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“I’m here to bless your pregnancy,” Aziraphale announced grandly, as if he were awaiting delighted applause or perhaps a rigorous handshake. Eve provided neither, and instead merely gaped at him.
“Pregnancy?” She looked down at her flat stomach. “I’m not pregnant.”
“But you are.” Aziraphale assured her kindly. He had been watching their little family from afar, waiting almost two years for them to make another human. His assignment was to bless the child with “genetic diversity” before it escaped. He had to be quick - humans were only pregnant for nine months - so he was glad he had caught Eve’s pregnancy early.
“Why?”
Aziraphale was not prepared to answer this question. He didn’t actually know how it happened. He was here to deliver blessings, not biology lessons.
He decided to fall back on a sure answer. “Because the Lord wills it.”
“Oh.” Eve appeared to be thinking very hard about many different things at once. “Go on, then.”
Aziraphale felt a bit put out that his first blessing was being witnessed so unenthusiastically, but he rolled up his sleeves and performed the miracle nonetheless. Eve was bathed in a warm, heavenly light for a few moments, leaving her with a peaceful smile on her face.
“Thank you, angel.” Adam approached, carrying Cain in his arms. “Would you bless him, as well?”
Aziraphale’s face fell. His instructions were clear, but it didn’t seem fair to bless one child and not the other.
Before he could respond, Eve jumped in defensively. “We were blessed with the Protector. Don’t be ungrateful!”
Aziraphale beamed at that. He knew that giving them the sword had been the right thing to do. And now they’d named it! Humans were just adorable, naming the things they cared about. And "The Protector" was a perfect name for it.
“What will you name the child?” he asked.
“What about Luluwa? I’m sure she will be as beautiful as her mother.” Adam suggested.
“And what if it’s a boy?” Eve shot back. “Will he be as ugly as you?”
Adam laughed and dragged her into a kiss. “Impossible. No one’s as ugly as me.”
Aziraphale left them to their good-natured bickering and took a look around the camp. It was small, just three tents nestled into the greenery near a creek. There were fishing nets hanging on branches, rough wooden bowls of fresh water, and a crackling firepit fueled by a very familiar sword. The humans were so inventive!
Soon, Eve came back and clasped his hand in hers. “You must stay and eat with us. Then you can see our Protector.”
“Oh, yes, I saw. Quite ingenious really- “ but Eve was pulling him away from the fire and toward one of the tents, where a tall figure was emerging.
“Protector!” Eve called. “The angel has returned!”
And suddenly, Aziraphale found himself face to face with a demon. Again.
When Aziraphale first came to Earth, he thought he understood his place in the universe. He was made to love - to love God, to love her creations, to love humanity. He loved everything, easily and effortlessly. Or at least he thought he did, until suddenly there was a snake standing next to him and he found that his love for everything didn’t quite extend that far.
It was disconcerting, not loving something. He’d never done it before. And that had immediately made the demon the most fascinating creature he’d ever met.
It was like a hole in his perception of the world, or perhaps in his perception of himself. An inky black stain where there should have been an uninterrupted expanse of pure love. A gap in the orderly pattern of his consciousness, a loose thread that threatened to unravel everything.
He worried at the missing piece, running over the edges of his memories, twisting them this way and that, studying his brief interactions with his hellish counterpart. He worried about whether there was something wrong with him for not loving the demon - or perhaps it was wrong that he thought he should? He considered trying to love him, just to see if it were possible, but then worried that might go against God’s plan. He couldn’t stop thinking about that blasted demon, and he worried about that, too.
And now Crawly was standing in front of him, just as fascinating and confounding as he was two years ago.
“Protector? What are you doing protecting and not…not...”
“Evil?” the demon helpfully supplied.
“Well, yes.”
“Angel. You knew they wouldn’t survive on their own.” Crawly flicked his slitted eyes toward the roaring fire. “The question isn’t why I’m protecting them. The question is why you weren’t. ”
The angel sputtered, aghast. “I have orders! ” he cried indignantly. “I’m not some... rebel like you.” He spat the word as if it were the harshest insult he could come up with, and perhaps it was.
Crawly grinned in satisfaction, as if he had won the argument rather than been quite savagely insulted. “Yep, that’s me. Look at me rebelling against God, protecting Her children against Her will. You’d better stop me.” He opened his arms wide in a mocking challenge.
Aziraphale really didn’t know what to say to that. He sniffed derisively. “My orders are to deliver blessings and otherwise not interfere. I couldn’t do anything to stop you even if I wanted to.”
“What, first giving away your sword and now sharing your orders with the enemy?” Crawly laughed. “You are a very strange angel.”
He did feel very strange. Did he really just admit to not wanting to thwart evil? The demon must have done something to him, confused him somehow. He would just have to be more vigilant.
Aziraphale determined the most strategic course of action would be to stay and conduct surveillance, keeping a vigilant watch for any hint of evil deeds.
In other words, he couldn’t stop staring.
He was mesmerized by how the demon’s perfect curls shone in the firelight as they slid off of his shoulders. How the muscles in his back shifted under the skin as he pulled Cain into his lap. How his mouth broke open into a wide grin in response to Eve’s joking.
He didn’t look evil. He looked like a ripe strawberry, tart and sweet with juices that run down your chin. He wondered what demons tasted like. Probably sin, he supposed, although he didn’t really know what that tasted like, either.
The night passed pleasantly enough. The humans shared their food and stories generously, and when Adam noticed Cain’s eyes starting to droop, he insisted that Aziraphale stay overnight. After all, there were wild beasts about, and he no longer had a sword for protection.
Aziraphale accepted gratefully. He was eager to spend as much time as possible getting to know their family, and observing their interactions with the demon. He hoped that with enough evidence of hellish influence, he might be able to convince his superiors to allow him to stay and conduct further investigations. And thwarting, naturally.
After the humans had disappeared into their tent, he spent some time cleaning up. He wasn’t allowed any miraculous intervention in the human’s lives, but heaven could hardly keep him from doing chores. He washed and mended and restocked everything he could find before finally retiring to the third tent.
Which was packed full of dried fish. Piles and piles of dead fish. Aziraphale marveled at the humans’ foresight in stockpiling for winter while simultaneously lamenting the fact that he would now be sleeping on the cold ground. He briefly considered whether miracling a shelter for himself counted as “interfering,” but decided that, regardless, it would be rude .
He had spent about ten minutes lying in the dirt, trying to find a position that didn’t dig rocks into his back, when he heard movement. In the dim light from the smoldering sword, he could barely make out the shape of Crawly, extending a hand in invitation.
“Come on, angel.”
Aziraphale couldn't see him, but felt certain the demon was rolling his eyes. He wasn’t entirely sure what that meant. “What?”
“You can’t spend all night on the ground. Come on.” He held the tent open.
Aziraphale rose to follow him before even really deciding to do so. Upon entering, he was delighted to find it lit by a tiny floating ball of flame. It cast a warm glow on the cozy interior, which was much roomier than it had seemed from the outside.
“Oh shit, sorry,” Crawly dove past the angel to grab the flame, filling the space with smoke and darkness. “Hellfire,” he explained sheepishly. “I don’t get a lot of angelic visitors.”
Aziraphale staggered under the sudden, crashing terror of the situation. He had just blindly walked into a demon’s lair without even considering the danger. That adorable little hellfire lamp could just as easily have been a lethal trap. One accidental touch and he would have been destroyed.
How could he be so foolish as to let down his guard for even an instant? Because the demon was polite? That meant nothing. Because he offered shelter? A clever ruse.
Because he hadn’t antagonized? Hadn’t harmed anyone in his two years on earth? Because he cared for the humans when no one else would? Because he played with Cain and braided Eve’s hair and taught Adam to fish? Because he was family to them? Because he lov-
Oh.
He looked Crawly with fresh eyes, watched him ignite something with a fresh, ordinary flame from his fingertip. Shadows danced across his freckled face, offsetting the flickering gold of his eyes. Crawly captured the entirety of his attention. No longer a rough patch of apathy in the periphery, he was now the black hole that spun everything else in a spiral orbit.
“Thank you,” Aziraphale said, but it meant something else entirely.
There, with the first candle now burning brightly between them, Aziraphale came to a decision. He reached out to Crawly and took his hand, the way he’d seen the humans do. The demon startled and shot him a puzzled look, but relaxed into the touch quickly.
Aziraphale squeezed his hand affectionately, and, for the first time in his eternal life, made the choice to love. He found that loose thread in his mind that had been worrying him so the past two years, grasped it tightly, and pulled. He chose to give his love freely, filling the gaps between them, asking for nothing in return.
And in that moment, everything did, in fact, start to come unraveled. But neither of them would ever realize that this, this first quiet moment between an angel, a demon, and a flame, was the one that saved the world.