, these borrowed years, he had built it up from dust and pain and stubborn defiance. It was his. It had meaning. He had carved something true out of pretending, and now it was going to crumble like everything else Heaven touched.

Beep.

But there was no choice.

He walked through the door.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing to my patient?” House barked, stepping into the room with a controlled fury that was half act, half real. He had used this tone before to evict interfering relatives and overconfident interns.

Metatron’s expression barely shifted, though there was the faintest flicker of irritation, “Doctor, I was just providing comfort for this patient, he seems to have taken a turn for the worse.”

“We must have different versions of what comfort means,” House retorted. He moved like a man circling something venomous, careful not to show fear but every step deliberate. “My version doesn’t involve a robed creep monologuing over their body like a budget Bond villain. Get out.”

“You’re hardly in a position to—”

“Oh, I’m exactly in position,” House interrupted sharply.

He kept moving, every step calibrated to distract, to dominate the space. To remind Metatron he wasn’t welcome, even if the angel didn’t yet realise who he was dealing with. Once the penny dropped this could go downhill very quickly. Hopefully the angel would be too surprised by his presence to fully process what was happening. House kept talking as he checked the demon over, waiting for the shout of suprise, the accusations of desertion, or a sword to the throat.

There. Just a flicker. The tiniest twitch in Metatron’s left eye. The look he used to get when made to come down to earth to deal with lesser beings He doesn’t recognise me, Raphael thought in shock. Either he’s blinded by arrogance or Heaven’s eyes truly can’t see me anymore.

He didn’t trust either explanation—but it gave him room to act.

He turned back to the bed. Crawly looked more dead than alive. Whatever passed for a soul in a demon was flickering faintly inside the ruined vessel of his body, a candle guttering in a storm.

House reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a small vial. Saline, from an earlier case involving a homicidal husband and a near-fatal mix-up in the ICU. He loaded the syringe with practised ease and muttered something half-formed to Metatron.

“Now, I don’t usually believe in miracles. They tend to involve too much paperwork and questionable sources. But this? This is my kind of miracle. The kind that works just enough to piss you off.”

What he actually meant was: Don’t look too closely at the miracle I’m about to cast.

As he injected the saline, his fingers brushed Crowley’s arm. He let the miracle flow through, subtle and precise. Raphael’s old power, muffled and reshaped after years of mortal confinement. It wrapped around the demon’s flickering essence like a shield, slowing the decay, cradling what little remained.

Crowley didn’t wake but his heart monitor steadied.

Metatron tilted his head slightly. “Do you really think that will make a difference?”

“I have faith,” House said, deadpan.

Metatron’s eyes narrowed. “You’re meddling in matters beyond your comprehension.”

“I do that every Tuesday,” House said, already turning away. “Now get the hell out of my hospital.”

A long silence followed. Metatron looked down at Crowley’s unmoving body, then back at House.

“You’ve made your choice,” he said coldly. “I hope, for your sake, it was worth it.”

And with that, he turned and strode from the room, robes swishing with unnecessary flair.

The door clicked shut.

House waited three full seconds before he let out a shaky breath. His legs threatened to fold under him. House stayed motionless, counting. One. Two. Three. Only then did he let himself breathe. The air hit his lungs like a punch. He staggered slightly, catching the wall with one hand. His legs were trembling.

Well, he thought bitterly, that could have gone worse.

Crowley didn’t stir. He lay still, looking white as paper, but his chest still rose with breath.

Alive. For now.

Raphael sank into the nearby chair, scrubbed a hand through his hair, and tried not to imagine what would happen if Metatron came back, or worse, if someone else noticed what he’d done.

Why was the Voice of God so determined to extinguish one demon? Yes, Crowley was the Serpent of Eden. Yes, he had once delayed Armageddon. But even then, he had always been more of an inconvenience than a true threat. Nothing worthy of Heaven’s full attention.

Unless…

Raphael looked again at the motionless form on the bed.

Unless this wasn’t just punishment.

Unless this was personal.

Why talk him to death? Metatron, for all his piety, had never been shy about brute force. If he’d truly wanted Crowley gone, he could’ve ended it with a whisper.

No, this was something else. This was calculated.

This was vengeance.

And vengeance, Raphael knew, wasn’t a divine trait.

It was a human one.

He clenched his jaw.

He’d spent too long among mortals. Too long playing doctor, healer, cynic. But somewhere in the mess of it all, he had started to believe in what he did. Healing people without judgement. Saving lives without weighing their worth.

And he’d be damned before he let Metatron undo that.

No. Crawly would not die here. Not like this.

House stood, straightened his coat, and reached for his phone.

It was time for Raphael to find out why Heaven wanted one demon gone badly enough to send the Voice himself.

And what, exactly, they were all so afraid of.

Chapter Text

Getting on a plane was nothing like flying.

Trusting another soul with your safety as they guided a tin can attached to a rocket through the sky? That wasn’t something Rapha- House enjoyed, nor something he’d choose to do unless there was absolutely no other option.

Unfortunately, there wasn’t.

He’d used more miracles in the past few days than in the last few decades combined. It was time to take the slow route. The mortal one.

After ensuring Crawly was stable, House left Cameron in charge, feeding her a story about a delinquent ex showing up and stressing the man’s heart. It wasn’t entirely false. She had strict instructions not to let anyone near the room, including other doctors, until he returned.

He’d persuaded Cuddy to let him leave the country by not telling her. Instead, he called in sick with the flu. She likely didn’t believe him, but it gave her just enough plausible deniability to cover the paperwork.

The reason for his transatlantic pilgrimage? Hardly scientific.

Inside one of Crawly’s many obscure books was a receipt. A coffee shop, when Googled, pointed to a small establishment in Soho, London. Combine that with the man’s accent, a ring of keys labeled “flat,” and the nawing feeling in his gut, and he figured there was a decent chance of answers waiting there.

The journey from the airport to Soho was long, hot, and miserable. Despite London’s reputation for damp grey skies, the sun was punishing as House emerged from the Underground. He’d managed a brief nap on the plane, but jet lag and accumulated stress were pushing even his non-human constitution past its limits. His body, for all its divine origin, often forgot it was built for more than this.

The coffee shop was just opening as he arrived.

It was absurdly named Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death, the kind of overly sincere pun that tried a little too hard. A beautiful Black woman stood behind the counter, focused but calm, while a bubbly blonde buzzed around, wiping down tables and humming something vaguely showtune-adjacent.

The bell above the door chimed as House entered.

“Good morning,” he said, attempting civility. “I was wondering if you could help me. My name’s Doctor House, and I’m trying to identify a patient at my hospital. He had a receipt from this shop, and I was hoping you might recognize him.”

“We can try,” said the woman behind the counter, her tone clipped and cautious. “But I don’t make a habit of keeping tabs on customers.”

The blonde nearby had stopped mid-wipe, her brow furrowing as she approached with soft concern.

House turned slightly toward her, noting the empathy already blooming on her face.

“Anything you can do,” he said, pulling out his phone. “He’s in critical condition. We’re trying to notify next of kin.”

At this he pulled out his phone to show a picture of Crawly that he'd taken on his phone before leaving. The man did look at death's door, with wires attached to him at every angle.

The blonde gasped, hand flying to her mouth. “Oh my god… Mr. Crowley?”

Nina’s eyes snapped toward her, but Maggie had already stepped closer, eyes wide.

“He used to live just next door,” she said quickly. “With his partner. Oh no, he closed up the bookshop ages ago. He said he was going traveling, but I always thought that was a bit odd. Do you know what hospital he’s in? We have to go see him. Aziraphale would want to-”

“Maggie.” Nina’s voice was low and warning.

“But Nina he’s in trouble! And he’s a doctor,” she added, gesturing toward House as if that changed the rules somehow. “Mr. Aziraphale would want to know-”

Nina cut her off, more sharply now. “That’s enough.”

“Aziraphale,” House repeated quietly, tucking the name away. “That’s…his partner?”

Neither woman answered at first. Maggie glanced nervously at Nina, who simply folded her arms.

“I see,” House said, pocketing his phone. “You’ve been very helpful.”

“Wait!” Maggie called after him. “Where is he? Just tell us...is he-?”

But House was already pushing open the door.

The bell jingled softly behind him as he stepped back out into the London sun.

Chapter Text

The bookshop was not much to look at, at least from the outside. It sat unobtrusively on the corner of a moderately busy street in Soho, half-sheltered by the overhang of a tattoo parlour and pressed tightly between a Thai restaurant and a boutique that appeared to sell nothing but vintage hats. Its windows were covered with yellowing newspaper, and one was boarded up with a weather-stained plank as though it had been smashed recently and not considered urgent enough to repair.

Above the door, the sign read 'A.Z. Fell' in faded gold lettering, now chipped and worn with time. The paint around it had once been vibrant, but years of London rain had reduced it to a sad patchwork of moss and peeling flakes. House paused, cane tapping gently against the pavement, and tilted his head. Subtlety, he thought, must be an allergy among angels.

The front door was locked, but a set of lock-picking tools that had once given to him by Wilson as a joke made short work of it. With a faint click and a push, the door creaked open, releasing a breath of stale, musty air that had been trapped too long.

Inside, the shop was dim and hushed, as if the very walls remembered how to keep secrets. Dust hung in shafts of light from gaps in the newspaper-covered windows, catching on the air like tiny spirits. The scent of old paper and something faintly floral, lingered like a memory. House stepped inside, letting the door click shut behind him. The change in light was immediate. The only illumination now came from a small tear in the newspaper above a sagging beanbag chair, through which a thin sunbeam spotlighted the surrounding chaos.

Books were everywhere. Shelves towered like the spires of a forgotten cathedral, groaning under the weight of tomes in every size, language, and era imaginable. A couple of Dickens shared a shelf with Mary Shelley and a Reader’s Digest Anthology from the 1970s. Wilde leaned, appropriately dishevelled, against an empty fishbowl. Several Jacqueline Wilson paperbacks were scattered across the threadbare carpet near the gardening section, which for some reason was situated next to World History.

The layout was madness. Glorious, nonsensical madness. But there was something deeply comforting about it, as if this place had been curated not for profit, but out of pure love.

House took a few more steps, the rubber tip of his cane muffled by the carpet. The silence was thick and reverent, broken only by the occasional creak of a floorboard.

Suddenly a squeak came from behind him. A sharp intake of breath. The clatter of something hitting the floor.

He turned.

A young woman stood in the doorway to a back room, wearing oversized jogging bottoms and a hoodie that looked at least three sizes too big. Her hair was in a messy bun, and she held a full popcorn bowl in one hand. Or rather, she had been holding it. Now the popcorn was scattered like confetti around her feet.

As the popcorn settled around them, Raphael realised this was not a woman. He didn’t recognise exactly who she was, but there was a distinct angelic glow about her. If Raphael didn't recognise her, she must not have come to Earth during the earlier years.

A baby angel, alone in London. What on Earth was going on?

"You're not supposed to be in here!" she blurted, voice pitched high with alarm. Her wide eyes were somewhere between startled rabbit and flustered intern.

House raised an eyebrow. "And you are? The ghost of Customer Service?"

"I'm—!" she paused, puffed herself up a little, and tried to look stern. "I’m the caretaker of this establishment. You have no right to be here. I shall call the police."

House leaned on his cane. "No, you won’t."

She blinked. "Yes, I will. I absolutely will. Just as soon as I find the phone."

"No, you won’t," said House, flatly. "Firstly, because I doubt you’re meant to be here either, and secondly because I don’t believe you even know how to use a phone."

"I'll have you know, I understand all sorts of human things. Very normal. Completely human."

He gave her a pointed look. "That's probably the least human thing you could say."

The girl, or rather the being, hesitated. Her expression twisted into one of guilt, followed by nervous insistence. "I am human! I'm the most human! Hugely human. Very...peopley."

House tilted his head. "You're glowing."

She glanced at her hands in a small panic, as if expecting to see them lit up like a glow stick. "No, I'm not."

House decided to take pity on the baby, "Look, relax. I know what you are. Crawly sent me."

She squinted. "Who?"

"Crowley," House corrected, testing the name. "Do you know him as Crowley?"

Her face brightened. "Oh! Yes! Yes, of course I know Crowley. He used to come here all the time. Wore sunglasses indoors. Had a very cool coat. Very swooshy. But he’s not here."

"I know. He’s in my hospital. I’m a doctor. I’m trying to help him, but I need to know what happened. Something drove him to collapse. I think it started here."

She looked stricken. Her hands fluttered around the edges of her sleeves. "Oh dear. Oh, I knew something was wrong. He was always so...slinky. And then suddenly he wasn’t."

House frowned. "Slinky's not a diagnosis."

"He and Mr Aziraphale had a row," she said quietly. "A real one. Not their usual ‘I’ll tut at you and you’ll smirk at me and somehow we’ll save the world’ sort of argument. This was...different."

Muriel took a deep breath "It was... sad, really. Crowley and Mr Aziraphale, they were together for ages, not together-together, though maybe they were, but everyone knew. Well, not everyone everyone. Mostly just us. Angels. Demons. People with eyes. They had this... rhythm. A dance. Like they balanced each other."

House stepped closer. "Go on."

The angel hesitated, realising perhaps she shouldn't trust this strange man, "I shouldn’t really tell you anything. I was only meant to watch the shop. That was my task. To observe and report. I wasn’t even supposed to open the popcorn without supervision," she admitted.

"But you did. And now you're going to tell me what happened, because Crowley’s life might depend on it."

She bit her lip, then nodded slowly and gestured to one of the dust-covered armchairs. She flopped into the one opposite with an awkward bounce.

"Alright. But you have to promise not to tell Heaven I told you."

"I promise to never speak to Heaven. Ever."

The angel bit her lip. "It was just after Aziraphale was called up to Heaven. The Metatron came down. Big important angel, very... authoritative. Sort of like if someone put a bishop and a thundercloud in a blender. He told Aziraphale he was needed. That he was going to lead Heaven’s new plans. And Aziraphale said yes."

House squinted. "And Crowley didn’t like that?"

"Crowley... begged him not to go. Not in those words, of course, because he’s all... snakes and sass, but it was obvious. He said he didn’t trust Heaven. That they'd never really wanted Aziraphale back. Not without changing him. And then... and then Aziraphale asked Crowley to come with him. To join him."

"And Crowley said no."

The woman nodded, her voice small. "He said Aziraphale didn’t understand. That he was choosing the people who had always tried to control him over them."

She paused, eyes glassy.

"Then they kissed."

House blinked. "They what?"

"Kissed," Muriel repeated, her voice wobbling. "Like in the movies. It was... oh, it was very dramatic. And then Mr Aziraphale just left. Got in that silly golden lift. Crowley stood there watching it rise like someone had cut his heart out."

She hugged the popcorn bowl tightly. "And then he came back here. Closed the shop. Didn’t speak to anyone. And then one day... he just vanished."

She looked around the bookshop, as if seeing it through a crack in time. "It’s been weeks. I came to look after the place, just in case. But I didn’t know Crowley was ill. I thought maybe he’d just... vanished. You know. Again."

House let the silence settle for a moment.

"So, let me get this straight. An angel was offered a promotion, accepted it, and accidentally broke the heart of a demon who-"

"Wasn’t really that demony," the angel added quickly. "He did good things. Well, his own kind of good things. Which is sometimes better, I think."

House sighed, rubbing his temples. "You people need relationship therapy more than you need celestial intervention."

The baby didn’t disagree.

House felt the beginnings of a headache forming. This trip gave him more questions than answers.

"Thank you for your help..."

"Muriel"

"Thank you, Muriel," House replied. Then, as he moved past her toward the door, he added, "I’ll let you know if he wakes up."

She beamed. "Tell him the bookshop’s alright. And that I made sure none of the books got lonely."

House paused at the threshold. "Books don’t get lonely."

Muriel looked at him seriously. "Yes they do."

He didn’t argue. Not this time.

Chapter Text

The trip to the bookshop had been... enlightening. Raphael couldn't get it out of his head. An angel and a demon. Friends. The demon in love with the angel. This was not what he had expected. Not at all.

He wandered through London in a daze, hands in his pockets, limping more noticeably than usual. His cane tapped a dull rhythm on the pavement as he walked aimlessly until he came across a large park. Families picnicked under the rare British sun. Children ran barefoot on the grass. Footballs flew. Laughter rippled through the air like music. It felt impossibly far from the world he'd just left behind.

He found an empty bench near a duck pond and sat down heavily, wincing as his leg protested with the familiar dull ache. Not pain, not anymore. Just memory. Scar tissue and ghost nerves reminding him—deliberately, relentlessly—of what once tore through flesh and hope alike. A piece of shrapnel, long since removed, but he still limped. Not because he had to, but because forgetting would be worse. Because it’s the hope that kills you.

The park was warm, full of laughter and summer. The kind of day people imagined peace would feel like. House stared at the water as it rippled around the ducks, and let his thoughts spiral back.
London. He hadn’t walked these streets properly in decades. The last time he was here, it had been 1918. Armistice Day. The streets heaved with bodies, not fallen for once, but alive and weeping. People embraced strangers, cheered, sang, kissed beneath fluttering newspapers announcing peace. He’d stood among them then, in borrowed skin, as Lieutenant George Colthurst. An identity that had felt real by the end. The mud was still under his nails. The blood, not all his, still on his coat.

He had celebrated with them. He remembered it vividly how civilians clambering onto rooftops, a soldier pressing his forehead to his mother’s hand like he was seven years old again. He had let himself believe, for just a moment, that they had done it. That humanity had proven something divine by ending the slaughter.
If they could do it, perhaps Heaven and Hell could too. Perhaps eternity didn’t need to bleed.

But the war to end all wars had lasted only until the next one began. It wasn’t peace. Just intermission.

1939.

He still remembered the crackle of the wireless, the clipped voice of Chamberlain announcing the inevitable. And then the silence, taut and fraying. Different names. Different fronts. Same mud, same hunger, same futile orders shouted across ruined fields. Just more young men thrown into a machine that never learned.

Owen had said it best: “The pity of war, the pity war distilled.” He had read Dulce et Decorum Est with shaking hands in a field hospital, the morphine wearing off, and thought: Christ, it’s true. All of it.
Even now, he carried it. Not just in his leg, which throbbed whenever it rained or when children screamed nearby. But in his marrow. In the way he looked at people. The way he never quite let anyone touch him without flinching first.

Somewhere in the trenches, between a dying friend and a wasted order, he’d stopped believing in victory. Not because it was impossible, but because it was cruel. Victory was a pyre they built from the bones of the hopeful.

And now this. In the same city where he learnt to crush hope wherever it grew bloomed a new kind of dream. An angel and a demon, side by side. Choosing love and peace over war.
It was absurd.

And yet…something inside him stirred. Something long since buried beneath gas masks and casualty lists. Something old and fragile and utterly dangerous.
He had known love in wartime once, too. Quick, desperate, doomed. A medic with a kind voice and ink-stained fingers. They had shared one kiss under a collapsed barn roof during a lull in shellfire. It had tasted of sweat and despair. There hadn’t been time for more. Not then. Not ever.

You didn’t bring tenderness into war. You buried it. Or you watched it die.

But maybe… maybe some things refused to stay buried.

House leaned back, leg stretched awkwardly, and watched the children in the park kick a football between them, all flushed faces and shouted rules. One tripped, fell, bounced up again laughing.
Their laughter hurt worse than the leg.

Because they didn’t know. Not yet. About the breaking. About how thin the line was between sunshine and trenches. Between a summer picnic and a letter home with black borders.
A bench creaked beside him as someone sat. He didn’t look.

“Stay where I can see you!” a woman called, her voice warm but firm. Four boys dashed ahead into the grass, whooping as they joined the football game. The woman turned to him with a sigh.

“Kids. They never listen, do they?”

House didn’t reply.

"They think they know everything," she continued, undeterred. "Think they’re invincible. But they don’t understand the world yet. And that’s alright. That’s what parents are for, isn’t it? To shield them from what the world really is, even if only for a little while."

The baby in her pram gurgled and kicked, and she reached down to soothe it with a thumb rubbed across the tiny brow.

"They all get like that when there’s a new sibling," the woman said, soothing the child. "Jealous. Like love is something that runs out. But it doesn’t. Not real love. It multiplies, not divides."

House turned slightly, frowning. That was a strange thing to say. Or perhaps it only seemed strange because it rang so true. Ahead of them, the older children had formed factions. A stick fight had broken out over a makeshift crown. The crowned child waved his prize triumphantly, while another wailed in indignation.

"Aren’t you going to stop them?" House asked, the question escaping before he could stop it. "They’re going to beat the crap out of each other."

"Not yet," the woman replied calmly. "They need to learn to solve their own disputes. If I intervened every time, they’d never grow."

One of the boys broke away, running back to the bench with red cheeks and tearful eyes. He ducked behind his mother.

"It’s alright, love," she said, brushing the hair from his forehead. "You can stay here until you’re ready to re-join. I will hide you."

The boy sniffled, then pulled a book from beneath the pram and curled up to read, wholly content to stay hidden. House watched him and felt a sudden, unexpected sting in his chest. He felt a strange companionship to the boy hiding from the violence of his brothers. Then the woman spoke again.

"So," she said gently,. "Are you ready to return yet, Raphael?"

House froze. His head snapped round. The bench was empty. The pram was gone. The boys had disappeared. Not even the ducks remained.

Chapter Text

The plane ride back to the States passed in a fugue state. House, for once, barely noticed the cramped seat or the subpar airline coffee. Instead, he spent the journey absorbed in his laptop, eyes flitting over centuries-old records, church registries, intelligence files, and theatre bills. He had pulled at the thread of A.Z. Fell's bookshop and unravelled a web that spanned lifetimes. Once he found the connection, it was hard not to see it everywhere.

Aziraphale and Crowley, always not far from one another. They popped up as patrons of the arts in Elizabethan London, appearing in the margins of playbills and dedications; then again, documented as businessmen in industrial-age Scotland. In the Second World War, they surfaced as presumed spies. Two figures who managed to be near every major turning point without ever quite being at the centre. It would have been excusable, this continued proximity, if not for the repeated notes of affection buried in the records: cohabitation disguised as collaboration, coded letters too tender for enemies.
From a distance, their attempts to play opposite sides were unconvincing. It wasn’t just a professional association. It was friendship. Maybe more. House felt a sharp pang of recognition. Not jealousy, exactly. But something like it.

It was almost unbelievable that no one had ever noticed. Or maybe they had. Maybe they just didn’t want to deal with what it meant.

Back in New Jersey, House headed straight to the hospital, bypassing his apartment entirely. He’d been gone almost two days. The protections he’d left around Crowley were designed to last, but he trusted them about as much as he trusted airline punctuality.

A quick stop in the ICU confirmed Crowley was still breathing, though he looked just as inert as before. No worse, but no better either. House stood over him for a minute longer than necessary. Not to check vitals. Just to look.

Then he headed to Wilson's office.

He entered unannounced, flinging the door open with his usual lack of ceremony and tossing a bag onto Wilson’s desk.

"Most people knock," Wilson said dryly, pulling out the contents of the bag. "Where have you bee- did you go to London?!" He held up a novelty bobblehead of Queen Elizabeth II and a T-shirt reading 'My situationship went to London and all I got was this lousy shirt'.

"Yes, I went last year for that conference on foetal brain development, you know this," House replied innocently.

"That’s not what I meant and you know it. Did you go to London when you told Cuddy you had the flu?"

"Cough," House deadpanned.

Wilson folded his arms. "Why did you go to London?"

"I needed to see where Crowley came from."

"What, breaking into apartments not doing it for you anymore? You have to cross the Atlantic to snoop now?"

"You know me. Gotta be thorough."

Wilson narrowed his eyes. "Did you learn anything at least?"

"Yup. The Underground is a death trap and apparently, you shouldn't feed ducks bread."

"About the patient."

House hesitated. "Potentially."

He crossed to Wilson's desk and leaned against it, his expression unreadable.

"If you got offered a great job," House said suddenly, "but it was on the other side of the world, would you take it?"

Wilson looked up. "What? Have you been offered a job somewhere?"

"Not me, idiot. I'm asking hypothetically."

Wilson considered. "Well then... hypothetically... no, probably not."

"Why?"

Wilson raised an eyebrow. "Do you want me to take a job somewhere else?"

"No," House replied, the word too fast, too sharp. Then more quietly: "But why wouldn't you? If it was a load more money, fancy equipment, all the cancer you could want. Would you go?"

Wilson paused, something tightening behind his eyes. "No," he said finally. "Not unless you could come too."

House looked at him then, properly. For a moment, something ancient flickered behind his expression. Something more weary than even Wilson was used to seeing.

"And if I said I didn’t want to?"

"Then," Wilson said, as if it were simple, "there's plenty of cancer in New Jersey."

House stared at him a second longer, then stepped forward, grabbed Wilson by the tie, and kissed him. It was decisive, possessive, and brief. Then he turned and walked out, cane tapping a steady rhythm on the linoleum.

Wilson remained still for a long moment, dazed. He looked down at the tie House had tugged, then at the novelty bobblehead, which now nodded solemnly at him.

"Why am I in this situation?" he muttered.

---

House’s cane tapped a familiar beat as he strode down the corridor, ignoring the nurse who tried to stop him about some minor administrative detail. He was halfway through composing a biting comeback when he changed course and made his way to the diagnostics conference room. Inside, Foreman and Cameron sat with files spread between them like a makeshift war table. Foreman was mid-sentence, gesturing toward the whiteboard, which was now covered in symptom timelines and question marks.

"Still no fever, no sign of infection. If it's neurological, it has to be something rare. A prion disease maybe, or-" Foreman looked up, startled. "You're back."

House made a show of looking around. "Am I? I thought this was my apartment."

Cameron frowned "We weren't sure you’d be back today. Cuddy said you were sick.”

"Well, now I’m back." He limped to the table and sank into a chair with a groan. “So. Have the children been behaving?”

"Chase is in the chapel," Cameron offered, with the tone of a tattling child. "He’s been spending a lot of time there the last two days.”

House raised an eyebrow. "Should I be concerned he’s found God?"

Foreman shrugged. "He says it's peaceful there. And we’re not exactly overflowing with leads."

"Unless God is going to write me a prescription or explain Crowley’s neurobiology, I’m not interested," House muttered. He turned his attention to the board. "So. Impress me. What’s the working theory?"

Cameron handed him a folder. "We've ruled out most known toxins and infections. His blood work is inconsistent. Sometimes completely normal, sometimes all over the place. It doesn’t follow any established pattern."

Foreman added, "We thought maybe something metabolic, or a mitochondrial disorder. But nothing fits perfectly."

House flipped through the scans without really reading them. “Well, he is a demon.”

Foreman rolled his eyes. “Right. So are we adjusting the diagnostic model to accommodate magic now?”

House looked up, unblinking. “Maybe we should.”

Foreman looked like he was debating hitting his boss.

"So what do we do next? We’re running out of tests.”

"Good question. Let’s go ask God. Or Chase, apparently."

House shoved himself up from the chair and limped toward the door. "You two keep thinking like doctors. I'm going to go see if religion finally broke our Australian."

Chapter Text

The hospital chapel was unusually full.

A man in a faded bomber jacket sat hunched near the front, murmuring prayers in steady Spanish, his rosary beads clutched tight enough to whiten his knuckles. Nearby, a woman lit a candle for her sister, then ushered her children towards the door with a whispered benediction. The sharp scent of melting wax and antiseptic lingered in the air. In the corner, a blonde doctor, tie loose and hands clasped. He was sat with his head bowed, motionless but tense. As the family left and the whisper of movement died away, only the two doctors remained.

House lingered by the door for a moment, cane tapping idly against the tiled floor. Then, with little ceremony, he dropped down onto the pew beside Chase, who startled slightly but didn’t move away.
"You here to make fun of me?" Chase asked, his voice rough and quiet.

House gave a faint shrug. “Tempting. But no.”

Chase ran a hand through his hair. He looked dreadful. The dark smudges under his eyes, the unshaven jaw, the shirt rumpled and creased. He hadn’t gone home, or even bothered to pretend.

"I suppose you're going to say I'm losing it," Chase muttered.

"I'm guessing you’re here because of our… patient?"

Chase turned his head slowly, narrowing his eyes. “I know what you’re going to say. But that man is not human.”

"I know."

Chase blinked, then frowned. “What?”

“You heard me.” House leaned back, folding his arms. “They’re not human. But that’s not the problem.”

“Like hell it’s not!” Chase was on his feet in an instant, the words raw and sharp. “We’re doctors. We treat people, not…whatever that thing is!”

“Oh, come off it. We’ve treated murderers, rapists, men who wouldn’t hesitate to kill again if it meant surviving. But you draw the line at someone with slit eyes?”

“That’s different!” Chase’s hands curled into fists. “The Hippocratic Oath-”

“-doesn’t start with but only if they’re the kind of lifeform I like,” House snapped. “Or did you miss that lecture?”

Chase turned away, pacing a few steps. “This is insane”

“It is,” House said simply, rising.

Chase looked back at him, stricken. “You really believe it. All of it.”

“I’ve seen more of the world than you realise.” He stepped closer. “You have to decide, Robert. It’s all or nothing. Either you’re a healer, or you’re not. Either you believe every life has value, or you don’t.”

“It’s a Demon!”

“And you’re a lapsed Catholic who once suffocated a dictator with your bare hands and called it mercy,” House said quietly. “So which part of you gets to decide who deserves saving?”

Chase froze.

“You think you’re better than him?” House pressed. “You killed a man. You made that call. Because you thought it was right. And maybe it was. But you don’t get to turn around and pretend you’re not standing on the same moral edge now.”

Chase turned back to face him, visibly shaken. “He’s not like us.”

“No,” House agreed. “He’s kinder.”

The silence hit like a slap.

House took a step closer. “You have to decide. You either believe in healing the sick, or you don’t. You either believe that life has worth even when it’s inconvenient - or you’re just another man pretending he’s God.”

For a long moment, Chase said nothing. He looked very young, very tired. Like a boy who had just realised the adults in the room don’t know what they were doing either.

“I don’t know what you want from me,” he said eventually, his voice thin.

“I want you to be a doctor,” House said, not unkindly.

Chase didn’t respond. He simply walked out, head bowed.

House remained still for a moment, then let out a long, slow breath. He turned and looked up at the stained-glass crucifix above the altar.

"You see what you put me through?" he muttered.

Then, almost theatrically, he made a sweeping gesture with his hands and pressed them together in an exaggerated prayer pose, eyes scrunched shut.

“My Father, who art never here when I need Them. Hollow be your promises. Thy kingdom is a mess, Thy will is a mystery, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily pain, and forgive us for not thanking you for it, as we forgive those who don’t deserve it. Lead us into temptation, and deliver us from those who think they know what evil is. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the gory—forever and ever. Amen.”

He opened one eye. Nothing changed.

“Thought not,” he muttered.

With a sigh, House slumped back onto the pew. After a beat, he tried again—his voice quieter, more genuine.

“I don’t know what I’m doing. You made me a Healer… and then told me to kill. You gave us free will and then punished us for using it. You put hypocrites in charge and expected the rest of us to keep smiling. You… you told us to love creation, and then stood by while it tore itself apart.”

He paused, his breath catching.

“I’ve seen centuries pass. Rome. Babylon. The Ottoman courts. I was in Cairo in 1380, Damascus in 1915. I taught medicine in Florence, read poetry in Kyoto, delivered children in Warsaw before the war. I’ve spoken prayers in Latin, Hebrew, Farsi. I begged You in tongues you no longer listen to. I’ve tried. I’ve tried so hard to believe this was all going somewhere.” His voice cracked. “But now I have a patient. One of your so-called fallen. Someone you said you loved once, but you cast them out like a misbehaving child. That’s what children do. They rebel, they question. They need answers.”

He stood, pacing to the front of the chapel, trembling slightly. “And this one? He’s tried. He’s helped. More than most angels ever did. More than I did. And he’s dying. Slowly. Alone. Because of you. And I can’t even tell his best friend what’s happening, because Heaven won’t let me.”

House’s voice was thick with tears now, his shoulders shaking.

“No one’s going to hold his hand.”

He pressed both hands against the altar, knuckles white.

“I stayed silent when they fell. When you exiled them. I said nothing when they cried out. I told myself you had a plan. But this… this is cruelty. And I won’t be complicit any longer.”

There was a long, breathless silence. Somewhere far away, a monitor beeped. A child cried in the maternity ward.

Finally, House turned. His eyes were red, but his voice was steady.

“Aziraphale,” he said, the words echoing through the planes of existence. “If you can hear me… Crowley needs you.”

And with that, he limped from the chapel, leaving the sanctuary in silence once more.

Chapter Text

Wilson needed a smoke.

He was trying to quit. He’d actually been doing rather well, regardless of what House might say with his usual derision. Three weeks, no relapses, not even one half-hearted puff on a colleague’s cigarette during a stressful shift.

But then House had kissed him.

That was the sort of thing that sent anyone spiralling. Not that Wilson was spiralling. He was simply... processing. Outside. In the walled memorial garden. With a cigarette in hand.

It wasn’t like this was the first time House had upended his reality and strolled off, utterly unaffected by the debris. Usually, the older man’s chaos manifested as several ethics violations that somehow resulted in the man coming up smelling of roses. Not that Wilson thought about how House smelled. Of course not.

Especially not now.

Especially not after House had kissed him. Fully sober. In the middle of the hospital.

Their place of work. The workplace where Wilson had a reputation for being steady, reliable, non-explosive. The workplace where House had, with terrifying casualness, leaned in after some strange questions, gripped Wilson’s collar and kissed him. Firmly. Thoroughly. With absolutely no warning and absolutely no regard for the fact that they were in Wilson’s office with the door open. The last time had been after a string of tragic dates. Wilsonian failures, House had called them. Wilson had been drowning his disappointment in flat beer and half-hearted self-loathing. House had dragged him out of the bar and shoved him against a graffiti-stained brick wall like something out of a bad romance novel, then kissed him until Wilson genuinely forgot why he’d been so miserable in the first place.

Then House had patted him on the shoulder like nothing had happened and flown to Peru for three weeks.

That was just how House was. Unpredictable. Unknowable. Ineffable.

To the point where he could stare you down and insist the sky was green and, against your better judgment, you’d find yourself checking, just in case he really had rewritten the laws of nature. And now? Now Wilson was standing in the hospital’s quietest courtyard, smoking like a teenager skipping class, trying to decode the actions of a man who made decoding impossible.

Smoke curled around his head like a perverted halo.

He didn’t hear the footsteps at first. Only noticed movement when a figure stormed past a nearby window. Blond hair in disarray, white coat flapping, eyes dark and furious.

Chase.

Wilson dropped the cigarette, crushed it underfoot, and strode off in pursuit. Whatever else was going on, he knew that look. It was the kind of look House got just before doing something particularly stupid. Chase didn’t usually allow himself the luxury of visible rage, so this couldn’t be good.

It took a while to track the younger doctor down; he moved faster than expected, darting through back corridors with the restless energy of a man trying to outrun a revelation. Eventually, Wilson caught up.

“Chase!” he called, breath fogging in the cooler air of the corridor. “Wait! What’s happened?”

Chase turned sharply. His expression was taut, exhausted, wild. “Did you know too?”

“Know what?” Wilson asked, genuinely confused, though his stomach twisted in pre-emptive dread.

“About the patient House brought in. That... thing!” Chase spat the word like it physically hurt.

Wilson blinked. “The patient? You mean Crowley?”

Chase stared at him like he was waiting for a punchline.

Wilson’s heart sank. “Dr Chase,” he said, his voice dipping into caution, “It’s the twenty-first century. Whatever your patient’s sexuality or gender identity might be, you don’t get to refer to them like they’re subhuman.”

Chase’s face contorted in disbelief. “What? No, that’s not- what the hell are you on about?”

Wilson frowned. “You just called them a thing. You're a doctor, Chase. You're supposed to help people, not dehumanise them.”

“Oh my God,” Chase muttered, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “This place is completely insane.”

“Excuse me?” Wilson stepped forward, affronted. “You might want to take a moment before saying anything else. You’re clearly upset, but-”

“Upset?” Chase let out a strangled laugh. “Of course I’m bloody upset! The man…thing…whatever is a demon! An actual, biblical demon! And you’re all just acting like this is business as usual!”

Wilson opened his mouth, then shut it again. Chase, misreading his silence, shook his head. “Forget it. You’re all in on it anyway. You and House and your…your cryptic little chats.”

“Chase, you’re not making any sense.”

“Yeah, well, maybe neither is the world!” And with that, Chase turned and stormed off, muttering under his breath about doctors and demons and the end of all things.

Wilson stood there, blinking in the quiet, thoroughly wrong-footed. A soft cough behind him made him turn.

“Oh dear,” said a concerned voice behind him, “Is the poor boy alright?”

Chapter Text

The man standing next to Wilson in the corridor was... well... unusual.

He wore a cream-coloured ensemble that wouldn’t have looked out of place in a period drama, the kind worn by an eccentric professor or a retired Oxford don. His coat was slightly rumpled, the collar just a little too high, and the waistcoat he wore underneath seemed lovingly maintained despite being fashionably several decades out of date. He had short, white hair that curled faintly at the ends, and tired, heavy-lidded eyes that aged him far more than the colour of his hair. There was something worn about him, as though he’d been sleeping in those same clothes for several days without ever admitting to himself that he ought to rest.

Wilson realised he’d let the silence stretch awkwardly long, which for him was saying something.

“I'm not sure,” he finally replied, voice clipped and professional. “He’s not normally like this.”

“Oh, well,” came the cheerful, almost sing-song reply, “sometimes people act out of character when they are upset. Poor Will was absolutely beside himself after the first reviews of Hamlet. Said his next play would be performed by trained mice.”

Wilson blinked.

“Right...” he said slowly, suddenly very eager to escape this odd encounter. “Can I help you?”

“Oh!” said the man, eyes lighting up as though he’d only just remembered why he was there. “I rather hope you can. You see, my... my friend is in the hospital, and I’m trying to track them down, but I keep bouncing around the building. Last time I ended up in the middle of some poor woman’s operation and gave the doctor a dreadful fright.”

Wilson stared at him.

“...Okay. And who exactly is your friend? Did you try asking reception where they were?”

“Oh no, that didn’t occur to me at all. I must admit, I’ve been in such a bother since I found out he was here that I forgot the hospital had him in one of those computer thingies.”

Wilson resisted the urge to sigh. He started walking the man down the corridor. Either this was a confused visitor or a very convincing escapee.

“How did you know your friend was admitted?” he asked.

“Oh, I got a call,” the man replied cheerfully. “Bit strange, really. They just told me Crowley was here and that she wasn’t well.”

Wilson stopped in his tracks.

“Did you say Crowley?”

“Why yes,” said the man, apparently oblivious to Wilson’s growing confusion. “Do you know him?”

“Yes, my... my colleague is working on his case. How did they contact you? There was no next of kin listed.”

“Well someone managed it,” he said simply. “Where is he?”

Wilson turned, shifting their direction through the maze of corridors that made up the hospital's older wing.

“What was your name again?”

“Oh, you can call me Mr Fell, dear boy.”

As they walked, Wilson took the opportunity to study Mr Fell more carefully. He placed the man in his early fifties, though the tiredness around his eyes suggested someone who’d seen far more than his years would suggest. There was an old-world formality to him, in the way he walked with hands clasped and how he offered words like “dear boy” without irony.

And there was something else.

The hesitance with which he’d said “my... my friend” had not gone unnoticed. It wasn’t just the pause. It was the subtle change in tone, as though the word he’d meant to use had been caught in his throat and replaced with a more palatable one. Wilson had seen that pause before, especially in older men. The ones who’d lived through the AIDS crisis, who remembered when being gay was illegal, when a lover had to be called a roommate or cousin, and when holding hands in public was an invitation for arrest or worse.

Wilson had no solid proof, of course. But he was a doctor and an oncologist at that. He’d spent a career reading between the lines of what patients wouldn’t say. And Mr Fell gave every impression of someone who had lived a very careful life. The dated, fussy clothing. The genteel mannerisms. The way he spoke about Crowley not with urgency or panic, but a sort of deeply held, barely restrained emotion that made Wilson’s chest tighten with something between sympathy and curiosity.

He concluded, almost without realising it, that Mr Fell was a closeted gay man. Not in the derogatory sense. Not a man hiding shame. But a man who’d learned how to survive. Someone whose affection had been tempered by history. The kind of man who had loved someone deeply, quietly, and probably for decades.

They arrived at the room. Wilson paused outside the door.

“I need to warn you,” he said gently. “He’s not in a good state at the moment. He’s stable, but we’re still running tests to determine what’s causing his symptoms. I’ll let one of his doctors know you’re here and get someone to talk to you about his medical history. Anything you can share might be helpful.”

He pushed the door open and stepped aside.

Mr Fell entered. His eyes went wide the moment they landed on the figure lying on the hospital bed. Tears welled up instantly, threatening to spill over as he crossed the threshold.

“Oh, Crowley,” he whispered, voice cracking.

And Wilson, left standing in the doorway, turned away to give him a moment of privacy.

He really needed another cigarette.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale stood in the stuffy hospital room and found himself unable to take a step further in.

He had spent the past ten minutes or so popping in and out of existence, struggling to fully materialise in this very room. Now that he was finally here, he couldn’t seem to make himself cross the threshold.

Crowley looked ill.

It was irrational, but Aziraphale had expected her to be curled up and cocooned in twenty blankets, snoring melodramatically as he usually did. Instead, only two layers covered Crowley’s too-thin frame: the standard hospital issue, and a dark blue blanket. Familiar enough to stop Aziraphale’s breath in his throat.

He stepped forward at last, fingers trembling as he reached out to adjust the folds. The dark blue fabric shimmered faintly under the sterile light, threaded with the faintest glint of silver. A scattering of embroidered stars spanned the cloth, stitched by hand.

Aziraphale remembered it well.

He had sewn it years ago, painstakingly threading each star into the cloth after Crowley had, half-drunk on bad Scotch, confessed that he missed sleeping among the stars. Not metaphorically, but literally. Floating through nebulae and dozing on clouds of stardust as only an angel once could. The memory of that conversation was etched into Aziraphale’s mind: Crowley’s voice unguarded, their eyes distant. Aziraphale had said nothing in response, merely gone home and begun to sew.

The blanket was a quiet promise, an apology he hadn’t known he was trying to make.

He smoothed it now, tenderly, brushing imaginary creases away with the pads of his fingers. He longed to run his hands through Crowley’s hair, now limp against the pillow, but couldn’t bring himself to do so. Crowley hated being cold. He would whine, half-sincere, until Aziraphale would huff and drape his coat around her shoulders every time. Crowley always forgot his, despite the reminders.

Aziraphale never minded. He liked seeing them in his coat. It made him feel… useful. Needed. Close.

A cough from behind startled him. He turned to see the young fellow who’d shown him the way.

“I’ll just… go and fetch the doctor,” the man mumbled, stepping out with a kind of professional discomfort.

Aziraphale stood by the bed, wringing his hands. He hadn’t expected Crowley to be asleep. He had expected a fight. A confrontation. A chance to explain.

Or beg.

He didn’t know which, only that he needed Crowley to wake up so he could apologise.

He needed Crowley to forgive him.

He hadn't wanted to leave them. He had believed- no, he had convinced himself, that taking Metatron’s offer and returning to Heaven was the righteous thing to do. That it was his duty. That he could make a difference. But the truth, the bitter truth that had clawed its way up his throat in recent weeks, was that none of it had been worth the cost of losing Crowley.

He'd told himself it was for the best. That Crowley would be safer away from him. That Heaven needed fixing. That their love was a temptation, and angels weren’t meant to be tempted. He thought staying would keep Crowley safe.

But the blanket on the bed and the stillness of Crowley’s body tore through every lie he’d ever told himself. As he lay there still, Aziraphale thought he looked more like an angel than anyone else who had ever been.

Metatron had suggested, early on, that Crowley’s refusal to return to Heaven marked him as unrepentant, unredeemable. The rage that had burned through Aziraphale at that moment was incandescent. His many wings had fanned out in incandescent fury, each eye blazing with divine wrath.

He had warned Metatron that if a single feather on Crowley’s head were harmed, there would be consequences.

Metatron had backed down. Fast.

But Aziraphale’s defiance had cost him dearly. Since then, his reforms have met nothing but resistance. The other angels balked at any mention of humanity. They had no interest in art or books, no patience for music or theatre. They called Earth messy. Impure.

They didn’t understand that the mess was the point.

Heaven was still broken, and now Aziraphale feared he had broken something else far more precious in trying to fix it.

The months since he left had stretched on like centuries. He wandered empty halls, drafted policy that no one read, attended meetings that left him cold. No one spoke of the demon who had walked away from the gates of Heaven. No one dared to ask where Aziraphale's fire had gone.

He had been lonely. So terribly, achingly lonely.

“I thought I could change it,” he whispered. “Heaven. I thought I could make it good enough for you. For us.”

Crowley didn’t stir.

“I told myself that letting you go was brave. Noble. That I was doing the right thing. But I wasn’t. I was… afraid. I didn’t know how to choose you without losing everything else. And now I’ve lost you anyway.”

He bit the inside of his cheek, hard. If he cried, he might not stop.

“I should have chosen you. Every time.”

The hospital room was quiet, save for the rhythmic beep of a machine and the hum of fluorescent lights.

Aziraphale sat down heavily in the chair by the bed. He conjured a book from thin air, its binding worn and pages familiar. It was one of Crowley’s favourites. The sort of thing he’d never admit to enjoying but would pick up and curl up in the corner of their bookshop to read. He opened it, cleared his throat, and began to read aloud.

“It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” The words felt hollow in his mouth. He glanced at Crowley, hoping for some flicker of recognition. Nothing. His chest rose and fell slowly. Aziraphale’s voice cracked as he kept reading, pushing through the ache in his throat. It was easier than speaking directly to her.

Easier than saying “I’m sorry” and meaning it with his whole soul.

Chapter Text

Chase felt like his head had been shoved underwater, and no one understood why he was drowning.

There was a demon. A real one. The literal embodiment of evil. And it was in the hospital. His hospital. The place where he spent his life tending to the sick, to the vulnerable, to those clinging to hope with trembling hands. And apparently… this was fine?

House, he could almost understand. House would sacrifice anyone and anything for the truth. The man had always pursued mystery like a wolf chased blood. And what bigger mystery could there be than a demon? Than the very nature of evil?

But Wilson?

Wilson, who once cried over a dying lab rat? Wilson, who talked grieving families through the night and bought coffee for interns who looked like they were about to collapse? That Wilson was calmly discussing the presence of a demon in their hospital like it was just another patient on the board.

It made Chase’s stomach churn.

He hadn’t slept. He’d barely eaten. It felt like the walls of Princeton-Plainsboro had become too tight, the air too stale, the very light in the corridors too artificial. He needed out. He found himself in the small park just down the street. A place he occasionally wandered to on his lunch breaks, when the buzz of fluorescent lights and medical machines became too much. Normally, it brought peace. Today it offered nothing. Children shrieked with laughter in the distance as they chased one another across the green. A golden retriever barked joyfully, tail wagging as it dodged between its owners. An ice cream van chimed a tinkling tune from beside the playground, and a line had already begun to form. He sat on his usual bench, elbows on knees, head in hands, trying to breathe through the slow, spiralling sense of dread curling in his chest.

What was he supposed to do? Pretend this wasn’t happening? That House hadn’t brought something inhuman into their hospital? That his colleagues were willing to experiment on it? He remembered House’s voice, quiet, in the chapel of all places. That moment hadn’t left him. The way House had looked at the altar, not with reverence or contempt, but curiosity. As if trying to solve it. Like the divine was a riddle he hadn’t cracked. And then, like an answer to a prayer he hadn’t dared make, a familiar voice cut through the noise.

"What troubles you, my child?"

Chase looked up. Standing beside the bench was Father Todd.

Or… the man appearing to be Father Todd.

He wore a long charcoal wool coat despite the late spring warmth, and in his hands he held a takeaway coffee cup, steam curling into the breeze. There was a name scrawled on the side, presumably from some overly enthusiastic barista. Chase could only make out two parts: ‘Give Me’ and ‘Death’.

The irony wasn't lost on him.

"I don’t know what to do, Father," Chase said quietly. His voice cracked. “I’m a doctor. I—I’m not equipped for this. I’m meant to heal. I help people. That’s what I do.”

“Doctors and soldiers are not mutually exclusive,” the man said calmly, as if explaining something very simple to someone very slow. “Especially in times of war.”

Chase frowned. “I don’t want a war.”

The priest’s eyes sharpened. There was something in them. Something vast, cold, and old enough to predate pity.

"It is not a choice," he said, voice like a blade hidden in velvet. "War is inevitable. Without war, we remain in this wretched stalemate—forever. A victor must rise. Evil must be punished. And it must begin with the thing currently defiling your hospital.”

Chase flinched at the word.

Then the priest’s voice softened again, turning paternal, persuasive. “You are a good man, Robert Chase. But the world has too few good men willing to act. It is time for a good man to go to war. Not for glory. Not for revenge. But for what is right.”

From the depths of his coat, the man drew out a small vial.

The liquid inside was clear. Harmless looking. It could’ve been saline. Water. Anything. Chase reached out, almost without meaning to, and took it.

"You must ensure it enters the demon’s system," the priest said. “Injection, ingestion -however you can manage. Just make sure it happens. Once it does, the threat will be neutralised.”

“Why can’t you do it?” Chase asked, staring at the vial like it might bite him.

The priest’s lips twisted into a frown. “I cannot enter the hospital. Something... bars me from crossing the threshold. But you, Dr Chase, you can. You must. For all of humanity.”

Chase’s hands trembled. “What will it do to him? I mean it.”

“It will make it unable to cause any further harm.”

“That sounds like death.”

“You can’t kill a demon,” the man said simply. “But you can erase it. Make it cease to be. And the world will be better for it.”

Chase looked down at the vial. It was such a small thing. Such a quiet thing. There was no evil pulsing from it. No warning sign. No sense of righteousness, either. Just… silence. He imagined injecting it. Imagined the demon (the patient he was a patient what was Chase doing oh god) collapsing. The look in its eyes. What if it looked afraid? What if it screamed?

What if House was wrong?

And what if he wasn’t?

He remembered standing in church as a young boy, confessing his fears to the priest who had known him since he was a child. The man had looked him in the eyes with intelligent eyes and told him the words that would stick in his mind forever: "If you think God would give us all the answers, you’ve missed the point. Sometimes, we’re supposed to wrestle with them. Maybe that’s what makes us human."

Was this wrestling? Or was this surrender?

A breeze brushed past him, catching the edge of his coat. He glanced up. The world carried on around him, indifferent to his plight. A couple holding hands walked past them on the path holding ice-creams. A dog escaped its owner and was hurtling towards a errant frisbee. Across the park, a woman sat beneath a tree, a paperback open on her lap but her gaze fixed not on the page. She was watching the playground…or perhaps the ice cream van. But for a moment, Chase could’ve sworn she looked straight at him. There was something odd about her. Familiar, maybe. But when he blinked, she turned back to her book.

Chase shivered.

“Will it hurt him?” he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

“It will end him,” the priest said, gently. “It will bring peace.”

"And this will save people?"

The priest nodded solemnly. “You are doing what needs to be done. Not for yourself. Not even for the hospital. For the entire human race.”

The vial gleamed in the light. So unremarkable. So final.

Somewhere behind him, a child laughed. A dog barked. The world carried on, indifferent.

Metatron smiled, voice low and rich with certainty.

“For the World.”

Chapter Text

Chase was almost at the door.

House had followed him half the corridor before confirming the worst. The kid was walking like someone heading to confession, not rounds. Purposeful. Distant. A hand in his pocket like he was holding something sharp.

That something, House suspected, wasn’t a scalpel.

When House called his name and got no answer, the suspicion calcified into something heavier.

He picked up the pace.

By the time Chase reached the hallway that led to Crowley’s room, House was close enough to see the tautness in his shoulders, the kind of rigid tension that didn’t come from stress, but from resolution. Chase was doing something he didn’t want to do. Something he’d been convinced was necessary.

That was enough.

House reached out, grabbed his shoulder, and without preamble drove his fist into Chase’s gut.

It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t even particularly well-aimed. But Chase went down with a soft grunt and a crumple of limbs, and House caught him before he could hit the floor too hard.

"Sorry, kid," he muttered. "You’ll thank me when you’re not on trial for celestial homicide."

He hoisted him awkwardly. It would’ve looked like a drunken fireman’s carry, if there were any firemen left with designer shoes and this much Catholic guilt.

The supply cupboard two wards over was mostly abandoned. Some leftover mop buckets, a half-deflated therapy ball, and the lonely smell of disinfectant were all that remained. House lowered Chase to the ground and checked his pulse. Steady. Still breathing. Still human. Just out cold.

He sighed and rifled through the coat pocket Chase had been holding so tightly.

There it was.

A small glass vial, unlabelled, unassuming. It caught the overhead light in a way that felt deliberate.

He uncorked it and, after a moment’s hesitation, touched a drop to his tongue.

For a second, he tasted nothing.

Then came the static. The kind of raw electric hum you feel before a storm, before the clouds split open and Heaven forgets how to be quiet. His whole spine tensed. His molars buzzed. Somewhere deep in his being, the water crackled against something older than bones.

But he didn’t burn.

He didn’t blister, or scream, or drop dead in a puff of sulphur. Instead, he stood there, rolling his jaw and blinking through the taste of ozone.

“Holy water,” he muttered. “Classy.”

He screwed the lid back on and slipped it into his own pocket.

So. That was the plan. Kill Crowley. Or at least neutralise him in some permanent, unholy way. And they’d sent Chase to do it. Someone kind, gullible, and riddled with just enough doubt to make him manipulable. A good man with a strong conscience. The perfect weapon, if you were willing to get blood on someone else’s hands.

The obvious question was who.

Metatron would’ve been the easy answer. He was the type to call himself the Voice of God and mean it. But that didn’t add up. The other night, Metatron had faced Crowley directly. He hadn’t hesitated to get involved. Why pull strings now? Why send a patsy with a vial when he could smite someone himself and call it a Tuesday?

No, House knew the game better than that. If someone was using holy water by proxy, it was because they wanted distance. Deniability. They wanted the demon gone, but the method to look like an accident. Or a human choice. Or maybe just an unfortunate breach of hospital policy.

And there was someone else who had motive.

Aziraphale.

The bookshop angel who had climbed Heaven’s ladder in a meteoric manner. Climbed higher than Metatron.

If Metatron was running a vendetta against Crowley, it might be personal. But if Aziraphale was behind this...if he had decided Crowley was a liability,...it was something far colder. Systemic. Strategic.

Like a politician quietly removing an inconvenient spouse. Or a parish secretary embezzling from the collection plate, all while keeping meticulous ledgers. House had seen it before: people who smiled while hiding knives.

If Aziraphale had ordered this, it made sense. Crowley was unstable. Hurt. Maybe even dangerous. And Aziraphale, now sitting pretty in whatever corner office they gave angels who finally stopped dithering, might have decided that the best way to protect Heaven’s plans was to cut ties with the past.

It was almost mercy.

He locked the cupboard with the old skeleton key he’d pilfered years ago from Facilities and ran a hand through his hair.

His patient had just survived a brush with oblivion. Now someone wanted to finish the job, and they’d tried to use his team to do it.

That felt personal.

He was halfway back down the corridor when he saw Wilson coming toward him.

The oncologist looked unusually alert, which always meant someone had either coded or confessed something romantic.

“There you are,” Wilson said, frowning slightly. “I was looking for you.”

“I was busy committing workplace assault,” House said. “What’s up?”

“Crowley’s next of kin is here. A Mr Fell. Blond, bow tie, incredibly British. I thought you said we didn’t have any emergency contact info?”

House stopped walking.

“Did he say why he came?” he asked, too casually.

Wilson shrugged. “Said he got a message. Didn’t say from who. He’s with Crowley now.”

Of course he was.

House’s eyes narrowed, the calculations already beginning behind them.

So Aziraphale had come. Timely, now that the job was nearly done. Had he expected it to be over before he arrived? Was he here to clean up? To mourn? Or to make sure no one asked too many questions?

House didn’t like mysteries with divine origins. They had a tendency to bleed.

He offered Wilson a tight smile.

“Thanks. I’ll pay him a visit.”

Wilson hesitated. “House…”

There was something else. It hovered between them, like a second sentence trapped behind his teeth. A thousand possible meanings in one pause. But then Wilson looked away, rubbed the back of his neck, and didn’t say it.

“Never mind,” he muttered. “Just… don’t antagonise him. He’s clearly upset.”

“Noted,” House said, already turning toward the stairs.

He could feel the vial in his pocket, cold and silent as a threat.

Aziraphale was here. Crowley was vulnerable. Chase had nearly followed through.

And House?

House had a plan.

Chapter Text

Aziraphale was halfway through Chapter Seven when the door opened.

He looked up, startled. He’d not heard footsteps, and the nurses in this wing had already checked on them about fifteen minutes ago.

An older man stepped inside, leaning heavily on a cane. His face tugged at something in Aziraphale’s memory. Not quite recognition, more a sense of familiarity, like a tune heard in passing or a name scratched out in a book’s margins.

Aziraphale let his eyelids flicker slightly, opening the secondary pair angels had to view auras and other supernatual presences. Most kept their eyes open fully all of the time, as they were most often either in Heaven where everything was angelic or on earth searching for something that did not belong.

Airaphale himself had started closing his eyes more often once he and Crowley became acquainted. It had started in those early days, when Crowley’s presence had unsettled him. Staring directly at a demon’s essence was like watching a wildfire through glass: beautiful, dangerous, exhausting. It had become a habit when he realised by keeping his eyes shut meant Crowley looked just like anyone else. A person with a crooked smile, clever hands, and a drink in his grasp. Just two people, sharing a table and a bottle and perhaps, once or twice, a life.

With his eyes closed Aziraphale didn't have to acknowledge the difference between the two of them.

The man standing before him now was not human. Not entirely. There was a faint residue of Grace clinging to him, like wax on a burnt-out candle. Too dim for a Principality or a Power, but not quite human enough to ignore.

Aziraphale stood slowly.

“Hello?” he asked cautiously. “Why are you here? Who sent you?”

The man’s face lit up with a grin far too cheerful for the setting. “Oh! My Lord Aziraphale,” he said brightly, voice disturbingly reminiscent of Muriel’s chipper innocence. “I wasn’t expecting you to be here. I was told I would be completing the mission. Did you change your mind?”

Aziraphale blinked. “I—what?”

“Excuse you where?” the man asked, tilting his head like a curious spaniel. “Do you need to go somewhere? That’s all right, I can handle this myself. Metatron made sure I had everything.”

From his coat pocket, the man produced a small glass vial.

Aziraphale’s heart stopped.

He recognised it instantly. Clear, holy water that had been distilled and blessed in the Highest Realms. Lethal to demons. And Crowley was still unconscious, still weak, still-

“What do you mean, Metatron made sure?” Aziraphale asked, all trace of warmth stripped from his voice.

Heaven had lied to him.

Worse, they had done so with a smile.

The man didn't seem to notice the shift. “He said I needed to give this to the demon Crawly, to make sure he couldn’t hurt you.”

“Hurt me?” Aziraphale echoed. “What in Heaven’s name are you talking about?”

“I don’t know, sir. I’m an angel, I don’t question orders,” the man said earnestly. “So… can I carry on?”

“Absolutely not!” Aziraphale cried, rising to his feet with such force that the book in his lap toppled to the floor. “You will step away and return from whence you came immediately.”

The man took a step back, eyes narrowing slightly. Not in defiance, but calculation.

“Lord Metatron really won’t like that,” he said. “Can’t I just finish the job? It’s only a demon.”

Aziraphale’s hands clenched. For a moment, he couldn’t speak. The words caught somewhere between rage and heartbreak.

“They are not just a demon,” he said, voice low but shaking. “He is—he is the best of all creation. And you will not sully their name by diminishing her to one facet of his being.”

He stepped forward, voice gaining strength. “They are the Serpent in the Garden who gave humanity choice. He is the one who shielded the children of Job from harm when Heaven would have them suffer. She is the temptation who gave comfort to those left homeless by the Flood. She is a mess, a flirt, a chaos unto herself, and my dearest friend.”

He took another step. The man with the cane didn’t move, but Aziraphale could feel something shift in the air between them like the moment before a storm breaks.

“He is everything I aspire to be and can never quite manage. She is brave and ridiculous and so kind it makes my teeth ache. He is my demon, mine, and if you so much as look at him with that vial in your hand again, you will learn what it means to face the wrath of an angel who has nothing left to lose.”

He drew himself up to his full height. “You’ll need to raise the armies of Heaven and Hell both if you want to lay a finger on them. And believe me—the odds are in our favour.”

Silence.

The man said nothing.

He studied Aziraphale with something unreadable in his eyes. Not shock. Not fear. Something cooler. Analytical.

And still, he did not move.

Aziraphale held his gaze, chest heaving, trembling slightly. His Grace burned just beneath the surface, singing through his bones like a choir warming up for war.

He looked down at Crowley. Still pale, still breathing, still the centre of Aziraphale’s world in all his impossible defiance. He reached out, brushing a lock of hair back from his brow, uncaring about his audience.

“You’re not alone,” he whispered. “Not now. Not ever.”

And if his hands trembled slightly, if his voice cracked beneath the weight of betrayal and fear—well. It was only human of him.

Chapter Text

Well," said the man whose mannerisms were no longer those he held when he'd entered the room, "glad you said that. Not quite sure what the plan would have been if you'd let me do this." And with that, he upturned the vial over Crowley, splashing his face and chest with water.

Aziraphale let out an inhuman yelp, rushing forward with a handkerchief. He began patting at Crowley’s face, frantically checking for blistering, sizzling, or smoke. Any sign that the holy water had begun to do its gruesome work.

Nothing happened.

"Relax," said the man as he swaggered to the chair Aziraphale had abandoned. He lowered himself into it with a groan and a flourish. "I filled the vial with tap water before I came in. Can't have my patient dying before I've had a chance to cure him, you know?"

Aziraphale took another few moments to convince himself that Crowley was, for now, physically unharmed. His eyes flicked to the water pooling slightly along Crowley's collarbone. Nothing sizzled. No smoke. He exhaled shakily, then spun around to glare at the man.

"You had better explain yourself."

"Long story short? Your pal Metatron tried to have my patient murdered. After the first attempt he enlisted one of the human doctors and gave him a vial of holy water. Lucky for everyone here I have a mean right hook and a spare closet I don't spend much time in."

"I don't understand," said Aziraphale faintly.

"Well you see, it's a double entendre playing on the word closet-"

"I don’t understand who you are."

"I’m Doctor House."

"That’s not who you are," Aziraphale said, eyes narrowing slightly. Something about the man’s voice, the sardonic timbre beneath the sarcasm, teased at the edges of memory.

The smile fell from House’s face. He straightened slightly, tone sharpening. "Yes, it is. And you would do well to remember it. This is my hospital. I’ve earned the respect of everyone who works here, and I expect the same from you."

That voice. Something almost clicked in Aziraphale’s mind. An echo of someone he used to know, somewhere he couldn't quite place. But it slipped from grasp like a name on the tip of his tongue.
He turned away, unable to sit, fingers wringing the edge of the blanket covering Crowley. Folding and smoothing and folding again.

"I just... I don’t understand what’s happening," Aziraphale admitted, his voice faltering.

House’s sharp blue eyes softened marginally. "Crowley collapsed. EMTs brought him in unconscious. He’s been deteriorating since: cellular breakdown, multisystem failure, destabilisation of metaphysical structure. Whatever Metatron did, it accelerated something already fragile."

He reached into his coat pocket and produced a tablet, tapping through medical scans with a flick of his fingers. He turned it so Aziraphale could see: Crowley's body lit up with pulses of unstable energy, bright and erratic.

"Originally I thought we were dealing with Amissio Animae Propositi, the Loss of Purpose of the Soul. It's rare. Mostly theoretical, especially when the patient isn’t actually an angel…anymore. But the symptoms matched. Then I considered vessel decay. Demons, especially older ones, don't always integrate well with long-term hosts. Human biology wasn’t built to house divine energy. Even corrupted forms of it."

Aziraphale frowned. "How do you even know about Amissio Animae Propositi? That’s not exactly something in The New England Journal of Medicine."

"Spend a lot of time reading The Lancet, do you?" House shot back.

Aziraphale gave him a flat look.

House relented with a sigh. "Let’s just say I’ve treated things most doctors wouldn’t believe were real. Demons, fae, minor gods, interdimensional parasites… If it walks, crawls, or phase-shifts into a hospital bed, chances are I’ve yelled at it."

"How?"

"It’s not relevant."

"It is entirely relevant when you’re treating my-"

"Your what?" House interjected, watching him.

Aziraphale hesitated. The silence was thick.

"Nothing."

"Right," House muttered, eyes narrowing slightly. "Anyway. The problem is I can’t fix him yet. Not without knowing which condition we’re actually treating. If it’s vessel decay, I have to retrain the demonic essence to maintain the host body using a healthy metaphysical blueprint. That takes time and conscious cooperation. Neither of which he can currently provide."

"And if it’s not vessel decay?"

"Then it’s A.A.P., and we need to find the soul’s sense of purpose and use it to effectively stop and restart his heart. Which is even harder because it’s like peeling back the layers of someone’s personhood looking for the first thing ever written there. What drove them into existence. It’s delicate. And invasive. If I do both at once?"

House paused, his face grave. "Then I break him. The body can’t take that kind of dual strain. We’re already seeing systemic instability. His metaphysical structure is destabilising faster than we can stabilise his vitals. I start poking around the soul and send biochemical impulses that his body’s dying? Catastrophic failure. I lose the patient."

Aziraphale’s face went white.

House leaned forward. "So. I need you to choose."'

"Me?" Aziraphale asked, voice high and thin.

"As far as I can tell, you’re the closest thing she has to next of kin. You’re also the only one here who might actually understand what the hell I’m dealing with. So, yes. You. I need to tell me how to treat them."

Aziraphale stood frozen, one hand hovering over Crowley’s chest like he was afraid to touch him.

"I... don’t know what to do," he whispered.

House’s gaze softened just a fraction. "Angel or demon, Aziraphale. We don’t have time to debate metaphysics. What keeps them alive? What holds him together when it all falls apart?"

Aziraphale looked at Crowley. The way his face looked so uncharacteristically peaceful now, slack and colourless. So different from the curl of his smirk, the flicker of mischief in his golden eyes.

He had spent so many years refusing to define Crowley. Too dangerous. Too intimate. Too true.

But now? The only danger left was not knowing.

Aziraphale swallowed hard.

"Demon," he said at last, voice hoarse.

House nodded once, sharply. "Alright. We retrain the vessel. Hope it’s enough."

He stood and tapped the tablet again, barking orders to a nurse to close down this section of the hall and move the other patients due to a potential contamination.

And then he was gone, leaving Aziraphale alone with the body of the being he couldn’t bear to name. Aziraphale lowered himself beside the bed, took Crowley’s hand in his own, and whispered, "Hold on, my dear. Just a little longer."

The machines around them beeped, steady for now. But only just.

Chapter Text

Crowley was floating. Not in the cool embrace of space, but a flat grey nothingness that tasted like a mouth full of cotton balls.

.

Crowley was vaguely aware that they were probably not drifting through the void of lack, but they didn't care enough to register where their physical form was. If they tried hard enough, they could probably find their fingers.

.

They didn't.

It floated along in the lacking, until floating became too much and it stopped.

.

Not much longer now, it didn't think, for thinking was too much for this being.

.

Was it a being?

.

.

It had been, in the before. But the before was a dream and dreams did not exist in the lack.

.

It stayed where it was.

.

.

.

And then that too started to stop.

.

.

.

There were little pinpricks of light, floating in the darkness. It thinks they were trying to form a shape. Perhaps they were trying to tell it where it's fingertips were.

.

.
.

.

.

If only it could speak, it would tell them it had no fingertips, for it was not a being.

.

.

.

It was not . . . .

Far away, in a long forgotten dream, a loud beeping was heard.

Beep...Beep...BEEP...BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP

Chapter Text

Aziraphale watched in quiet awe as the strange doctor began drawing over his friend’s arms and face. Each sweep of the biro shimmered faintly before sinking into Crowley’s skin, forming swirling maps of star systems and constellations. Shooting stars seemed to arc across his face, flickering briefly before fading into the lines. The patterns were almost hypnotic in their beauty.

Occasionally, House would pause and consult a battered, leather-bound book that looked oddly familiar to Aziraphale. Though the angel couldn’t quite place it, he could swear that he had seen that book in Crowley’s flat in London.

This had been going on for hours.

According to the tablet House had handed him (which, perplexingly, seemed perfectly capable of monitoring supernatural vitals) Crowley was showing minor signs of improvement. House had explained that Crowley’s own consciousness wasn’t fully present, so the burden of repair had fallen to the body alone. If there was enough residual energy in the vessel, it might be enough to begin healing without the demon’s intervention.

Trust.

That was the word, wasn’t it?

This had all happened because Aziraphale didn't trust Crowley. Didn't trust her on his team, didn't trust their motivations, didn't trust that he knew his own mind and could make decisions for themselves. It was hard to not fall into a downward spiral about how the very reason Crowley was in this bed to begin with was Aziraphale.
Aziraphale looked down at the figure in the hospital bed, pale and still. How fragile eternity looked when curled beneath thin cotton sheets.

The doctor finally stepped away, murmuring something about letting the stars do their work. With the ink settled, Crowley looked almost human again, if one ignored the impossibly symmetrical constellations glinting faintly across her skin.

Aziraphale picked up the novel he’d dropped earlier. It was one of his favourites. He’d always loved the aching pining, the elegant misunderstandings that twisted towards a happy ending. But now, as he reread the scene at Meryton, it wasn’t an English ballroom he pictured. It was the Whickber Street Shopkeepers and Street Traders Association meeting. The cheap fairy lights strung across the ceiling. The band of buskers playing swing versions of Queen songs. Of finally feeling brave enough to dance with his partner in everything.

He hadn’t said it then. Not in words. But in the way he’d danced, in the way their hands had remained clasped even after the music stopped, he’d said everything he couldn’t bear to admit.

It was those memories that distracted him enough not to notice the nurse entering the room.

She was wearing standard scrubs and had a clipboard in hand that was covered in stickers of rainbows and assorted animals. Her hair was loosely pinned back with a biro, and she wore the tired but kindly smile of someone many hours into a long shift.

“Oh! Hello,” she said, surprise in her voice. “Didn’t expect anyone to be here this late. Visiting hours ended some time ago.”

Aziraphale tensed, preparing to be asked to leave. He’d already decided he’d simply sneak back in after the next set of rounds.

But the nurse just winked. “I won’t tell if you won’t.”

She moved around the bed with a practiced efficiency, tucking in corners of the blanket, gently brushing hair back from Crowley’s forehead. Her hand lingered a moment too long in a gesture more tender than clinical. Then she caught herself, withdrawing.

“Sorry,” she said, a little embarrassed. “Once a mother, always a mother.”

Aziraphale watched her warily. Too many people had stood by this bed with concealed threats for him to offer trust easily.

But she didn’t press. Just scribbled something on the clipboard and turned to him again.

“Are you alright? Can I bring you anything?”

He shook his head. “No. I don’t think so.”

She nodded, accepting that. Then her eyes drifted to the book in his lap.

“Pride and Prejudice, is it? Love that one. Bit long though. If they’d just kissed the first time, they could’ve saved themselves all that heartache.”

“I don’t think that would have been quite the done thing in Regency England,” Aziraphale murmured, already returning his attention to Crowley.

“Mmm. Perhaps. But sometimes we let our environment or our upbringing hold us back from the things we love most. Even when we think we’ve grown past it. The best we can do is try to live for ourselves—not everyone else.”

She walked toward the door, then paused with a final glance over her shoulder.

“Still think a kiss would solve most of their problems.”

Aziraphale blinked, watching her go. It was such a peculiarly human sentiment.

He stopped.

And turned back to Crowley.

Surely… it couldn’t hurt?

He leaned over the bed, careful not to disturb the monitors. Crowley’s face was as serene as it had ever been, the only motion the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blankets.

Aziraphale cupped her cheek, whispered something he didn’t quite let himself hear.

Then he kissed him.

It was gentle, reverent. A thank-you, a plea, a confession long overdue. A kiss that told the truth he hadn’t known how to say aloud.

He didn’t notice the change immediately.

But the monitors did.

Beep.

Beep.

BEEP.

BEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEPBEEP.

Chapter Text

The heart rate monitor went wild.

Shrill, stuttering beeps pierced the air, each one faster than the last, like footsteps racing toward the edge of a cliff. Aziraphale stared at the machine, paralysed, as the green line spasmed in jagged bursts across the screen.

Louder.

Faster.

Louder. Faster. LOUDER fasterLOUDERFASTERLOUDERFASTER

And then—

Silence.

The machine flatlined with a final, piercing tone that vanished as suddenly as it had arrived, replaced by a thick, suffocating stillness. It wasn’t just quiet. It was wrong. A hollow, ringing silence that seemed to swallow every sound in the room, until even the hum of the overhead lights faded into nothing.

Nothing.

Aziraphale stood frozen in place, the breath in his lungs arrested mid-inhale, his eyes locked wide with disbelief. His heart had forgotten how to beat. His thoughts fractured. He felt like a wax figure of himself. Sculpted in the likeness of a man, but empty, still...wrong. The warmth had fled from his limbs, leaving him brittle and cold, and somewhere deep inside, something cracked.

His universe had stopped turning.

Time no longer marched forward; it hovered, suspended, holding him hostage in the terrible stillness between heartbeats. The world spun away from him in quiet horror, colours bleaching from his vision, the edges of everything blurring like the room itself was falling apart.

And then—

Beep.

The softest sound he had ever heard.

Beep.

It came again, louder this time. A green pulse lit up the screen like a light across a moonlit harbour.

Beep. Beep.

Aziraphale gasped, his lungs kicking back into motion like they’d just remembered how.

Beepbeepbeepbeep—

The sound filled the room in a joyful, erratic stutter. The line danced again.

He stumbled forward, knees nearly buckling with the force of it, and reached for Crowley’s hand like it was the only real thing left in the world.

He was still here. He was still fighting.

And Aziraphale let himself breathe.

---
The first thing Crowley saw when he opened his eyes was blue.

A familiar blue. Not the piercing azure of a midday sky, nor the pastel wash of morning, but a soft, celestial hue. It reminded him of the sky above Eden after the first dawn. He’d crept into the garden as it formed from barren sands: curious, rebellious, wide-eyed.

The first of the plants had fascinated him. Not because their beauty, but for their defiance. Alive where there had been nothing. Growing from dust and daring to thrive. They were his favourite things in the Garden. Or they would be. Time was a bit confusing in those days. He had climbed to the top of what would be called a tree to gaze out at all of the marvelous things appearing. In the sky, he could see one of his true favourite creations. A star. Big and bold and beautiful. She sat there overhead in the blue. If he closed his eyes he could almost feel like he was in the Heavens again.

This blue, the blue he now saw, felt like that morning: beautiful, overwhelming, and somehow terrible. Because this blue belonged to something he loved. And something had gone wrong. Something that he would never have the same way again.
"Angel?" his voice cracked with disuse. "Wha—"

The rest was cut off by a sudden armful of angel and a noseful of white-blonde hair. Aziraphale wrapped himself around Crowley like a lifeline thrown into a storm. Crowley’s body protested weakly, but he didn’t care.

He blinked. Not entirely sure where he was, but also not entirely sure it mattered. What did matter was the trembling weight in his lap and the uneven sobs dampening the thin hospital gown he wore.

He raised a hesitant hand, awkwardly patting the back of Aziraphale’s head. They didn’t usually do this sort of thing sober. Perhaps he was drunk? That would explain some things.

His other hand felt gritty. He glanced down.

Soil. His fingers were caked in it. Earth was scattered across the bed, stark against the sheets. It seemed familiar, if dirt could be called familiar, though that might have been his imagination. Or the remnants of whatever dream he’d been yanked from. He made a mental note to ask someone later.

Still, the crying took precedence.

“What’s going on, love?” he said gently, trying for levity. “Can’t be that bad, can it? Did you accidentally sell a book? I’ll hunt down the buyer, no trouble at all.”

Aziraphale let out a strangled laugh-sob and pulled back, blotchy and pink-eyed. His gaze searched Crowley’s face as if he were verifying he was real, breathing, present. And then, with no fanfare at all, Aziraphale kissed him.

Crowley stilled.

Ohh....

Well this was rather lovely.

The kiss was soft, earnest, and a little salty from tears. It was far wetter than he’d imagined, and she had imagined. Far better than the last time too, which had been...

...Oh.

They pulled back.

“Why are you here?” he asked, not with suspicion, but a weary, painful confusion. The kind you get when your heart still remembers being broken.

Aziraphale froze. Then he straightened up, brushing at his waistcoat, a nervous habit he'd had since the 1800's.

“Oh, well... it’s a rather funny story actu—” He caught himself. “No. No, it’s not funny. I’m so sorry, Crowley. I love you so much, and I thought I was making a decision that would keep us safe. I didn’t understand that you wouldn’t feel that way. I thought I was fixing the things that hurt you, but instead I just hurt you all over again.”

He wrung his hands, voice shaking now.

“I know you don’t need Heaven. Heaven certainly doesn’t deserve you. I wanted so badly to believe we could change things from the inside, but what good is that if it means losing you? I am sorry. Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I didn’t realise... and that doesn’t excuse anything. I just need you to—”

“You love me?” Crowley interrupted.

Aziraphale looked startled.

“Yes,” he said, and in that moment, the soft-spoken, dithering angel vanished. What remained was a soldier of Heaven, fierce and immovable in his truth. “Yes, I do. I love you.”

Crowley blinked.

“And you admit you were wrong?”

“Yes.”

“So... you’ll do the dance?”

Aziraphale looked momentarily confused. Then his expression softened, and he glanced at the narrow space beside the hospital bed, as if calculating.

He shifted to stand, but Crowley caught him by the lapels and pulled him close again.

“You idiot,” he murmured, before kissing him a second time.

This one was different. This was a promise. This was all the things they’d never said in 6,000 years. This was an apology, a confession, a declaration. Aziraphale melted into it, one hand fisting the scratchy gown and the other cradling Crowley’s jaw.

When they pulled apart, Crowley kept his eyes closed for a moment longer.

“I thought I lost you,” Aziraphale whispered.

“You almost did,” Crowley said honestly.

A beat passed.

“I was angry. I’m still angry. But I never stopped loving you. I just needed you to see me. To hear me. Not as a problem to fix. Not as a mission. Just... me.”

Aziraphale bowed his head.

“I see you now. All of you. Not just the angel who fell, but the being who chose love and curiosity and compassion over blind obedience. I see you, and I choose you.”

Crowley looked like he might cry. Instead, he laughed. A broken little sound.

“God, we’re soppy,” he muttered. Aziraphale smiled slightly, but still looked slightly hesitant. As if waiting for the other shoe to drop.

"Do you..." He seemed to brace himself "do you think you could, in time I mean, maybe one day-"

"Angel," Crowley interrupted Aziraphale before he began to spiral again "Do you think I care for you so little that betraying me would make a difference?"

Aziraphale’s bottom lip began to tremble and he buried his face back into Crowley's shoulder. Despite the crying, it was a rather pleasant feeling mused the Demon.

“We’re going to be okay,” Crowley said, reaching out to pat his head again.

Aziraphale turned his face slightly to look into the Demon's eyes.

“Yes,” he said. “I think we might be."

Outside the window, a bird started singing from a nearby tree.

Chapter Text

House had left Aziraphale at Crowley's bedside with a heavy heart.

The treatment wasn't working. He’d known that in the first few minutes, no matter how he’d pretended otherwise. There simply wasn’t enough of the demon left to anchor the vessel, to support his own recovery. The vital signs were erratic, the metaphysical scans worse, and Crowley’s essence flickered like a candle in a collapsing lung. Still, House had carried on with the performance. It was a role he knew by heart.

He'd done it before.

He thought of a young boy, barely seventeen. His face had been gaunt, eyes glassy, lying in the churned mud of a field in northern France. The boy's arm had been blown off, most of his chest was gone, and by the time Raphael had reached him, there was nothing left to save. But he’d crouched there anyway, pulling the lad into his lap, stroking his face and whispering comforts. Told him he’d be home by morning. Told him it was barely a scratch. Told him he’d seen worse. Maybe the boy believed him. Maybe he didn’t. Raphael wasn't even sure when he died. Only that he kept talking long after the light had gone from his eyes.

Sometimes, the kindest thing a healer could do was lie.

That same feeling was sitting heavy on his chest now, as he left Aziraphale beside Crowley, hands shaking with the weight of what couldn’t be fixed.

He didn’t remember walking down the hallway. His legs moved on autopilot, powered by sheer momentum. Everything felt disconnected, like the world was happening slightly to the left of him. It was dark outside. Had it been morning when all this started? He wasn’t sure anymore.

The lights in the office glowed dimly through the frosted glass. He pushed the door open without knocking.

"Wilson?"

The man turned in his chair, brow furrowed with familiar irritation. "What have I told you about sneaking up on m—"

He was cut off as House stepped forward and wrapped his arms around him. Tight. So tight it knocked the breath out of him.

"House?" Wilson’s voice shot up in alarm, hands patting at his back as though checking for blood, for some sign of what had gone wrong, because something had. House never hugged people. Not like this. Not without a punchline.

But House’s shoulders were shaking. Trembling.

"House?... Greg?"

House didn’t respond. He just pressed in closer, like he could hide in Wilson’s shirt, as if the shape of his body could stop the collapse of something vast and invisible inside him.

They sank down together, Wilson sliding off his chair to the floor, letting House curl into him without protest. His friend’s weight was heavy, and there was something childlike and terrifying about the way House held on. Wilson looked helplessly toward the open door, half-expecting someone to walk past and explain what the hell was going on.

No one came.

Time passed in silence, until finally Wilson spoke, voice low.

"Are you… okay?"

"...No." House’s voice was ragged.

Wilson nodded. Of course not. Of course he wasn’t.

"I think my brother is going to die."

Wilson froze.

"Your… Crowley?"

House nodded again, face buried in Wilson’s chest. His voice was thick, wet with tears soaking through the cotton of Wilson’s white coat.

"He’s your brother?"

"Sort of," House murmured. "It’s hard to… I don’t..." He trailed off, hands gripping at Wilson’s arms like a man who didn’t know how to let go.

Wilson processed it as best he could. Then promptly decided it didn’t matter. Not now. Not this.

"Okay, love," he said quietly. "Okay." And he held House closer, like he had the strength to hold all of this together.

But House didn’t want comfort. Not really.

"It's not. It's not okay." He was on his feet in a heartbeat, eyes burning.

"It's not fair. And I'm going to deal with it."

"Wait—" Wilson stumbled up, reaching out, but House was already halfway to the door.

"You can't stop me now, Wilson," House called over his shoulder. "I have revenge to reap."

He paused. Turned back.

"…Dinner later?"

"What?"

"You. Me. Dinner. Maybe sex afterwards. Then breakfast."

Wilson blinked. "What?"

"Breakfast, Wilson. We’re going to have breakfast together. Because you're going to stay at my apartment tonight. Or tomorrow. I don’t know what bloody time it is anymore."

"...Okay."

House gave a sharp nod, then was gone.

___

He didn’t stop moving until he was out of the hospital, into the chill of the night, where the darkness pressed in around him like the edge of something ancient. His fists clenched at his sides.

He had always tried to be the healer. That had been his purpose, long before he’d put on the sarcasm and cynicism like a second skin, back when he still had wings.

But time and time again, the world had shown him what it did to hope.

He’d tried to stop the burning of Rome, and watched it fall anyway.

He’d stood outside plague houses in the 14th century, powerless to stop the screaming.

He’d wandered battlefields in Crimea, Flanders, Korea, and found the same red-soaked earth, the same broken bones, the same useless prayers.

And now this.

Crowley. Dying. And it wasn’t just personal. It was symbolic. It was the last thread of something that had kept Raphael tethered. The last proof that maybe, just maybe, even broken things could keep going.

And it was Metatron who’d done this.

It always came back to him. That smug, righteous bastard. Moving pieces like a celestial chessboard, sending others to do his dirty work while pretending his hands were clean. He’d tried to have Crowley assassinated in a hospital. A hospital, of all places. Metatron had crossed a line.

If House couldn’t save Crowley as a doctor… then maybe it was time to be what the Hosts had once begged Raphael to become.

A soldier.

He hadn’t picked up that mantle in a long time. Hadn’t needed to. But he remembered the weight of a flaming sword in his hand. Remembered what it felt like to make angels afraid. And if Metatron wanted a war?

Well.

He was about to get one.

House’s eyes narrowed as he walked, each step gathering purpose. His posture straightened, the limp he’d carried since 1936 fading like smoke on the wind. He swung his cane up to rest across his shoulder. Flames licked down its length. A slow burn at first, then roaring to life. The old wood blackened and reshaped, twisting into gleaming steel. The air shimmered with heat and memory. The cane was gone.

In its place a sword. An angelic blade for an angelic foe.

“Doctor, soldier, bastard, brother,” he whispered. “Fine. I’ll be all of them.”

He turned on his heel, coat flaring behind him.

Metatron was somewhere out there.

And House was going to find him.

Chapter Text

It was dark outside.

Thick, black, rolling clouds churned in the sky. Droplets of rain fell like widow's tears and churned the ground to mud.

Always mud.

A lone figure lit up the darkness, walking away from the muted glow of the sanctuary it had left and heading towards the park opposite. No soul saw it pass, though there were people busying about with their lives. No eyes fell upon the vision as it walked into the twisted shadows cast by the trees.  Perhaps someone would have stopped it.

Perhaps this could have all been prevented if someone had just looked up.

The figure marched on.

Raphael the Archangel, the soldier of God. Raphael the Trumpeter, the announcer of the Day of Judgement. Raphael the patron of travellers, of the sick, of marriage, of doctors. Raphael, who walked through wars with an open palm offered to all, whose hand was now wrapped around steel.

Raphael the Protecter from Nightmares.

His sword burned in his grip, flames licking down the blade and up to his elbow. It should have burnt, but angel's do not fear pain. Angels do not have bodies, only vessels. Angels are weapons to serve at the will of God.

Raphael was not here to serve God.

He raised his right hand to his mouth. As he did, metal twisted in the air, shaping itself into a battered brass bugle. It was the form it had taken ever since his years in the British army, a relic of duty he had tried to forget. The instrument had followed him across continents and centuries, no matter how many times he had tried to leave it behind. He had never wanted to use it. He had hidden it, buried it, denied its call. But now, at the end of all things, it had returned to him. Its shape had changed, just as he had, but its purpose remained the same.

To announce Judgement.

Only this time, the Judgement was not for the earth. It was for Heaven.

Raphael brought the horn to his lips, and for a moment his breath caught. Not from hesitation, but from memory. Just a heartbeat ago, those same lips had pressed against Wilson’s skin, warm and human and alive. Now they met only cold metal.

A final breath in.

A final moment of grief.

Then he blew.

And as the note rang out, low and terrible across the field, Raphael knew it marked the end of his time on earth. He had made his choice.

And in the depths of his grace, something inside him mourned.

"Metatron!" It screamed into the black. If anyone had been listening it would not have been English in that call. It was not one language but somehow all and none of them.

The shadows twisted and writhed away from the sickly white light that expanded in the field opposite the flames. It was a harsh, white light. Painful in its purity. It sought to reveal all that was dark and imperfect. Lighting up the space at the cost of destroying it.

"Who are you?" echoed back the voice of the Metatron. "Who are you that summons me here?"

"Don't you recognise me?" Taunted the flame bird. "You have invaded my sanctuary several times this past week and you do not recognise me?"

Metatron squinted into the field, as if it's vision could be affected by the rain now pouring down upon them. "The doctor?" He said, incredulously.

"Not anymore" responded the creature opposite him. It raised the sword in it's grip higher.

"I am your Judgment."

The Metatron seemed perplexed, but not yet fearful. "I am the Voice of God" he declared. "There is no being who may cast Judgement upon me who does not first cast Judgement on the Divine."

"Oh I do" retorted the figure.

This made the Metatron blink incredulously. "You dare-"

"Oh I dare. I dare to challenge the so-called mouthpiece of Heaven. I dare challenge the word of a sycophantic bureaucrat who sends boys to war on his behalf. I dare challenge the authority of an absentee God who in Their infinite and omniscient wisdom cast you in the role of Messenger. YOU! Who cannot even speak to the people you dare to think yourself above. You are dirt, Metatron. You are Mud. And I am here to return you from whence you came."

The Metatron’s eyes widened and he took a small step back before righting himself.

"You have not the authority, whatever you are! You cannot beat the combined forces of Heaven-"

"I don't need to," said the fire in front of him. "I just need to beat you."

Quicker than a viper, it struck. Metatron barely managed to raise his blade in front of himself before the creature attacked. Wild blows rained down on him as fast as the water that now drenched them both.

Metatron, for all his blustering, had not raised a sword in many eons. He preferred to have others do his work. It was clear from the start the fight was unevenly matched.

He tried to call out, to summon the angelic hoards to his defence, but the wind howled louder than his cries.

Soon he was on his back, covered in mud and soot. His sword had been flung far from him in a burning arch and buried itself in a nearby hedge. The smell of burning wood itched his nose as he lay panting on the ground.

The monster, for what else could it be that could slay an angel such as the Metatron, swaggered over to where he lay prone. Almost absently Metatron noticed a slight limp and wondered which of his attacks had swung true.

It didn't matter now.

"Please" he whispered.

The figure did not stop its approach.

"Please" he called louder, more desperate. "Please I don't want to die, please!"

The creature raised it's sword and instinctively Metatron raised his arms to cover his face and squeezed his eyes tight shut.

Waiting.

Waiting.

Wait.

His lungs still filled with pointless air. His skin still felt the cold ground. The rain had stopped.

Opening his eyes, Metatron found himself alone in a field at daybreak. The sun was starting its assent into the sky. The clouds were dispersing, faint pinks and golds creeping along the edges of the horizon.

The battle had ended.

The only signs it had ever taken place were the deep gouges in the ground, the flattened grass, and the lone hedge still burning where his blade had landed.

Chapter Text

Raphael opened his eyes slowly, almost lazily, as though waking from a dream he wasn’t quite ready to leave. There was a sensation of warmth. Not heat, not the bracing fire of righteous wrath, but the kind of warmth that lingered in your bones after a soft blanket and a long nap in the sun. Comfort, bone-deep and heavy, like being held in the arms of something older than time.

His head rested against something soft, pillowy but vast, like the memory of a meadow or the belly of a beast that meant no harm. Above hi- no, around him, came a voice. It was gentle, amused, tinged with fond exasperation and wrapped in something that could only be described as eternity.

“What am I going to do with you, eh?”

Raphael did not startle. He was sure he should, but fear had been peeled from him. What remained was a core self, stripped of mortal anxiety. The question curved gently around his ears, settling there like birdsong in spring. The voice was both masculine and feminine, old and impossibly young. It rang with creation and cradle-songs, commandments and lullabies.

He blinked slowly, craning his head slightly toward the source even though he knew, instinctively, it did not dwell in any one direction. “Running around with flaming swords, picking fights with your brother. This isn’t like you, Raphael.”

“You would know,” he murmured, weary. The name tasted both bitter and nostalgic on his tongue. “You built me.”

There was a fond chuckle that pressed against the inside of his chest. “Did I?”

He frowned. “Didn’t you?”

“Do you know why I made you a healer?” she asked, gently.

His mind filled the silence with the bitterness that still clung to him. “Because after you built your army, you realised it would be cheaper to patch up soldiers than make new ones?”

He was startled by a sudden flick to the ear. Not painful, but surprising. The kind of gesture a mother might make to a child being too clever by half.

“Do you know why I made you a healer, Raphael?” she asked again.

He wanted to argue. He wanted to tell her he hadn’t had a choice, that his whole purpose had been predetermined. That he had rebelled against Heaven only to land, again, in the arms of his supposed design. That even his stubbornness had been scripted.

But instead, the truth found its way past the walls of old anger. “…No,” he whispered.

“I didn’t,” she said simply.

Raphael sat up, startled. “What?”

“I didn’t make you a healer. You did. You fashioned that identity with your own hands. Lit your soul with that fire. I don’t hand out Purpose, my sweet one. I never have. If I gave it to you, it would be no different than shackles. You found your Purpose. You found it when you stayed behind, when you chose to heal not because you had to, but because you wanted to.”

He blinked, and for the first time in a long while, he felt something tremble within him. It wasn’t grief or rage. It was the kind of realisation that knocks the wind out of a soul.

“I chose… this?”

“You did.” Her voice softened even more, taking on the echo of every comforting murmur that ever soothed a child’s nightmare. “That’s why you stayed. That’s why you were happy, even when you didn’t understand it.”

He shook his head slowly, emotions too tangled to name. “But it still hurts. It still… it hurts, to care this much. To try to do right and watch it not be enough. Crowley might die. Aziraphale’s breaking. Metatron is twisting everything into something cruel. And all I could do was swing a sword.”

“You wanted it to be easier.”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to be told what to do.”

He laughed bitterly, laying back again against the softness. “Not at first. But now? Yes. I wanted a map. I wanted an answer key. I wanted it to make sense.”

She let the silence stretch for a moment before speaking again. “Do you know why I gave humans free will?”

He looked at her, or rather, he felt her in the space beside him. A towering, intimate presence that simultaneously cradled and eclipsed him.

“Humans… you said they were ready for choice. That they needed it.”

“They did. And so did you. But the difference is, they were born in darkness and had to learn to recognise light. You were born in radiance. You had to lose it to see it. You had to walk far enough from Me that you could choose to return.”

He shuddered, something breaking open in his chest. “Why make us go through the pain?”

“Because without pain,” she whispered, “without darkness, my sweet child… you cease to see the stars.”

Around them, the endless void shifted, curling into starscapes and nebulae. Galaxies spun like silk ribbons, tangled in a child’s joyful hands. Light flared and danced, and somewhere in the distance, music was being born. Raphael was reminded of what creation had once sounded like: not an order, but a song.

“You’ve grown, Raphael,” she said, fondly. "But you will always be my baby."

“Then why has no one recognised me?”

“Because you’re no longer quite an angel,” she said. “You’re not human, either. You’re something else. Something new. You chose so many times that you changed the shape of your being. You were never just a sword or a trumpet. You were never just my soldier or healer. You became what you loved.”

He blinked at her, stunned.

She continued, voice wrapped in mischief and love. “You spent all that time pretending your rebellion wasn’t one. Insisting you weren’t defying me. But I didn’t want obedience, Raphael. I never did. I wanted understanding. And you gave me that. You gave the world that.”

He swallowed hard. “Then what now?”

“That’s not for me to answer.”

“But you’re—”

“I am. But this part isn’t mine. I made you, yes. But you’ve grown into someone I don’t fully know anymore. And that’s wonderful. You must find out who that is on your own.”

He exhaled shakily. “I’m afraid.”

“Good.” She leaned closer, or maybe was closer. “Fear means you care. And caring… that’s what shapes the soul.”

He curled in on himself for a moment, trying to ground himself. “I just want to go back. I want to be a doctor again. I want to help.”

She kissed his brow. Not physically, but his soul bore the warmth of it anyway. “You never stopped being one.”

“I chose it?” he asked one last time, needing to hear it again.

“You did,” she said gently. “And you’ll choose again. Over and over. That’s what life is. And love. And purpose. Not a single answer carved in stone, but a path you keep walking, no matter how many times you stumble.”

Something shifted in him, old wounds settling into new shapes. There was grief, yes. But it didn’t feel like the end anymore.

As she faded from his senses, he heard her whisper, “You’ll be brilliant, my dear.”

And then—

The warmth remained, but the rest of it peeled away like morning mist. He was falling gently back toward a familiar rhythm, the smell of antiseptic, the low hum of hospital lights.

His name echoed through the veil like a prayer.

“House?” came Wilson’s voice, frantic and confused. “Greg? Are you—are you back?”

He smiled, eyes still closed.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I am."

Chapter Text

Foreman was triumphant.
He had done it. Solved the damn thing. Finally.

Despite House’s vagueness, Chase mumbling some cryptic nonsense about going to church and vanishing for hours, and Cameron being far more interested in dissecting their boss's emotional stability than the actual diagnostics, Eric Foreman—M.D., neurologist, and professional bearer of common sense—had cracked the case.

The patient had been bizarre from the outset. Unusual vitals. Wild swings in his bloodwork. Unresponsive to light in some ways, and hypersensitive in others. Slit pupils, for Christ’s sake. But underneath all that weirdness, Foreman had done what no one else seemed to be doing: he'd treated him like a patient. Not a riddle. Not a drama. Not House’s personal science experiment. Just a man in a hospital bed with a medical issue.

The solution? Incredibly rare, barely documented, and not even listed in the hospital's diagnostic database without heavy cross-referencing.

Congenital Iridic Dysautonomia with Associated Photonic Rejection Syndrome. C.I.D.A.P.R.S.

There were maybe four documented cases in the last fifty years. All of them in obscure journals or specialist texts that had to be manually pulled from the sub-basement of the hospital archives since the internet hadn’t heard of it. Typical. It was a neuro-ocular disorder, rooted in a malformed bundle of nerves behind the eye, which also affected neurological light interpretation and various autonomic functions. It explained the slit pupils. The inconsistent test results. The patient’s aversion to bright lights. The mood swings. Even the odd skin temperature fluctuations that no one else seemed to be paying attention to.

All perfectly explainable. All treatable with a long-term programme of nerve stabilisers, tinted lenses, and a very specific light-exposure therapy used for rare photosensitive epilepsies. If he could document it, it might even lead to proper recognition in Western literature. This was going to be his paper. His footnote in medical history.

He just had to get to the patient before House did.

Knowing House, he’d figured it out two days ago but had been too busy wandering off into increasingly implausible side quests to act on it. First, he'd vanished for several hours, and when Foreman had tried to ask about the patient’s treatment plan, House had stared at him, said “I have to make a house call,” and then bloody left the hospital. He’d heard someone say he went to London. London. As if that made any sense. Then Chase had wandered past muttering something about holy water and stained glass, and then he had disappeared.

Cameron had helpfully suggested that maybe Crowley’s “condition” wasn’t physical at all but “spiritual.” Foreman had walked out of that conversation before she started recommending energy healing.

In short, it had all been left to him.

Foreman had spent the last thirty-six hours neck-deep in dusty literature, shovelling takeout into his mouth with one hand while highlighting passages with the other. He hadn’t slept. He hadn’t even gone home. The nurses in ICU were starting to look at him like he was a slightly overcommitted intern with something to prove.

And maybe he was.

But someone had to take this seriously.

Everyone else had gone off chasing ghosts. Foreman had been treating a patient.

Now, with the pieces in place, he was heading to Crowley’s room at last. Just one final swab. A cheek scrape for nerve tissue confirmation, and he could begin assembling the treatment plan. Assuming House hadn’t already swooped in to steal the glory.

He turned the corner sharply and - shit. Foreman promptly skidded to a halt.

There they were. House and Wilson. Standing in the middle of the hallway like a pair of underwritten drama characters, the air around them thick with something unspoken. Wilson looked like he’d just been told someone close to him had come back from the dead. House looked... completely un-House-like. Dishevelled, distracted, and possibly singed.

Normally Foreman would eavesdrop hoping for something he could trade with the nurses in favour of first pick of patients during clinic hours.

Now was not the time.

Foreman considered turning back and waiting a few minutes. Let them have their weird little moment. But then he saw his opportunity...they weren’t moving....If he could just sneak past...

“Foreman!”

Damn it.

He froze, mid-step. House sounded off. Raspy. Almost hoarse. And that jacket definitely had a burnt edge.

“Where do you think you’re going?” House asked, looking like he’d walked through a thunderstorm and then gotten into a fight with the lightning.

“I was just going to check on our patient,” Foreman said as casually as he could.

"He’s in a coma," House said flatly. "But apart from that, he’s fine."

"He’s in a coma?" Foreman repeated. Damn it. That complicated things. As much as he wanted House as far away as possible from his discovery, he would not compromise patient care.

"I’ve come up with a theory which would explain his symptoms, and if I'm right we would be able to reverse most of the disease progression within a week.”

House raised an eyebrow. “Please, do tell.”

“Congenital Iridic Dysautonomia with Associated Photonic Rejection Syndrome,” Foreman said, savouring every syllable. “Explains the pupil presentation, erratic nervous system reactions, aversion to light, and the wild test variation. It would even explain him falling into a coma-like state whilst in the hospital under constant florescent lighting. It’s incredibly rare, but it fits the symptoms to a tee. I’ve found four case studies. Ever. All in fringe European publications. I want to run a confirmatory swab for genetic testing before treatment.”

House blinked slowly. He looked... different. Like he hadn’t heard a word of the diagnosis. But there was something else in his eyes. He didn’t interrupt.

“That’s your theory?” he said after a pause.

“It fits,” said Foreman, puffing his chest slightly. “Better than most of the wild guesses I’ve heard floating around. If we treat the nervous response to light, stabilise his retinas and nerve relay—”

“Wrong,” House said, though not with his usual smug satisfaction. Just quiet finality. “But not entirely idiotic.”

Huh?

“Then let me test it,” Foreman pressed. “Let me take the samples. Worst-case, I am wrong and nothing happens.”

House looked at him, like he was trying to decide if it was worth explaining. Then: “You can ask his next of kin. But if he says no, leave Crowley alone.”

That tone. It was... gentle. Foreman had never heard House speak like that. He glanced at Wilson, who just looked just as confused as he was. What the hell was going on? House was being...encouraging? Also when did Crowley get a next of kin?

Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, Foreman headed towards the patient’s room.

Together, the three of them walked down the hall toward Crowley’s room. Foreman clenched the printouts of his research in one hand. He was ready to fight for this if he had to. Ready to win. Crowley needed care, and Foreman needed the recognition of solving something the Great Doctor House could not.

They opened the door.

Foreman blinked.

Crowley was awake.

Not just awake. Laughing. Perched upright on a fortress of pillows, clad in a soft cream robe that definitely wasn’t hospital-issued, he was playing Go Fish with a soft-featured blond man who looked like he belonged in a vintage bakery advert.

“...what the hell,” Foreman whispered.

Crowley’s golden eyes flashed briefly toward him, amused and bright. He looked... healthy. Vibrant. There was no trace of the coma House had mentioned. No sign of the system breakdowns Foreman had spent days agonising over.

He turned to House, expecting a triumphant sneer, some kind of cruel punchline.

Instead, House looked like the ground had just steadied under his feet for the first time in a century.

He stood straighter. The tension in his jaw had vanished. His eyes looked strange. Full of something Foreman didn’t have the vocabulary for. They were locked on Crowley as if convinced he would disappear between blinks.

It was like watching someone wake up from grief. Or rediscover meaning.

He looked alive.

And for once, Foreman said nothing. He simply stepped back, folded his report under one arm, and watched.

He still didn’t know what had happened. He wasn’t sure he wanted to. But somehow, in the midst of a case he hadn’t been allowed to solve, he’d witnessed something rarer than any disease.

House was smiling.

Chapter Text

After shooing a grumbling Foreman out and waving off Wilson with a promise to explain everything over dinner, House turned and stared at the two beings who had somehow turned his entire hospital, and maybe his entire worldview, inside out.

Crowley was sitting up in bed, sunglasses firmly back in place, though the rest of him looked decidedly less composed. Aziraphale sat beside him on the mattress, close enough their shoulders touched. A deck of Go Fish cards lay between them like a peace offering from a less complicated time.

House blinked.

“What... the fuck.”

Aziraphale brightened immediately. “It worked! The treatment worked!”

Crowley raised a brow. “Miraculous, right?”

House strode over and snatched the chart off the bed rail. “Miraculous is the bloody word for it.” He flipped through vitals, scans, charts. “You were dying. Flatline-bound. Black smoke from every orifice and a metaphysical system collapsing like a soufflé in a thunderstorm.”

“Well, I was kissed back to life,” Crowley offered.

House looked up. “You what.”

Aziraphale flushed. “I... might have... kissed him.”

“Kissed him,” House repeated flatly. “Days of extensive medical investigation, and you kissed him better?”

Crowley leaned back on his elbows. “Worked, didn’t it?”

House’s eye twitched. “I almost murdered the Metatron and got in a fight with God, and all you had to do was confess to your situationship?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Wait—you what?”

“You got into a fight with the Metatron?” Crowley echoed, sitting up straighter.

“You spoke to God?” Aziraphale’s voice had gone oddly high-pitched.

“Yeah, had a lovely parental-overlord to soldier-child chat.”

The two on the bed took a moment to process what had just been said.

“You’re…an angel?” ventured Aziraphale finally.

“Well what did you think I was, human?” House asked in a sarcastic tone.

Silence.

“Oh come on, are you seriously telling me that you saw me drawing sigils in Enochian and went ‘yup, that’s a human right there. They have a magical tablet to scan metaphysical readings, common equipment in any mid-sized hospital’?”

“You knew about the supernatural, obviously, but I just assumed—”

“That I was a human?” House barked a laugh.

Crowley raised both hands. “To be fair, I was asleep through a lot of this.”

House rubbed his face. “Right. Sit down. Or stay sitting. Shut up either way.”

He folded himself into the plastic visitor chair with a groan, rested his cane against his knee, and looked at them like a man about to deliver either a confession or a diagnosis.

“My name,” he said quietly, “is Raphael.”

The silence that followed was nearly religious.

Crowley stiffened, sunglasses tilting slightly down his nose. Aziraphale stopped breathing entirely.

“As in—?” Aziraphale asked.

“Yes.”

“As in, the Archangel Raphael?”

“Yes.”
Crowley stared at him. “You’re joking.”

“I wish I were.”

Aziraphale whispered, “You’re the Healer.”

“Was. Am. Depends on the decade.”

“But you’ve been... here,” Crowley said, waving vaguely at the room, the world, “playing doctor?”

“Not playing,” House said sharply. “Working. Fighting plagues. Pulling children out of rubble. Stopping infections before they started. I left Heaven because it stopped helping people and started well... I’ve been here since the Crusades, give or take. I stayed on as a battlefield medic. Eventually learned to fake records, identities. Became House about twenty years ago. Didn't stop. I... needed something to do. Somewhere to go. Somewhere I could make a difference."”

Aziraphale looked stricken. “But—Raphael. You’re... still you. Still angelic.” He could see it now he was looking. The way the light always seemed to be just behind the Doctor’s head. The way his eyes seemed to always be looking slightly through you.

“I didn’t Fall. I didn’t rebel. I just... walked out. Quietly. I’ve spent the last few millennia putting people back together while Heaven let them rot.” House replied quietly.

Crowley stood abruptly, dislodging Aziraphale and scattering cards to the floor. He walked to the window with sharp, agitated steps ignoring Aziraphale’s hand trying to steady him.

“And you got to leave,” he said. “You got to walk away. No consequences? I asked one question and was set on fire.”

House didn’t respond.

“I wanted to do the right thing,” Crowley continued, voice rising. “I didn’t want to burn! But I did. And you—” he turned, jabbing a finger at House, “you left, kept your wings, kept your post, and She spoke to you.”

“She didn’t for a long time,” House said. “Not until I was ready to hear Her.”

Crowley’s voice dropped to something raw. “She’s never spoken to me.”

“You ever needed Her to?” House asked.

Crowley blinked.

House looked at him steadily. “You fell. You survived. You helped stop the Apocalypse. You found someone worth fighting for. You chose.”

Crowley looked toward Aziraphale.

Aziraphale gave him a small, sad smile. “You never needed Her, my dear.”

“No,” Crowley said softly. “I didn’t. But I wanted Her.”

Raphael hesitated for a moment but then walked over to where the demon stood and wrapped his arms around them. Holding her together. Saying ‘I know, I understand, I accept’ in a language that didn’t need to be heard to be understood.

The two held each other. Not angel and demon. Not two sides. Finally, equal.

The weight of the moment settled gently over them, not heavy, but inevitable. Like the knowledge that the tide was turning, and you were no longer drowning.

“So you’re not Doctor Gregory House,” Crowley said at last, pulling away to re-join Aziraphale.

“I am,” Raphael said. “But I am also Raphael, and still the one who saved your sorry ass. And for the record—” he pointed a finger between them, “—if I’d known a kiss would fix things, I would’ve told you both to pucker up days ago.”

He sat back with a sigh. “What is this—Grimm’s goddamned fairy tales?”

Aziraphale chuckled, wiping at his eyes. Crowley rolled hers.

The lightness returned for a breath, an inhale after a long plunge.

Eventually, Crowley asked, “So what now? You head back to Heaven?”

Raphael shook his head. “No. I talked to Her. She said I wasn’t quite an angel anymore. Not in the way I was. Said I’d become something new. I’m not sure what that means. But I do know She’s not giving us answers anymore.”

“She’s waiting,” Aziraphale said.

“For us to choose,” Raphael nodded. “What we want to be. Where we want to go.”

There was a long pause. Crowley stared down at his hands. Aziraphale shifted closer to him, their shoulders brushing again.

“You think it was on purpose?” Crowley asked quietly. “You being here at this this hospital? Me being brought here?”

“I don’t believe in coincidence,” Raphael said.

The three of them sat quietly for a time.

Crowley broke the silence. “So what now?”

Raphael smiled faintly. “You get to go home.”

Chapter Text

There weren’t many nights anymore when James Wilson found himself blackout drunk. Unlike his university days, most of his evenings were now spent in quiet, sober routine. But tonight? Tonight was not one of those nights.

After House had run off after announcing, with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer, that their mysterious patient was actually his brother. Wilson had been left standing in the corridor, blinking like someone had just told him that he had just been made the President of Mars.

He’d considered chasing after House. That thought lasted about as long as it took him to realise that wherever his friend had gone, he probably needed space before talking. House had never been one for deep emotional conversations. Next, he considered checking on the patient, Crowley. But then Wilson remembered that Mr Fell was likely there. Mr Fell, who had looked so uncomfortable even saying that he and Crowley were friends. Whatever Crowley and Fell actually were to each other, Wilson wasn’t going to intrude on what could be their last moments together by making them pretend to be something they weren’t for his sake.

That was the part that had been stuck in his chest since seeing Mr Fell in the garden.

Crowley, despite being all angles and sarcasm, had struck Wilson as someone oddly charming. Eccentric, sure. But not cruel. Not dangerous. Just... tired. And Mr Fell? Mr Fell looked like the sort of man who apologised to furniture when he bumped into it. He was also so clearly in love with Crowley that he was bursting from it.
And yet they were pretending.

Wilson had seen it earlier. The carefully controlled facial expressions, as well as the careful avoidance of words like "partner" or "love." It had struck him as so profoundly sad. He found himself thinking: Is this what House and I are? Two old fools orbiting each other for decades, too afraid to admit what everyone else can see?

Would that be them, in thirty years? One of them dying in a hospital bed, the other standing just outside the door because they weren’t "allowed" to mourn properly? Still hiding?

Would he be like Mr Fell, left behind to pretend that his heart didn’t beat in time to House’s?

The thought gutted him.

Instead of facing it, Wilson walked. He wandered the halls of Princeton-Plainsboro like a ghost haunting his own hospital. Around the second aimless turn, he heard muffled banging from a nearby supply closet.

“Hello?” he called, rattling the handle. Locked. Of course.

A glint caught his eye. Something small and metallic was lying beneath the skirting board. A key. Because why not? At this point, reality had stopped following the usual rules.

He bent down, plucked it up, and unlocked the door.

Dr Robert Chase tumbled out in an undignified heap, accompanied by two mops, an avalanche of cleaning cloths, and a single bright pink feather duster.

Wilson stumbled back, blinking.

“What the hell were you doing in there?”

Chase blinked up at him, squinting against the harsh fluorescent lights as though they physically hurt. His pupils were slightly dilated, his expression slack with confusion. He looked like someone waking up from a dream they couldn’t quite recall.

“Wilson?” he asked, frowning. “What...where...huh?”

Wilson crouched beside him, concern blooming in his chest. “Why were you in the closet, Chase?” he asked. Then, wincing at his own phrasing, added quickly, “I mean literally.”

“I... I’m not quite sure,” Chase replied slowly. He touched the back of his head as though half-expecting to find a dent. “Last thing I remember, I was going to the chapel. Thought maybe it’d help clear my head. And then—nothing. Just... static.”

Wilson opened his mouth to press further, but paused. There, nestled in Chase’s hair, were feathers—not the synthetic hot-pink ones from the duster currently poking out beneath his hip, but real ones. Tawny brown, fine-veined, like something from a hawk or owl. They shimmered faintly in the light before dulling back to matte.

“Hold still,” Wilson said, plucking one gently free. “What the hell...?”

Chase tilted his head, watching the feather fall between Wilson’s fingers as if it had come from someone else entirely. He didn’t seem particularly alarmed. If anything, he looked… peaceful.

“Should I be worried?” he asked eventually, voice low and uncertain.

“That depends,” Wilson muttered, checking his pupil's response and coordination. Neurologically, Chase was fine. Speech normal. Reflexes sharp. Orientation... shaky, at best.

“We should probably take you to get checked out properly. Maybe you hit your head or inhaled something in there. You really don’t know how you got into a supply closet?”

Chase shook his head slowly. “Nothing. Not even blurry impressions. Just… silence.” He seemed to consider that for a moment, brows furrowing. “But it’s not frightening, which is weird. It should be, right? But it’s not.”

Wilson studied him more closely. There was a subtle shift in Chase’s demeanour. Less tension in his shoulders, less of the defensive sharpness that normally bristled beneath his polished exterior. He looked... lighter. Not just physically, but emotionally.

“How do you feel?” Wilson asked gently.

“I feel... calm. Like something finally shut off in my head. The background noise is gone. It’s like waking up and realising you’d been dreaming about a fire alarm the whole night and now it’s just…quiet.”

Wilson nodded slowly. He didn’t know what had happened to Chase, but he’d had his fill of mysteries for today. Whatever this was, it could wait until tomorrow.

He patted Chase’s shoulder and helped him stand.

“Come on. Let’s get you checked out properly.”

Wilson led Chase to the nurses’ station and passed him off with a quick handover. Hopefully, whatever strange thing was going on with Chase could keep until tomorrow when it could be someone else's problem. He'd had enough unusual happenings for the week.

Wilson turned and walked away, looking back only as he rounded the corner. Chase was still standing at the desk, talking to a nurse, fingers curled around a plastic cup of water, and gazing at the corridor as though seeing it for the first time. There was no fear in his eyes, just quiet wonder.

Wilson barely made it a few steps before running into House again.

Literally.

It was like one minute the hallway was empty the next House was just...there.

Wilson barely had time to process it before Foreman showed up going on about solving everything.

The next twenty minutes went by in such a blur that Wilson completely forgot about seeing Chase at all.

---

Wilson finally made it to House’s apartment on autopilot. Let himself in with the key House had given him years ago. Raided the fridge for the snacks he had stocked there last week. Settled on the sofa with a six-pack of beer and his roiling thoughts. He didn’t cry. Not yet. He would save that until after. After what, he wasn’t sure.

Three beers went by.

What if this was it?

What if House had gone to fight some metaphorical windmill and never came back? What if Crowley took another turn for the worse? What if his brother died, and House decided he needed to get away from it all?

Wilson had lived a life full of unfinished conversations. Half-written endings. What if House became just another sentence he never got to finish?

Six beers.

The jingle of keys in the lock pulled him back to himself.

House entered. Cane tapping, shoulders drawn, but with a strange glint in his eyes. Wilson had seen many expressions on his best friend’s face. Arrogance. Boredom. Pain. But this…this was new.

Joy.

God, he was beautiful.

"They’re going to be okay," House said, a grin tugging at his lips.

"Crowley?" Wilson clarified. At House’s nod, he broke into a smile. "That’s wonderful, Greg. I’m really...really happy for you."

House came to join him on the sofa, dropping his jacket on the floor in a pile after grabbing his own beer from the fridge. They sat in companionable silence for a time, but Wilson could tell that it wouldn’t last. House was watching him carefully, as if studying a bug under a microscope.

It was hard to think straight with all the beer in his system and House looking at him with his eyes like that. "How did you fix it?" he asked in a desperate attempt to distract him, and because, of course, House fixed it, he fixed everything. House could fix death. House could fix Wilso- no. Not that.

"Let's just say it wasn't all me this time", said House. That caused James to frown. Now he wasn't taking credit for everything? Something really was wrong. Had Foreman solved it afterall? That seemed unlikely.

Suddenly, House spoke in a faux casual tone, "If I knew something…something that would change everything for you…Would you want to know?"

Wilson took a big gulp of his beer, frowning at the bottle when it emptied faster than he'd have liked it to.

"It would have to be pretty big to do that", Wilson said and then laughed ", that's what she said".

"Would you want to know?" House pressed, more seriously this time.

Wilson took a long gulp of beer and thought for a moment or two. The silence probably stretched longer than it felt like to him, with the beer slowing down his faculties. Despite the haze in his mind, he realised this was important to his friend, so he tried his best to answer honestly.

"Well...do you need me to know?" He asked.

House frowned, confused by the answer.

James tried again, "If it's that big a secret that it's gonna change my whole world, and you already know it, it must be pretty heavy. Do you need to share the weight with me?"

House looked stunned. James tried to commit the image to memory, along with the earlier smile he had seen.

"...yes," answered House finally, "but I'm scared if I tell you, you won't treat me the same."

"Well, are you still the same person as you are right now?" James asked, trying to focus on his friend's two heads.

House's mouth thinned into a line, and he looked away.

Wilson, in that moment, made up his mind.

"Greg, I love you. I will always love you. Tell me." He said.

House froze for a second, looking at his best friend in disbelief. Then reached out carefully and touched the side of his face. Wilson thought he was going to kiss him, and was quite pleased at the thought. Instead, a burning sensation ran through his body. It was like his entire bloodstream was suddenly purified. Like he'd never even looked at a beer before, let alone finished a six-pack by himself tonight.

Newly sober Wilson looked at House with wide eyes. House looked steadily back, but Wilson could see the fear there.

"I need you to say that again," asked House, his tone an octave away from begging. His hand lingered on James’ face.

"Greg, I love you. I will always love you. Tell me."

House took a breath. Then another.

And then he changed.

Nothing dramatic. No wings or flames. But his presence shifted. It expanded. He seemed... larger, brighter. Like looking directly at a solar eclipse. Like standing in a cathedral and realising it was built not by men, but by time itself.

"My name isn't Ho- my name isn't only House.," he said. There was a timbre there that wasn’t before. An echo as if voices were layered over each other.

"When I was created I was called to be the Archangel Raphael. The Healer. I have walked this Earth for centuries, worked through plagues, wars, famine. My Purpose is....my purpose is to help, where I can. To heal the sick, to comfort the lost, and to serve the most vulnerable. I am Raphael, and I am also Doctor Gregory House. I am not one or the other I am both. I am human and I am divine. I will live my entire life as Gregory House and when he dies someone else will be born in his place and I shall continue. I am both mortal and immortal. I am something centuries old and entirely new."

Wilson stared. "...Oh."

House seemed to shrink slightly, the shadows on the wall rippling. Whilst the being in front of him was colossal, it seemed a word from Wilson could rend him in two. A mere man could get drunk on that sort of power.

Wilson knew he had to choose his next words carefully, for all their sakes. "Well... it does explain the bed situation."

The entity known as House blinked. "The what?"

"The nest. You basically built a nest. Now it makes sense. You’re part bird."

There was a beat.

Then House started laughing.

Not his usual dry cackle, but something real. Something from deep inside the shadows on the walls. The sound bounced around the room, infectious, wild.

Wilson started laughing too.

When it faded, they sat in silence. Comfortable. Close.

Wilson thought about all the years. The longing. The silences. The phone calls at midnight. The coffee shared in hospital corridors. The way House knew when it was a bad day just from the look on Wilson’s face. The way he forgave him when no one else did. The way he always came back.

And House, whatever he was, had loved him all along. The whole time. No matter how much James denied it or looked away as if he couldn't see it. As if the whole world couldn't see it.

So what if he wasn’t human? So what if he was some sort of divine entity? They were House and Wilson. They always would be. In all lifetimes. No matter what names they were using or lives they were living. The two of them, together, were a statement of fact in an uncertain and uncaring universe. House and Wilson would find each other.

"So what now?" Wilson asked, face still aching from smiling.

House looked at him, something soft behind his eyes. "Now we live. However long that is."

"I’m mortal, you know."

"I’ve noticed."

Wilson smiled. "You’re still an arsehole."

"Well, you know, immortality doesn’t fix everything," smiled House.

"Mortality doesn't break everything either", retorted Wilson.

They leaned in. House kissed him gently, like he was scared this whole thing was an elaborate illusion. Like he daredn't think it was real.

And Wilson kissed back, because he finally understood.

Outside, the city slept.

Inside, two souls collided.

And for the first time in a long time, everything made sense.