Chapter Text
It had been nearly four hours since Aziraphale first attempted to make contact with mission control. Nothing but static answered his requests for assistance.
Space was unimaginably vast and he was very much alone and adrift, somewhere far from home. He was trying so hard not to panic. It was a losing battle. Aziraphale had always had an anxious disposition.
"Mission Control, this is Guardian One. I have come out of hypersleep early if my calculations are correct. Please respond."
He was waiting for a transmission that might never come. That was the problem. It wasn't like he hadn’t known the risks. Only a few years had passed for Aziraphale, but that equated to nearly a century on earth. A lack of response could be as simple as a malfunction in the comms equipment, or the Guardian program could have gone bankrupt or even been scrapped. When everyone who knew you personally was surely dead, it wasn't hard to think you might have been forgotten. Truthfully, he had often been overlooked back when he had still been physically present.
Of course there were worse possibilities. Extinction-level natural disasters. Or the entire human race could have epically self-destructed. He could very well be the last human left alive. Not that he would stay that way for long if there was no one left to help him.
"Please," he whispered as the tears he had been trying to hold off finally started to fall.
"Fuck!" The word crackled over the speakers, harsh and unexpected.
Shocked out of his despair spiral, Aziraphale blinked repeatedly, uncertain of how to respond.
"Bloody fucking shite! I am so sorry! Fuck me sideways, that was… hngh."
Aziraphale had spent a fair amount of time working in control rooms before he was co-opted into his current predicament. Swearing wasn't uncommon on the best days, but it was rarely broadcast. Still, the sound of another human voice was such a relief, he could hardly bring himself to care. "Are you alright, mission control?"
"Yeah. Probably. Maybe. Gods, that hurt. Found a short in one of the control panels. Got more than the recommended daily dose of electricity, didn't I?"
Aziraphale’s first instinct was to ask if there was anything he could do to help, but given his current location, he squashed it. He still had problems of his own.
"But enough about me. You're alive! I mean, uh, of course you are. But it’s nice to have confirmation."
A laugh he couldn’t quite suppress bubbled up in Aziraphale, though he was fully aware it was bordering on hysterical. He had felt too many big emotions too quickly to be in a particularly healthy state of mind. The voice reaching out to him through the darkness was full of excitement. Even as he was cursing in pain, the joy was still evident. To have some sort of connection… to know someone cared at all, no matter the reason, was exhilarating. "For now," Aziraphale said lightly, enjoying the moment even though he was still aware he was in some amount of peril.
"And it's my job to keep you that way. Give me a few minutes, I need to get everything booted up to receive diagnostic logs."
Though he had expected the connection to cut, the sound of clanks and thunking and a few distant murmurs that sounded suspiciously like curses drifted through the speakers.
"Can I ask your name?" Aziraphale finally ventured. It should have been part of the initial transmission if they had been going strictly by the book, but nothing about this particular call was standard.
"Anthony Crowley. But… uh, don't call me Anthony. Just Crowley, if you don’t mind."
Back in his day, everyone working for the Guardian project had a doctorate and they wouldn't let anyone forget it. Either the standards had changed or this Crowley was unique. "Well met, Crowley. I'm Aziraphale Fell."
"Don't I know it!" There was another set of banging noises before a low hum stirred to life filling the background of the transmission. "The great A. Z. Fell. Had your poster on my wall when I was a kid."
Wasn't that unexpected. Aziraphale blushed and tried to fight the urge to distance himself from the whole situation. He had never wanted to be a promotional tool, though he had known it would be unavoidable. "Not so great as all that," he said softly. "I haven't really done anything."
"Besides traveling further than any other human ever. And being brave enough to try it in the first place."
He had been terrified every step of the way. They had threatened to sedate him if he stalled any longer. Too much was riding on the project to delay it for his nerves. Aziraphale nearly quit on the spot, but he didn't have anything else to live for really. "Well," he said, trying not to feel morose, "I slept through most of it."
"Even better! All the glory with very little effort."
Aziraphale smiled despite himself. It was hard to know if Crowley was naturally a cheerful optimist or if this was his controller persona to keep his astronauts calm in stressful situations.
"Alright. It’s up and running. Start transmitting. We're running a skeleton crew right now but I've already sent out the call for analysts so we can start digging through your data and figure out why you were pulled out of stasis."
"Sending now." Aziraphale's fingers danced over the console in front of him and he let out a sigh of relief. There were still people looking out for him. A whole team even. There was reason to hope.
"Receiving," Crowley confirmed. "I'm assuming the lack of screaming alarms in the background means you're not in any immediate danger."
The next few minutes were filled with an easy back and forth of checks and verifications until both men were satisfied that there wasn't an imminent threat. As it wound down, Aziraphale braced himself for the impending loneliness. Crowley would need to brief the rest of the team and coordinate their efforts. A skeleton crew made sense for a project that had run with little to no data to review for the last hundred-ish years. But then the controller surprised him.
"I can play something for you, while I'm away. If you'd like." Crowley's voice sounded almost hesitant now. When he didn't get an immediate response he rambled on. "Music, I mean. Nothing modern, since this is being recorded, but I could do something classical if you'd like."
Aziraphale had agreed. The sound of piano music mingled with the low hum of running machines, nearly drowning out the sound of Crowley leaving the control room.
Floating through space, Aziraphale was alone and he was lonely, but he was listening to the evidence that somewhere on Earth, someone was looking out for him. Beyond all reason, a person he had never met seemed to genuinely care.