Anthony J. Crowley (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hellbentley) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
wildestlands2021-11-16 10:52 pm
hellbentley) wrote in wildestlands2021-11-16 10:52 pm
Entry tags:
If a demon screams in the woods... [video]
[A redhead in sunglasses squints into the mirrors.]
[He's already had his moment of freaking out in the woods, already frantically looked around for his best friend who'd been sitting next to him before the ground fell out from under him, already spent time discovering the massive hit to his powers, and already freaked out about the loss of his wings.]
[He's gotten it out of his system, which is why Crowley's expression as he looks into the mirror looks a lot more like a very old person squinting into a smartphone and trying to figure out how to make a call.]
[His tone is almost bored. The calm is purely calculated.]
So, the whole Chosen one thing, who exactly's done the choosing?
[He sounds English. He kind of is, kind of isn't. Do you sound like you're from a place if you were there before the place even existed?]
[His tone is dry ice, each word carefully emphasized. He sounds unimpressed.]
I have notes.
[He's already had his moment of freaking out in the woods, already frantically looked around for his best friend who'd been sitting next to him before the ground fell out from under him, already spent time discovering the massive hit to his powers, and already freaked out about the loss of his wings.]
[He's gotten it out of his system, which is why Crowley's expression as he looks into the mirror looks a lot more like a very old person squinting into a smartphone and trying to figure out how to make a call.]
[His tone is almost bored. The calm is purely calculated.]
So, the whole Chosen one thing, who exactly's done the choosing?
[He sounds English. He kind of is, kind of isn't. Do you sound like you're from a place if you were there before the place even existed?]
[His tone is dry ice, each word carefully emphasized. He sounds unimpressed.]
I have notes.
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He makes a disapproving tsk. Possibly because this is an exact line of thought and emotional, existential processing that he's personally been refusing to dig into over the past few days.
In fact, he'll leave it for even later. The deep dive. And by leave it for later, one means continue actively repressing most of his feelings on the matter. More important things at hand. ]
Yes, funny old thing, isn't it. Being "human-ish." [ He gives the side of Crowley's knee a business-like two-fingered tap and tries to drop a healing slot on it. Thousands of years of existing is not nearly enough to bolster his impulse control. If anything, the past few years have made it worse.
Human-ish. Not quite all the way there. Which is at least something.
(There is nothing Aziraphale can do for the stained jeans even if the healing takes, though, which is of course what real tragedy looks like.) ]
Can't say I've been keeping that one on my list of possibilities.
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[He continues the conversation without pause.]
It's the worst. Can't properly miracle anything, there's all the walking actually being tiring, and either I actually need to eat or something's crawled into my stomach and started squirming around.
[Sure enough his stomach growls and he gestures dramatically at his abdomen. Dramatically.]
[He looks thoughtful.]
As I was saying when I was walking up...do you think it's somehow the boy? [He knows which one.] I know he was supposed to lose his power, but...a bunch of random people from different places and with different powers drawn together on some kind of adventure...
It's the kind of thing he'd dream up.
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I've been falling asleep. It's dreadful.
[ Physically restful, certainly. Conceptually, something in him chafes at the whole idea. Never really interested him, sleeping, in the way that other little hobbies and indulgences have.
Tiny holdover of theoretical guardian duty, maybe.
Reality-warping even sounds like a very on-par thing for Adam. Consciously or not. It isn't out of the realm of plausible theory.
So really, he's completely on board with Crowley until the exact point where he suddenly isn't. ]
What do you mean, he's supposed to lose his power? [ SOURCE?? ] That's not possible.
[ Having the power is sort of the entire point.
Literally not even in the area of possible. Last he checked. There's no way Crowley came up with and could do that. ]
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[His brows furrow in confusion.]
His power's going to fade now that it's all over, but maybe this was one last little bit of completely disastrous whimsy he was able to make real.
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Do large Heartstones scramble demon memory function? Oh, dear. He has no idea. ]
I saw no such thing. [ Things to say with all the grace of an offended, fluffed up cartoon owl: that. ] Crowley, if it were all over and I'd seen it, I wouldn't have been half so worried about it these past few days. It was definitively-- definitively ongoing.
[ Possibly devastated, depending on the direction that "over" leaned in, worried about Crowley not being here all the same, but still. ]
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[He looks at him with concern and then the gears tick away, but he needs to confirm something first.]
What's the last thing you remember from back home?
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He still looks offended. Because of course he does. It slots in fine with his own concern and what may or may not be spiking anxiety. ]
We were somewhere between the points of getting the armies stood down and Satan coming up to have a stern word with us. [ To put it politely. ] Far closer to the latter than the former.
I couldn't have missed anything after that, I was looking right at you!
[ Because he'd had a look on his face that said he would, as ever, not let Aziraphale down when it mattered the most. Hence why Aziraphale had asked him to do something in the first place.
Crowley is arguably the only person in the universe to hold that title. ]
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Somehow we've been pulled from different times.
[Time travel's not that hard for him to wrap his head around. They were there when time was invented, after all. It can be a very fluid and manipulatable thing - hence why he was able to freeze it for just a moment for the two of them to give Adam his pep talk.]
[But that was a short-term thing. He doesn't know what would be powerful enough to do this other than...well. Her. Or maybe Adam? With the last vestiges of his power. But he's at least figured out what the kink in communication is.]
Angel... I'm from after. I froze time for a few seconds, we gave the boy a bit of pep talk, his infernal father popped out of the ground, and then the boy knocked him right back down like it was a game of Whac-a-mole.
[Crowley gives him a wide, genuine smile, happy that - if Aziraphale was stuck here worrying and fretting - he can give him the good news.]
He told him where to get off for being an absentee father, and used the last bits of his power to unmake the situation. His adoptive father was his his real father by virtue of him believing it hard enough.
[He shakes his head.]
It's over, Angel. And the world hasn't gone anywhere. You must have somehow been taken from a time before.
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If it were a bit firmer, after all, then this mismatch almost certainly couldn't be on the table. If that's what it is. A mismatch. And there wouldn't be so very... much at hand. In general. ]
Ah. Clearly.
[ Much like the obsolete personal computer he uses for his tax documents, Aziraphale.exe dedicates a stretch of time solely to buffering. He has some thoughts. Almost definitely. That it's always nice to see Crowley look genuinely happy is one of them.
Logically, it adds up as much as anything could for the circumstances that were at hand. Logically, he knows he was holding out for every last very sincere hope that the world could be saved. Had faith in it.
He was maybe not prepared to not live through the outcome himself, for better or worse. Hearing it secondhand makes it strange to absorb. ]
So the Earth is... fine. Will be. Was already. [ Wibbly-wobbly. ] And the humans. And the boy.
[ Trying to figure out the catch on main. ]
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He even used the last of his power to undo the damage that'd been done. For instance, all those people that died on the M25 when it lit on fire got revived.
And he brought back your bookshop - and my car.
[Oh no, wait, he understands what this is about. He knows his friend. The catch. Aziraphale's not just looking for the good news, he's looking for the catch. Because this whole thing had been a test of his sunny optimism. Because heaven turned out to not be as good as he believed. Because when he tried to speak to Her, having faith She'd fix it, She hadn't answered.]
[And because he'd decided to upend his entire life and work against his own side for the sake of doing the right thing. After millennia of being terrified of ruffling wing-feathers.]
[The consequences for Crowley turning against hell are actually excellent now that he's avoided being killed: no more assignments, no more expectations of causing random harm, no more having to be around other demons, no more reports to the home office. He gets to be left alone like he always really wanted. Never has to do another scheme - unless it's for fun somehow. Never has to tempt another temptation. He's free of a structure he never wanted to be a part of in the first place. ]
[He'd spent years terrified of being found out, terrified they'd come to understand just how little his heart was in it for most of it. It's why he'd wanted the holy water. Insurance. Because he'd known that someday they'd realize he wasn't fully loyal to them and come for him. And he'd been right.]
[And now they're scared of him instead.]
[But Aziraphale... he'd wanted to be part of something bigger until learning how awful it was. And that leaves things terribly uncertain, doesn't it? Without having experienced the events himself, he hasn't had time to accept his new status quo - or that he truly has a new one. For the first time, he's adrift.]
But there - there was a slight catch. We survived it, obviously [or he wouldn't be talking to him right now] but both our sides decided to cooperate to... [there is no better word for it] to execute us.
[His expression softens because he knows this can't be easy to hear. That on top of all they'd done to try to end the world for selfish reasons they'd also been so petty as to try to kill him for...what? For being genuinely good? Like an angel was supposed to be?]
Holy water and hellfire. If we hadn't gotten a warning to switch places and faces from Agnes Nutter's last prophecy...
[He shakes his head.]
They've decided to let us alone for now. We gave them quite a scare, being "immune." Probably won't be bothering us for a long time.
[But. That means something Aziraphale had clung to for a very long time is gone now, and the people he trusted to do the right thing hadn't, and the organization he trusted to be good wasn't, and the cozy place he'd had in said organization wasn't so cozy after all.]
[His voice is gentle, gentler than he's allowed himself to be through much of their friendship. He's gone awful soft during all this, and he can't walk it back after the choked and teary "I lost my best friend" in the bar.]
We're on our own side now. [There is still a place for the angel, even if it's a very small one on a park bench next to someone else.] And on humanity's side.
[Silver lining: at least after all those times of denying that he was nice or good, Crowley's finally willing to admit to being just good enough to take humanity's side.]
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All the things that Aziraphale had wanted, more than anything, to keep safe. All the things he'd loved the most. Regardless of whether or not he's ever loved or wanted anything the way that proper angels are supposed to.
It does make sense that this answer comes more in a form of what about us?
Getting it all laid out is relieving, really. Less in the joyous sense initially than in the simple releasing of pressure. Of getting the dread of it over with. They'd been found out, after all, then he'd made his bed a few times over, made his choice, made it all clear in grand public fashion. (Would do it again.)
Once some of the dust settled and things came home to roost, he'd expected to lose Crowley in the worst, most permanent of ways, and to never be allowed to set foot on Earth again. At the very least.
Michael and the others had certainly made it clear that he wasn't in any sort of good position.
Aziraphale primly seats himself on an appropriately-sized bit of rubble. Folds his hands in his lap, squeezes his fingers. His expression stays reined in to something uncharacteristically neutral, because he hasn't worked out what else to do with it.
Hellfire and holy water.
It's an awful lot of pomp and circumstance for a nice demon and a shoddy angel. Almost flattering. If hypocritical. ]
I suppose they thought it was a clever way to deal with us.
[ Thought. Were apparently wrong about that. Hard to outfox the two of them on short notice when they had the benefit of forewarning. A day or two of tense board meetings against a few thousand years of funny little technicalities and at least one of them having a penchant for imagination.
He is, he thinks, not as surprised by the finality of an execution as he is disappointed. Which somehow hurts about as much as the news itself.
He's touched by Crowley being very Crowley, steady as ever, by the gentleness of his approach. Grateful not to get an I told you so out of the gate about the fruitlessness of every single appeal he'd attempted to make going up the organizational ladder.
Mostly he sort of wishes they had a bottle of scotch.
But, well.
Nothing for that. Any of it, really. ]
It's not a bad side to be on. [ Least of all if you're still on it, he doesn't say. ] Suits us a bit better. If I'm being honest.
[ Makes him a little bit... homesick, he supposes. But that's not so awful. There's still a home to get back to. ]
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[He's bad at soft. There's been no call for soft during most of his existence. Any time he's actually felt it he's mostly hidden it. Any time he's been called out for being good or nice he's aggressively and self-protectively insisted otherwise.]
[Can't be soft if you're being watched for weakness, and it's hard to swallow "good" or "nice" when...]
[When you know you can never be anything but damned. And you know that being damned means you're supposed to be no good. That you'll never be good.]
["It's not a bad side to be on." He knows he means it partly because he's on it as well. He doesn't comment on that. They're still dancing around it.]
It does. Suit us better.
[He finds the words.]
Humanity deserved better than them. [Here it is, soft as three-ply.] You deserve better than them.
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He's being ridiculous enough already. This is good. All things considered. The exact sort of endgame he'd been very stubbornly, desperately hoping for, all neatly tied off in a way that makes him wonder if She'd possibly set Her dominoes up just so to land there.
A nice thought, if nothing else. The kind of thought that helps to have. ]
Well. No use crying over spoiled milk. [ He thinks that's the term.
Doesn't matter much. Crowley always intuits well enough. ]
I am glad you're here, you know. [ And still extant. In general. There aren't words in any human language to explain how deep that particular relief goes. ] And-- grateful for the good news. Obviously.
[ Which he will simply have to work on absorbing and accepting.
But mostly, he's glad that Crowley is here. Purely selfishly. ]
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Of course you're glad I'm here. We're going to have to mingle with humans long-term and you think the Velvet Underground is "bebop."
[It's only mild teasing and it brings up an extremely pressing concern.]
[One that makes him grimace.]
We're going to have to mingle with humans long-term. Without any way of making their attention glide off us. Not looking forward to that.
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This does not prevent a tiny scoff on his end at that implication. Old familiar patter, like falling off a horse. ]
I'll admit it's been... challenging. Funny little gambit, extended socializing. I'm not sure how they get the hang of it so quickly. [ Good for them, though. No one said he can't be proud of a few dozen strangers stuck in the woods cooperating for survival. ] But I'm sure we can get it worked out. Muddle through, as it were.
[ Aziraphale hasn't always had poor luck as far as blending in. Middle of a large city, middle of a neighborhood like Soho, and humans being like they are, he's found there's a touch of day to day wiggle room. People turn out eccentrics all the time. They'll encounter an affectation or quirk and carry on with their day as long as it isn't inconveniencing them. Honestly easier to do that for a few centuries than to try to put on airs for an hour at an office party Upstairs.
But that's broad scale. Going out to eat. Getting a trim. A couple of hours at a long-defunct social club created for a very specific niche of gentlemen. Frustrating a customer enough that they leave. That sort of thing.
He's never had to account for all this extended close quarters, multiple encounters per day with the same people business, with mortals. All the "properly getting to know each other." ]
Surely a pair of odd ducks in a flock of odd ducks can't.. can't stand out too badly.
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They can if they're not actually ducks. Even the nonhumans here seem to be mortals.
We're going to have to small talk. Act like we have normal mortal backgrounds.
[He grimaces.]
Remember names. They've always got all kinds of names - sometimes the same name as someone else. And we'll have to remember them. Hate remembering names.
[Also...well, he doesn't like admitting to something being a threat to himself, calling attention to himself like that. But it is one.]
If they somehow find us out, you'll be fine. You're an angel.
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Helps keep things in perspective. It's sometimes the case that Aziraphale will handle hoping for the best and Crowley will handle thinking about preparing for the worst. It's hard to blame him for it. And, as ever, it's hard not to love him for it.
Do they look old enough to get away with having trouble with names? By human standards? Oh, dear. He hasn't the foggiest. Aziraphale gets caught on that long enough to have a minor delay in processing from point A to point B, which is a point that he genuinely hadn't thought about.
If he weren't already sitting upright as properly as ever, he'd sit up straighter. He looks outright offended. This is entirely offense taken on a hypothetically-outed Crowley's behalf. ]
Don't be ridiculous. If they somehow find us out, we'll both be fine. One way or another.
[ Some of these people, from what he's gathered so far, probably wouldn't care regardless. He can't speak for the rest of them. ]
I'm not allowing anything less.
[ Does Aziraphale want to pick up another frying pan and fend off a zealous mortal like the world's poshest personal bodyguard? No. Of course not. Would he do it if things escalated? Yes.
He may not have reached the wrap-up back home, but he's certainly past the point where pretending not to be invested in Crowley's well-being is the best safety measure. ]
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We've got to consider the worst case scenario. People find out someone's an angel and it's 'oh, look at that! We've got a guardian angel, look at our luck!'
[He looks around to be extra sure no one is listening.]
They find out what I am and they'll be reaching for the torches and pitchforks.
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[ That's just pedantry, though. Less about the actual point being made.
He loves humans. The overzealous superstitious sort aren't any fun to be around. ]
I won't let anything happen to you.
[ Which is as much of a promise as he can make. Won't let. Can't promise nothing ever will happen to him.
If nothing else, he at least has his larger capacity for bringing sincerity to bear.
Fine thing it would be to lose Crowley now, after everything. ]
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[He knows the depths he himself would go to in the face of all this strangeness and uncertainty to keep Aziraphale safe, too.]
[It is a definitive turning point. "I don't even like you" and "there is no 'our side, Crowley'" completely pivoting in a 180 to "I won't let anything happen to you."]
[Quite a few things have changed since the gazebo, since Aziraphale refused to run away with him into the stars.]
[Crowley wonders if he'd run away with him now, if there truly was no fixing things. (Or at least go on a short vacation up there.) For a half second he also wonders what Aziraphale would look like bathed in the light of stars and nebulae when he already has a natural glow about him, a sort of luminescence radiating from his skin.]
[He wonders what it would be like to see stars in his eyes, especially the ones Crowley himself had made ages ago. Wouldn't it be nice if he'd made a gift for him completely by accident? In the quiet eons when he was still creating things, before he'd fallen.]
[He can't give him such gifts of creation now, so the old ones before his fall would have to do.]
[So much "you go too fast for me, Crowley" now. It seems as if Aziraphale is slowly but surely catching up. And Crowley isn't entirely sure what to do with feelings of being cared for.]
[Through all his long years, he hasn't felt actually genuinely protected often. Not since... not since he'd felt safe in the warm embrace of Her favor.]
[He doesn't know what to do with this so he goes with downplaying it, naturally.]
Well. You know. If you get into trouble, s'mutual.
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It's just a very Crowley way to go about saying it. He's missed him terribly.
Maybe he's been ridiculous missing him over a handful of days when they've gone for centuries without catching sight of each other in the past, putting the context of what was happening in Tadfield aside, but, well.
Telling himself he's been ridiculous has never gone far in terms of stopping him from being a bit ridiculous. ]
Of course it is. [ Crowley drove to the apocalypse in a flaming car because Aziraphale popped up to give him an address and asked him to be there. He's turned up in the past even when Aziraphale was gone on assuming he wanted nothing else to do with him.
Crowley's sort of terrifyingly steady, really. Whether it's deserved or not.
He wonders if 'steady' or 'reliable' would go over better than 'kind.' ]
I'll do my best to keep a cleaner record. I think you've earned as much of a holiday from trouble as we can manage here.
[ Considering there were actual nightmare creature attacks on the first night, and Aziraphale is ultimately still Aziraphale, no concrete timespan of holiday can be delivered in good conscience. ]