Chapter Text
one
we are the hollow men
(Crowley)
As far as dreamscapes go, location is rarely assigned due any methodically uncovered preference. For humans, it might be a reflection of someplace they have been, distorted or reshaped by impressions and fear. For human-shaped, occult — or ethereal, but Crowley didn’t tend to care about the intricacies of semantics — beings, perhaps there was indeed something more to it all.
A rooftop, really, that could not be coincidental. It was either his subconscious trying to tell him something, or Someone else indeed, still trying to tell him something. Unable to decide which option was worse, Crowley swayed on his heels and swallowed. Standing on the very edge, pointy shoe-tips half-immersed in the oddly tinted air, trying to familiarise the nerve-wrecking possibility of falling, once again he found himself intrinsically unable to. I know what would happen. I know how it would feel. He stared down, feeling morbid, into the vague golden haze that hardly even tried to resemble a city, I still can’t understand how it happened.
This, at least, was a fairly recurrent motif: the recognition of height and the moment of breathless anxiety — extended into a suffocating eternity as he would lose his balance, time after time, the vague feeling of sudden fear erupting in his stomach — and then descent, noiseless, deafening. An arch honed to perfection. He’d swim in the vertigo of impending collision, too stunned to rationalise it, never reaching the bottom of whatever lay below.
At least, not here — he supposed that was a treat reserved for reality.
‘Fear not.’ A tinny, eerie voice came drifting from behind: odd, because unfamiliar — and Crowley, though inappropriately accustomed to roaming the improbable dingy corners of his own sleep-stymied cognitive processes, never allocated much attention to strangers. ‘The end is nigh.’
Frowning at the oddity, he turned lightly on his heel, precariousness of his positioning momentarily forgotten. ‘I’m sorry?’
The phrase sounded vaguely like something Aziraphale could have said, at some point or another, across the however-many intersections they will have shared through their six millennia of existence.
Interestingly enough, the incandescent creature perched upon a solitary chimney of Crowley’s projected rooftop did look more or less like one would imagine a proper angel looking — winged, fairly brittle, radiating some sort of a numbing glow. Vaguely female-shaped.
Hence, all in all, it had impressively little in common with the only angel Crowley was used to seeing with any regularity.
‘The end is nigh,’ she repeated, studying Crowley with something in the way of baffled curiosity in her awful bright eyes. And that expression, he decided, was where all similarities began and ended: Aziraphale in a billowy robe on top of a chimney verged with being an oxymoron.
It almost made him smile. Meanwhile, the angel inclined her head to one side, ‘Why are you here?’
‘Yeah, only that’s my line,’ Crowley retorted, growing swiftly annoyed, and waved his hand in the air as though to discourage a particularly gluttonous duck. ‘And my dream. Shoo, angel. Get out of my head.’
There were some limits to the Arrangement, after all, and the limits corresponded strictly with the person of Aziraphale.
‘We wouldn’t expect it to be you,’ the angel informed him, mildly.
‘Well, tough,’ said Crowley, slightly unnerved. Shifty things, the other angels, vague and nondescript and those blasted piercing eyes didn’t help in the slightest. ‘Cause I’m afraid you don’t get to be picky, I don’t tend to keep any dependants up here.’
He gestured vaguely at his temple. The angel blinked and raised her eyes upwards, at the thick haze of burnished gold stretching above them. He was never sure why he had so much trouble reinventing the sky: it was hardly a literal manifestation of Heaven, after all.
She said, ‘We shall proceed nevertheless.’
Feeling increasingly more unstable, Crowley stuck his hands into the pockets of his coat. Even in the dream, even now, they were cold. That surely catalogued as an inbuilt flaw. Perhaps he was liable for an informed complaint.
‘Er, good for you?’ he muttered, narrowing his eyes as he glanced around. There was something disturbing happening to the dream: a disjointed decay. The air seemed to be fraying at the seams, the vision slowly bursting and beginning to melt away. Crowley tried to focus enough to resettle the balance, but to no avail: he felt like there was sand pouring through his fingers, dragging him down with it.
He said, ‘I can only presume you’re something like a … manifestation of my repressed doubts or whatever, so … welcome, it’s kind of high time we met face to face. What was it you were saying? The end is nigh? That’s a new one.’
She kept studying the canopy of trembling light, unmoving. ‘Interference is not a possibility.’
‘Okay,’ Crowley said, a notch irately. ‘Interference in what?’
She closed her eyes. ‘He does not understand.’
Crowley froze mid-question who doesn’t? — because all of the sudden there was a terrifying presence all around him, pushing down and inwards, rising with the sand, and all of the sudden, falling seemed like the easier way out.
…
It was a wretched sight, that much was certain: a torn-up landscape after violence, dead matter piled upon ruins, coagulating in an ever-trembling haze of thick dust or ash, no certainty in recognition, air churning like an agonised creature, writhing before death.
There were the trees, or what was left of them: ragged skeletons of grey dead wood with smears of dirty rain upon them, hazy among the fumes of yellow acid, pungent in the air. There was the crushing sound the fragile bones of smaller animals made under his feet as he moved forward, and there was the heavy ceiling of dead thick sky, weighing down upon him as he drew a breath.
And none of it mattered as Crowley sank to his knees among the muddied coagulation of all that had once been life; none stood the remotest chance against the fact of torn-up feathers of a dead angel in front of him.
Aziraphale’s face was not the face he’d worn for the ages they spent coinciding existences on Earth, nor was it anything that could be in any way described: frightening in its severity of true inhuman form; frightening even more in its stiff morbid stillness.
Crowley found himself unable to cross the bridge of touching.
‘What is this?’ he asked, hoarsely, finding his voice strangely disembodied, coming upon him from every direction except himself, sounding weak and frightened. ‘What is this?’
‘We shall prevail.’
The voice was ever-present, too, and cruel, much crueller than it had seemed in the honeyed light of his previous dream, much clearer. ‘Interference is not possible.’
Crowley raised his eyes from the stagnant crude representation of Aziraphale’s demise, only to have them blinded by the newly buzzing expanse of rot around him: particle by particle, the world was crumbling to living dust, filthy and final, crawling towards death.
He wanted to say something else, something defiant and questioning, but the ash stuck in his throat rendering him helpless, and what came out of his mouth was a blur of denial, ‘But he is one of yours, isn’t he? He is one of yours, so how can this be you — you prevailing? How can this be what comes if there’s no interference, how — how do I —’
The ground beneath him dissolved into dust before he finished speaking, a shout of protest caught in his silenced throat. He didn’t, couldn’t ask, How much time do I have?
(Anathema)
He looked different. Or perhaps he didn’t; she was never quite sure if what she remembered from that vivid chaos of events was hers or Adam’s hasty repainting: there were bits and pieces missing which Anathema would have catalogued and labelled to analyse. There were evasions, but more importantly, there were reversed priorities. Forgotten voices and gestures, unformed impressions. Downright mistakes.
The Crowley from her memories was a lean dark shape, swift and oddly graceful, shifty like a wild creature prepared for rapid flight, with hyper-focused yellow eyes. Wary, snarky, difficult to properly register.
There had been wonderful constancy, as well — which she did remember — both in him and the angel, with their respective niches. That sleekness and rapid movement, some easy pleasantness of appearance; Crowley did not look in any measure heavenly. A cunning thing, you’d say, deceitful. And that stand-offish air, that reluctance upon closeness, set so blatantly against the soft inoperancy radiated by Aziraphale, from his uncertainly waving hair, hesitant hands and kindly crinkles under the eyes, where the old-fashioned glasses were perched. In warm-coloured tweeds and wool, smelling of dust, and yet — and yet.
There it was, and yet Anathema had hardly ever met someone quite so effortlessly intimidating. Quiet, amiable detachment so thorough that it bordered with outright lack of concern, and which she couldn’t even properly explain; Aziraphale set his mind and clear eyes upon something and suddenly the twitchy feline devil seemed safer by half.
‘We don’t have much time,’ Crowley said presently, wincing as the wind whipped at the upturned collar of his coat.
He stood stiffly, narrow shoulders squared, hands pocketed, eyes fixed without movement somewhere ahead. There’s the glitch, Anathema thought dully, and how did I not see it earlier?
The man-shaped being standing beside her was at the same time stunningly more solid — observable — and peculiarly frailer than her recalled impression. He had a thin face, cheekbones jutting out and lips a small curve, one corner slightly upturned, as though tugging persistently for a smile: remaining in a perpetual argument for optimism with his stark bone structure.
But it was the eyes that truly clashed — snake’s eyes, a bright yellow, too bright under the dark eyelashes, too startling. There was some odd look in them: something in the way of desperation, a relentless, harrowing question.
He looked strange, that much was true, too human to be inhuman, too peculiar to be approachable. The stillness wasn’t beckoning on him, in the sense that he looked too convincing in it, like he’d earlier employed the anxious vivacity as a lesser evil to withstand something worse.
In a flash, Anathema understood Aziraphale’s hand on Crowley’s shoulder, back in that bulky car, all those years ago. She pictured it with a startling clarity: firm touch on a soot-smeared shirt. Steady; it wasn’t the angel who was shaking.
‘Why do you think it’s going to happen again?’ she asked, steeling herself for the answer as she cupped her takeaway coffee with both hands and took a careful sip.
Crowley’s lips pursed. For a moment, she thought he wouldn’t answer.
Then, finally, he said, his voice guarded, ‘I’ve been having dreams. And I know it’s — that it doesn’t sound like anything much but —’
Anathema shook her head before he could finish, an odd mixture of familiarity and sheepishness blooming in her stomach. ‘No, come on. Why wouldn’t it? Dreams are … I mean, dreams can be significant.’
Crowley tore his eyes away from the street for a moment to focus on her. Then he muttered, ‘I forget who I’m talking to.’
‘Well, don’t,’ she said, managing a feeble smile over her coffee. Crowley looked down, staring at the wet sand for a moment, quiet.
‘Thing is, I don’t really know why I asked you to come here,’ he muttered. ‘All I know is that I … I want someone to be aware of what’s going on. I want someone to fight back. I would — it should be done differently. A bigger scale, a proper riot like the last time. Stopping the Apocalypse la-di-da la-di-da. But I can’t do it this way, not this time. I can’t risk it.’
‘Risk what?’ she said, frowning. ‘Your … what, status? Since when do you even care about such things? I mean, no offence, but you don’t exactly strike me as the type to —’
‘Oh, it has nothing to do with me,’ Crowley replied swiftly, almost too easily, voice strained. ‘Trust me, I — you know me, I think, well enough to know I’d do something if I could. Even the stupidest thing, even the most idiotic goddamned plan you’ve ever bloody heard of, I’d be in if I could. But I can’t, not this time. I have … an obligation.’
‘Not the kind of obligation you can work your way around?’ Anathema guessed.
‘Yeah,’ Crowley said weakly, his eyes falling closed. ‘Not this kind at all.’
There was a moment’s silence. Then Anathema asked, ‘Why aren’t you wearing your glasses anymore? I’ve always thought it was, like, your thing. Trademark. That, and the burning car.’
He smiled, and even while it was a rather wan and weary smile, it still managed to change his face into something slightly softer. Anathema fought off the urge to mirror the expression.
‘I don’t know,’ he mused. ‘Guess I stopped seeing the point when —’ He trailed off. His expression turned stony and sober in a split of second.
‘Listen, I probably won’t be … available when it happens. I’ll most likely be … ah, elsewhere. So I just wanted you to know, there’s a place you can — I’ve bought this cottage, yeah? Nothing much, but it’s a decent hideout. And it’s somewhat sheltered, if you get my meaning, from … ngh, let’s just say I took some measures to make it … safe.’
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Anathema said incredulously, shaking her head. ‘What do you want me to do, hide? I don’t think that’s the best —’
‘I want you,’ Crowley said in a strangled voice, abruptly looking away, ‘to try and preserve whatever you can, whomever you can, for as long as it’s possible. That … boy, what was his name, that was with you. Maybe the children from Tadfield, if you could find them and … or someone else, really, just please, try to survive.’
Her voice softened. ‘It’s been ten years —’
‘I know, I know.’ He inhaled sharply. ‘I know it’s probably ridiculous, but I just can’t bear the thought nobody will think to say no this time.’
Anathema swallowed. Then she said, ‘I will.’
(Crowley)
But he did ask, relentlessly, this and many other questions, in the plenitude of echoes of the same projection that came to haunt him night by night, becoming ingrained so deeply in his subconscious that if felt like second thinking.
An always-present, always-nearing terrible awareness of the inevitable collapse.
‘We shall prevail,’ the angel whispered, the rustling sound of her voice almost inviting.
And at some point, he didn’t say, maybe yes, maybe not, who the fuck knows, it’s meant to be ineffable. He didn’t ask, how should that be any better than if you didn’t? Can’t you understand it’s better left as it is?
He said, ‘I know.’
‘ Will you accept it?’
It went on and on, again and again, cruel and relentless. The dream-not-dream, repeated night by night, relived unbearably each time. Recurring until he knew it by heart, each sound and twitch of air by her wings, each tug of the heart and empty, aching ribcage upon waking up to an awareness of passing time.
‘How could I?’ Crowley whispered, ‘Don’t ask that of me. You can’t ask that of —’
(Aziraphale)
Reality had a way of restoring itself inconspicuously to its natural state, heedless or oblivious of whatever interruption caused a momentary ripple on its smooth surface. Persisting states of denial — or, as he liked to put it, common sense and a healthy approach to unnecessary fussing — was something Aziraphale had always appreciated in humans. All in all, they hardly cared for change, especially of the drastic kind.
Much like humans, Aziraphale liked his reality’s shortcomings shuffled under the carpet, tucked warmly under the blanket of routine and pretence of unchanging. And he liked to think he managed to restore this blissful level of stagnation after the Apocalyptic jump-scare ten years prior well enough.
Well — mostly, at least.
One definite change, grand in significance, and not so much subtle as simply quiet in introduction — had definitely occurred, and was currently sitting, a notch decadently, in a chair across the minimalistic white table of the café, stirring his coffee angrily with an overturned spoon.
‘You’ve gone and ordered an espresso again,’ Aziraphale observed, reproachfully, if entirely without feeling. ‘You do that every time, and every time you’re shocked that it tastes the same. Face it, Crowley: you need your milk and that’s all there is to it.’
Crowley winced. ‘You sound like an old spinster berating a six-years-old nephew,’ he said peevishly.
‘I most certainly do not. I’ll leave it to you to find an alter ego in a six-years-old, though,’ Aziraphale replied scathingly, his gaze slinking down to the monthly rare book catalogue — just in time to barely register the tinny sound of the spoon hitting the side of Crowley’s cup, and the demon’s consequent, rapid flinch.
And suddenly, without fanfare — the way such things, epiphanies and enlightenments tend to occur, even to angels — it struck him; much more powerful than it had any right to be after all these years.
It being that for some flimsy and hardly definable time, Crowley himself had been progressively making his wobbly way towards the centre of Aziraphale’s universe, to finally settle there with a scoff, a wince, and an un-drunk cup of gone-cold black coffee the angel would have to finish off.
Feeling, all of the sudden, quite taken aback, Aziraphale paused over the scrutiny of his text.
Crowley’s words — something about the distasteful, undignified practices of south-side baristas, most probably — became muted and vague, just as the rest of their immediate reality. Some persistent, possibly important, discovery had begun tugging on the edges Aziraphale’s usually intentionally obtuse awareness, demanding attention.
The thought of their mysterious co-dependence certainly wasn’t unprecedented. To say that Crowley hadn’t been a substantial — not to say, intrinsic — part of Aziraphale’s projection of the universal order, and a frequent actor and co-participant in his existence’s linear progression would be not so much an understatement as an outright lie.
And, though Aziraphale certainly didn’t tend to devote too much time to such — unnecessary and unnerving — reflections on the nature of their Arrangement, the treacherous grounds it was founded upon and what could or should be read from the bizarre mutuality of their strikingly easy companionship … well, suffice to say that dismissing any of the former as irrelevant to the present state of matters would be pushing at the boundaries of denial, even for his fairly low standards.
Had it not been, after all, precisely for whatever it was that Crowley had turned out to be, and what their Arrangement had come to entail, neither of them would have been sitting at this table or having any conversation at all. There would have been, Aziraphale acknowledged hazily, considerably more Liszt involved, not to mention even less endurable sounds of music.
He frowned, looking absently at his own immaculate hands laid atop the coffee table, as though vaguely surprised by their physicality. Perhaps that was the point, then — adaptability and survival, weren’t they the main principles of habituation to a prolonged sustenance on Earth? Wasn’t that more or less exactly what the two of them had done?
But even such a theory in no way changed the fact that what actually pushed Aziraphale into his current confusion was neither the logical progression of events nor the reasonable justification for the way things were.
No, it was something else entirely: something to do with Crowley’s umpteenth black coffee, disappointing time after time and somehow still relentless. What Crowley was, indeed.
It wasn’t even that Aziraphale had come to know the whats and hows of Crowley’s puzzling mind well enough to anticipate the probing of the coffee subject, the tasting, and the inevitable rapid dismay and decline of interest, followed by near-sulking and refusal to continue the conversation towards the end of the breakfast. Until, that is, Aziraphale would take pity on the miserable beverage and order an additional scone, perhaps airily suggesting a walk or an innocuous activity of similar kind, one that would push them both to dawdle well into lunchtime with their shared slice of day, and then maybe even well into the afternoon.
No, it was the overturned spoon — its finer tip submerged in black liquid — and the fact that Aziraphale knew the reason for this curious practice well enough not to think of questioning it, that gave him pause.
‘I hate the bloody noise it makes,’ Crowley had once explained, years and years ago, upon Aziraphale’s raised eyebrows. ‘The less surface to possibly come into contact, the less chance of collision’s how I see it.’
‘My dear,’ Aziraphale had replied, voice clipped, ‘you are ridiculous.’
The question is, he presently thought, flustered as he watched Crowley cut through his scone with an unnervingly precise, familiar movement of the knife, at what point did I stop thinking that?
And the answer was, obviously, that he didn’t — and Crowley remained ridiculous, with all his peculiar phobias and even more peculiar fixations, his milk and teaspoons, the shiny car, a half-assed gardening hobby and the most utterly nitpicking approach to respecting dress codes Aziraphale had ever encountered. Mood swings, a heavy overload of sarcasm and a well concealed, semi-perpetual existential crisis that would put Frederic Chopin to shame (and oh, Aziraphale would know.)
He was ridiculous, top to toe, from the tips of coiffed-up dark hair, through the tip of a long nose, to the tips of snakeskin shoes. Ridiculous, and at times utterly incomprehensible at that. So the proper question would go differently:
At what point, Aziraphale asked himself, feeling, all of the sudden, entirely uprooted, did you manage to become so much that none of this mattered anymore?
As though in direct response, came Crowley’s sullen remark, ‘My flat’s being audited. Gonna have to move.’
Combined with, and given sudden gravity, by the nature of Aziraphale’s recent thoughts, the news sent him into a rather ridiculous state of alarm.
‘Good grief,’ he said, worriedly, setting his magazine down with a startling flop. ‘How soon?’
Crowley looked up from his plate, visibly surprised by Aziraphale’s sudden attention.
‘Dunno,’ he said vaguely. ‘Soon.’
‘Well, where are you going to live?’ Aziraphale demanded, registering somewhere deep in his mind that he sounded only just short of frantic. ‘I won’t have you sleeping around on people’s ovens, you know.’
‘That’s not,’ Crowley said slowly, with an incredulous and drawn-out sigh, ‘something I would ever even consider, where do you get those ideas about me from, Aziraphale?’
How do you expect me not to have ideas about you, Aziraphale thought, feeling hazy. By this point, you yourself feel like my own idea of something that I myself do not fully understand. The worst and best idea I’ve ever had: you. Besides, you did so in the eighteenth century so don’t even bother pretending it’s below your practices.
‘There’s always room upstairs, at the bookshop,’ was what he said instead, rather mindlessly.
Crowley tensed visibly. For a lingering second, not a single muscle of his body twitched. Then he sniffed, adjusting the position of his coffee cup on the tiny plate. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ he said, his voice clipped.
Somehow, quite ridiculously, Aziraphale felt stung.
‘I just meant,’ he said, unable to keep the edge of defensiveness from creeping out into his voice, ‘Why rent out something temporary and expensive, when I barely use the quarters as it is? It’s sheer economics, dear boy.’
‘Yeah, no, I’ll be fine,’ Crowley said dismissively, smearing the butter on his scone with one decisive movement and leaving Aziraphale baffled. ‘Don’t bother.’
Acting harsh and cryptic was in no way a novelty for Crowley: Aziraphale had come to witness countless instances of such behaviour and work through them with barely a thought to spare. What made this case different was a thorough blend of his newfound fragile realisation that he might have undermined the significance Crowley held for him — and the awareness of having no idea how to actually work through the layers of reluctance or understand the reasons for it.
Crowley didn’t look very well: his skin was paler than usually and he seemed to have lost a bit of weight — something that Aziraphale didn’t hitherto consider possible. He acted differently, too: much more like he’d tended to act before the Apocalypse, before the Arrangement even, distant and biting where he normally would be flippant and enthusiastic.
What caused this change? How come I missed it?
And, Aziraphale thought, watching Crowley dissect his scone in mournful silence, and feeling a touch of inexplicable cold on his neck, a slither of winter in the bright September autumn, was this withdrawal the only reason I realised how much I would miss it if you withdrew too far?
…
Then a different kind of change came unbidden, change too profound to ignore or accept without a word, in the shape of a creamy envelope with instructions.
…
In no time, they found themselves sitting on a bench in St. James. It was a wondrously mundane morning: pleasantly yellowing trees, messy background noises exhaled by the city, a slither of lazy Autumn-scented wind — and the sun, just a bit too bright to be having this sort of conversation.
Aziraphale linked his fingers together on top of his book, feeling slightly fidgety.
‘As I said,’ he said cautiously, ‘I have given it much thought, and eventually … Well — eventually, I said … I said yes. Well, I say naturally, meaning that the whole thing wasn’t exactly a question, you understand, more of a … of a chance to go willingly. As opposed to a later chance to … go unwillingly, if you will.’
There was a tiny pause: some bird shrieked in close distance. A gust of the sneaky wind fluttered up with a hiss. Aziraphale adjusted his scarf and trench coat conscientiously, trying not to glance sideways in a manner exceedingly obvious.
‘Oh,’ said his companion, meanwhile. His voice was politely listless, ‘Well, who would’ve thought.’
And he said nothing more.
At times, old times, Aziraphale had thought that Crowley must have been shaped from particles different from the rest of the world: a focused concentration of some dark and trembling matter, an accidental bloom of anxiety. Not anything vile, no. Nothing inherently vile could have this much of a ruffled bird’s impression to itself.
Like right then: looking ahead, with his expression unfathomable — especially from Aziraphale’s hardly strategic angle. I could have planned this better, the angel thought fleetingly: the intended soothing familiarity of the setting made a tremendously poor substitute for a good judge of Crowley’s reaction. Aziraphale narrowed his eyes a little: the sun was very bright. Slightly too bright, everything became almost too sharp to directly look at.
The wind made the coiffed tips of Crowley’s hair twitch over his forehead. He kept silent.
Crowley — that is, Aziraphale’s private living contradiction, his little hushed-up heresy. Wearing an expensive-looking dark scarf tied neatly around his neck, and sleek sunglasses. Sitting with his arms crossed, gazing directly ahead. Looking somewhat as if he were the lead actor of some inconspicuously shot feature film, unnervingly picturesque.
Something in Aziraphale’s stomach tightened. ‘You’re not going to say anything?’ he muttered.
Met with silence, he hesitated. ‘After all these years,’ he said, uncertainly. ‘I thought you might —’
‘I’m not sure I’m following, Aziraphale,’ Crowley said abruptly, voice curt and foreign. ‘Are you expecting me to try and hold you back?’
Oh, cold — that’s how it felt, unexpected and surprisingly hurtful. The sting almost knocked the breath out of Aziraphale; he barely managed to compose himself before the revelation from a breakfast table — days? hours? weeks ago? — came crushing to remind him of the intricacies of misguided attachment.
‘I was hoping,’ he said, only slightly breathless, ‘for something rather more than indifference.’
There was a silence. After a moment, Aziraphale added, his voice deflating into a dejected murmur, ‘Perhaps I’ve been foolish.’
Crowley didn’t move. ‘Perhaps we both have.’
The way he spoke was rigid, even a little biting — obviously. But there it was again, Aziraphale couldn’t help noticing: that anxious energy, swarming back in a dizzying tide. Crowley’s left leg twitched, he moved marginally away on the bench, inhaled.
Not for the first time in his life, Aziraphale wished he could see his eyes.
‘This is it, then,’ he picked up, straining his voice into something unbearably light, ringing with ingenuity as he aimed feebly for humour, ‘the end of the world as we know it.’
Crowley sighed.
And before Aziraphale could fully process it, he was getting up, stretching tall on his spindly legs, shoulders tugged forward, wearing a slight wince.
‘Well, good luck in any case,’ he said, voice dry and rustling, not looking at Aziraphale at all. He seemed to consider adding something else but ultimately thought against it; settling for merely extending his right hand, lips pursed.
Stunned, slightly sick to the stomach and caught up in the most dizzying kind of disbelief directed at his immediate reality, Aziraphale found himself standing and gravely shaking Crowley’s outstretched gloved hand.
‘Goodbye,’ he managed, voice catching in his throat before he would add something unforgivable.
Crowley nodded curtly, ‘Yeah.’
Change? Or maybe there had been no change, only wishful thinking?
There was a brief moment of infinity in which Aziraphale wished — prayed — for some sign, some enlightenment, some change of heart, anything at all; in which he very nearly hauled Crowley closer: to embrace him, punch him in the face, or simply keep in reach — he wasn’t sure.
And then Crowley’s hand slipped out of his grip and the demon stalked away, cutting out in the suddenly blinding sunlight, thin and sparse like a wisp of smoke.
For a moment, Aziraphale felt trapped in a dead world.
(Crowley)
And in the dream, the angel who sometimes wore the face of Adam, sometimes of Hastur, and sometimes of Aziraphale himself, at the same time precious and unbearable, asked, ‘What will be your price?’