Happy Holidays, macdicilla! Part 3
Dec. 24th, 2017 05:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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go_exchange25 August 2020 (N. S.), Canterbury
For once, Aziraphale was fast asleep.
All right, a selection of old liquors might have had something to do with it, but that was hardly the point.
The point was rather the infuriating silence. It would have made Crowley scream, if not for the crickets.
Thank Sa-… Go-…? Someone? For the little buggers.
These past few decades must have been the highlight of Crowley’s existence, but he did not get lost in their enjoyment – not enough to forget how they had got here. How improperly un-demonic of him. The big question was… was his angel thinking the same way? Did it matter to him, even a little? Or at all?
“Just think, all right? Think logically,” Crowley told himself in his thoughts. He looked up to the sky – remembering half-imagined constellations of mould on a far-away ceiling – but the Universe remained stubbornly quiet. Stars were no help, humans were no help, and Aziraphale – well, he was certainly no help.
Less than three dozen year prior, the world had almost ended. It had served as a catalyst that put an end to the slow and messy dance that had been Aziraphale and Crowley orbiting one another. They needed some time to readjust their trajectories, and it took a series of spontaneous, bursty encounters until they finally cemented their new and improved relationship. Kind of like the Earth and its Moon, according to humans and their strange science. (Honestly, Crowley could not remember anymore what his elders had once told him about the topic. He quite liked the human theory, anyway.)
Because of this gradual and incalculable drift, they had never felt the need to point at a date and claim it was when they took a start – much like they didn’t celebrate birthdays, either. It mattered very little to them what numbers they ended up conjuring on documents meant to help them blend in among the people of ever-changing nations and customs.
But this, Crowley had realised with something akin to dread, this could be big. Important. Well over a millennium passed since one of them had last managed to discorporate the other. And almost exactly one thousand years since they had mutually agreed to stop trying.
Ten entire centuries.
About a sixth of their whole existence.
That had to mean something, right?
Crowley certainly felt like it did.
Then again, the concept of anniversaries was non-existent both Above and Below. It was purely the product of creatures of clay cursed with ephemeral lifespan, unable to ever fully break out of the servitude that Time imposed upon them. In Heaven, time was an insignificant pariah. In Hell… it was always too late anyway.
But Aziraphale and Crowley – they lived on Earth. And they intended to stay.
So they should celebrate, shouldn’t they?
“But what if the Angel doesn’t want to?” Crowley asked himself for the millionth time since the beginning of the year. It was the big question he always returned to. The one he seemed to be unable to answer.
And the stars were no help. Humans’ opinions carried little weight in such an unusual case of a couple of immortal man-shaped beings living among them. And he couldn’t very well ask Aziraphale. Because, even Crowley knew, this should be obvious. And if the angel did want to celebrate the anniversary of their Arrangement, he would surely find the question hurtful. It would catapult him right back into his old tirades, claiming that as a demon, Crowley couldn’t properly understand, let alone feel love.
Worse still, what if it didn’t matter to him? What if any sentimental mention of anniversaries would drive him away?
Everything would be over, either way.
Crowley was at the end of his wit. He had tried everything he could think of to get the information out of his companion. He slipped sappy romance novels on top of Aziraphale’s endless piled of books. He created just enough drama in their neighbours’ relationships for the angel to notice the shouting and the loud episodes of appeasement. He had taken Aziraphale to the most obvious romantic movie he could find (under the guise of introducing the angel to the wonders of 4D cinema). They had talked more about every and any single love-related thing than anytime before. But somehow, by some supremely annoying miracle, Aziraphale managed not to let anything actually useful slip over the course of eight long months. As if the blasted angel had built up such a tolerance to Crowley’s every usual tactic that his demonic charm could be declared non-existent.
For Someone’s sake, Crowley even brought him to the very city they had forged the Arrangement in! On the exact anniversary of the Armageddidnt! This had to have been on-the-nose enough, hadn’t it?
Apparently not.
Blessed angels and their blessed inscrutable radiant smiles.
1 September 2020 (N. S.), a little less tidy and perfect bedroom, Mayfair, London
Crowley had just checked his mail and retreated to his now somehow perpetually dust-scented yet nigh-immaculate bedroom to think. However, the noises made by a very ineffectual postman, and eventually some letter sliding through the slit of the front door and crashing to the floor startled him out of his reverie.
He was going to just grab the annoying latecomer pieces of paper, and incinerate them with a thought – but the sight of the big red envelope with gothic style lettering stopped him. As carefully as he just could, he tore it open with burning curiosity.
Hi Crowley,
good, apparently you thought I was my ancestor, writing to you. Do Not Stop Reading.
I’ll be short: thanks for the anniversary wishes. NOW DON’T YOU DARE FORGET YOURS.
Witching you well,
Anathema
On the one hand, her husband’s sense of humour was clearly wearing down on her, Crowley thought to himself with a sigh. On the other hand, Agnes might have known the future scarily well, but her descendant’s newfound talent for catching people’s trails of thought and shepherding them to exactly where she wanted said people’s minds was equally unsettling.
As if this hadn’t been enough, a moment later, Crowley’s newest watch – the sleekest and smartest such device ever made, the terrified salesman had assured him – went off signalling a new message, leaving a crumpled letter and an exasperated demon in its wake. It read:
From: Princes of the Universe (Adam Had Insisted)
To: Snake Uncle
Message:
Hey Crowley,
want me to help you get a big enough cake for a thousand candles? Magic candles that can only be blown out with wings? Wensley says that’s childish and dumb (perfect), but Brian promised to have the fire squad ready. Not that you’d really need them, eh?
But seriously. Give us a ring if you need help with the surprise party. We do this sort of thing all the time, just, you know, with smaller numbers.
Happy Arrangement-sary,
Us
PS: Pepper wants me to tell you she will pluck you like a thanksgiving turkey if you mess this up. Or if you don’t send us pictures within a year. No rush, though.
Well, technically, these people weren’t simple humans. Certainly not the average human. And they knew enough to know when the Arrangement had come to be (though the word Arrangementsary would never be one that Crowley could be convinced to use). And they all seemed to be expecting a celebration.
And, if he was entirely honest with himself (although demons were probably not supposed to do even that), Crowley kind of… just the tiniest bit… wanted one.
He wanted surprises. He wanted to make a big deal out of a simple pattern of dates.
He wanted to give his angel the first edition of Casino Royale that they had read together just after Armageddidnt.
… but that wasn’t quite big enough of a fuss, was it now?
21 July 939 BC (O. S.), Solomon’s Reading Chamber
Hiding in the second secret exit corridor might have been one of the worst ideas Crowley had ever had. To his defence, he had been expecting Aziraphale to come and nose through the King’s secret collection – and definitely not the man himself to turn up. As a general rule, Crowley did not like to mess with humans who knew how to see through most of the simpler occult tricks, and how to bind demons. So the best he could come up with on the spot was to hide.
And later, he would be overjoyed by this inelegant decision. It might very well have saved his skin.
Not that this made the flash of heavenly light through the entire palace (the entire city?) any less painful, or the following series of crashes, explosions, and tormented screams any less terrifying.
“Thank Go-… Sa-… Somebody for the magical interference,” Crowley thought, making a quick mental count of the scrolls scattered throughout the shaking room. The magical instructions and the attempts to construct new spells, scribbled over each of them, were enough to conceal his own occult signature. A Duke would have stuck out like a sore thumb, but Crowley was relatively safe as long as he stuck close to the books. (Aziraphale would find this extremely humorous, he was sure.)
Someone else was sticking out: a bright, yet unidentifiable angelic presence. The path of general chaos and destruction seemed to follow its clattering footsteps, and it was clearly headed for the reading chamber.
Solomon had barely had time to put away his scroll and draw his sword by the time the intruder forced their way into the room. A large chunk of wall simply evaporated around the seething angel, and the very vaguely man-shaped creature immediately pinned the enraged King to the wall with a well-aimed thought.
Crowley did not dare to draw a single breath after that. (Although he technically didn’t need to, it was hard to give up on such a long-standing habit.) He thought: that temple for Milcom might have been too much. But he had only mentioned the idea to the King’s wife, he had never thought it would actually get built, least of all that it would be so enormous, ornate…
… and such a grave offense in Heaven’s eyes.
“Where is it, you despicable little maggot?!” the angel demanded, their shape enveloped in flames as they spoke. The longer Crowley looked, the more familiar that fire seemed, though…
“Be gone, foul creature!” Solomon yelled at the angel – which was definitely the wrong thing to say. It was the way a demon would be addressed, not an ang-…
“Oh. He’s not. An angel anymore,” Crowley finally realised. Now that he knew what it really was, he could look past the hungry flames of Hell, and identify the being they were trying to consume.
“Silence, sinner! You have betrayed your Lord, and you are about to plunge your kin into a new era of darkness, yet you dare make demands even now?! I should strike you down where you stand!” the falling angel screamed at the proud King. “You will not stop me,” he continued more quietly.
Crowley did not miss the occasional wince even the powerful creature couldn’t suppress. He wasn’t surprised: he knew the process all too well.
“I am Rahab, mine are the oceans, mine was the Book to save from their depths, and mine is the power to take it away again,” the intruder proclaimed. It was, of course, a half-truth at best. Otherwise, he could have appeared with his full might and his very essence intact.
“I will take back the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh; your kind is unworthy and will forever remain undeserving of such gifts. I will take the Book or we will all be destroyed.”
As if to give emphasis to Rahab’s words, the building started shaking again, even more violently than before. At this point, all Crowley wanted to do was scream, since nothing but the imminent arrival of an exceptionally powerful group of angels could cause this specific pattern of ethereal vibrations.
Rahab might have been aware of this, or spitting out one threat after the other might have just made him feel better during the tormenting fall – it mattered very little. Because he surely had no idea just how stubborn any human had to be to keep even the most meaningless position of power. And the King? Would never tell him. Never let the source of his magical knowledge be taken.
“We shall perish, then,” Solomon answered the challenge. Either he did not care about death, or he still trusted Heaven’s mercy…
… which Crowley did not.
Timed to the rhythm of the next minor earthquake, he shook a piece of the ceiling loose, and made it crash the chest surrounded by the holiest emanation. Rahab would need time to relearn how to make sense of such stimuli, but Crowley already had honed his demonic senses to perfection when it came to various manifestations of holy dangers on Earth.
As he had hoped, Rahab whirled around, noticed the glimmering volume he had come for, and knocked the useless king unconscious. He muttered a silent incantation, and then he lunged for the book – which, interestingly, did not burn him. In a few moments, he was gone – as was the trembling of earth, walls and sky caused by extreme inter-realm pressure. Crowley remained alone in the half-demolished chamber, and decided that even if he never saw Solomon again, it would be aeons too soon.
12 September 2020 (N. S.), a decidedly messy and untidy flat in Mayfair, London
“I know, said the proud idiot, I’ll track down a demonic angel I have last seen three thousand years ago! How hard could it be?!” Crowley fumed, fighting the ever stronger urge to just start hitting his head with the nearest tome. He had tomes now, for Someone’s sake! Actual, real-life old and dusty tomes stolen from jealous collectors all over the world. Tomes. In his flat.
He was turning into Aziraphale.
If he was going to start wearing tartan, too, he would just have to ask his Venus’ flytrap to swallow him whole.
Two more days of labouring over books finally brought some results. More precisely, covering them with reports of strange occurrences printed from the depths of the internet did.
With the help of the craziest theories surrounding vanished or sunken ships as well as crashed planes, Crowley managed to determine that there were only a dozen places Rahab could be hiding. And where he was, there the Book had to be, too. The First Edition to begin all first editions. The Book of Secrets. The real deal, too, not just a distortion of it, put together by generations upon generations of devoted humans. Not a fragment of the whole, not based on Solomon’s faulty and fading memories of it. The actual Book that had been written and first brought to Earth by the Archangel Raziel himself.
If Aziraphale had spent days immersed in the Nice and Accurate Prophecies, this book would keep him pinned to his chair for years to come. (Crowley already felt somewhat jealous. But the look on his angel’s face would so be worth it.)
Later that evening, he called the angel. Unsure as to when he could return and deal with the preparations for the big day, he thought it best to settle some things well in advance.
“Yes, Crowley?” Aziraphale’s vibrant voice asked from the other end of the line.
“You… actually checked the caller-ID,” Crowley said lamely. To his defence, this was an entirely new development. His feather-brained counterpart… was just that. Scatter-brained enough to always forget to take a short look at the screen, no matter how many times Crowley had tried to explain the benefits.
“You might have noticed that I can, indeed, read,” the angel teased light-heartedly.
“Still not a fan of audiobooks?” Crowley shot back with a grin. Now, that would be an idea: the secrets of the universe, an unabridged recording…
“Don’t even start, you vile old serpent.”
“All right, love, not this time. Listen, there is something I wanted to ask…”
“Yes, my dear?”
“Aremphfreeonthtwfth-” Crowley rushed through the question with a wholly knew and unavoidable lump in his throat.
“What?!”
“I sssaid… Are you free on the twelfth of December?”
“Well, I… of course, dear boy. But why do you ask?”
“I’m… I sort of have to go out of town for a while. I… you know, I wanted to make sure we could meet up afterwards,” Crowley said. “Real smooth,” he quietly scolded himself. “Are you even a demon that you can barely put together a decent lie?!”
“Oh. Is it… did they message you from Below?” Aziraphale asked worriedly.
“No, no, it’s… something personal.”
“So that’s all right, then,” the angel concluded. He suddenly sounded very cheerful. “I myself am quite busy at the moment, too. This actually came at the perfect time,” he went on, growing ever more chipper.
“All right…” Crowley said, hoping beyond hope that the uncertainty in his voice wasn’t as tangible as he thought it was. “See you on the twelfth, then. Let’s say… St James’ Park. At eight.”
“Sounds lovely, dear boy.”
“Er… good. See you around, angel.”
“Goodbye, Crowley.”
Early next morning, Crowley took off from the rooftop with growing unease. Actually facing Rahab in his sea beast form was not something Eden’s crafty but, comparatively speaking, tiny serpent was looking forward to. And it felt potentially pointless after the last phone call with his angel. Aziraphale had definitely not realised the importance of the date for their next meeting. And he didn’t seem to mind nearly two months of his counterpart’s absence, either?
However, Crowley’s newly hatched optimism managed to persevere. He must have been reading too much into the distracted words of his angel. Surely, at one point he would remember what had happened exactly a thousand years before. Surely, he would want to make the date even more memorable. An Antichrist, a witch and a demon couldn’t all be wrong.
Next: Part 4!
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Date: 2018-01-04 07:57 pm (UTC)i blame tumblr for "snake uncle" (that adorable comic about "Adam and his f*d up Snake Uncle) :D