#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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