Chapter Text
On the way to the flat in the morning, Aziraphale considered what he should explain to Crawly. He had covered roughly 14 years, and even so Crawly hadn’t seemed to believe him about much of it. Perhaps he should have started at the beginning and gone in chronological order.
Oh, but Crawly may have thought they were each aligned with their original sides if he had done that.
When Aziraphale opened the door, Crawly was in his snake form, curled under the overhead light, snoring in the way that no other snake was capable of. Aziraphale tried not to make noise but the point was moot. Crawly sensed him and woke with a yawn. He changed his form to the winged humanoid again.
“You were gone a long time,” he complained.
“I suppose I was, wasn't I?” Aziraphale said apologetically. “But I brought you breakfast.”
Crawly looked puzzled, but Aziraphale paid him no mind. Before they got back down to business, Azirphale thought they deserved to share a nice breakfast. He pulled out a couple of plates and placed a crepe in front of Crawly and himself. Aziraphale took a few bites of his own before he was stopped in his tracks.
Crawly, with strawberry cream filling leaking onto his hands, grabbed the crepe with his bare fist, unhinged his jaw, and swallowed the crepe whole. His eyes widened with delight and hummed happily as he did so.
In all the millenia Azirphale had known him, Crowley had never actually let him watch him as he ate like that. The only times Crowley would let him see him unhinge his jaw like a snake were deep in intimate moments, when he was too lost in the moment to care. Aziraphale couldn’t help but stop and stare for a moment. Crawly looked at him quizzically before his expression shifted to something he was sure was meant to be sultry. Crawly flicked his forked tongue in the air, tasting the air a moment before grinning mischievously.
“Angel.” His voice was low and slow. “Is that lusssst I’m sensing?”
Aziraphle blushed profusely. “I think we should table this particular discussion for another day.”
Crawly raised his eyebrows and smiled smugly. “We’re considering this the second day of your week right?” Crowley just looked at him. “I’ll explain on day 5 okay? There’s just an awful lot of context.”
“Hmm, hm. Context, right. Sure, sure.” He considered it a moment. “That won’t do, tell me tomorrow. I have agreed to hide for an entire week. You should at least give me that.”
Aziraphale bristled, but considered it. It did occur to him that from Crawly’s perspective, a week must seem like a much more substantial chunk of time. Literally all of his earthly experience right now was from a single week in the garden. And whether he knew it or not, Crawly had the upper hand in this case. Aziraphale would do anything to keep him from leaving the flat on his own.
“Split the difference, perhaps? I’ll tell you all about it on day 4.”
Aziraphale held out his hand and Crawly shook it.
“Pleasure to bargain with you, Angel.” A sly grin played on his lips. He looked more relaxed in his skin and almost smug. Aziraphale wished he could read Crawly’s mind. It made him nervous to be in the dark about what Crawly was thinking. “But what kind of an angel makes a deal with a demon?”
Aziraphale considered telling him about the Arrangement, but thought it unwise.
“An unusual one to be sure,” Aziraphale replied instead, picking up his meal where he had left off. “You know I’m the only angel that even eats. ”
Aziraphale finished his meal and let Crawly bring out his notebook of questions he’d thought of.
Crawly pulled at the lapel of his overcoat. “What is this robe you have?” he asked. “Feels a bit like feathers. Did you make them from your feathers? You had wings in the garden. Big ol’ beautiful buggers. Is this what you did with them?”
Aziraphale chuckled and unfurled his wings properly. Crawly’s eyes lit up. Perhaps he looked a bit more familiar like this.
“No, no my dear, I still have my wings. These days on Earth, you and I try to keep a low profile. Blend in amongst the humans, as it were. The lot aren’t comfortable with nudity most of the time anymore. They cover themselves with clothes now. These clothes are the ones I prefer, and you have some, too. I believe there are still some around here, actually.”
Aziraphale made his way to the closet. Most of the clothes had made their way over to the flat they share above the bookshop since they got together, but sure enough, two unforgivingly tight jeans and a black silky button up remained.
Crawly looked them over and wrinkled his nose. “I think I’ll stay in my robes for now.”
Aziraphale shrugged, but his heart sank a little. He longed to see his Crowley again. The one who wears tight pants and thin ties and sunglasses around everyone else so that when he took them off with Aziraphale, it felt special. The whole garden of Eden look was lovely and all, maybe he’d appreciate it more if Crowley had just done himself up this way one day for the fun of it. But this wasn’t fun, and he longed to get his memories back to him so he could discuss the ordeal with him and laugh about it, how silly it all was.
“How do I, erm...?”
Crawly jostled his wings and Aziraphale understood. He showed Crawly how to put away his wings.
“Next thing on the list then? What’s this room all about then?” It was the bathroom and Azirphale explained. Over the next hour he explained bathrooms and showers, kitchens and cooking, feilding a couple awkward questions about the statue of an angel and demon “fighting in the nude,” as Crawly had put it, and explained the sounds of planes passing overhead.
When they were done, Aziraphale decided to start explaining things from the beginning, starting at their first meeting, but only had time to explain up until the Crucifixion before it was about time for him to leave. He had to meet back up with Anathema and Adam to look into a way he could fix all this. And now he very much hoped he could do so in 48 hours, before he had to explain the whole lust thing.
When Aziraphale told him he had to go, Crawly looked disappointed.
“One more question before you go?”
“I’m happy to oblige. What is it?”
“Am I...?” Crawly stalled, making a confused face, as if trying to find the right words to ask what he wanted to ask in a way that would get him an answer that made sense to him. “Hm. So you’re an angel still. You’ve told me that. Am I… still a demon?”
Aziraphale frowned slightly. “Well, yes. What did you think you might be?”
Crawly shrugged.
“It just doesn’t make any sense to me. You’re an angel and I’m a demon and you seem so terribly upset about all this. I just...” Crawly looked pained, almost. “I don’t get it.”
“Oh, Crawly.” Azirphale sighed. He didn’t know what to say. And whatever the right thing to say was, he didn’t have the time to say it anyway. “I’m sorry. I will be back tomorrow. And before you know it, I will have your memories restored.”
“Wait!” Crawly yelled but Aziraphale didn’t heed his demands. Aziraphale was a practiced hand at ignoring Crowely’s tantrums. “Why do I have clothes here!” he screamed at the closed door.
Getting a cab to Tadfield to meet with Adam and Anathema made Aziraphale’s heart ache. It had been two years since Aziraphale had had to go anywhere without Crowley at least offering him a lift. Crowley had, in the twilight hours one night when they had first gotten together, confided that driving Aziraphale around was his favorite thing to do. He had told him it was his way of telling Aziraphale he loved him without having to say it, without having to admit it to himself. There were many things, little gifts and acts of service that Crowley would indulge in without much risk of rejection, but driving was also just something Crowley enjoyed in a way the little favors and miracles and dinners weren’t.
Once in Tadfield, Adam wasn’t nearly as much help as Aziraphale had hoped he might be. The boy was only 13, so Aziraphale couldn’t begrudge him for it, but the frustration and anxiety for the situation planted itself firmly in the pit of Aziraphale’s stomach.
“I don’t know what I’ll do if we can’t fix this,” he muttered miserably as he flipped through the pages of one of Anathema’s collection of books on witchcraft.
“On TV, sometimes you can fix amnesia by doing the stuff they’re used to doing with the people they care about,” Adam told him. “Or, if they get hit in the head, you can just hit them again and it fixes it.”
Aziraphale nodded just to acknowledge what was said to him without really taking it in. Dread bubbled in the pit of his stomach when he thought of how his own nodding mirrored all the nodding along Crawly had been doing when Aziraphale explained part of their history together.
“In the Steven Universe movie they-” Adam was suddenly cut off by a voice from the entrance.
“Oh, hello there, you lot.” Newt greeted Aziraphale, Adam, and his wife. “Just got back from visiting my mum. Did I miss anything terribly important?”
Aziraphale let Anathema fill him in. He never really had gotten around to having a proper one-on-one conversation with Newt. In all honesty, Aziraphale thought of him only ever in the context of his relationship to Anathema and most times they had spoken, Aziraphale had found him to be a frightfully dull conversationalist. But he did remember, vaguely at least, he had some kind of relationship with computers.
“Is there any hope that you might be able to find something?” Aziraphale asked him. Anathema gave him a warning look from behind Newt.
“I suppose I could try.” Newt said and took a step towards the laptop Adam was stationed at. “If you put quotation marks around the keywords when you Google something, you can get a more exact-”
“Hey, the WiFi went down!” Adam pouted.
Newt winced and mouthed an apology.
Azirapahle sighed. “That's quite alright, I suppose.” The sour expression on his face assured Newt otherwise. “It’s getting late, anyway, and Adam does have a curfew. I should be getting back to the bookshop. Hastur has been in the shop alone all day. It makes me uneasy, even with him confined. Would you mind giving me a lift?”
“Sure, sure. Happy to help.” Newt replied. Anathema decided to join them so she could grab one of Aziraphale’s occult books she had already read. She was hoping she had missed something.
The smell was worse than yesterday. Azirphale had completely forgotten to lock up the shop when he was away, but the stench worked more effectively as a deterrent, anyway. Newt parked while Aziraphale and Anathema walked into the shop. Aziraphale covered his nose with a pocket square as he fetched the book Anathema wanted to take home with her.
From the entryway, Anathema cocked her head and examined the salt circle where Hastur was trapped. The wooden floorboard had begun to rot beneath him. Anathema went upstairs and fetched more salt from the pantry. She approached with the intent to reinforce where some of the lines of salt were starting to warp over the slowly rotting wood. Hastur struggled uselessly with his binding. Anathema stopped and cocked her head when she noticed an envelope.
Pulling it out from its hiding place between the foundation and the floorboards, she noticed it was addressed to her. Or, rather passive-aggressively: “To mine prophecy-burning descendant...”
“Aziraphale!” she shouted over to the angel. “I think I found something.”
Aziraphale emerged from the stacks with the book in hand. “What is it?”
Anathema looked at him brightly. “A prophecy.”
They all took the envelope upstairs, where Aziraphale set out a 3rd chair at the dining room table. Aziraphale had been avoiding the living spaces of the shop recently. It felt so empty without Crowley.
They divested the parchment of its envelope, and Anathema read the prophecy aloud.
“Two devils will converge on a world made new. Yet to ripen in mind leads a path, rotten beyond a lifetime follows suit. From Serpen’s starlight sparks will rain on a red-lit night. That is when the ripened mind will seek his revenge. Under the dirt is a devil’s place of retirement.”
Aziraphale’s heart beat faster.
“What does it mean?” Newt asked.
“Well,” Anathema said, “I think ‘the world made new’ means this prophecy is for after the apocalypse. You know, when Adam made everything the same, but different.” Newt nodded. “And the two devils must be Hastur and Crowley.”
“What about the sparks and the red sky bit? That doesn’t sound good. Are they going to drop a nuke or something?” Newt asked worriedly. “I’m not sure I could stop a nuke a second time.”
“Maybe.” Anathema ponders. “ ‘Yet to ripen in mind’ must be Crowley. Would he know where to find nukes?”
“I dunno. Maybe if he had his memories? Would he even want to nuke the place if he had his memories, though?”
“I don’t know.” Anathema hummed. “ ‘This is when the ripened mind will seek its revenge.’ Do you think that means he’s going to remember before or after the nukes?”
“That depends… Who is he gonna get revenge on?” Newt paused. “What do you think, Aziraphale?”
It was a good question that Aziraphale wasn’t too keen on answering, honestly. The truth was that Anathema and Newt were focused on nukes and revenge and destruction and all that, but Aziraphale didn’t pay that part much attention. Crowley and Hastur could destroy half the world and it wouldn’t matter to Aziraphale. The humans would rebuild after a couple thousand years even if it were to come to that.
Aziraphale was instead fixated on two things. The first being ‘ripened mind’ . Clearly, Hastur was the ‘rotten beyond a lifetime’ demon, which made the amnesiac Crawly the ‘yet to ripen mind’ demon.
That must mean his memories would come back. If that was all the prophecy said, he would have been rapturously joyful. But the last line filled him with anxiety. ‘Under the dirt is a devil’s place of retirement.’ If that meant what Aziraphale thought that meant, then either Hastur or Crowley was going to end up back in Hell at the end of it all.
But which one ?