Happy Holidays, Lunasong!
Title: Celestial Motions and Supernatural Systems of Timekeeping
Recipient: lunasong
Characters/Pairings: Aziraphale & Crowley
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 8.000
Notes: I loved your prompt about waiting and twisted it a bit to the extent of: What if their perception of Time is more complicated and how did it evolve along with human history? Please enjoy your gift and I wish you Happy Holidays =)
Summary: Unbeknownst to him he had arrived at a Crossroad. The first path was straight as an arrow and lead to a universe where they’d continue to live in different realms of Time, the demon operating during night and the angel operating during day. At the end of this path Crawly would one day accept a basket with a sleeping infant wordlessly and relieved to his bones that the miserable experience of Earth existence was finally over. This path, obviously, was also the one they were supposed to take.
Celestial Motions and Supernatural Systems of Timekeeping
“You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”
(Seneca: On the Shortness of Life)
***
Earth was created on Sunday the 21st of October, 4004 B.C., at 9:13 A.M., because God liked to get work done early in the morning while he was feeling fresh. Unfortunately 9:14 arrived with a migraine so He developed neither the Gregorian calendar nor the 12-hour clock to go along with His new creation. It fell to the humans to categorize Time and stark naked as they were it would take them well into the Middles Ages to invent instruments that could measure minutes let alone seconds.
The first humans didn’t have any incentive to start this tedious endeavour. Each day in Paradise was sunny, balmy and blue. Freezing season, Monday mornings and menstrual periods hadn’t been invented so why would anyone in their right mind keep track of time?
Consequently the two supernatural beings sent to Earth stumbled flat-footed into this newly discovered dimension. Time had existed before but nobody had noticed it since there was only one time in the two places that existed before Earth. (1)
Coming from such static environments Crawly immediately noticed that an elusive Something on Earth was steadily changing. Something was dragging him along even if he clung to the other three dimensions with all his unearthly might.
And he hated being dragged. It reminded him of another time when he had been forced to go somewhere he didn’t want to go. In fact, he had just stomached the discovery of the third dimension and now there was supposed to be a fourth? Added to this his perception of Time was completely mental at first.
Nights felt much longer to him which unfortunately made sense. Earth would alternate between periods of Lights and Dark until either of sides won. In an effort to make things fair He had given the days to the angels and the nights to the demons. It was a nice gesture, Crawly reckoned, but only so in blasted theory.
In reality it meant that Daytime Time yanked him forward like a glimmering stream, silky, powerful and irresistible. Days flew by like comets, beautiful green-blue-golden comets but comets nonetheless. He was nothing but a spectator during the day which would have been fine if it hadn’t been for the nights. Crawly hated them with a passion.
At night the flow of Time thickened like a cooling stream of lava and when his night vision kicked in the world turned ugly as Hell only more creatively so. Colours were one of Crawly’s favourite things on Earth. He loved how the sun flooded the sky in the morning in gold, rose and orange. He approved of the plants those swanky bastards for absorbing the light and turning it into all imaginable shades of green. He would come to admire the humans for picking, slicing, boiling and drying those plants until they gave them all the colours of the Earth to wear.
But every blessed one of them glared at him in nasty of tones whenever he dared waking them from their sleep. There seemed to be no exception. Grass blades turned into bilious needles, tawny sand soured to grimy grey and dandelions exploded before his eyes into thorny balls of white.
Please Earth, he once thought in the deepest midst of the darkest night, or Stars or Moon. Give me something that isn’t completely messed up by the night. A rock or beetle or even some wacky little flower. I don’t care as long as I get to look at something in the night that doesn’t make me my eyes balls bleed.
Later he felt embarrassed because, of course, celestial bodies didn’t give a bless they were just doing their jobs like everybody else. The only good thing about night vision was that it provided him with a way to keep track of time in the dark.
Blue, he discovered, looked it’s most hideous shortly after sunset, red became intolerable at midnight and as soon as yellow and white started giving him nausea he knew that the sun that unreliable daughter of a prick was about to make a comeback.
So Crawly’s days were short, wonderful and impossible to grasp and during the night he had plenty of Time but no longer wanted anything to do with the stuff, ugly and dull as it was. The humans were dead to the word at night and there was only so much havoc he could wreck with the support of the nocturnal animals. They were terribly nice to him especially the owls but he soon grew so moody he started avoiding them.
After 574 of those horrible nights it finally dawned on him (hah) that against all logic he wasn’t nocturnal. Each sunset brought a twinge of dread followed by a tide of tiredness that grew heavier with each passing night. It got to a point where even the most revolting colours barely bothered him in his stupor. He could go ballistic if he thought about it for too long.
Both Below and Above wanted him to work at night. Why for his own bloody sake make it so bloody difficult?
And by Satan did he resent the other agent for not having the same problem. As things were going there was no overlap in their working hours but whenever they met against all possible odds the angel pottered about so cheerfully it made Crawly’s scales crawl (literally). Once goody two-shoes thwarted every single scheme he had painstakingly developed for a very long time (2) in a much much shorter time. (3)
At that point Crawly was so fed up he tracked the angel down determined to give him a good hefty bite. Despite being dog-tired for most of his stay on Earth he had somehow managed to develop a few poisons and there was a particular powerful one that might knock the angel out or at least slow him down until Crawly could gain some momentum.
He found him in the mountains. It was one of those cloudy nights with the moon nowhere to be seen and a strong wind blowing from the North. It battered the fire the angel had lit on a stack of woods. He stood close to it, his wings carefully shielding the flames against the roughness of the weather. His attention was so absorbed by this activity Crawly could sneak up to him unseen.
He had almost reached the angel’s ankle where a strip of skin shone through when he realized something that got his jaw to drop (and snakes could open their mouth really wide). He blinked twice just to make sure. The colours… No, he wasn’t imagining things. The colours were the same. White that didn’t blind him, gold that wasn’t tarnished. The angel looked exactly as they did during the day.
For a moment Crawly couldn’t do anything but stare. Maybe celestial bodies gave a bless. Or Somebody else did. He swatted the thought like a mosquito and slithered closer. When he brushed against a branch the angel stiffened and looked over his shoulder.
“Who is there?”
He sensed Crawly’s aura but it was clear from the unfocused movement of his eyes that he couldn’t see him. Or anything else for that matter. Angels were blind in the dark which was probably another attempt to make things fair, thank You very much.
“I know you are there”, the angel said in a low voice. “Reveal yourself.”
Crawly hesitated.
Unbeknownst to him he had arrived at a Crossroad. The first path was straight as an arrow and lead to a universe where they’d continue to live in different realms of Time, the demon operating during night and the angel operating during day. At the end of this path Crawly would one day accept a basket with a sleeping infant wordlessly and relieved to his bones that the miserable experience of Earth existence was finally over. This path, obviously, was also the one they were supposed to take.
Crawly crept forward until his body entered the light cone of the fire, his teeth filling with poison as a precaution.
“Oh, it’s you”, the angel exclaimed and Crawly felt downright affronted by the blatant relief in his voice. “Long time no see, serpent. What have you been up to?”
Crawly rolled his eyes and yawned at him shamelessly.
“Smalltalk, angel? Really?”
“Oh, but I you have been up to grand things. It was quite the task to - ”
The angel also broke into a yawn. Judging from his widened eyes he seemed surprised by it himself. He was unsuccessfully trying to keep his mouth shut and hide his face behind his hands. Before Crawly could say anything (and he had a lot to say) he felt himself overcome by another yawn. After he was done they stared at each other, the fire crackling quietly between them.
“Ssso you get tired at night too?”
“Err, yes”, the angel admitted. “That stupid old instinct. Very annoying if you ask me.”
“What are you talking about? What instinct?”
“Well, of course, the instinct that He...” the angel stopped and blinked as if he had just remembered something. “Ah. I shouldn’t have said that. It’s kind of a secret.”
“But I want to know.” Crawly rose from the ground until their faces were almost at the same level. “Tell me. What did He do?”
With a sigh the angel threw another branch into the fire. His wings were still forming a shield around the flames and in Crawly’s new position they almost brushed against his semi-upright form. Under other circumstances it would have been quite the distraction.
“Fine”, the angel said. “I supposed you have a right to know about it considering you’re… your unique situation. Yes. Don’t mention it to the other demons though.”
After chewing on his lower lip for a moment he looked up at him.
“Demons aren’t that different from angels. The Rebellion only happened, err, a very short while ago if you compare it to the much much much much longer time we spend in Heaven together. Demons have only been demons for a fraction of their existence. You probably think you are rotten to the core but let me tell you: Inside that core is another core which remembers that you are of angelic stock and... now now. I don’t like being hissed at me like that!”
“Then get to the point”, Crawly growled.
“You feel tired at night”, the angel went on, “because a part of you is still afraid of the Dark. The mechanism was created after the Rebellion as a sort of escape route for those who’d never enter the Light again. After seeing how it affected some of the Fallen He decided it would only be fair to give you a way out. Angels feel the same urge to sleep when it gets dark but we are supposed to suppress it. Which worked fine by the way until you showed up and yawned in my face with that remarkably flexible jaw of yours.”
“Oh, I beg your pardon”, Crawly replied forcing himself to feel pissed off because the alternative would have been pitch-black misery. “A tough existence you do lead having to work all day and then feel tired at night. Try working and suppressing that bastard of a need at the same time. Because that’s what I have been doing for the last… the last…”
“20 months?” the angel provided.
“20 what?”
“Months. A new word. The humans invented it. Well, Eve did. It describes the time the moon takes to go full cycle.”
“Huh... handy?”
“I think so too.”
Silence settled between them and established a few colonies.
They were still standing at the Crossroads and Good Fortune would have it that the angel was a bit faster when they spoke up almost at once again.
“Did you ever consider - “
“So I guess, I should be… did I ever consider what?“
“Using a human form”, the angel said with slight hesitation. “It might help with your perception.”
“A human form? Seriously?”
“Yes… and you could also try to adapt to their way of living a bit. They are excellent at handling Time.”
And when Crawly decided to swallow his pride (he was very good at swallowing huge things anyways) to consider this advice it came to pass that the second path opened up before them. It was a muddy one, winding and willowy, a path that seemed to lead everywhere and nowhere most of the time.
It was also a path that would one day be lined with taverns, ponds, book shops, vine parlours, street musicians and other wondrous delights either of they had the capacity to imagine yet.
***
In the 20th century Crowley would own a custom-made watch which was designed for the kind of rich deep-sea diver who likes to know what the time is in twenty-one world capitals while he's down there. Five millennia earlier he would literally have given an arm, a leg and a wing for any timekeeping device at all.
The angel had been right. A human form helped with his perception of Time. Days became longer and nights… well, he couldn’t care less what they did. Along with his new body had come the discovery of sleep and this fabulous activity turned out to be something he never wanted to go without again.
After some experimentation he formed the habit to rise with the sun feeling giddier than a demon was technically allowed. But screwing the rules had rarely been this satisfying. Finally he could look at daytime colours and mix with daytime beings as long as he wanted to.
Not being a pseudo-nocturnal outcast anymore also came with its challenges. Days felt longer to him but they also grew more confusing. Suddenly unexpected chunks of Time opened before him like unchartered sections on a map. Without the invention of clocks the only pointers he had to work with were sunrise, sun peak and sunset and those got muddied by the clouds more often than not.
The Wild West of Time was a time when a spell of bad weather didn’t just ruin the picnic it meant that nobody showed up. It almost wrecked the frail liking he and the angel had taken to another.
“Where were you?” the angel snapped at him after another failed appointment to, well, chat about stuff. “I realize that demons have to show up late as a matter of principle but this is going too far. I refuse to be treated like that. Do you know how it’s like to be all dressed up with no place to go?”
“No because I’m always dressed up,” Crowley shot back. “Also I showed up on time last month. You were nowhere to be seen.”
“I left after the sun had disappeared behind the horizon. You know I don’t like it when it gets dark.”
“So that’s your definition of sunset? When the sun has just disappeared behind the horizon?”
“Of course, it is. What’s yours then?”
“As long as there are some red or golden clouds left it still qualifies as a sunset. That’s how the humans see it too.”
“Your humans”, the angel clarifies. “The ones I’m involved with would never call the thing you just described ‘sunset’.”
“Tcha, maybe that’s the reason why my humans and your humans like to smash each others’ skulls.”
What Crowley meant as a snide remark would get both of them thinking later on. It was one of his sharper early observations. Humans hated it in general when other humans differed in any way from them but Time seemed to be an especially touchy subject. The first thing any conquering group of humans always imposed on the defeated was their own concept of Time no matter how primitive or sophisticated it was.
And yes: They could also do sophisticated, thanks celestial bodies whether you gave a bless or not.
When the first sundial was invented Crowley felt a bit like someone who had suffered from tinnitus for centuries before getting his first shot of cortisone. He still relished in his human body but some of the wondrous effects had worn off. Inevitably Time started to weigh down on him again. Only sleep and buckets of booze could make him forget how it dragged him along like some pathetic kidnap victim with a lightproof bag pulled over its head.
And Time was one of those sadistic kidnappers who didn’t just do it for the ransom.
The longer Crowley stayed on Earth the more it shoved itself in his face. The sun either rose or sank, the moon either grew or diminished, snow either settled or melted, plants either bloomed or withered - and whenever he thought he could handle the pull of Time as it manifested itself in days, months and years the humans he had just sung saucy lullabies to lay grey and wrinkled in their graves.
Sundials sounded like a brilliant idea, yes. A device to keep that bugger of a dimension in check was exactly what he needed. All the more gutted he felt when the whole hype turned out to be a let-down. Those dim-witted things only worked during certain times of the year and when the weather was nice. Needless to say one had to be a completely deranged to trust the weather. So sleep and booze it was again.
Until the angel one day showed up with a Babylonian water clock.
“Just a little gimmick found on the market”, he said dusting off of his robes. “I thought you might enjoy it.”
Crowley could tell from the way he was fumbling with his sleeves that both statements bordered on Plain Old Lies but he felt no urge to call him out today. Slowly he turned to stare at the two vessels that were standing on his table, one of them elevated on a clay pedestal from where it was pouring water into the other one.
“Look, one UŠ (4) has passed since we poured the water in”, the angel explained dabbing a finger against a line on the inner wall of the lower vessel, “When all of the water has flown through it means that one DANNA (5) is over and the clock needs a refill.”
They continued to watch the flow of water and when Crowley hadn’t said anything for another whole UŠ the angel looked at him with a slightly concerned smile.
“Are you quite alright? You look a bit pale.”
Crowley blinked and cleared his throat feeling dazed with barely contained elation.
“M’fine. Where is yours? We should run them next to each other to test how reliable they are.”
“They are quite reliable I assure you, even the Emperor has one. I didn’t get one for myself though. Money was a bit tight and… Crowley, err, where are we going?”
“The market. I’m paying.”
It was no wonder the angel had run out of money. High quality water clocks cost a small fortune. But they were worth it. Oh, they were.
The possibility to divide time in smaller units than days and nights opened up a whole new world for them. Suddenly they could measure exactly how long something took and experiment how they might speed it up or slow it down, they could make short-term goals and predict when something would happen in the near future without having to sound vague as Hell.(6)
With clocks Crowley could even arrive late to their meeting on purpose. It was rarely more than a few UŠ though and never a DANNA. While he was obligated to behave like a fiend it didn’t say anything in his contract that he also had to be an ungrateful jerk. And using his new understanding of Time against the one being who had helped him when nobody else gave a fuck would have boiled down to just that.
So starting in Babylon he decided to always buy two copies of the newest timekeeping device: One for himself and one for Aziraphale (7) - and they had to be the exact same.(8) After each purchase he ran them simultaneously and relentlessly tossed the ones that drifted apart before the experimentation phase was over.
Not long and Crowley turned into every clockmaker’s worst nightmare. He was such a persistent critic of the trade they had no choice but to fervently hone their skills and come up with better and better ideas. It was one more proof for the boundless energy of human imagination especially when put under pressure.
A few decades later Crowley was happily surrounded by a plethora of clocks: candle clocks, oil-lamp-clocks, hourglasses, mercury clocks, incense sticks, all sort of water clocks and even a few sundials so elegantly designed they atoned somewhat for their early predecessor’s failures.
“Really, dear” Aziraphale said after receiving the third clock in less than a lustrum. “Why are you so obsessed with having the best and newest of those things? There is hardly any difference. Don’t you think you’re getting a bit carried away?”
When Crowley broke into helpless laughter the angel furrowed his brows and sat up on his dining couch. Outside a waning moon was shining over Rome.
“What’s so funny?”
“It’s just… carried away… listen to yourself, angel. We are always being carried away whether we like it or not. Time carries us God-knows-where and probably not even that. If I can’t see where I’m going I’d at least like to know how fast I’m going. And clocks are the only blessed things that can tell me.”
When he saw the upset expression that had taken up residence in Aziraphale’s eyes he looked away and took a sip of wine.
“You make it sound like an entirely horrible thing.”
“That’s because it is an entirely horrible thing. Come on, angel. Tell me one good thing about Time.”
“It makes things precious and urgent. Look at the humans. Sometimes they get more done in thirty years than we do in centuries. Why do you think that is? Because nothing matters without Time. Nothing ever gets done. Sometimes I even… sometimes it makes me wonder what I have to show for myself after all those aeons of existence.”
Crowley blinked and nearly missed what was happening on Aziraphale’s face in the semi-dark. It got him to choke a little on his wine. Was that a blush? His night vision scrambled into action and told him in a rather high-pitched voice that, yes, it was. (9)
At the same moment Aziraphale’s brain seemed to remind him that Crowley had night vision because the blush deepened and he stumbled to his feet in his ill-fitting toga.
“Aw look at the time” he exclaimed throwing a cursory glance over his shoulder. “Has it been two hours? Well, I should get going now, indeed I should. Thank you for the wine, dear.”
“Two hours are already?” Crowley called after him. “And don’t forget your new clock!”
But he was already gone.
After staring at the empty hall in confusion Crowley got up, walked to the corner of the room and checked the clock that was running there day and night thanks to the diligence of his servants. To his surprise it had truly been two hours. And how they had flown by considering that winter solstice was nearing. (10) They hadn’t really done anything expect talking.
The implication of it all crept up on him like a particularly cheeky pickpocket near the Pantheon.
Oh bless. With a groan he threw himself back on his dining couch. So there was a third thing that could make him forget.
***
If there was a nice thing about Time, Crowley mused in the following decade, he hadn’t yet discovered it.
The angel was right that nothing got done without Time. But how was that a good thing? First of all, deadlines were a nuisance and should have never been invented. Secondly, they lead to awful mental pressure that could only be relieved by doing pleasant stuff for days without feeling pleased but rather like a demon-shaped waste of space afterward. (11)
Putting things off, however, Crowley realized was not the worst way to deal with Time.
Waiting was.
The activity wasn’t even new. He had waited for aeons in Heaven and for millennia in Hell. Only it hadn’t felt like waiting. It had been the only thing they ever did.
Waiting on Earth was one activity among many. Waiting on Earth meant he wanted something to be different and couldn’t do anything but hope that bloody Time would arrange for it to happen at some point or another. (12)
There were different sorts of waiting. So far he had discovered three: Waiting of the bearable kind meant that he was at Time’s mercy but could at least distract himself with booze, sleep or Aziraphale. Waiting of the bad kind meant that either booze stopped being fun, sleep was out of the question or that the foolish angel had scampered off someplace. Waiting of the ugly kind meant that none of those three distractions were available.
He had to face the second kind during Nero’s reign when Aziraphale was out of town, some festivity was going on that included a great of singing and he had gotten a message from Below that they’d needed him for a mission “in a few days”. (13)
When nobody showed up after a week even his best wine started to lose its appeal and before he knew it Crowley had skidded into the third kind of waiting, the one he despised the most. After a long day of frightening the plants in his garden, counting the tiles of the atrium and polishing his clock collection he decided that Hell was due for a call.
WHAT A RARE OCCURENCE, CROWLEY, the voice sounded from the tar torch they used for communication. HAVE YOU FINALLY FINISHED THE REPORTS YOU HAVE BEEN WORKING ON?
“No, lord”, Crowley replied quite truthfully, “There were other urgent matters if you remember?”
THE NEW EMPEROR YES. I MUST SAY YOU HAVE OUTDONE YOURSELF THIS TIME, CROWLEY.
“Thank you, lord, but, err, that’s not why I’m calling.”
WHAT IS IT THEN?
“I just wanted a head’s up about the current mission. I got a message that someone would come to fetch me in the next few days?”
AH THE MISSION (the voice suddenly adopted a disturbingly satisfied tone) ABOUT THAT.THERE WAS A CHANGE OF PLAN AND WE DECIDED TO PROCEED WITHOUT YOU. TIME WAS SHORT CROWLEY.
Rolling his eyes in disbelief he sat up in his chair.
“How so?” The words slipped out before he could think. “I mean… why was it so urgent, lord? It sounded like we had plenty of time.”
IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THE MOVEMENT OF CELESTIAL BODIES CROWLEY. I REALLY DON’T HAVE THE TIME TO EXPLAIN BUT SINCE YOU’RE SO UNUSUALLY EAGER TO BE INFORMED -
Before Crowley could protest something slammed into him and he was floating over a sunlit pine forest he had never seen before. The weather was flawless and a salty breeze told him that the ocean couldn’t be far off. This memory belonged to someone else so he had no control over the body he was in.
He had always disliked it when they force fed information to him like that but when he saw a group of brightly clad beings on the ground he was overcome by a strong sense of foreboding that he might positively come to hate it this time.
There were ten of them gathered in a circle on a clearing. Ten angels. Crowley’s vessel was lurking close to them hidden in a tree surrounded by other trees that held at least twenty more heavily armed demons. He had barely processed the situation when the landscape got dark all of a sudden. The sun stood high in the sky but something had moved in front. A black disk that was about to cover it completely.
An eclipse, Crowley thought. Oh shit.
He felt his body raise its axe and nod at the demon next to it, a broad grin stretching over its face. Then it opened his mouth and yelled in an ear-deafening voice: “NOW!”
They raided them with blazing arms. Most angels had their wings out which made them even easier to attack. They all glowed in the dark like flickering white-golden torches. When their screams pierced the air Crowley tried to look away but the memory wouldn’t have any of it. The body he inhabited lunged at a slender figure vainly holding on to another angel who was being dragged skywards. Then Crowley felt the claws of his current body buried deeply into dense feathers.
They felt softer than Chinese silk, softer than any memory or fantasy he had ever conjured of touching an angel’s wings. But not even in his kinkiest of moods he had ever imagined it to happen in such a way. It felt so wrong it gave him mental goose bumps.
Those goose bumps were nothing though compared to the violent shudder that overcame him when another yelling voice emerged directly next to him. A voice that sounded exactly like Aziraphale’s.
Abruptly he found himself back in his mansion where his unsuspecting body struggled to catch-up with the bedlam of his mind. He had never felt the blood leave his face this fast and his heart thudded so loudly he struggled to understand Beelzebub’s next words.
YOU SEEMED TO ENJOY YOURSELF A BIT TOO MUCH THERE CROWLEY SO I DECIDED TO CUT IT SHORT. NEEDLESS TO SAY THE MISSION WAS A SUCCESS. THERE WERE SOME INEVITABLE LOSSES ON OUR SIDE BUT WE TOOK FOUR HIGH-RANKING ANGELS HOSTAGE.
“What about the ressst?”
ELIMINATED. REJOICE - IF YOU ALLOW ME THE EXPRESSION - CROWLEY. FIVE ENEMIES LESS TO DETER US FROM WELL-DESERVED VICTORY.
Beezlebub continued to gloat after that. How well negotiations were going, how this was the first time since the Rebellion that the other side even deigned to listen to them… Crowley didn’t listen.
Four high-ranking hostages, he thought over and over again, five dead.
“But there were ten” he blurted without waiting for a break. “It doesn’t add up!”
AH, the voice replied after a moment of resentful silence. HOW PERCEPTIVE OF YOU CROWLEY. YES ONE GOT AWAY. WE ARE ON HIS HEELS THOUGH AND HE WON’T BE GETTING FAR. NOT IN THE STATE HE IS IN.
In the next hours Crowley discovered there was a fourth kind of waiting. It was similar to the third and at also completely incomparable to any kind of waiting he had ever done.
Waiting for Aziraphale while facing the solid possibility of never seeing him again.
His first instinct was to do something, anything. Find out when the eclipse had happened, find out where, find the angel. But for once Rome’s prodigious astronomers were clueless. Even after hexing them they couldn’t tell him where the eclipse had taken place. All but one claimed there hadn’t even been one.
After that fiasco he checked Aziraphale’s place (empty), returned to his mansion (empty) and then decided that the astronomers had to be right after all. Beelzebub was just messing with him, haha. Yes, he’d call him, they’d have a long-drawn-out evil laugh about it and the whole thing would be forgotten. Everything was fine. Aziraphale was fine. He’d walk through Crowley’s door any moment now. He surely hadn’t been dragged to Hell and he also wasn’t lying under some pine tree paralysed by poison while demons were combing through the forest. And most of all he wasn’t…
Five out of ten, a voice reminded him. And he was never a very good fighter.
Then Crowley drank wine that tasted like leach and crawled into a bed that laughed at him. For the first time since the Beginning sleep became a physical impossibility. His thoughts spun him like manic dancing partners to tunes that sounded all the same.
At first told himself that Aziraphale must have been the one that got away. Rusty fighting skills put aside he knew Earth better than anyone else. That had to account for something, right?
Then he reminded himself that Principalities had been quite big shots in his day. Maybe Aziraphale was one of the hostages. Maybe he was sitting in a cell of Hell right now pestering the guards with his questions. But would Heaven even care to get him out?
Aziraphale had mentioned once that he wasn’t exactly on good terms with his superiors since the incident in Paradise. He should have kept the bloody sword, Crowley now realised, it was supposed to keep him seeing the dark. It was supposed to make things fair. And that impossible angel with his hero complex had given it to the humans. How could anyone be so absolutely and completely imbecilic?
Just when Crowley thought that berating Aziraphale for the rest of the night might produce the longed-for calming effect, another voice chimed in: Why didn’t you tell him that he shines in the dark like a snowflake in a freaking goldmine? You were the only one who could have warned him.
Around midnight he got up again. Which midnight it was he didn’t know, he could have spent two hours in bed or two weeks. His perception of Time was so messed up he almost expected to crawl around on his stomach again.
He took a seat in the dining room staring at the water clock in the corner. Normally its steady rushing sound was quite pleasant, a discreet background noise reminding him that things were taken care of. Time was passing but at least he didn’t have to watch it.
Tonight the water didn’t flow - it trickled. He could heard each drop, each one of them, as they fell with chinking noises like shards on frozen ground. After half an hour that felt like three successive winters in Southern Bothnia he stood up to go to his storage room. Something was wrong with that clock. Time had never dragged on like this before. He got his favourite hourglass and it seemed to be working fine at first. But just when he felt a faint semblance of relief the sand turned to viscous goo before his eyes.
Over the next hours (or whatever it was) he went to his storage room until it was empty. They all betrayed him tonight. Candle clocks wouldn’t catch fire, incense sticks exploded in his hands, water clocks refused to run. He even fetched his sundials but to use them he would have to wait until this monstrosity of a night was over - which defeated the whole bloody purpose.
So he waited. He waited and watched the door. He waited and stared at the clocks trying to force at least one of them to work again.
Two millennia later Aziraphale would read a quote to him claiming that in a real dark night of the soul it was always three o'clock in the morning.(14) Crowley would wince and decide that if novelists were any good at horology it must have been exactly three o’clock in the morning in Rome when he had gotten desperate enough to fall back on his oldest system of timekeeping: Night vision and colours.
Not that it helped. In that particular night all colours looked equally hideous and none could make him anymore nauseous then he already was.
But it made sure that he saw the angel immediately when he finally arrived.
There was no warning. One moment the room was empty, the next he stood before him: wind-swept, pale-faced, covered in grime, encrusted with several sort of blood and wrapped in robes that dated back all the way to Babylon. With one shaky wave of his hand Aziraphale ignited a torch on the wall, mumbled something about being hunted by archangels and then decided to collapse headfirst on the marble tiles - a plan Crowley couldn’t help but foil entirely.
His own knees only started shaking when he was already safely on the floor, a limp angel in his arms who mercifully couldn’t hear the speech he was half yelling half bawling at him. Very soon he ran out of breath, broke off and hugged Aziraphale’s rain-soaked head so fiercely to his chest his servants would later silently agree that master Antonius was also due for a bath.
They were the best servants anyone could wish for. Servants who didn’t ask questions when their employer shouted for them in the middle of the night from a room filled with broken clocks because an unconscious creature needed to be taken care of. They brought hot water, towels and bandages for the angel and a chair and wine for Crowley when the sight of Aziraphale’s wings confirmed that he hadn’t exaggerated about being hunted down by archangels.
At least one his servants also had to be a mind-reader otherwise Crowley couldn’t explain how he and Aziraphale ended up in the same bed in a mansion with sixteen bedrooms. The next thing he knew was being roused at bright daylight by someone saying: “You stole my blanket again” and it took him a moment to realize that the rough voice did in fact belong to him.
The angel lay an arm’s length away dark circles under his eyes and his bandaged wings out. Crowley hoped he hadn’t woken him by his complaining until he heard a murmured apology that contained more endearments than strictly necessary. Without opening his eyes Aziraphale slid closer, put his head on Crowley’s shoulder and covered him from chin to toe with something much better than a blanket.
When he woke up again (this time with his blanket draped over him) the other side of the bed was empty. As he sat up groaning and feeling hopelessly hungover he wondered briefly whether he had imagined it all. It felt as if centuries had past in his sleep. When Izema, both his cook and hairdresser, promptly stuck her head through the door he decided she had to be the mind-reader among his servants.
“Good evening, master, I’m glad to see that you’re feeling better.”
Crowley gave her a harried smile and tried not to think about the state he must have been if this qualified as ‘better’.
“Where is my guest?” He threw the blanket off, a few feathers twirling up in the air. “Have you seen him yet?”
“He’s in the dining room”, Izema replied. “We thought you should know he has drawn something on the floor and seems to be engaged in some sort of monologue.”
The ‘monologue’ was still going on when Crowley arrived downstairs.
“No, I understand”, the angel said businesslike to someone who Crowley couldn’t hear. “Thank you very much for clearing things up.” He noticed Crowley across the room and signalled him not to come closer. “Yes, yes of course.”
Who is it? Crowley mouthed and when Aziraphale rolled his eyes he knew it had to be Metatron.
“No, I assure you I don’t need any assistance. I’m being taken… err, I can take care of myself quite well. -. No, I don’t know why Israfil’s strike didn’t obliterate me. Maybe it needs sharpening?”
Crowley winced. Then he hissed in a way that immediately gained him the angel’s full attention.
Tell them to shut up or I’m coming over.
“Err, the weather is lovely again, don’t worry about it”, Aziraphale said. “No, please don’t inconvenience yourself, your grace. Really I do need to go now. - Yes thank you very very much!”
Finally the light disappeared and the angel limped out the circle dragged his injured wings along instead of using them for balance. The circles under his eyes were now an impressive plum blue.
“Care to explain?” Crowley asked while sauntering closer (certainly not considering whether or not to give him a hand).
Aziraphale slumped down on a dining couch and sighed.
“It’s, err, a bit complicated. Do you want the whole story?”
“They already filled me in about the attack. So…”
“They did?” Aziraphale perked up. “You saw… everything?”
“No, but Beelzebub told me there were four hostages and five permanent victims. That doesn’t tell me though how you got yourself beaten up by both sides.”
“Five permanent victims”, Aziraphale repeated with a frown. “Is that what they told you?”
“What - did that bastard Beezlebub lie to me?” Crowley asked his eyes narrowing.
“Well, there were five who got discorporated. But, err, not permanently.”
“You can’t be serious. It happened during a bloody eclipssse. That means almost a complete power shutdown for your side and I saw their weapons. They knew exactly what they had to do.”
“Well”, Aziraphale quietly replied. “So did I.”
Crowley blinked and this time reality hit him like a brick without the need for any telepathy.
“You discorporated them”, he said flatly. “Five angels. In the dark. With your bare hands.”
“Not exactly”, Aziraphale protested. “Remember that dagger we found on the market last year?”
“You stabbed five angels”, Crowley started again, “and possibly a few demons. In the dark.”
“It was the only way to save them!”
“And as a reward Upstairs set Israfil with her Flaming Lance on you.”
“Dear, don’t make it sound like that. It was a misunderstanding. They didn’t have their fact right.”
“They thought you were changing sides”, Crowley said. “Which… wow you should consider. When I first met you I thought you wouldn’t last one day in Hell, angel, but now I’m pretty sure you would be due for a stellar career.”
“Oh do shut up”, Aziraphale murmured pointedly looking anywhere but at him. “What’s going on with all your clocks anyways? Is that… a block of ice in your favourite water clock?”
There was indeed a block of ice in Crowley’s favourite water clock. Which was running again. As well as all the other clocks. The sound of rushing was unmistakable now that he had noticed it.
“Did you conduct some sort of experiment?” Aziraphale asked carefully when Crowley looked around the room speechlessly for a while.
“What? Oh yes, exactly. It was an experiment. As it turns out clocks are stubborn buggers who do the exact opposite of what you tell them, a bit like you really. Instead of, for example, going faster they freeze all over. So don’t try that with your clocks, Aziraphale, it might cause them permanent damage.”
“I can see that”, Aziraphale said slowly. “But why would I want a clock to run faster anyw… Oh.”
Strangely Crowley didn’t feel any urge to bolt when the angel stared at him with open concern and more than a hint of bad conscience in his eyes.
“Never walk into a trap like that again”, Crowley said only having to gulp once. “I mean it, angel. I don’t care how many mid-existence crises you go through while we are here. Don’t do something like that again. Saving five angels from oblivion hasss to sufficsse for the next five millennia.”
“I didn’t mean to…” Aziraphale started but broke off soon enough. “Yes, all right. I shall be more careful during the next eclipse.”
“You need a calendar with those things”, Crowley added. “I happen to know where Rome’s best astronomer lives so there is really no excuse to not have one.”
“Well, I guess I should pay him a visit then. But maybe not today.”
“No, today you’re staying in bed while I coax the secret from you how to survive being attacked by three cherubim, two fire incubi and an archangel in the blessed dark. (15) There might be some wine involved but maybe not for you, recovering as you still are.”
“That sounds like a truly wicked plan, my dear”, Aziraphale said with a smile. “Lead the way?”
Crowley took the hand he held out to him and together they left a room full of thawing clocks.
That night when he was covered by a silky-soft wing again Crowley realized that all that mattered really broke down to one thing: Being in the right place at the right time.
And despite his broken clocks for one tiny fragment of both Space and Time he knew this was exactly where he was.
---
(1) Too Late and Always on Schedule.
(2) Three months.
(3) One week. And yep the Wild West of Time was complicated in many ways. Linguistically too.
(4) Four minutes. Roughly.
(5) Two hours. Very roughly.
(6) Hell was indeed vague as hell before it discovered the new devices and time units themselves. It was never as vague as Heaven though.
(7) So in the 20th century Aziraphale also owned a custom-made watch that gave time is in twenty-one world capitals. He kept it in a drawer at the bookshop in its original packaging where it ticked away despite its long dead battery.
(8) Despite the immense stylish appeal he didn’t even allow for different shapes or colour schemes.
(9) He still used it from time to time to not get out of practise. The fact that Aziraphale and his Ever Shining Colours hung out with him mostly at night certainly didn’t have anything to it.
(10) In Ancient Rome daytime hours were longer in summer and shorter in winter. It meant that clocks had to be calibrated all year round which was a huge hassle for everyone involved. It was still a better deal than daylight saving another one of those things that Crowley received a commendation for without having lifted a finger. In modern Europe it had been all East Germany’s fault - or rather West Germany’s because they refused to be separated from their other half by a wall and by Time. He couldn’t really blame them.
(11) Luckily, when it came to procrastination Crowley could always argue that he had to lead by example.
(12) In Heaven wanting things to be different wasn’t allowed. In Hell wanting things to be different was part of the deal but since there was no hope whatsoever most people dropped it after a while.
(13) To a human this might sound reasonable but in Ancient Hell’s linguistic it could mean anything from “in an hour or in three months”. Crowley still refused to give a Downstair presentation about “Human Time Units and how to best Ill-Use Them”. They could that figure out for themselves, ta.
(14) F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Crack-Up, 1936.
(15) As it turned out Aziraphale sometimes wore clothes not because of how they looked during the day but because they rendered him almost invisible at night (especially in the eyes of fashion-conscious demons). Also he might be blind in the dark but he wasn’t blind. Just because his eyes couldn’t detect demons in the dark didn’t mean his remaining senses stopped working. More than any other angel in existence Aziraphale was well versed in how demons sounded, moved, smelled, felt and tasted like at night.
Happy Holidays, lunasong365, from your Secret Writer!