The prophecy five-thousand and four is what flutters into Aziraphale's hand at the end of the end times. It descends unto him quite bluntly, quite pointedly, and Aziraphale may be a fool but he is not one to ignore the words of the one true prophet.
5004. When alle is fayed and alle is done, ye
must choofe your faces wisely, for soon enouff
ye will be playing with fyre
The words are simple. They are the kind that you might find in a fortune cookie, if fortune cookies weren't so boring nowadays, and they're just abstract enough to give Aziraphale pause. Indeed, if Gabriel and Beelzebub didn't interrupt and vehemently blame him and Crowley for stopping Armageddon, and if Satan didn't pop in with bright, burning hellfire licking at his heels, Aziraphale might not have put it together at all.
"It all worked out for the best, though," he says softly, sitting on a bench at a bus stop beside Crowley. It's night, and for the first evening of the rest of their lives, it's quite peaceful. There is a box between them and Aziraphale wishes distantly that it wasn't there. Crowley feels too far away, somehow. Like he might slip away. "Just imagine how awful it might have been if we'd been at all competent."
"Point taken," Crowley concedes. "What's that?" He nods toward the prophecy, clutched lightly in Aziraphale's hand.
"It fell out of Agnes Nutter's book," Aziraphale says, handing over the scrap of paper, burnt 'round the edges. Crowley takes it with the hand not occupied with a bottle of something alcoholic.
"'For soon enough you will be playing with fire…'" Crowley reads, knitting his brows as he looks down at it. He turns the paper over in his hand before looking at Aziraphale. "So this is the final one of Agnes' prophecies?"
"As far as I know."
"And Adam? Human again?"
"As far as I can tell, yes." Aziraphale nods a little, as if to make it more true. They share a short moment of silence.
"Angel," Crowley prompts, and Aziraphale meets his eyes as he leans back against the bench. He takes a swig and offers the bottle. Aziraphale takes it. "What if the Almighty planned it like this, all along? From the very beginning?" Something in his voice here is very soft, very hesitant.
Aziraphale looks off into the middle distance for a moment. "Could have," he says, and he believes it. "I wouldn't put it past her." He raises the bottle to his lips and takes a drink. It's wine. Good wine.
The thought is as bitter as it is comforting. If God had planned for Armageddon to be avoided all along, then surely she meant for he and Crowley to thwart it together. But, in the same way, if God had planned for Armageddon to be avoided all along, she had surely meant for Heaven and Hell to end up detesting them both.
Heaven has never been as kind a place as Earth is. But Heaven is home, just as it was when Earth first formed, and for it to reject him is bittering as no human dish could be.
When the mailman leaves with his sword and the other artifacts of the horsemen, Aziraphale finds himself suddenly lost. He finds himself even more so when Crowley reminds him, gently, that his bookshop is in ashes.
And he finds himself suddenly, wretchedly found when Crowley looks at him, in that way only he can. When he says, "You can stay at my place, if you like," and Aziraphale squirms with the instinct to deny the offer. He knows before the words leave him that Heaven is not "his side" anymore, but it still takes Crowley's voice and his eyes, boring into Aziraphale's even through his glasses, to understand it.
"You don't have a side anymore," Crowley tells him, eyebrows creased. His voice is far more gentle, far more careful than any demon's has a right to be.
Then again, Aziraphale thinks, I suppose I'm not quite an angel if Heaven doesn't want me. And he's not quite a demon if Hell doesn't want him.
"Neither of us do," Crowley finishes, and it feels like truth. It feels like dripping, like pooling, like the home has suddenly leaked out of Heaven. Aziraphale realizes, quite suddenly, and with all the clarity of fact, that Heaven hasn't been home in a long time, not in the ways that matter. Looking at Crowley, taking in his hair and the lines on his face and the creases in his jacket, Aziraphale finds that home has been on Earth for eons. For millennia.
He realizes that home has been a kind and loving thing for just that long.
Aziraphale caught on that there would be some kind of retribution for him and Crowley the moment that Gabriel and Beelzebub agreed on something. When Satan rose with his torrents of fire, Agnes Nutter's prophecy truly came to life in Aziraphale's head—soon, his and Crowley's mortal faces would be wanted, and Aziraphale himself would brace the fires of hell as punishment.
As such, Aziraphale devised a daring plan: until it is no longer necessary, he and Crowley would swap appearances. They would, in essence, be choosing their faces—though if it wise, Aziraphale has no way of knowing yet.
They do not truly swap bodies. It is merely a mirage—a good one, certainly, but a mirage nonetheless. Despite this, Aziraphale finds himself feeling rather peculiar, not unlike how he'd felt when he and Madame Tracy had joint control of her body.
In six thousand years, not once had Aziraphale been discorporated. He always imagined that, should it happen, he'd simply pick up his new assigned form and move on. Looking in a stupidly grand mirror in Crowley's hallway, however, and seeing a different face looking back, makes Aziraphale realize that his human body had become him in a way he hadn't before been conscious of. It makes sense, suddenly, why his self-projection had mimicked his body after the portal had turned it to ash.
I think I understand now why humans are so concerned with identity and the body being intertwined, he thinks, running a hand down the skinny length of Crowley's arm. A very good mirage, this, that he can even feel the fleshy difference between them.
"Well, I guess I'll see you later then." Aziraphale turns from the mirror to face Crowley, who's just spoken. He's looking down, inspecting his (Aziraphale's) hand.
"Are you… kicking me out?"
"Uh, no. Kicking myself out, actually," Crowley says. Aziraphale creases his eyebrows in confusion. "This is your house for the time being, Crowley."
"I—oh. Right." Aziraphale clears his throat. "Yes, of course." Crowley goes back to looking at his hands, rubbing one thumb over one of his palms. It might be cute, if Crowley weren't wearing his skin.
Perhaps he is as unnerved with the change as Aziraphale is. It's certainly odd to see his own body moving independently of his will, as logically as he knows that it's Crowley standing before him.
"Keep my plants alive, would you?" Crowley asks as he heads for the door. Aziraphale nods, a slight smile gracing his face.
"Of course, dear."
The head offices find them when they go for a discreet meeting over ice cream in St. James' Park. It was inevitable, of course, but it is still truly alarming to watch Crowley, dressed in his clothes, be dragged away, gagged and bound at the wrists. Aziraphale cries out involuntarily, the "Stop! Stop them!" falling harsh and pleading from his lips. Perhaps, somewhere in him, he had hoped that Heaven and Hell would leave them be with the war averted. Perhaps, with no word from Heaven or Hell in almost twenty-four hours after the end of the end times, he had believed it.
His legs (Crowley's legs) carry him forward of their own accord. He flings the popsicle aside, his only thought being to keep Heaven's pristine, serrated hands away from Crowley, away from his only friend, and he curses the length of Crowley's legs as he almost trips over them. Funny that they feel so long, for a mirage. An Asian woman in a smock watches him as he dashes forward, and he sees but does not register soon enough the dastardly smirk that crosses her face as he passes.
Then Hastur clocks him on the head with a crowbar and says, "What's wrong, love?" to taunt him with menace, and he can only watch in swaying, distorted horror as Crowley is dragged further and further away. Further and further towards that white peak of nothing, the whole and hollow stomach that Heaven is.
Crowley told him that he hadn't ever really meant to fall, a long time ago, when they were both very drunk. He'd said, in a hushed, hoarse voice, that Heaven was just too… big. Too echoing, and too gaping, too wide. He hadn't been quite able to put it into words, then, and Aziraphale had hushed him. But.
But, he thinks he might understand what Crowley was getting at, then. Thinking of him, up in that great place, Aziraphale realizes just how sharp Heaven really is, and just how comforting Earth has been.
He wonders, distantly, which one Hell is more like.
Aziraphale hears Beelzebub's voice echo down the hall. "Bring in the traitor," she calls, to the mass muttering of the demons present. The atmosphere down here is thick enough to choke on. It's the far, far opposite of Tadfield. As much as Adam Young loves his town, loves his Hogback Wood, the population of Hell despises this place a thousand times more.
As he is led toward the trial room, Aziraphale notes that Hell echoes just as much as Heaven does. It's simply drowned out by the low, constant moans of agony and the occasional snap and spark of failing amenities.
The trial room (execution chamber?) is short, elevated at the back with stone stairs that seem more for decoration than any real function—though why Hell would design anything with decoration in mind is rather beyond Aziraphale. At the very front of the room stands a stained claw-foot bathtub, and above it, a plexiglass window through which countless numbers of spectators watch. The walls bear dripping and drooling water damage stains, and plenty of tiles are missing or damaged.
Aziraphale never imagined Hell would be a happy place. He'd always thought of it as burning, as flames licking at the heels of the damned. It isn't, though. Hell is damp. There's a chill to the air, or the lack of it, for the oxygen in this place ran out a long time ago. This place, this maze of tunnels and rooms and locked doors, is like the manifestation of nausea. Of rage, bubbling and burning just beneath the skin, ready to break or boil at any moment. The tension that snaps along the lines of the underground is high, is aching, and Aziraphale can just feel the itch. Hell itches, and it sways, and the hordes and masses of malevolence (not malevolence, not really. It's frustration, and desire, and weakness. Hell is the want to be recognized. The feeling of worthlessness. The people here, or most of them, wouldn't be evil if it wasn't the job description. They just need something that Heaven couldn't give them—wasn't willing to give them) are baying like wolves before the hunt.
Yes, Aziraphale thinks. Yes, that's it. This is anticipation that pools at my feet. These people wanted the war so desperately because they had something to prove. They had something they wanted Heaven, or perhaps the Almighty, to know.
It's rather tragic that it took a jaunt downwards for Aziraphale to really get it. He's known Crowley for six thousand years and he's never seen it before—but it makes sense. All the little things Crowley does for him—bailing him out of betrayal by the Nazis and saving his books in the meantime, ridding his coat of the stain from a paintball gun—these are things that an angel could never do. When Aziraphale had been cornered, a gun pointed to his head, he hadn't expected any rescue. He knew full well that no angel would look twice at his predicament. They would simply issue him a new body later and wipe their hands of the problem, and why should he expect any more? Aziraphale is… used to it. He is used to the impersonality of Heaven's affairs. And yet.
And yet, Hell's demons have a loyalty that Heaven has never had. They speak highly of malevolence and mistrust, but here he is, at a trial wherein Hastur blames Crowley viciously for the death of a fellow demon. Of a friend, whether he'll admit it or not. These people are snapping and sparking with emotion, with empathy, and they talk big about being cruel and callous but they are filled to the brim with potential. It's still a horrible place—this kind of loyalty is sizzling; is the kind that kills without question, is the kind that digs under the skin and infects. Hell is a product of loss that has festered: Heaven did not listen, and over six thousand years of crying into an empty room has made Hell's children cruel.
Whatever made the demons fall left them long ago, Aziraphale concludes. In the beginning, it must have been vibrant. Now, they're left with just the old, rotting remnants which give them the capacity to hate, and Hell has become a putrid, crowded echo of Heaven.
Aziraphale wonders, suddenly, if Crowley knows how much he appreciates all that he's done for him over the years. Because Aziraphale does appreciate them, truly, it is rather impossible for him not to when practically his only personality trait is reverence, but… what's been the point of it, if Crowley doesn't know?
Because Aziraphale isn't sure that he knows. He's not sure that, in six thousand years, he ever conveyed it quite genuinely enough. He's not sure that Crowley ever truly got the message, or thought merely that it was an angel's duty to give gratitude. Aziraphale is horribly, hollowly uncertain that Crowley ever knew how personally he meant each and every word.
"Hey guys," he says, to break away from his thoughts as he is stood before Beelzebub and Hastur and Dagon. "Nice place you got here." He tries to joke around like Crowley would, to sell the performance, but they shut up his babbling rather quickly.
When the creatures of Hell cry out, "Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!" Aziraphale feels a wave of dread and hatred roll over him more potent and revolting than he's ever felt. It feels, horrifically, like justice. Like vindication. Crowley's said before that they love him down here, but it's clear from this smog of emotion that none of them really care who he is in the wake of Armageddon's dissolution. Few of them probably even listened to his offenses. They just want someone to blame, someone to hang, for the crime of taking away what seemed like, to them, their one shot at recognition. Their one chance to explain in great, cutting detail what Heaven had robbed them of.
Aziraphale feels the grief crawl up his throat slow. This is what Crowley has to come home to. This is his eternity.
Aziraphale has realized by now that Earth has long been an escape for him. He imagines that it, too, was an escape for Crowley—an escape from the maddening wretchedness of this place.
Hell is much more like Heaven than Aziraphale ever dreamed it would be.
Crowley can't come back here. Not to this.
Seeing the archangel Michael step into the execution chamber (not trial room, unfortunately) is chilling in a way nothing else has ever been. A little over a day ago, Heaven and Hell were primed and ready to go to war with each other in the atmosphere of a boiling, erupting Earth. Now, Dagon professes cooperation. Hastur still has the gall to call Michael "wank-wings," but the fact that she doesn't smite him where he stands is a testament to the truth of the situation.
Aziraphale cannot know the fear of holy water that demons know. It is lucky, then, that Crowley hasn't shown real fear of it since he decided it would be his way out if things ever went wrong. Aziraphale doesn't feel very lucky, though. Rather, he feels horrified. The teasing of terror that leaks from behind the plexiglass, while muted as compared to the hatred that had followed their declarations of his guilt, is enough to make Aziraphale's stomach feel hollow. If water is enough to make these people shake and tremble, what can it do to a demon?
What was Crowley willing to do to himself?
He watches Michael pour more holy water into the bathtub than the pitcher contains—a small miracle of intimidation, to keep hold of the tentative power she possesses, even in the demons' stronghold. The tension that burns in the room is fit to give out, at this point. Behind the glass, the lesser demons snarl and howl, jerking away from the wall every time the water splashes erratically.
"That's holy water," he murmurs, still astonished.
"The holiest, yes." Michael's voice is flat. Aziraphale has never liked Michael much.
When Hastur dunks the small reptilian thing that called the trial to session into the water, Aziraphale is treated to a front-row view of demonic obliteration. The thing melts before his eyes, disintegrated to nothing and leaving the water clear as can be in its wake, and its screams ring in his ears long after it goes quiet.
Oh, Crowley, Aziraphale thinks, grief heavy in his throat. I think I can see why you'd rather die than spend eternity here.
When Aziraphale takes off Crowley's coat and shirt and pants and shoes (and is this really a mirage? If he can take off parts of it, is that an illusion or not?) and gets in the tub of water and doesn't melt into nothing, the entire atmosphere of Hell changes. The fear that had snaked between his boots and skirted wide around the bathtub is suddenly and viscerally tied to him. In the eyes of those present, he is the demon Crowley, and he is a monster.
Even Beelzebub is forced still and wavering with uncertainty, watching him play in the water. Aziraphale flicks some at the glass, a sudden desire for vindication coursing through him. He wants the demons on the other side to back off, to be afraid, to be terrified, and for a brief moment the holy water seems to sizzle around him. It cools just as quickly, and Aziraphale pointedly does not dwell on it.
"I don't suppose that anywhere in the nine circles of Hell there's such thing as a rubber duck?" he asks, and it comes out with more bite than he meant it. "No?"
"He's gone native," Beelzebub murmurs, astonished. The shock in her voice is like music to Aziraphale, and he should probably be worried about how happily he bears witness to her horror. "He isn't one of us anymore."
"So," Aziraphale begins, about ready to get on with it. "You're probably thinking: 'If he can do this, I wonder what else he can do?' And very, very soon, you're all going to get the chance to find out." Perhaps he says it with a bit more drama than is necessary, but that's very Crowley, isn't it?
Hastur is eager to call his bluff, but Beelzebub calls him off, and Aziraphale is thankful that she does. When Michael walks back in and sees him splashing about in the holy water, her "Oh, Lord," is like birdsong, and Aziraphale is too enthused to be worried about this little free-trial of cruelty.
"Michael! Dude," he crows, playing it up for his audience. "Do us a quick miracle, will you? I need a bath towel." Seeing her conjure one quite promptly is supremely satisfying. After taking it from her, he leans over the edge of the tub and addresses the presiding demons.
"I think," he says, "it would be better for everyone if I were to be left alone in the future. Don't you?" He nods to prompt them, making eye contact with Beelzebub. She nods back, hesitantly, and everyone else begins to nod along too, even Michael.
When they let him go—or, rather, when he makes his way out and they neglect to stop him—he walks a tad too fast to be considered casual. When he ascends the escalator back up to Earth's surface, it takes all he has to let it carry him as opposed to dashing up two stairs at a time. He cannot leave Hell fast enough.
Aziraphale only hopes Crowley has wormed his way out of this, too.
God, he hopes.