Happy Holidays, todd_fan!

Dec 27, 2008 07:46


title: Ask
gift for: colon_bracket 
rating & genre: PG-13, Crowley/Aziraphale
summary: Asking questions can cause trouble; it might even get you answers.

A/N: Happy non-denominational stereotypically wintertime celebrations, Todd Fan! And have a great year! This came out rather more serious than it was intended to: I’m sorry about that.


Ask

During

That summer, the sky was the deep blue of a Sicilian sea, and the sun hung heavy in it like a swollen drop of honey. That summer, the days were long, and they were beautiful. The time passed not in seconds nor in minutes, but in hours, achingly slow and joyfully infinite. Adam turned fourteen, Anathema gave birth, and a man Aziraphale knew was promoted: there were parties.

And when it rained, it fell to the Earth like a flash of cold remembrance.

The park was full with Londoners sleeping and burning in the heat, without shirts or responsibilities. The ducks were well-fed and swam lazily over the glittering surface of the pond. The angel smiled as the light made him a halo. He looked beautiful like that, somehow, sun tangled in his hair and eyes shining blue as if to echo the sky. His hand reached into the green plastic bag1 he held, and he scattered the crumbs across the duckpond. The ducks moved slowly towards them: there would be more bread. There would always be more bread.

Crowley said, “I’ve been thinking a lot, recently. ‘Bout the Earth, you know?.”

“I had heard of it.”

“Mm. But really, Aziraphale, it makes you want to ask questions once you think about it for long enough.”

“I used to believe in innate evil, once, Crowley. More time I spend with you, the more I think it’s just curiosity. Which killed the cat, apparently.”

“Which cat?”

“The cat. The... the perfect ideal of a cat.”

“Sounds kinda platonic, Angel.”

“Plato made some fair points.”

“ But that’s the thing, isn’t it? Why did we have a Plato, who got so much wrong? Why was there pre-Christianity?”

“Why was there a Shakespeare, Crowley? Why a Handle, why a Van Gogh? Humanity, free will. It’s nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. Just humans, and all their... humanity.”

“Are you forgetting the absinthe, there, with that last one? Absinthe is ours .”

There was a pause, and then, “Such beauty that can come from evil,” said Aziraphale, looking over at the demon, who was tall and thin and wore a leather jacket and tight, dark jeans.

After a moment, a mallard quacked and the demon broke off a piece of bread and fed it.
“Violent duck,” said Aziraphale.

“You said it,” replied Crowley, his voice filled with envy and awe: if only he could get away with a beak. “But anyway,” he added, “I’d better take you home. It’ll get late.”

As he followed his associate to the Bentley, Aziraphale couldn’t help but wonder why, exactly, this demon had fallen.

Before

The clouds were not tinged with gold; in fact, there were as of yet no clouds. This is because there were no humans to dream of clouds the colours of precious metals, or the gleaming gate of promise and hope. There was a heaven, but it was a dark place- not because of evil, but because when the only inhabitants can see in pitch black, what need is there for light? It was a dark place, yes, and simple. Angels did not know about beauty, yet, and had no need for it. They did not doubt, so they needed no reminder of glory.

The place had no end, and no edges, until the day that the Lord God declared that it was the Heaven, and that the Earth, and let there be light, and then the edges appeared and burned so bright, enclosing this Holy Land in fire, brightening it, and letting the angels See. When God then made Adam, and later Eve, and they began to tell stories, Heaven changed. The clouds grew from nothing, and colour raced through the skies. When man and woman sinned, their stories got better, and Heaven changed again, grew a gate and a fence, and an angel called Lucifer changed his mind.

But none of that had happened yet.

No.

If there had been such a thing as time, I would say it wouldn’t happen for a long, long while. It might have looked like it, perhaps, if a human had been there to see.

One of the angels would, when there were names, be called Aziraphale, and this is him. And one of the angels, who would fall when the stories turned, would be named Crawley2. It doesn’t matter, not really, what they are called or what will happen to them: not now, not here. They’re angels. We wouldn’t be able to see them, or understand them.

I can try to explain. It’s a metaphor, it’s an analogy, it’s a parable, but what happened is this:

The angel that would one day be shaped like a snake said, “don’t suppose you’ve any idea why?”

“It’s no good asking why,” replied the other one, looking out vaguely towards the past.

“You must wonder sometimes, I mean, though. Angel like you; must wonder. What’s it all for? Why bother? Why are we here?”

“I don’t like to. Don’t like to question Him.”

“Pointless, if nothing else, I s’pose.”

The angel who would eventually take the name Aziraphale turned to the other, and looked forward. He wasn’t good at looking forward; even now, before such a thing as time, what can be called the future was blurred. He was short sighted. Later, on Earth, he’d go almost blind; but the past, the past would always open itself to him in perfect clarity. It would be something he cared for. That which hath been.

As it was, he could look into the future of this angel, look and catch glimpses of movement and of colour: and of heat, fire. There was lots of fire and lots of red and lots of running. And lots of blue and green- most angel’s futures were filled with gold and silver and white- and purple and orange and black. It looked alien and beautiful and terrifying, and he wanted it in a way he could not understand.

“Do you not love Him?” he asked, when he could speak again.

“I don’t know,” replied the other angel. “Do you?”

Afterwards

And then it was autumn, blurring the long hot dead summer into the bitter gentle cold of a London winter. The sky was grey or black all day and night, and now the rain fell like reassurance; the thunder rumbled like the breath of a lover, and the lightning flashed like sudden touch of skin on skin.

“I-” said Crowley, and seemed to falter. “I don’t even doubt Him anymore.”

The night rolled on, and the angel lying next to him breathed slowly, deeply, thoughtfully.

“I mean, that’s my purpose, isn’t it? To doubt, and to install doubt. Because He makes mistakes; He can’t be perfect. But now I think we doubt, demons and heathens, because He needed doubt. And when I think that, well: that’s not doubt, it’s belief.”

“Crowley-”

“Angel, I think it might even be faith.”

Aziraphale turned to his demon, and said,

“Faith? Crowley, that’s - that’s brilliant.”

“Not faith like yours, Aziraphale, not faith like an angel’s. You have to understand. This isn’t uncritical loving faith. I save that for you. This faith- angel, I almost understand Him. Or I know, suddenly, that I ought to try. It’s faith- but not in God, no.”

“Understand Him. Understand what is ineffable.”

“No. But- try to. ‘Zira, I’m not ineffable, you can understand me: I want to know about the universe, ‘cause there’s gotta be a point to it.”

“That’s a sin.”

Crowley grinned. “I know.”

During

It came as no great surprise, really. Earth does things to people; and Aziraphale was always open to new ideas- not necessarily a bad thing, but some of the ideas floating around that planet were quite suspect and best avoided. Ideas for humans, thought Gabriel, not for us lot.

Ideas for humans, and from humans. From the Apple. From the demons. From that demon; that snake. Aziraphale spent so much time with it, and with the humans, that Gabriel was almost surprised that it had taken this long for any evidence of corruption to show so clearly; furthermore that it was still so subtle.

“He’s not evil,” Aziraphale had said. “Not good, but not evil.”

And Gabriel had listened, politely, and said he’d pass on the message, but it doesn’t work like that. You can’t just go up to Heaven and say, “I’m afraid you’ve got it wrong,” and be listened to.

No.

There’s no complaints department, nowhere to report bugs, nobody in charge of welcoming discussion. Heaven isn’t Earth. That’s pretty much the point of it. So when Aziraphale had come up to ask all those difficult questions you find in books by Soulless Atheists, he hadn’t been answered. “We’ll get back to you on that,” Gabriel had said, and had made a note of the expression on Aziraphale’s face.

The archangel rose, great wings moving, and looked out over the perfection of the kingdom, and down to the Earth, and backwards to the fall of man. There.

It wasn’t like people said it was. Not a simple temptation. The snake had not simply gone to Eve and suggested, wordlessly, what her life could be if she’d only break the rules. He had not simply had to flick his tongue and speak in dark tones. He had not had to lie.

He had had to argue. To discuss and debate, nights on end, about God’s indifferent love3. About why, which is not something good angels thought about, and was therefore the domain of the demon. Why. And how: how does it work? And what: what’s the difference between good and evil?

And he’d won, and won the title of Tempter, which was deserved, but not that of philosopher. Odd how these things work out. Angels do not wonder why but there is theology, which does and which holy men study.

And demons, too, and Aziraphale, the only angel who was a Christian.

It makes you think, says Gabriel to himself and goes off to do so.

Afterwards

It’s easy, in the end. Easy: like a dream.

“What is sin?” asks Crowley and Aziraphale realises he simply does not know.

And that was the answer Crowley was dreading, so he goes to Aziraphale and kisses him and for the moment, that’s it: he’s said it, what needed to be said.

And the angel thinks he should be scared, but this is easy, this is nothing: he can do this. Crowley’s hand is on his shoulder, and their lips are moving, together, and he wonders why humans make so much out of this. It is not a tragedy. It is nothing.

But then Crowley pulls him close, and a hand goes to his waist, another on his neck, and he’s burying his own hands in the demon’s hair. Crowley is shaking now, and Aziraphale changes his hold on the man-shaped-being, and now it is desperate and all the fear the angel thought he’d have is there; and so is lust, scary and bright and promising.
And he understands. Granite thought, like an atomic light.

He feels the peaks of Crowley's spine through his shirt, feels his shoulder blade, and slips a hand down the neck to feel the skin there and not just the bone. Crowley breaks off and pushes his face into Aziraphale's neck, says something. The angel runs his fingers again over Crowley's shoulder and the bone there is whole, but something's breaking. "What?" he asks, and gets no reply but the feel of Crowley's lips again on his, wet and warm, and then his tongue pushing past lips and into an open mouth.

And then Crowley's shaking fingers on the buttons of his shirt.

It's an answer; and it is better said than anything either of them could manage with words.

What is sin?

It is being resigned to regret. It is the bright shock of touch. It is what parts lips and lifts shirts. It is logic and love and it feels so very much like flying.

The angel and the demon climb the stairs in silence.

Outside, the rain falls hard and you have to wonder.

During

“Look,” said Crowley. “Look.”

The nameless demon on the other side of the desk rose an eyebrow. It was little more than a machine, really, a scorn machine. It had the sort of artificial intelligence that gave the robots of the early twenty-first century their conversational skills.

“We can use this, perhaps, in the battle. Or maybe there doesn’t even need to be one anymore.”

“What could possibly have led you to the conclusion doesn’t even need to be one anymore?”

“Angels aren’t pure,” repeated Crowley. “They’re just nice.”

He wished, again, that he’d not come down here. But Aziraphale was going upstairs to ask a few questions and Crowley was a demon- that was pretty much his job. He did want answers, desperately, but it’d be no use. He’d get nothing. He’d carry on talking to the low level demonbot who’d record it and store it and let Hell forget it, and then he’d be tortured for a while, just because, and then he’d go back upstairs and it’d be normal again. He’d watch the angel move through his days, almost breaking into dance for the hope in his heart, and Crowley’d remember what he learnt that very first day on Earth: you’re dragging them down. He’d watch the angel and he’d want to cry, he’d want to break the glass around his own heart and run, perhaps, somewhere he could forget and die and watch the stars burn up. And then Armageddon’d swing around again and what would he do? Traitor.

And so he stood up and he swung his fist at the demon sitting opposite, and he walked calmly out the door, and down to Satan’s lair.

Where the Devil was waiting with a smirk and a cigarette.

“Why?” said Crowley, kneeling down. “You could have had it all.”

By London nightfall, he’d forget the words. Summer turned to dust that night. It isn’t fair, said the devil.

Before

I still remember Hell’s first night. Then, it rang with the screams of the demons as they fell down down from Heaven. Their wings burnt bright and their eyes did too, and it was not only pain they cried from. Relief. Release. It was their duty no more to be perfect. Scream, now, you can. Relax. It doesn’t matter what God sees.

Gluttony. Lust. Greed. Wrath. Sloth. Envy. Pride.

Like freedom and love and all those perfect things people pray for. You have them, said Satan, they’re yours. Go spread them. Bring down heaven, and no-one will know the difference between fire and happiness. It’s good. It’s so good.

I remember how they laughed at that, the demons, laughed and then they sang.

Afterwards

“What do you think will happen?” asked Aziraphale. “Do you think we’ll get answers, ever?”

“No. I think that’s the point of God, really.” Crowley yawned, stretched. “And of Hell. Keep it hidden, all the truth. I reckon it’s there, though.”

“They’ll never tell us. Maybe we can figure it out.”

They were back by the duckpond; the sky was grey and the grass was grey and the air was grey with rain. At least, thought Aziraphale, the fog had cleared.

“Maybe Adam can; maybe humanity can. We can help, of course.”

“Right.”

A moment passed, and the wind blew a cloud out from the way of the sun.

“Look, angel, if you regret it...”

“I do regret it. But I don’t think that should change anything.”

“I understand. Or, no, I don’t. I don’t understand anything.”

“I wish I could answer your questions, Crowley.”

“Maybe you can,” says Crowley, and wraps his arm around the angel’s shoulder.

Before

“He’s right,” says the angel whose name will very soon be Crowley, and he means it. “Lucifer- look, you should come with us. We can’t trust a God who won’t answer our questions; we need to make our own answers.”

“No,” says the other angel.


  1. Angels shop at Waitrose, or at least tend to see it as a good thing to pretend they do.

  2. New names were not given out. Lucifer is Lucifer still. Satan and Devil are titles.

  3. This is a reference to Simon Clayton’s Book of Job: The Musical, which is hilarious and also has a MySpace you should look at.


slash, aziraphale/crowley, fic, rating:pg-13, 2008 exchange

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