Chapter Text
And just like that, it was over. He was gone, He was truly fully gone from Earth, from the life they he had learned to love, left it all behind in some folly attempt to make a difference, despite the fact that he knows that there's no difference to be made. He was supposed to be different.
London blurred around the Bentley in streaks of gold and rainwater. The car burned with ethereal flames and moved between traffic at unmatched speeds. Crowley fought off the strange feelings in him and stepped on the gas even further, basically pushing the pedal through the metal. Streetlights smeared themselves across the windshield like wet paint dragged by a careless thumb, and the engine growled low and ugly beneath Crowley’s hands. The car moved too fast for the narrow streets, too fast for the weather, for the first time in his immortal life everything was happening too fast for Crowley to comprehend, It was all just so fast.
The Bentley, loyal creature that she was, complained softly every time he took a corner hard enough to nearly lift her wheels off the ground, and resisted fiercely every time steered himself into oncoming traffic.
“Oh, Don’t you start,” Crowley muttered, gripping the steering wheel tighter. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
Thunder rolled somewhere over the Thames. Or maybe Heaven was moving furniture around again. They never did know what they wanted the decor to be up there, plan or no, but maybe that'll change now with Azira him in charge. Maybe there'll be biscuits.
Crowley laughed a small huff, it made his eyes sting a bit more and broke apart halfway out of his mouth.
His glasses were still on, because taking them off would mean admitting something was wrong, and Crowley had built an entire existence around never admitting anything was wrong. Not during the Fall. Not during Armageddon. Not when Hell dragged him screaming across burning floors because he’d dared to ask questions.
And certainly not now. Because he KNEW he was right, so nothing could possibly be wrong. He was not wrong... He pushed the Bentley faster than before.
Rain battered the windows harder now, drumming frantic little fingers against the glass. London at night curled around him in reflections and ghosts. Couples beneath umbrellas. Neon signs flickering half-dead. A drunk man laughing outside a pub. Humanity, carrying on as it always did, oblivious to what goes on behind the scenes, to what he gave up to keep them happy.
He was out of London now, at least out of all the populated bits of London, just green hill and dark clouds, where the Bentley slowed instinctively, for once trying to get him to slow down instead of speed up.
Crowley slammed his foot down harder cracking the car floor.
“Not tonight.”
The car tore through the now dirt road like a rocket wrapped in black paint, bathed in hell fire. He rampaged through the country side for hours on end, not having any destination but feeling as if he wanted to just be gone. At some point the night just blended together and the clouds disappeared, he was somewhere he wasn't quite sure he recognized and the stars seemed more beautiful than ever.
The Bentley finally had enough of Crowley's temper tantrum and came to a stop on an open green pasture, despite Crowley's complaints.
“NO. You are MY car, You go where I tell you to go and that is not HERE, so move!,” Crowley screamed out, banging his hands on the steering wheel
"MOVE. YOU DUMB HUNK OF METAL!!!" He kept banging and banging on it, eyes set ablaze as tears streamed down his face unrepentant. Each blow harder than the last, the car honking and various lights and every gauge going crazy.
"MOVE...Move...move...please. Please move. I can't. You know I can't, I have to move forward or it all comes crashing into me, please." His hits got softer until he was holding the steering wheel so tight his knuckles began to whiten.
There was no running from it now. It was all gone, his whole way of life, all of it, all of him. There was no other way to make this hurt less, and running wouldn't deny the undeniable truth.
Aziraphale was gone.
No.
Worse than gone.
He’d chosen Heaven.
Crowley swallowed hard enough it hurt. He dried his eyes and laid his head on the steering wheel in shame and disbelief.
"I'm sorry. You didn't deserve that." He knew his sweet car didn't deserve what he'd done and he didn't deserve it. Apparently he didn't deserve anyone because the great big, ineffable plan had taken what he cared about once again.
“You know,” he said aloud, voice rough, “I tried to make him understand, that we're like them, that we are them, the free. I tried to make him question, and the only thing he ever did, was question me. Giant waste of time. All of it, one big waste of time, the fighting, the bad, the good. ALL of it, isn't that right? You'd know wouldn't you." He knew he started the conversation with the Bentley but somewhere in the middle he had switched over to his favorite silent listener.
And like always, Silence answered him.
"I know you won't answer, you never answer, but just this once, if never before, just once can you please listen." He fully realized who he was addressing and like always struggled to find the words, the rage, the anguish and sorrow, the hurt, it all came crashing back in as if he was back in the bookshop watching him go.
"Because, Seriously,” he continued, staring up into the starry sky. “Bit cruel, isn’t it? You make one angel. Just the one. Lovely little disaster in a bow tie. Give him impossible eyes and that ridiculous smile and all that…” He waved one hand vaguely. “Goodness. That hope the rest of us don't seem to have.”
His throat tightened around the word.
“And then You hand him to me. You make him mine, and make me his.”
“For six thousand years. Hell, longer than that.”
Crowley’s voice cracked.
He cleared it violently.
“Six thousand years, and then You just…” He snapped his fingers. “Take him back. You take him away. Worst thing is that you made him do it, wasn't forced, wasn't strong armed or hurt into it, no. He left me with a smile on his face, he forgave me for loving him." The years crashed back into him, the delicate back and forth between these two celestial beings, the love that had been budding and festering since the beginning of man. All to just go up in a puff of smoke, evaporate from his grasp with no real reason why.
“I mean, what was the point?” he asked softly.
That question lingered in the car.
"What was the point of it all..."
Crowley remembered another time he’d asked questions. Back before gravity. Before pain. Before he learned that Heaven preferred obedience polished bright enough to see your own fear reflected in it.
Why make galaxies if nobody gets to live long enough to know them?
Why create people only to drown them?
Why punish curiosity when the universe itself was built from it?
And now this.
Why give him Aziraphale?
Why, why, WHY!?!?!?!!!??????
“He could’ve stayed. He should've stayed with me.”
The words came out small.
Broken.
Crowley hated them instantly.
“No, that’s not fair,” he muttered quickly. “Not fair on him. He doesn't know you like I do, no-one knows you like I do.”
“He thinks he’s doing the right thing.” A shaky breath escaped him. “Course he does. That’s the problem with angels. You made them all thinking duty and love were the same thing.”
A tear slipped free before he could stop it.
Crowley cursed viciously and wiped at his face.
“Don’t,” he snapped at himself. “Absolutely not. I can't keep doing that, I'll dehydrate.”
Despite his misgivings another tear followed the first.
Then another.
The Bentley’s windshield wipers started to rhythm like a metronome marking the collapse of a universe, as if trying it's best to wipe the tears from his face.
For a moment there was only breathing.
Crowley leaned forward against the steering wheel, shoulders shaking once.
Twice.
Then he covered his eyes with one hand and fought to say the words.
“Why wasn’t I enough?” he whispered. "Why?"
The question shattered in the tiny space inside the car.
And because God remained infuriatingly, cosmically silent, Crowley filled the emptiness himself.
“I know, I know. Big ineffable plan. Greater good. All that rubbish.”
His voice turned bitter.
“But You could’ve let me keep this one thing. You could've let me keep him. Just him.”
Crowley looked up through the windshield.
For one impossible second he imagined he could still smell Aziraphale on his coat. Bookshop dust and cocoa and old paper and safety.
Home.
The realization hit him so suddenly it stole the air from his lungs.
The bookshop had become home.
Not the flat.
Not the Bentley.
Not Mayfair or London or Earth itself.
Aziraphale.
Crowley made a wounded sound low in his throat and pressed both hands against his face.
Somewhere above the storm clouds and the stars and the moon and space itself sat Heaven in all its terrible certainty.
And somewhere inside it was Aziraphale.
Probably already trying to fix the apocalypse with tea and politeness.
Crowley could picture it perfectly.
That almost made it worse.
“You’d better look after him,” Crowley said finally, voice raw. “You hear me?”
The rain softened slightly, becoming a hush against the roof.
“He believes in You. He believes in what you told them to be.”
The Bentley idled patiently beneath him, engine rumbling like distant thunder.
Crowley took off his glasses at last.
His eyes were bright gold and wrecked with grief.
And still, impossibly, full of love.
The bookshop became impossibly quiet after they had both gone, not merely empty in the ordinary sense but hollowed out in some strange and invisible way that Muriel could not properly explain, as though the walls themselves had once contained a heartbeat that had now abruptly stopped, leaving behind only the faint memory of warmth clinging to the air between the shelves and in the dust floating lazily beneath the lamps.
This quiet sat wrong with her, and she wasn't quite sure she could fix it.
Muriel stood exactly where she had been left, hands folded carefully behind their back, shoulders squared into the sort of attentive posture that Heaven rewarded and encouraged, wearing the same bright smile that had carried them safely through untold years of corridors, files, and politely terrifying conversations with higher-ranking angels, because smiling was useful and safe and expected, and expected things rarely resulted in trouble.
The problem, Muriel was beginning to suspect, was that Earth did not seem particularly interested in her expectations.
The bookshop creaked softly around them in slow, irregular noises that sounded almost conversational, and every sound made Muriel glance instinctively toward the door, convinced for one hopeful moment that someone had returned to explain things properly, because surely there had simply been some misunderstanding, some missing instruction, some final page of the plan they had not been permitted to read yet.
Muriel stood in the middle of the shop smiling politely at nobody.
The smile had been there for nearly five hours now.
Waiting.
That was familiar.
Heaven involved a lot of waiting.
Wait for instructions.
Wait for judgment.
Wait for permission.
Wait until someone more important explained what was happening.
Muriel had always been very good at waiting.
But the door remained closed.
The silence stretched longer.
Muriel kept smiling anyway.
The Metatron had instructed her to remain on Earth and oversee the bookshop while the newly reinstated Supreme Archangel settled into his position in Heaven, and although Muriel did not fully understand what overseeing a bookshop involved, they had accepted the responsibility with immediate enthusiasm because enthusiasm was another useful thing in Heaven, particularly when one had absolutely no idea what was happening but hoped nobody would notice.
Unfortunately, now that everyone else was gone, there was nobody left to perform certainty for.
Muriel’s gaze drifted slowly across the shelves surrounding them, taking in row after row of books whose titles ranged from incomprehensible to mildly alarming, and they found themselves wondering how Aziraphale had managed to live among so many contradictory ideas without seeming distressed by it, because books disagreed with one another constantly, humans disagreed with one another even more frequently, and yet somehow the angel who had lived here for centuries had treated contradiction not as a threat but as something almost delightful.
That seemed impossibly strange.
Another long moment passed.
Muriel remained standing perfectly still.
Then another.
And another.
A human walking past the window glanced inside and visibly startled before hurrying away faster.
Muriel’s smile widened automatically.
She thought back to the only person to feign even a short conversation with her. She thought back to that reckless, murder hornet bee like demon named Crowley.
The demon had looked like someone had reached inside his chest and removed something vital.
The Supreme Archangel had smiled too brightly before leaving.
Muriel knew very little about demons beyond official Heavenly documentation, but they were fairly certain demons were not usually supposed to look that devastated.
The memory made something uncomfortable twist inside them.
Muriel frowned slightly.
That was odd.
They did not usually frown.
Angels weren’t supposed to dislike things. Not properly. Certainly not Heaven.
And yet.
Her gaze drifted upward toward the ceiling as if they could somehow see all the way to Heaven from here.
The enormous white corridors.
The endless instructions.
The smiling faces that never quite reached the eyes.
The certainty.
Muriel had thought certainty felt safe.
Now it just felt cold.
“I don’t think I liked it there very much,” she whispered.
The words escaped before they could stop them.
Muriel blinked rapidly.
Angels could not hate.
She was almost absolutely sure of that.
But perhaps there were smaller things one could feel. Tiny cracks between obedience and rebellion where strange new emotions could grow unnoticed.
Like confusion.
Or loneliness.
Or the horrible sinking feeling currently living somewhere near their stomach.
Angels were not supposed to dwell on discomfort.
They were especially not supposed to question Heaven.
And yet the questions kept arriving anyway, soft and persistent as rain tapping against the windows.
Why had the Supreme Archangel looked frightened instead of happy?
Why had the demon looked heartbroken instead of angry?
Why had the Metatron smiled in that careful, polished way that made Muriel feel suddenly small without understanding why?
The rain outside intensified, drumming gently against the glass, while somewhere upstairs a floorboard shifted with a noise that instantly made Muriel straighten in alarm before remembering, with a strange sinking sensation, that there was nobody upstairs at all.
The shop was empty.
Completely empty.
For the first time since arriving on Earth, Muriel realized they did not know what to do when there was nobody around to obey.
The thought arrived slowly enough that it almost escaped notice at first, unfolding itself carefully inside their mind like the opening pages of one of the novels stacked around them, but once it settled there it became impossible to ignore, because Heaven had always provided structure so absolute that independent thought became unnecessary, every hour assigned a purpose, every action weighed and categorized, every uncertainty solved by simply asking someone higher up the endless ladder of authority.
But here there was no ladder.
Only choices.
Muriel suddenly understood why humans were so anxious all the time.
Her hands tightened slightly behind her back as she stared toward the front windows where London moved beyond the rain in blurred streaks of headlights and umbrellas and hurried footsteps, every human outside apparently deciding where to go and what to do entirely on their own, which now struck Muriel as an utterly horrifying system upon which to build a civilization.
Still, humans managed it somehow.
Often badly, admittedly.
But they managed.
Muriel took a careful breath and attempted to ignore the growing turmoil inside them, because turmoil also seemed improper somehow, though they were beginning to suspect that many emotions existed. Maybe even existed inside of her.
Loneliness, perhaps.
Or uncertainty.
Or the aching sensation of being left behind.
They glanced again toward the door.
Surely someone would return eventually.
Aziraphale might come back because he forgot something important, perhaps one of his books or one of the little notes he tucked into strange places throughout the shop, and Crowley might return because despite his frightening demeanor he had looked far too emotionally entangled with this place to abandon it forever, and if neither of them came back then perhaps another angel would arrive with instructions, because there were always instructions eventually.
Muriel clung to that thought carefully.
Instructions meant certainty.
Certainty meant safety.
And she was certain her side, the good side, would never forget about her, would never make her wait for 1@#$@$#%@^# years again, she was certain.
So she smiled the biggest smile she could muster and looked at the door, hoping someone else came into her story and gave her the answers she needed.