Chapter Text
Now
It started as it always seemed to for Crowley, in a garden.
Kew Gardens, to be exact.
Crowley visited Kew Gardens at least once a month when he wasn’t otherwise engaged or out of the country. The plants there didn’t need nearly so much face-to-face menacing as the ones he kept in his flat.
It seemed to be a habit of angels {and demons of angel-stock} who spent an extended period of time on Earth, to start collecting things.
Aziraphale, in addition to snuff boxes and regional delicatessens where they knew his name, collected books. When his collection had grown too big to hold in a single room, he’d bought and filled a bookshop that never opened.
When Crowley’s own collections grew too large to be housed in whatever bolthole he had at the time, he made certain suggestions in the ears of the well connected, and started a Garden.
Kew Gardens was one of his favourites, although he was more than a little proud of the Eden Project, not least because the humans thought they’d come up with that one all on their own. Bless them.
He sat in Kew Gardens now and glared at the cyclamen until they shook and slowly started brightening up.
He felt Her before She spoke, settling onto the bench beside him.
“Is that truly necessary?”
Crowley glowered a little harder and the cyclamen grew an extra inch. “Obedience through fear, I learnt that from you.”
“You never feared me.” Crowley didn’t look at Her but he saw the way the sunflowers across the path turned towards them and knew She was smiling.
“That just proves my point, doesn’t it? I wasn’t all that good at obedience.”
She laughed, Crowley felt a surge of contentment from the humans around them.
“Certainly not blindly. Always asking questions.”
He flinched, curling his shoulders as he clasped his hands tightly together to stop himself from doing…something. “Yes, well we both know how that went down.”
She sighed and it was such an unexpected sound Crowley finally turned to Her. She was beautiful, of course. Divine. She was also smoking. Crowley gaped.
“…what?”
“Sorry, did you want one?” She held out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and he took one out of reflex. The only thing keeping his jaw from hitting the ground was his body’s insistence that right now it was human shaped with the associated bones, joints and muscles, and not a giant snake.
Crowley lit the cigarette with a little hellfire and took a long drag. He hadn’t smoked for decades, hadn’t wanted to accidentally tempt any children into it once humans discovered how dangerous it was. Human bodies were fragile enough, no need for him to give the young ones that extra push towards destruction. {And Aziraphale hated the smell.}
“This is new.” He said carefully, blowing a series of smoke rings.
Her next exhale took the shape of dolphins, jumping through his rings. She always had been a show off. {Who needed to create a whole world in six days? Honestly, no wonder the paperwork had been such a mess.}
“Do you ever wonder what it’s all about?”
There went his jaw again. Crowley choked on his inbreath, smoke puffing out of his nostrils.
“You do remember why I Fell, don’t you? Not confusing me with Luci?”
She waved Her hand, the end of the cigarette between Her fingers lit up bright red as it moved. “There was a lot going on, I wasn’t in the mood for questions.”
Crowley took a last drag and then crushed the butt out onto his heel, slipping the remains into his pocket to deal with later. He’d had enough of Pollution for one lifetime.
“If you’d had a suggestion box you could have just looked when you had a minute. Not my fault Metatron was on a break and no one locked your door.” It was an old argument, but they never seemed quite finished with it.
“Heaven doesn’t need a suggestion box.”
Crowley raised an eyebrow, really staring at Her. “You really have been away for a while, haven’t you?”
She sighed again, it made Crowley shiver uncomfortably. “You know if there had been another way…”
He waved Her off; he knew. He wasn’t even mad about it anymore. Honestly, he probably wouldn’t have stuck around up there much longer anyway. Not once Earth had been created. He could have done without the fire and brimstone, and it had taken at least a century to get the smell of sulphur out of his hair, but it could have been worse. He could have ended up like Michael.
Besides, he wouldn’t have spent six thousand years with Azi- ah, nope, not ready yet.
“So are you back? Or is this just a visit?”
He held out his hand for the end of Her cigarette, shoved it into the pocket with his own.
“The Gates are closed.”
Crowley looked at the entrance to the Arboretum, where people were still streaming in and out, and then he registered the capitals. {It was easy to miss them, almost everything sounded like it had a capital with Her.}
Crowley laughed, full bellied, the kind of laugh that came from your soul {or whatever approximation an ex-angel, ex-demon had} and burnt through everything on its way out of you.
“You’re shut out of Heaven. You.” He said, once the laughter had become the occasional chuckle. His eyes were watering. He reined it in before he could start sobbing.
“Of course I can get in. And I will, when the time is right.”
“Of course.” Crowley sneered. Another Plan. It was always about the buggering plans with Her. “And what’s my part to be this time?”
He slouched down further in his seat, crossed his arms over his chest. Petulant, but there was always something about Her that brought out the adolescent cherub in him.
“That’s the best part, I don’t know.”
This time it wasn’t just his jaw, Crowley’s whole body almost forgot it had any bones at all. “You don’t know?”
She smirked then, it was a little too familiar. “I don’t. I’m, what’s the phrase, taking a backseat this time.”
Crowley valiantly didn’t ask Her when the Hell She had been in the front seat for the last two thousand years or so, but he did jump up from the bench and pace in front of Her. “You can’t just back away. This is all your fault! Those self righteous pricks are doing it all for you. They’ll end the world just to get a pat on the back and a ‘good job’ from you and you’re telling me you don’t even care?”
She smiled. A tree in the corner of the Gardens dropped all of its fruit, perfectly ripe. “I care very much, that’s why I won’t interfere.”
Crowley growled, paced and growled again. He could feel himself heating up.
“This isn’t a game, this is people’s lives we’re talking about here. Not just people, but all lives.” {Aziraphale’s life.}
She tilted Her head, still smiling. “I have missed you-”
Crowley stormed off before She could say his name, any of his names.
He found himself a pub and drank the bar dry.
It didn’t help.
3004 BC
She had come to him the first time during The Floods.
Crawly had been bedded down in a rickety craft, his black wings acting as cover and mattress for the dozen small children gathered around him.
He was using every ounce of demonic and angelic grace he could access to miracle the thing afloat, and plug the hundreds of holes that kept springing up. {When this was over he was taking a course in carpentry, just in case.}
She had appeared when the last of the children had fallen asleep. Ten days on the boat had cured them all of seasickness, finally. He’d thought they might even be getting used to the rain and the constant rise and fall of the new seas beneath them. Human children; so resilient. He’d bet at least one of them became a fisherman after this.
“Don’t.” He had said, eyes closed because he wasn’t so used to the sickening motion just yet.
“You’re disobeying my orders.”
“Not an angel anymore, remember? You can’t give me orders.”
That wasn’t strictly true, he had known that She and Luc- Satan {urg, the King of Hell was just as big a drama queen as She was} still spoke occasionally, usually resulting in a new job for some sorry excuse of a demon to carry out back on Earth {he had been that demon. Apparently the dramatics were hereditary}. Still, he didn’t have to do what She said if She said it to him directly.
“The Plan-”
“Sod the plan!” Crawly had opened his eyes then, glared at Her. Part of him had expected Her to turn away at the undeniable proof of his new status. She had told him once that She had given him dark eyes to better see Her own reflection. He had assumed She meant for him to keep Her in check, now he wondered if it weren’t just Her own vanity.
She hadn’t turned away.
“I won’t let you hurt them.” He had said, tucking his wings in a little tighter. She’d watched with an almost motherly look as a small hand clasped onto his robe. “If you try I’ll…” he’d hesitated, faced with the obvious imbalance between them; “do something.” He had finished lamely. Still, he’d pulled on the draining reserves of his power anyway, waiting.
She had leant forward, brushed away the stringy curls around his face. Her touch burned in a way it never had before as She cupped his cheek. He hadn’t flinched, willing to take the pain for the love that came with it.
“The rain won’t abate for another hundred and ten days.” She’d said, “it will take more than seventy after that for the flood water to recede. You must leave them then, to find their own way.”
Crawly had fought tears as Her hand pulled away, blinking acid yellow eyes as She stood and looked down at him.
“Hell will be angry.”
“That’ll make a change.”
She had left then and Crawly had stayed.
He had stuck around on dry land for a month until he found safe homes for all of the children, because he really didn’t have to obey Her.
Hell had definitely been angry. He hadn’t been allowed back up to Earth until everything with Job. He supposed he should have thanked Her for that. He hadn’t.