Chapter Text
“Thanks again for watching Crawly.” Tracy said with a smile, patting the snake’s terrarium fondly. “We’ll be back in a few days. Her stuff is in the same place as always.” Crowley nodded. Shadwell called from the front door and she smiled again before hurrying out, readjusting her coloured scarf for the tenth time. Crowley headed out into the hallway after her and waved from the top of the staircase as the fondly squabbling couple closed and locked the door behind them, Shadwell stubbornly carrying both suitcases despite his wife’s offer to carry her own. As soon as they were gone he slumped over the banister, social battery entirely drained from a day of stupid clients and stupid coworkers.
He walked back into the study, where Crawly’s home sat amongst several layers of newspaper clippings and several misplaced tarot cards. He sat with boneless limbs on the lone chair and watched her move slowly along a branch. “Just you and me.” he muttered, and moved his sunglasses to the top of his head, revealing amber coloured eyes and misshapen pupils that almost looked like a snake’s. Crawly nodded her head in his direction as if saying ‘look! We match!’.
Preoccupied with watching the snake, he bumped the desk while shifting to a more comfortable position. Something fell with a thud, barely noticeable under the avalanche of coupons for condensed milk that it pulled down after it. The sudden noise startled the danger noodle and she retreated to the back of the terrarium. Crowley moved to the floor and started sifting through the slips of paper, only to reveal a book, at which point he had been sifting for five minutes and was getting frustrated. He threw the book down on the desk, dumped the paper in a drawer, and then picked up the book again. He held it up in Crawly’s general direction, sneaking a quick glance at the blurb. Thankfully, it wasn’t about taxes. If he had to read another one of those today, he’d scream. “I don’t like books.1 But you like books, you weirdo, so slither out now if you want me to read to you.” She coincidentally chose this moment to emerge, so he sat down and inspected it. It was a strange red colour, and had no author or any of the pages you’d expect to be present at the start of a book. The only identification it had was a short blurb and the title, one he had never heard of before. Labyrinth. The blurb sounded like the ones he’d read when he was a teenager and just been taken in by Tracy and Shadwell. Magic and adventure.
Crowley read for a long time that night, only stopping when his phone pinged with an email that turned out to be spam. He looked at the time and groaned, having completely failed to feed Crawly. He grabbed the nearest thing as a bookmark and left the room. He only had a few chapters left, and the book was more riveting than he’d admit.
Quite a few things happened when he came back in, mouse dangling from his hand.
Crawly, thoroughly annoyed at having to wait for her dinner, snapped at his fingers and caused him to drop the mouse with a yell. He glared at the snake and picked up his book angrily, continuing to read aloud.2 The protagonist was arguing with the villain. ‘“But you kidnapped my brother!” she accused. “Because you asked me too. Principality, principality, man from ancient tome,” he started to recite, trailing off as if wanting her to finish. She thought about it, but didn’t dare speak. Take this being, this shackle of mine, far away into your home.’ Crowley glared at Crawly again. “Wish he’d take you away. I was twenty minutes late, it’s not like you would have died. My fingers did not deserve that.” A rustling of paper, some small thudding sounds. He paused. Looked around. He saw the open window and got up to close it, continuing to read as he did so. “What’s all this ‘you have no power over me’? Certainly seems like he does.” Crawly started to move restlessly and she kept knocking things around and bumping the glass. The sound went straight to his nerves.
“For someone’s sake. I’m sorry I fed you late!” He crouched next to the glass. “Stop. Being. Annoying. Or… or I’ll wish you away!3 You got that?” The current bane of his existence continued to bump the glass. Crowley could’ve sworn there was a glint of malicious amusement in her eyes. She slithered in and out of the water. “You really want to risk it?” Inwardly he felt stupid, but he had committed to it now. She may not be able to speak, but the little smug glances would never cease. Sometimes, when he’d had a few drinks and wasn’t automatically dismissing it as folly, it seemed like she was sapient. She certainly acted like it.
She’d discovered that moving a certain way over a certain surface made a sound akin to nails on a chalkboard. He groaned. “Principality, principality, angel from ancient tome, take this being, this shackle of mine, far away into your home!” He waited, half hoping something would happen, but nothing did. “Right now,” he muttered. “Any moment is fine.” He dropped the book next to the terrarium and stormed out of the room. He leaned on the wall, humming Queen loudly and covering his ears. It was only when he stopped did he realise the noise had too.
“Finally given up, eh.” he mumbled. Guilt washed over him. Crawly didn’t deliberately annoy him, even if it seemed like it, a voice in the back of his mind scolded him. “Alright, conscious, that's enough of that.” He banged his head against the wall, slipped his glasses back onto his face, and opened the door again. He walked back in, and froze. The glass was shattered, the room even more of a mess. The window was open, but the view wasn’t of a nighttime garden anymore. He saw a tall dead tree and a yellow sky instead. He walked as close to the window as he could, desk jabbing into his hips, and looked out. “What?”
He turned around and looked at the trashed room, at the empty terrarium. “What?” Crowley looked out the window again. “What?!”
Giggling erupted from the room around him, but when Crowley spun around it stopped. “Who’s there?” He demanded. “What have you done with my snake?” The red book sat smugly. He stared at it. “Nuh-uh. Not possible.”
“Hello?” A voice asked, but only the desk was behind him, and the… window… he turned, looked down, and saw someone standing under the dead tree.
“What are you doing in my window?”
“In your what?”
Crowley made his hands form a megaphone. “My window!” He gestured with his hands. “While we’re on the topic, what is all this? Where’d the garden go?”
“Look, I think you’d better come over here.” The mysterious person called. “Just climb out.”
“Out the window?”
“Well you could use the door but then I’d be waiting even longer.”
He was very confused, but he did as the person said and climbed out the window, dropping to the ground unsteadily. He marched over to them, grabbed them by the lapels of their tartan coat, and pushed them against the trunk of the tree. “Where are we, who are you, how did this happen, where’s Crawly.” he hissed. “I have had a very long day.” The other man looked unfazed, unimpressed, and snapped his fingers. Crowley staggered forward, trying to regain his balance as he found himself teleported a metre or two backwards. He glared, and in doing so looked at the man properly. Oh no. He was hot. His clothes were a tartan fashion monstrosity from the 1800’s but somehow, he pulled it off. And was that a bow tie? Unironically? Crowley had the sudden urge to take it off with his teeth. No, shut up brain, focus.
“We are outside my Labyrinth, I am the Principality otherwise known as Aziraphale, and I’m assuming you wished ‘Crawly’ away and they are therefore in my castle.”
Principality, the villain of the story and, if the book was to be believed, an extremely strong retired angel. He had slammed this guy against a tree and lived. He started to think that maybe not all the gods had abandoned him. He felt like he had to say something in response to this, and let out a very eloquent “Ngk.”
“You have thirteen hours to make it through to the Labyrinth centre, or the child will be lost forever.”
“Hang on, child? If the spell worked, and that story was real, then where’d you get a child from?”
Aziraphale looked confused. “Well normally it is a child, so I didn’t bother to check. What did you wish away instead?”
“I might have… gotten very angry… at my snake. Well, not my snake. I was snake-sitting.” He muttered. The angel sighed as if this happened all the time.
“Let me check if your snake is in the castle.” he said, conjuring a thick dusty book. He flipped through the pages. “What’s its name, again? And yours?”
“Her name’s Crawly. I’m Crowley.”
“Hmmm… Quasi-sentient police box… a few stray cats… ah yes, Crawly the snake, wished away by one A.J. Crowley. Makes a lot more sense than Crawly the child. She’s fine. Nice and safe- as long as you get her back within thirteen hours.”
“Can’t I just take her and go seeing as I’m not some sixteen year old wanting ‘forbidden love’ with the ‘dark, cruel king of darkness’ who they can ‘fix’?” He asked snarkily.
Aziraphale looked scandalised. “Good Heavens, I thought they’d taken that plot point out! That sort of… relationship… would never happen.”
That was not crushing disappointment. No.
“Well then, I suppose I’d better be off.” Crowley said, and started to walk down the crumbly hill to the Labyrinth. He paused. ‘Didn’t you have a flaming sword? Scare the protagonist into giving up with it?”
Aziraphale blushed. “I… may have given it away.” He mumbled. Then his voice got stronger as he defended his reasoning. “I don’t want people to give up and leave the wished aways behind, so I needed to get rid of it anyway, and the more dangerous citizens were rather active that day, and they were so worried about their child.” Crowley grinned.
“I shouldn’t be worried then, should I? This Labyrinth will be a piece of cake if you made it with that in mind. See you at the castle, angel!” He started walking off down the hill again.
“My Labyrinth is not a piece of cake! It is a work of art, the greatest puzzle in the world!” Aziraphale yelled after him, having not processed the last sentence yet. Crowley walked faster, hoping his hair hid the ears that were currently burning red with mortification. When he reached the wall, he didn’t waste time in looking for a door, and instead climbed up and over, ignoring the Principality’s final shout. “Wait, what did you call me?”
- This was a lie. He very much wanted to read the book and relax, but felt like it would ruin the snake’s impression of him. [ ▲ ]
- He wasn’t so evil as to make her miss part of the story, after all. Only monsters did that. [ ▲ ]
- Yes, he was threatening a snake with magic. He had had a long day, ok? [ ▲ ]