#it's late antiquity/the dark ages: crowley has trauma and aziraphale has memory loss

[evilasiangenius]

A starling flew down, and once more landed on Crowley’s hand.

“I thought you told me to fuck off,” Crowley said to the bird. But then the white-speckled starling began to sing.

The bird had no words for this song, just a melody, but it was one that Crowley had not heard in a long time. The last time he had heard this song of Euripides, Aziraphale had played him a snippet as a quote at supper but then stopped because he said it was too sad and didn’t want to continue. They had ended the evening together as they usually did, talking until past dawn or maybe that was a different night or a different one and did it matter which night it was, when it was with Aziraphale?

Ten years behind, ten years athwart his way Waiting and home, lost and unfriended…

The two angels, fallen and otherwise, gave each other startled looks as the bird sang. It was joined by other birds, slowly, until a great murmuration descended down upon them from the skies, huddled under the protective cover of the courtyard corridor, warbling snippets and pieces of the song from garbled memory. Lost notes, added beats. The trill of a robin, the tap of the chisel upon wood, the rasp of a saw, the liquid burble of water. The chatter of a squirrel. A note, two notes, all a semitone off, the tuning of the scale that the song would have originally been in set adrift upon a heaving sea of sound, sliding on and off its tonal base as if the foundation was cracked and crumbling but the heart of the song remained recognizable.

As the starlings continued to sing it was as if he could feel at once all the words upon his lips.

A rift of the hills, raging with winter rain, Dead and outcast and naked. It is I beside my bridegroom And the wild beasts cry…

Crowley flinched; he had not heard this song in centuries and never this much of it, not since he first saw the play in Athens in the year of the Herm-breaking (which by the way was not his doing, not in the slightest, though he had received commendations for it later). Aziraphale had been there too, they had watched it together in the great theatre in Athens and they had long conversations about this particular play, until Crowley had not wanted to talk about it anymore.

“I think…” Aziraphale began.

“No, it’s fine. I should leave. I’m going to leave.” Crowley moved to duck out from under the corridor, but the starlings did not scatter. They stayed stubborn, blocking his path. The demon snarled in annoyance and threw up his hands, unwilling to exert his infernal will upon the birds to force them to leave.

“It’s still raining,” Aziraphale ventured, though he did not move from where he was standing, white speckled starlings perched all about him, some upon his shoulders, some fluttering in his curling hair as if nesting, another perched on his outstretched hand.

“So? Why is that a problem?”

“Because…because you should stay until the rain stops and things dry out a little. I know you don’t like being cold and wet.”

“Does it matter? Why would it matter?”

“It matters to m–” Aziraphale said, but then paused to think. “It should matter to you. You…should take better care of yourself.”

“Why?”

“B-because it’s virtuous!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “It’s virtuous to take care of oneself!”

“I don’t care about being manly or good or ethical or whatever that word means now.”

“Then…then because otherwise you scare cats. And people,” Aziraphale said.

“Why should I care if I scare cats or people?”

“You scare me too!”

The silence between them was not even broken by the birds who watched them with curious eyes, but slowly, as the two angels fallen and otherwise stood there, unable to find the words with which to address each other, the birds began to leave, one by one, fluttering off in a great white-speckled cloud.

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[evilasiangenius]

When Crowley woke, the air tasted savory-crisp to his snakey tongue and it took him a moment to recognize the scent of fresh bread baking in the hearth.

“Aziraphale?” Crowley sat up on the bed.

“My apologies for being a poor host,” Aziraphale said from across the room where it seemed that he was poking about in the hot ashes with a fire-blackened stick. “I have no cheese or butter, and very little oil. Trade isn’t what it was these days. I think this city is on the verge of failure.”

“Verge?” Crowley’s mouth twisted in a squiggle of sadness. “I’d say from what I saw it’s quite beyond that verge. Why are you here at all? There are hardly any humans at all in this city anymore. We’re usually posted in more populated places.”

“You know I can’t tell you that,” Aziraphale said primly, as he pulled a big piping hot flatbread off the hearthstone still gray with ashes with his fingers and set it upon a terracotta plate. “You should eat this. The oil’s over there.”

“Do you want me to get anything? I could make us some–”

“No,” Aziraphale said decisively. “Frivolous miracle usage will get both of us in trouble, it’s best to make do with what we have at hand.”

Crowley blinked; whatever happened Upstairs must have been extremely serious for Aziraphale to talk like this. The angel had never been one to be particular about the finer points of miracle expenditure and economy. He glanced at Aziraphale, but the angel’s expression gave nothing away.

“Sounds like a change in policy?”

But Aziraphale did not answer him.

“It’s all right, angel,” Crowley said, choosing his words carefully. “No one is doing any accounting like that at Head Office, no one really tracks these things Downstairs. And besides, I have a little extra in reserve…well, a lot more than a little extra. He’d never mind what I was using it for, and even if he knew you were involved he’d probably think it was funny and would only want to know what I had made for you–”

“No. Please. You’re my guest, please just let me do this.” Aziraphale’s face was tense and unhappy and Crowley wondered where this tension had come from.

“Fine,” Crowley shrugged.

Thinking better of it, Aziraphale reached out for the jar of oil himself and poured a healthy drizzle of golden olive oil onto the bread, handing the plate up to Crowley.

“Oh,” Crowley said softly, realizing that little white wild garlic flowers floated in the oil and he wondered how Aziraphale must have gotten it so late in the season until he realized that the flowers had been preserved in the oil, probably since at least spring. “Are you not going to have some yourself?”

“No. I ate already.” But the angel eyed the bread with no small amount of longing.

“Here, it’s too much. I won’t be able to finish this.” Crowley tore the bread in two, and handed Aziraphale the larger half.

“I really shouldn’t,” the angel murmured, but his hands trembled as he took the bread.

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[evilasiangenius]

“I don’t suppose…our postings are in the same place?” Crowley asked hopefully, a slip of papyrus gripped tight between white-clenched fingers. In his other hand he held gently a bundle of long-stemmed starry white flowers, in a light and considerate grip so as not to bruise even a single fragile stem.

“I wouldn’t know,” Aziraphale said primly, folding a similar slip of papyrus and tucking it away in a hidden pocket, even as he held a stick of firewood in his other hand that he did not set down. “You know that I can’t tell you where I’ll be going.”

“Byzantium. Er, Constantinople,” Crowley said. “I’ll never get used to that new name. That’s where I’m going. I’ll be posted in the City.”

“Oh.” And he could not tell if Aziraphale’s expression was of relief or gratitude or something else, the angel seemed to be very still, his expression very carefully controlled though there was a hint of tension to his entire demeanor that Crowley did not quite know how to interpret and a part of him hurt, remembering a dozen critical ways in which this Aziraphale was a stranger to him just as he was a stranger to Aziraphale.

“Are you traveling east then?” Crowley said hopefully.

“South,” Aziraphale said, looking away. “I’m to stay in the Western Empire.”

“I don’t think there’s a Western Empire anymore.”

“Oh. Yes, right. Thus the sorry state of Londinium. I– ahem. There are things that I keep forgetting.”

“It’s all right,” Crowley said. “That’s not your fault. Whatever happened to you Upstairs–”

“I suppose I should go.” Aziraphale glanced at the wreckage of the little room in the east wing of the house abandoned to entropy and collapse, and his lips quivered just a bit. But even then his eyes passed over the ruins with what seemed like studied dispassionate coolness.

Crowley stared at the grasses growing through the paved courtyard tiles, between the cracks and the crumbling mortar, at the firewood that Aziraphale had been holding in one hand until he wasn’t anymore, dropping it without considering where it fell clattering to the ground, forgotten.

The sound was loud, and despite expecting it, Crowley felt himself startle at the noise.

“Yeah, me too. Hey, angel. Thanks.” He set down the handful of wild garlic he had gathered, leaving it upon the brick lip of the outer opening of the furnace.

“For what?”

“For an autumn and a winter and a spring.” Crowley watched as the makeshift bundle of little white flowers fell apart, some falling to the ground while others withered from the scorching heat. “Seasons without being rained upon or snowed upon, at least not excessively. It was nice being warm and dry, I liked it.”

“Yes, of course,” Aziraphale said absently. “But as you know, a few seasons hardly counts as living together. Just a brief shelter from the elements, like pausing beneath the branches of the same tree in a downpour.”

“No, I suppose it doesn’t count. Nice tree though, while it lasted.” As he looked at the wisp of smoke from the furnace that stained the clear blue sky above them, Crowley closed his mouth, unable to say what he wanted to say, that he wanted them to travel together, that they could take a ship south together as far as the port at Massilia and then they would each go on their own way but he knew he couldn’t ask; Aziraphale was already trembling as if a leaf in a gale ready to be blown away, to be upset and untethered and tossed about by the wind, with no assurance of safe landing.

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[evilasiangenius]

It was a hard and cold winter. The roads were blocked and the Tamesis froze over, stopping trade by boat, though Londinium stayed miraculously fed due to some human ingenuity with sure-footed ponies and sleds. When the snow piled up, Aziraphale and Crowley took turns (depending on the time of day) clambering up onto the top of the house and scraping the snow off the terracotta-tiled roof to keep it from collapsing under the weight of the snow. Much of the rest of the ruined structure collapsed further from the heavy snows, and there were a few days of discussion and serious calculation as to whether or not the existing room would hold.

In the bleak midwinter, the two angels, fallen and otherwise, moved big warped beams of frozen fungus-riddled wood from the wreckage and ruins of the rest of the house to prop up what still remained.

When they weren’t trying to keep the house together, they stayed indoors near the hearth. Crowley regularly braved the ice to go hunting or fishing to supplement the cache of supplies that Aziraphale had managed to gather before the freeze and the cat followed the demon on the hunt for scraps from the slaughter. For a few weeks Aziraphale had made noises of concern about Crowley overfeeding the cat until she birthed a litter of six kittens, all black save for one incongruous orange kitten.

Aziraphale made a third patchwork cushion for the cat and her family. He ground grain for bread and kneaded the dough. He made pots and pots of soup. When Crowley brought back fish, Aziraphale roasted fish on the hearth which were so often stolen by the one-eyed black cat that Crowley ended up having to catch an extra one every time just for the growing family.

They ate wrinkled apples slightly shriveled with age. Aziraphale bought sacks of wool from a carder and spun clouds of naturally white, gray, and black fiber into individual sets of thread. The angel knitted naturally black wool stockings that the demon wore to keep his feet warm, and eventually with Crowley’s help, designed and built a loom to weave cloth. While Crowley distracted the kittens to keep the bumbling little bun-shaped beasts from wrecking the wool, Aziraphale made a big monochromatic tartan blanket for the bed that the angel never used.

They spent long winter nights giving the creaking ceiling nervous glances before Crowley went up in the stormy moon-stained dark to scrape off accumulating snow before returning to the heated embrace of the tartan blanket that Aziraphale had ready to wrap him in, and the gentle kiss of a cup of heated water flavored with a few drops of wine and no spices that Aziraphale had ready for him to drink.

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[evilasiangenius]

Crowley sat on the warm tiled floor on his towel away from the tub, staring at discarded wooden sandals that sat by the closed door. There weren’t benches in this room; someone must have stolen the beautifully carved wood in here, ripped it out of the wall, which gave them more space to put the tub in, but that meant there was nowhere to sit but the floor.

The dark room was lit by a single lamp that they were carrying from room to room, whose flame did not waver in the dark stillness, and the domed room echoed with the sound of water in motion as Aziraphale stepped into the tub.

“Ahhh,” Aziraphale sighed as he sank into the water. “This is so lovely, I haven’t done this in…”

“Forever?” Crowley couldn’t help but speak. He knew exactly when they had gone to the baths together last, he remembered everything that Aziraphale didn’t, and it made him hunch up against himself, tears welling in his eyes.

“Forever,” Aziraphale agreed. “And speaking of forever, I wish this moment would never end.”

“Yeah,” Crowley said, his voice choking on the word.

“My dear. Did you want to come sit by the tub? I can pour some water on you, if you like. Or you can just lean against the tub, the heat feels nice and I think you’d like it.”

Crowley didn’t move for a long time, and then he moved over to the tub, resting his cheek against the smooth wood, surprised to find it silky smooth. This must have been the patch that he had accidentally sanded with the horsetail ferns, the bit that he didn’t have to do but he did anyway, because he was turned around.

“Do you want some water?”

“No,” Crowley said reflexively, but then nodded. “Yeah. Sure.”

And cupping both hands, Aziraphale gently poured water over the demon. Tense and trembling with anticipation – and was it fear or something else, the demon did not know – Crowley gasped, flinching at the first touch of water.

It was hot, hotter than his skin, and it didn’t feel like any touch that he had known. It seemed so alien, so strange how unusually gentle it was, as if the water had a kindness for him that it had never had before.

And he hated that the memory of touch, of tenderness, years and years of it, centuries in fact, eons, seemed to be erased in so short of a time by callous cruelty that made him flinch from Aziraphale’s hand even as he wanted so desperately to join Aziraphale in that tub and take the angel into his arms.

As Aziraphale leaned over to pour dripping handfuls of heated water over the naked demon, from head to toe, Crowley felt as if some of the pain, some of the memories of vicious torture and worse were being tenderly washed away though he would never be able to fully walk away from it, even if he wanted to leave the past behind.

But as he sat there, as water slid warm over his skin from gentle cupped hands, he thought that perhaps it was more that the heat from the water that poured from Aziraphale’s hands was seeping into the brittle faults and fractures that ran through his heart.

And then he realized that the precious rainwater that they waited days for now pooled upon the baked earth tile of the tepidarium floor, leaving Aziraphale with less.

“Stop. That’s enough, Aziraphale. I don’t want you to end up with no water at all.”

“My dear, I am still deeply immersed, up to my neck and more if I wanted, even accounting for displacement. There is plenty for you, plenty for both of us..."

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[evilasiangenius]

“Caldarium?” Aziraphale asked, but did not move to undress.

“Caldarium,” Crowley agreed, but also did not move to undress. But once Aziraphale began by taking off his paenula, folding it, and setting it upon a wooden bench in the central chamber made for this purpose, Crowley unpinned his pallium, letting it slither to his feet, unconcerned about the infernally created clothing.

Instead of miracling his clothes off, the demon went through the trouble of actually untangling himself from the many, many folds of his black toga, which was rather involved. Once it was off, he glanced over at Aziraphale, who had already undressed completely. He stood in his long crimson linen tunica, shivering a little despite the warmth.

“Are you coming?” Aziraphale asked, as his hand lingered on the door of the caldarium.

“Yeah,” Crowley said, slipping out of his long tunica and tossing it aside to live in a lonely pile with the rest of his clothes.

“Really, Crowley. You don’t wear underthings? No wonder you get cold. You had really ought to wear an undertunic. The humans make really lovely ones of silk, I think you would enjoy that.”

“Don’t really wear their clothes properly, don’t know why I should be wearing an undertunic. Got a weird relationship with silk when it drapes like a peplos though maybe if it had sleeves or trousers it wouldn’t be so bad. What about you?”

“Well, all my clothes are divinely willed into being, as they should be,” Aziraphale managed a smile and it was at that moment that Crowley knew what the towels had been made of, what the bed had been patched with, what the cushions had been made with, and a pang of sympathy went through his heart.

Aziraphale loved those clothes. He was always patching up his favorites and wearing them through the years though those patches were near-invisible, and here he was, having cut his clothing up for patches, giving all of himself away until he had nothing left that was his own.

“Eh, you should consider getting something you like. Not just what you were told to wear. After all…”

“Is that a temptation, foul fiend?”

“No.” Crowley walked past Aziraphale into the hot depths of the caldarium.

Immediately his dark glasses fogged up so that he could not see, and so stepping out for a moment he took them off, set them down with his discarded clothes, and hurried back in following Aziraphale, closing the door behind him.

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[evilasiangenius]

Long nights were spent staring at the sweeping expanse of stars that filled clear skies amid meadows full of the starry blinking of lovelorn glow-worms. Together they stayed warm wrapped in the shelter of the big monochromatic tartan blanket that Aziraphale made over the winter, speaking softly in a quiet murmur so as not to be much louder than the hooting of owls and the squeaks of bats.

Curious hedgehogs scurried up to them to sniff at their fingertips but did not pile upon Aziraphale, instead settling to watch the two from a polite distance.

They talked all night until they didn’t, lapsing into silence. In the stillness of the deep night when they ran out of words, long quiet hours were spent listening to the wandering songs of nightingales, as if the little drab birds crying out for love could speak for them, longing for one that was close but yet to be found.

The gradual waking of birds at dawn, the lavender smudge of a wispy cloud marring the sky at dusk.

The palpable heat of the sun at midday, sunlight thick and viscous like honey where it broke through the tree cover to bake meadows and clearings, sending flowers to seed and gently drying grasses to gold.

Crowley’s hand in Aziraphale’s, when the demon no longer felt like moving and needed encouragement, but it was just a little further to the next sun-dappled stream where they could drink cool fresh water and sit beside the gentle murmur of moving water calling them to rest.

Crowley snoozing, drifting off for the remainder of the afternoon. Wrapped in the monochrome tartan, his head pillowed upon Aziraphale’s thick thigh as the angel watched a single bird dart from branch to branch, disappearing into the canopy of trees above them before his eyes wandered back to the demon, mouth pursed in the tiniest of smiles.

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