#I think Crowley learned to read from those demotivational posters hung up in Hell

[shipaholic]

Omens Universe, Chapter 15

Link to next part at the end.

(From the beginning)

(last part)

(chrono)

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Chapter 15

Crowley and Aziraphale sat facing each other in the dying firelight.

They’d made themselves more or less presentable. Aziraphale had reconstituted most of his clothes from the firmament. Crowley had done the same, and looked immaculate, but had slung a blanket around his shoulders like a cape. He met Aziraphale’s eyes and saw his own seriousness reflected back.

“OK,” he said. “We need a plan.”

He left a pause, in the vague hope Aziraphale would fill it with a bullet-pointed list of Anti-Antichrist measures he’d prepped in advance.

When this didn’t happen, Crowley gave a little cough and went on.

“I know him pretty well, I think. I was basically there his entire childhood. He thought I was imaginary, but I don’t think that matters.”

“Any information will be helpful, I think,” Aziraphale volunteered.

“Hmm.” Crowley scratched his head. “OK. Uh. Friendless kid. Except for me. Maybe I could appeal to his better nature.”

He realised this was stupid as he said it. Adam was literally the reincarnation of Satan. On top of that, he’d had a tailor-made demonic upbringing. The better nature ship had sailed.

He drew a blank on helpful things to say. What else was there? He was utterly detached from humanity? He could remake reality on a whim? Fighting him would be even more pointless than trying to reason with him?

“He hates Hastur?” he managed.

Aziraphale looked blank.

“I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said.

Crowley let out a breath. It sounded like a pressure valve wobbling under strain.

“OK, never mind. I’ve got to admit, angel, I can’t think of much that’s useful. It doesn’t look good, basically. Maybe we should cross that bridge when we come to it. Improvise something.”

He could tell by the look on Aziraphale’s face that this was already off to a poor start.

“Why don’t we start at the beginning? We need to get off this planet.”

That should be a bit better. Aziraphale was the ideas man when it came to getting from Planet A to Planet B.

Aziraphale looked put on the spot.

“Ah,” he said. “Er. We could fly?”

“Fly?”

“Right, sorry. That would take years.” Aziraphale fidgeted. He did that when he was stressed. This wasn’t going well.

“How about a portal?” Crowley suggested.

That somehow went over even worse. Aziraphale practically squirmed. Crowley thought portals were his thing.

“Portals are very complicated, Crowley.”

Crowley gestured with both arms. The cape moved with him. He was a bit fond of this cape.

“Don’t you just draw on the ground with chalk and pray?”

Aziraphale gave him an affronted look. “There are calculations involved.”

“Well, you’re clever. Can’t you figure them out?”

Aziraphale sighed. “Honestly, without reference books, or a clear idea of our current coordinates…”

Crowley tried not to sound as frustrated as he felt. “Well, just remake the one from your bookshop and… adjust it a bit?”

Aziraphale’s expression contained volumes.

“What,” said Crowley. “Would we end up inside a volcano on Jupiter or something?”

“No. It’s far more likely it would do nothing at all,” Aziraphale said, a little snide.

“Great.” Crowley lost the battle. He sounded frustrated. Fine, he might as well let it out. “You may as well try it, then. The only alternative really is that we start flapping and hope we run into another spaceship.”

“Yes, all right. I suppose we have no choice.” Aziraphale’s voice was clipped. Fine. They could both be annoyed.

“Damn right. I’m not flying for four light-years without a break.”

Crowley stood up and stretched his legs. He felt bad already for being snappish. It wasn’t fair on Aziraphale. He was, once again, going to be the one doing all the work. Crowley’s stomach gave a guilty squirm.

“Can I bring you anything?” he asked, a little gentler.

Aziraphale’s gem glowed, and a piece of chalk fell into his hand.

“The coffee machine should work inside the café Zadkiel made.” He still sounded a trifle cool.

“No problem.” Crowley hesitated. He bent down and kissed Aziraphale’s head. Some tension left his shoulders.

Crowley strolled out, leaving Aziraphale to begin the preparations.

~*~

???, ? days until Armageddon

Everything was bloody awful.

Crowley didn’t say it. Neither of them did. But it was hours later, maybe the next day on Earth already, or even the day after that. Adam could have razed the place to the ground by now, and they had accomplished absolutely sod-all.

Aziraphale’s fingers were stained with chalk. So were the ends of his hair. Crowley tactfully wasn’t mentioning this. It wasn’t as if he could get rid of it with a miracle, anyway.

Crowley’s job had been to fetch coffee, which he had done on a loop for the past however many hours it had been, to the point he’d practically worn a footpath between their front door and the café. Unfortunately, Crowley had never so much as switched on a coffee machine in his life. He had a similar heavy industrial device back at his flat, but he had always snapped his fingers to operate it. He listened to the whir of machinery, thought contentedly about how much electricity it was using,[1] and collected the perfectly made cup without further speculation of how it had got there.

Crowley’s attempts to wrangle some coffee out of the infernal[2] machine in the café, however, had gone about as swimmingly as Aziraphale’s attempts to make a working portal.

There was a chalk circle in the centre of the living room. It was around the same size as the one in Aziraphale’s bookshop. However, the squiggles overlaying it looked as though Hieronymus Bosch had had a go. It was as though Aziraphale had tried to duplicate his old portal, and then rotated five degrees and done the same again, laying copies on copies until the pattern that arose could make a physicist’s brain dribble out of their ears.

Crowley’s contribution to the endeavour was about twenty espresso cups filled with congealed liquids[3] that had been undrinkable when they were fresh, littered around the room.

He glumly handed the latest one to Aziraphale. Aziraphale accepted it, eyes wide and slightly mad. He raised it to his lips, reconsidered, looked into it, raised it to his lips again, smelled it, and put it down beside the last one. Crowley, for want of anything else to do, started collecting them all up. He’d stack them in the kitchen. Zadkiel had made them a kitchen, although it didn’t include a sink. Washing up had never been a thing that happened to either of them before. Crockery just got summoned from the aether and banished again when it was dirty.

Aziraphale scrubbed more chalk dust into his hair. He made a noise best described as that of a distressed penguin.

“I’m sure these runes are wrong,” he moaned.

Crowley risked a peek over his shoulder. “Which ones?” he hazarded.

“Who even knows. This is hopeless. I’m making this up as I go along and then filling in the gaps with nonsense. We’ll be lucky to end up in the right solar system.”

Crowley carefully avoided saying anything unhelpful about how some other solar systems were a bit of alright, really. He sat down beside Aziraphale.

“Maybe we should just get it as good as you think you’re going to and test it out.”

“You know we could teleport into a volcano on Jupiter, don’t you?”

“So we’ll climb back out and make another portal on Jupiter. At least it’s closer.”

Aziraphale tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling with bloodshot eyes.

“You know what’s really eating away at me? Not getting a proper look at that book. I’ve never ignored a book before. It was a terrible time to start.”

“A book of prophecy’d be useful right about now,” Crowley admitted.

“I’m sure that young lady back in the Bentley mentioned an Agnes. She can’t have meant…”

Aziraphale trailed off. The prospect that his personal holy grail was within two feet of him for the entire day without him noticing was a thought too excruciating to contemplate.

He gasped, rummaged in his trouser pocket, and pulled out a tiny, charred scrap of paper.

“I forgot about this until now! Look, Crowley! This blew out of the book.”

Crowley scooted over. They both read it.

When alle is fayed and all is done, ye must choofe your faces wisely, for soon enouff ye will be playing with fyre.

“That’s cheery,” said Crowley.

Aziraphale mouthed ‘choose your faces’ several times in a row. His face crumpled. Crowley patted him on the arm.

“Were you hoping it was a portal diagram?”

“Slightly,” Aziraphale confessed.

“It’s good news, in my opinion. If you think about it. We must get through this crisis in order to end up in, er. Another crisis.”

“Unless this isn’t about us at all.”

“Must be.”

Crowley had no hard evidence for this. It would just be really irritating to him, personally, if the one useful thing they’d turned up in the last two days wasn’t even anything to do with them.

“I reckon we should test the portal,” he said.

Aziraphale tossed down the chalk. “Fine. Why not. I’m going cross-eyed staring at the blasted thing.”

They got to their feet, wincing as joints popped. They’d acquired a few middle-aged human traits by accident over the years.

A quick dance and a fusion later, Zadkiel snapped his fingers for candles. They floated into place around the circle and lit themselves. He sat back down, cross-legged, and put his hands together in prayer. It gave his demon half a little headache, but it was ignorable.

He reached out to Her with a question and waited for Her answer.

Like a house with faulty wiring, the portal began, very faintly, to flicker.

Zadkiel prayed with all his might. He screwed his eyes tightly shut and reached into himself, offering himself up. There was something here, he just had to find it.

The portal blipped on, briefly.

A little smoke fart went up in the middle. All the candles blew out, emitting an unpleasant smell.

Zadkiel sat perfectly still. His cheek twitched.

“Fuuuu -”

He split apart.

“- ck!” Aziraphale remained sprawled on the floor. He looked on the verge of tears.

Crowley pulled himself into a seated position. He poked Aziraphale in the side.

“I didn’t think that was a bad start.”

“Yes, clearly we’re in two minds about it,” Aziraphale snapped.

Crowley withdrew his hand. He felt a little stupid. Bit hurt, too.

“I’m a pathetic excuse for an angel,” Aziraphale almost whispered.

“Hey!” Crowley felt, ridiculously, offended on Aziraphale’s behalf.

“It’s true. She made me to love humanity, and I abandoned them.”

Well. That. Crowley’s mouth opened, then closed.

“But She abandoned them too!” Aziraphale pushed himself upright. He looked anguished. “What kind of loving Creator would do that?”

“Er,” Crowley said.

He’d personally grappled with questions like these millennia ago, when he was young and angry - angrier - and arrived at the vague sense that he’d drive himself mad trying to understand some people, so he might as well just get on with things. He wasn’t sure how to handle Aziraphale suddenly plunging into the beginning of what was, for Crowley, a lifetime’s worth of existential angst.

“And I don’t even have time for a crisis of faith right now! This is all my fault. This entire scatter-brained plan was my idea. All I’ve done is strand us light-years from home in the middle of nowhere. I thought I was being so clever, Crowley. And daring, to turn my back on Heaven and flee into the night. But I should never have turned my back on Earth. It’s unforgivable.”

“That’s my line,” Crowley joked, feebly.

A tear rolled down Aziraphale’s face. Crowley pressed close and kissed his temple. He had no idea what to say. Scraps of the wrong words tumbled across his brain, but nothing at all that was helpful.

He had to say something, though. No matter how badly it went. He drew a breath.

“OK, so we’ve both been massive cowardly idiots, that’s pretty obvious.”

“That’s incredibly non-reassuring,” Aziraphale hiccupped.

“But it doesn’t matter. You know what we need?”

Decades of pop culture flashed before his eyes. Oh, yes. He could do this.

“A redemption arc.”

Aziraphale looked up. On the plus side, he was no longer crying. On the other, he looked like he might vomit a tiny bit.

“Crowley, please tell me that isn’t a cinematographic reference?”

Crowley held up a hand. “Hear me out. We’ve both been incredible idiots and cowards. True enough. But you know what I’ve learned from humanity? If you show up late after messing everything up, give a speech that’s mostly about yourself, and save the day, everyone will forget the stupid, selfish stuff you did until that point. People have short memories. It’s the worst, best thing about them. You can be a flaming shit ninety percent of the time and turn it around at the last minute, and it only makes them like you more. But.”

He looked into Aziraphale’s eyes. This was the important part.

“You do have to actually save the day. Otherwise you look like an arsehole. So just focus on that. If we pull that off, we’ll be heroes, no matter how often we ran away and put ourselves first and let everyone down.”

Nailed it.

Aziraphale stared at him, mouth ajar.

“Crowley, that was the worst speech I have ever heard in my life. I actually feel worse now.”

Crowley’s confidence wavered. He pulled it back up by the fingernails. Stick the landing. He could do it.

“No, angel. My point is… people are forgiving. They’ll forgive you even when you can’t forgive yourself. That’s… the thing, isn’t it? Grace? Humans have it. You’ll never find it in Heaven, we both know that. You’re right - it was another thing entirely to abandon Earth. So let’s make up for it. I know you can get us back there. And we’ll save them all, together. And if you still want to beat yourself up, I won’t let you. We are on the same side. And you may be an idiot, but you’re also the cleverest person I know. So. Be clever.”

A faraway look appeared in Aziraphale’s eyes.

Aha. Crowley tried not to lean forward expectantly.

“I just thought…” Aziraphale said. He sounded like a man basking in a sudden epiphany.

Crowley held his breath.

“...You obviously learned to write motivational speeches in Hell.”

OK. Fine. He wasn’t as moved as Crowley might have hoped. Crowley was willing not to mind, so long as they got a plan out of it.

“She said, playing with fyre…” Aziraphale read the scrap of paper again. “Could she have meant hellfire?”

Crowley frowned. “I don’t know how to make a portal to Hell either, if that’s what you’re -”

“What would happen if our sides summoned us back?”

Crowley blinked. “Kill us on sight, presumably?”

“Well.” Aziraphale looked disconcertingly blithe. “We could always cross that bridge when we came to it.”

So far, Crowley didn’t love where this was going, but he held his tongue. Aziraphale stood up and paced.

“We can’t make a portal from here to Earth, that’s a total dead end. But I can get to Earth from Heaven. And you could get back to Earth if you were in Hell. It’s as easy as stepping on the lift. All we need to do… is get on their radar. Perform a miracle as ourselves, unfused. They’ll see someone dallying around in space instead of preparing for Armageddon and summon us back.”

“And kill us on sight.”

“It’s mad enough to work!”

“I’m not sure about this -”

“We’re supposed to choose our faces wisely. She wrote us a clue… she means us to outfox them.”

He had a point. Crowley took the slip of paper from him and read it again.

“OK. I trust you. Let’s puzzle this out.”

~*~

An angel and demon faced each other over a scuffed chalk circle.

They had made their preparations. If things went according to plan, they would see each other again on Earth. If not… then this was goodbye.

Aziraphale leaned in and straightened Crowley’s tie. They exchanged smiles. Nothing that needed saying had gone unsaid.

“See you on the other side.”

They snapped their fingers.

Crowley made a shower of sparks. Aziraphale, a bunch of party balloons.

There was a pause, long enough for a pair of beleaguered actuaries to go, “hang on”.

Twin thunderclaps rang out.

Both of them were sucked into the air and vanished.

---

[1] None. None of Crowley’s appliances ran on electricity. None of them were even plugged in. Crowley didn’t understand this, however, so he mistakenly believed his coffee maker churned through factory-level quantities of electricity. It gave him a warm glow as he sipped his morning cappuccino.

[2] For once, not a compliment.

[3] And some solids.

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