Work Text:
Before Time, but after the Fall
“So we’re all agreed then.”
“Agreed!”
“Definitely.”
“Fuck the Great ssssodding Plan”
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It is generally recognised that Everybody Knows that when Lucifer and his rebels Fell, they were twisted and corrupted into terrible shapes, their heavenly essences burned away in a lake of sulphurous fire.
To a degree, this is actually correct. Being thrown out of Heaven and having ones Grace forcefully yanked out as you do an uncontrolled bellyflop into a burning pool will tend to do nasty things to your body, and leave an awful lot of mental and physical scars.
What Everybody also Knows, however, is that in the aftermath, as the newly designated ‘demons’ struggled to acclimate to their new reality and come to terms with losing their entire previous lives, they formed around their still-(if now rather redly) shining Fallen Leader to create a realm of torture and despair, manifesting their self-loathing on the landscape around them and turning their wrath and hatred upon the Creators new pets whose existence was, ultimately, the spark that ignited their rebellion and downfall.
This, too, is somewhat correct. As far as humanity and Heaven are concerned, it is even entirely correct. After all, it’s all right there, written down in Her own hand as part of the Great Plan.
A Plan, it should be noted, that existed long before the rebellion and Fall. Oddly enough, all of the angels who were inquisitive and intelligent enough to pause and raise a hand to ask why, exactly, some of their kind had literally been created and designed purely to fail… well. They just so happened to be, one and all, amongst the Fallen.
Which also meant that they were the ones to turn their towering and completely justified resentment and anger in the direction that had actually earned it.
Namely: God. And especially Her Plan.
What Everybody Knows, after all, is very rarely what is Actually True.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Some uncountable amount of non-time, plus 6000 Years and One Day Later
The Principality Aziraphale, Guardian of the Eatern Gate of Eden, long-time eccentric bookshop owner, and now lately a very distinct thorn in Heavens (and particularly the Archangels) collective side, was having a Bit of A Day.
Actually, he had been having a Bit of A Week, following a slightly stressful eleven years, due to the whole birth of the antichrist and countdown to the End of Days thing. Which had been scheduled to kick off in its final form yesterday. The fact that it hadn’t was primarily down to the fact that both he and his best friend/opposition, the demon Crowley, Serpent of Eden, instigator of Original Sin, and general mass-producer of low grade annoyance, had somehow managed to completely misplace said antichrist, and thus left him to be raised by a perfectly normal human family in a picture perfect perfectly normal human life. Strangely, a little boy who loved messing about in the woods with his friends and got really indignant about the various ways humanity hurt the world around them wasn’t exactly racing to be the reason the entire world got totally destroyed.
Aziraphale and Crowley had actually had very, very little to do with the young antichrists decision, but as is the way with corporate management everywhere, the people who had been supposed to be keeping an eye on the project were the ones who got the blame when it went wrong, regardless of who had actually been actively a part of said project.
Long story short, Heaven and Hell now wanted to have some rather pointed Words (followed by executions) with the two of them. Given that neither was particularly interested in quietly letting themselves or each other be executed, and with the help of a three hundred year old witch, the angel and the demon had come up with a rather clever plan involving switching places so that the likely methods of execution wouldn’t work. What was holy water to an angel, after all? Or hellfire to a demon?
Which brings us back to now, with Aziraphales having a Bit of A Day.
The last instruction Crowley had given him about how to act had been a quick, hissed, “whatever happens, just go with it. I’ll explain later.” Odd instruction, to be sure, but Aziraphale had guessed it was related to some ridiculously complicated hell politics that there was no time for him to truly understand. So when he - in Crowleys form - was dragged off to Hell and hauled up in front of a scowling Beezlebub, he just went with it, assuming that simply acting as brazenly confident and cool as he always believed his demon to be would do the job quite nicely until he could get out of there.
In all fairness, it had seemed to work. He’d made a few quips, been dunked in a bathtub of holy water, and gotten to take out a bit of his resentment toward the way Heaven had treated him on Micheal by asking her to miracle him up a towel, just for fun.
It was on the way out that things took a turn for the truly bizarre.
He had been walking jauntily through the dank, grimy, slime-covered, basement corridors, under the leaking pipes and past the de-motivational posters, when he had suddenly been grabbed by the elbow and yanked sideways through what had seemed to be a completely solid wall into a pitch dark room that smelled faintly of… wait… oranges? And was that… early jazz music? (contrary to his favourite method of winding up Crowley, Aziraphale was perfectly aware of the changes in musical genre. He just didn’t much like anything newer than 1900 or so.)
Then the lights came on.
That wall had to have been a dimensional door! Didn’t it? This lovely, calm room of muted yellows and creams, all dressed up to look for all the world like a 1920’s upper class parlour couldn’t possibly be in Hell. Not a single thing in here was mouldering or decayed. Then he caught up with himself enough to look at the being who had grabbed his elbow.
“... Dagon?”
The Lord of the Files, who had been at the trial and attempted execution, looked distinctly different now. She had lost the unhealthy sheen from her skin, her teeth were less pronounced, and under the soft warm lights of this room, he could see that what had looked like years of neglect and weathering was actually rather lovely material that had been artfully and deliberately designed to appear as though it had been dragged through the gutter.
She grinned at him, an honest, genuine smile that held nothing of the dead-eyed glare from earlier.
“Beez will be up in a few, zey just need to finish impressing themselves on the idiot hordes minds. Tea?”
Aziraphale felt that he could absolutely be excused for simply standing there, gaping like a landed fish. This was not at all the sort of thing he could ever have expected. Crowleys voice hissed through his memory “whatever happens, just go with it”. He sort of stumbled towards the nearest couch and collapsed into it in a graceless (no pun intended) sprawl. Dagon ignored it, and just handed him a lovely piece of china with… he sniffed delicately… jasmine green tea? What?
“It’s not your preferred, I know, but Crowley didn’t get a chance to send any darjeeling down and we used up the last of ours last week. I was promised this would do just as well.”
At this point, all Aziraphale could do was cling to his cup of near perfect tea like a lifeline and stare weakly “.... what...?”
Across the room, a new door materialised, and Beelzebub stepped through, zer scowl fading to a more neutral expression as the layers of dirt sloughed off zer face, the fly on zer head sleekened, and the already surprisingly pristine suit straightened out its few creases.
“Ah, there you are Azzziraphale. You can stop trying to imperzonate the zzerpent now. He told uz about your plan lazt night. It really did make arranging thingz on our end much eazier.” Ze accepted the cup of tea Dagon handed zem with a nod and sat down in a wingback armchair that looked suspiciously like it was rather more cushioned than its designers may have intended.
Finally getting himself at least a tiny bit together again, Aziraphale shakily set his cup of tea down on the lovely mahogany coffee table and attempted to manipulate Crowleys ungainly limbs around until he was finally able to sit up in an approximation of his more usual prim posture, before nervously picking his tea back up and taking a sip. It was exquisite, and he briefly distracted himself by trying to identify the region it had been grown in. Somewhere in the south of China, he thought. Possibly the Yunnan province.
The two demons in the room smirked at each other as the angel unconsciously closed his borrowed eyes and seemed to settle a tiny bit from the understandable anxious mess he had been upon entering the room.
The three of them sat there quietly, sipping tea while soft jazz played in the background, until another door opened on the wall, briefly revealing the sterile entrance hall of the metaphysical office block that connected Heaven, Hell, and Earth, before Aziraphales own body came sauntering in with a deeply smug look on his face.
“There you are, Angel! I take it everything went well down here, then?” a jaunty nod to the other two demons “worked out as planned then, boss?”
Setting down zir cup, Beelzebub nodded, with the faintest hint of what might be called a smile. “Exzzzactly as exzzpected. No one zzzeems to zzuspect a thing, and the idiot hordes are all zzuitably terrified of you now.”
“How did it go with the self-righteous wanker brigade?” Dagon asked, her teeth sharpening ever so slightly as she grinned.
Aziraphales body somehow managed to get even smugger as Crowley settled into a comfortable sprawl next to his own very confused looking corporation on the couch. “Oh, you would have loved it. They were being all holier-than-thou and Gabriel was wearing his best insufferable twat face, and to see the shock and horror when I stepped into that column of hellfire… I blew some at Gabriel and it was the best day ever! He leapt back like a scalded rabbit.” all three demons collapsed into howls of laughter, and even Aziraphale managed to snicker through his sudden cultural whiplash.
“But seriously, Angel” Crowley turned to him suddenly “why did you never tell me just how bad it's gotten up there? I might have been in character when I told them they were supposed to be the good guys, but the point itself was real. They didn’t even give you a damn trial! Even the idiot hordes down here expected a bloody trial for me! And Gabriel! How in all the circles did he manage not to fall when he’s so clearly wrapped up in his own Pride, and has so much hatred for you?”
“H… hatred? Surely not! He… he’s an Archangel, for heavens sake. He just had a lot on his plate, I’m sure, and I have always been a terrible angel, so it’s not truly surprising that he’d be disappointed in how badly I’ve let him down!” casually, Crowley observed how such a flustered angel somehow managed to make his lanky, heavily angled corporation actually look soft. Aziraphale drew breath to continue making excuses, hands fluttering about, but was interrupted.
“He told you - by which I mean me, of course - to, and I quote, ‘shut up and die already’, Angel.”
“Oh.” it was a very soft sigh, and the principality visibly deflated, looking close to tears. Which was something Crowley absolutely could not abide. Especially since it was currently his body doing it, and snakes don’t even possess tear ducts.
“Alright, time to shift back. You’ll feel better in your own body, and at least you can look all sad properly then.”
A short while later, back in their correct respective corporations, Aziraphale took the new cup of tea Crowley passed him with a subdued smile. The news of Heavens planned treatment of him had temporarily overwhelmed his confusion over the impossible lounge room and disturbingly friendly Dukes of Hell. Said Dukes had been quietly sipping their own tea and were at least pretending not to be subtly watching the angels miniature breakdown.
“So.” drawled the now properly corporated red-head “where's the big boss today? I notice he didn’t bother to show up to any of this.”
“Zztill in his decadent pit of vize and sin. He zzaid he’d bother showing up if everything actually went down, but otherwize he refused on principle to do anything either of hiz ziblings wanted, including turning up on time to the family reunion.” Beelzebub had completely regained their composure from the earlier laughing fit, and was back to zer firmly neutral expression. Zey still managed to be exuding rolled eyes and fond amusement.
“Sounds like Him, yeah. ‘Sides, he set up in the celebrity capital of the world, they’re real big on being fashionably late to everything important over there. How long did it take to train Kevin into getting the timing on the entrance right? He did a great job, very impressive. Even I could barely tell, and it was my bloody idea.” by now, Crowleys empty teacup had morphed into a full wine glass, which he was gesticulating with to emphasise his words.
Dagon swiped the wine bottle from Crowleys other hand and used it to fill her own miraculously appearing wine glass, offering some to the shell-shocked Aziraphale, who waved it off vaguely. Crowley pushed a plate of biscuits and the teapot closer to him.
“Ages” was the answer to Crowleys question. She was wearing a look of remembered exasperation as she spoke “First it was activating the projector at the same moment as he burst upward, then we realised that disposables aren’t really designed to withstand the strength of the Boss’s aura for that length of time and had to do a whole lot of tweaking and exposure therapy to not burn him up and give the whole thing away. A complete nightmare keeping the paperwork straight on that one.”
“Ah. Yeah. I hadn’t really thought of that. You kind of forget how overpowering it is when you never really see him. Still. All’s well as ends well, and a right proper middle finger to the wankers upstairs.”
It was at this point that the deeply confused angel in the room finally passed his tolerance for mysteries and schemes and burst out with an almost plaintive “Will ANY of you PLEASE tell me just what is going ON?!”
He probably wasn’t expecting the smug smirk to appear on Crowleys face, or for the two dukes to sniggeringly pass the serpent a pair of ten pound notes each.
Crowley pocketed his winnings and set out to soothe his angel, before launching into a somewhat rambling explanation, assisted by corrections and observations from Beelzebub and Dagon.
As Aziraphale began, with the ease of long practice, to piece together the story from the convoluted rambles, this is what he came to understand:
Ultimately, it was all down to one simple question. Why exactly did everybody expect the rebels to just go along with God's Great Plan, anyway?
Apparently, Lucifer and his most trusted (by which we mean most intelligent) followers had, after everybody had finished picking themselves up after the Fall and while the lower ranks were still distracted with clawing out their own hierarchy, gathered together and asked themselves this very question. They had literally rebelled because they didn’t like the things God had ordered them to do with no explanations as to why. So then why, exactly, should they take this 6000 year Plan that God and Heaven were all so enamoured of, and actually adhere to it?
God threw them out and said they weren’t allowed to look like angels anymore? Fine. But they’d be as close to it as they could manage to push themselves.
God said they had to suffer as punishment for rebelling? Well then, paperwork was a punishment, right? The one now calling herself Dagon had worked in records up top, so she could just make a hellishly convoluted filing system for them and force everybody to try and work their own way through it anytime they wanted something. Done. Suffering, sorted. Now how comfy can we make these rocks, anyway? And Crawly, you did stars, that's light and colour stuff, right? See what you can do with all these dreary caverns.
God said that humans who were bad had to come down here to be punished for it? Well, certainly some of them were probably terrible people who actually didn’t deserve Heaven. But that list of things that get you past those shiny gates is pretty damned small, innit? More than half the poor buggers who’ll end up with us won’t deserve to be tortured for all eternity just for loving the so-called wrong person or trying to survive. Fuck that noise. No one’ll notice if their punishments just sort of get lost in the paperwork… Dagon, you should remember to include that feature.
And so it went. It had become clear very quickly that a large portion of the weaker or more belligerent Fallen were gladly embracing the idea of being everything that Heaven was not, so they just weren’t told about the secret second kingdom that was carved out beneath and between them. Let the horde of brainless idiots and malevolent morons be and live how Heaven expected of Demons. We’ll just put on a show for them when we have to, and leave them to it.
That was the crux of it, Crowley said, almost everything Heaven and Humanity thought they knew about Hell and Demons was ultimately a sham. A carefully constructed set-piece to keep them all distracted and prevent anybody looking too closely at what was going on behind the curtains. There was a reason, after all, that Crowley had been the one to be sent up, and the only one to be long term assigned to “corrupting” humanity. He was the one who could spin it to look like Hell was actually trying, while actually not being all that effective at all. Any time there was a need to make a really big statement, they just sent up the most powerful of the idiots, usually Hastur or Mammon, to grab the attention and mess with people who were already headed downwards anyway.
“But… but what about Adam?!” sputtered the angel “If you weren’t all trying to bring about the end times in accordance with the Great Plan, then why have an antichrist at all?”
Beelzebub sighed, and refilled zir glass. “Unfortunately, like the Eden thing, that waz one of the timez when Heaven waz looking much too clozely and exzpectantly at uz. We compromized by having Crowley make the delivery, and enzure that the child ended up with the perfectly normal and dezent Young family, rather than the rich arzeholez that Heaven expected uz to want raizing the Great Beast, Devourer of Worldz. It waz the best we could do, making zure that whatever happened, it waz the rezult of free will and true choize rather than pressures from either of our sidez.”
“We did cheat a bit though.” Crowley added, proudly. “Had a whole performance set up and ready to fool angelic eyes and give the kid just that overly authoritative and Evil looking absent-parent push he needed to rebel against. Worked, too, though I had a bit of a nervous moment there before the time freeze. Wasn’t sure he’d be strong enough to throw off the voices.”
Aziraphale was staring at him, somewhat horrified and betrayed. “Then… you mean… you LIED TO ME! You let me panic and run around desperately trying to find a child you already knew the location of?!”
Dagon intervened as the serpent squirmed uncomfortably. “He had no choice. Right up until the final day, you were still trying to be a Good Angel and please Heaven, even if you were rightly upset about everything. We couldn’t take the chance that you’d let something slip if you knew too much.”
“Oh… oh. Yes. I… I see your point. I’m so sorry, my dear. But I must say, your acting has been superb, you truly had me completely convinced.” sky blue eyes met slitted gold pleadingly.
“‘S okay, angel. I knew you’d be upssset, but I did it anyway. And of course you believed me. I am a /fantastic/ actor…. And… well… you do like to believe the best of everyone, which did make it easier, i’ll admit.”
The angel blushed a bit sheepishly, but haltingly laughed it off. “What now? Did you know upstairs was going to execute me?”
“Weeeeellll, not exactly… not until yesterday, really. Agnes gave us the hint, remember? I still thought the arseholes were at least trying to be fair and forgiving to each other.”
“We were originally under the imprezzion that it would be Crowley working alone. That Heaven would be thwarted and we would have to hold a big zshow trial and mock execuztion for our treacherouz snake. There waz a whole plan with growing and szhaping a dizpozable to take hiz plaze, but your involvement made the zwitch nezzezzary and alzo made organizing the trial zzo much zimpler.” ze toasted the angel with a rock steady hand, before downing zir 19th glass of wine.
Everything was quiet for a time, as the angel assimilated this complete turn around of all he thought that he knew.
Then Crowley, by now in his favourite state of energised enthusiasm drunk, got bored. “Sssso, angel. Wanna go ssee the besst kept secret in creation? We’ve got all your favourite creatives down here, including that Wilde guy. Set him up in a sssweet little pad myself, once I found out he kept you company during my nap.”
A brilliant smile bloomed across the angels face “Oh, my dear, that would be absolutely lovely.” He stood and took the demons outstretched hand, oblivious to the knowing glances exchanged between the observing dukes.
As the pair left through a curtained alcove that turned out to be a staircase, Dagon heard Crowleys voice happily babbling on “and after that, we can tour all the rest of Soho below, and visit Freddie too. I think he was planning on a celebratory concert if it all went to plan, and his digs are fantastic.”
.
.
Summoning more wine, the two Dukes of Hell relaxed into their chairs, and toasted the continuing life of relative luxury and comfort they were leading, in spite of everything Heaven had to say about it.
Meanwhile, far away and a dimension upwards, a dark haired pianist with flashing eyes played a triumphant concerto to a packed club, mentally raising a middle finger to the skies.
.
.
And far above all, above even the shocked and shaken Archangels sitting in the tallest tower of Heaven, an ineffable entity sat back on their metaphysical sofa, and tossed some more metaphorical popcorn into their mouth with one hand, while the other scribbled notes excitedly onto the bottom of the never ending scroll that no one else would ever see.