We're at the Halfway Point!
Dec. 18th, 2019 05:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
goe_mod posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
go_exchangeThe Brazen Serpent
Rated T
Aziraphale & Crowley (friendship)
Graphic Depictions of Violence
#angst #hurt/comfort #snake!Crowley #historical #pre-Arrangement #biblical #old testament #theology #Old Testament God sucks #some language
Summary: The Israelites have almost reached the end of their forty-year exile, but Heaven has some business with them first. Unfortunately, that business includes a certain interfering demon.
The Wilderness of Zin, just outside the Promised Land
1241 B.C.
“The principality Aziraphale, I presume?”
Aziraphale forced a smile as the first of the three angels who had just touched down amid a flurry of white wings stepped forward.
“That’s me. And to whom do I have the pleasure…?”
The angel who had spoken didn’t respond at first, instead scanning the sandy scrubland surrounding them with a slightly distasteful look. Once she had evidently satisfied herself that they were alone, she let her wings fade out of sight behind her, the crisp white feathers bleeding out this plane of reality in favour of another. She turned her attention back to where Aziraphale was trying and failing not to fidget nervously.
“I am Mizrael,” the angel announced in a clear, no-nonsense voice. “And this is Norioch and Amaliel.” She didn’t turn to address her companions, simply indicated them with a small gesture of her hand.
Aziraphale smiled at them politely, but neither of the new arrivals seemed any more interested in him than Mizrael had been, scanning their surroundings with the same vague mistrust. Luckily, they were all appropriately attired—in long linen robes draped over undyed woollen tunics—but if they showed such a clinical disinterest to everyone they met it would be difficult for them to blend in.
“From the letter, I understand you’re here about…?”
“The unrest, yes,” Mizrael said, stepping forward and beginning to move past Aziraphale. “Which way is it?”
“I wouldn’t say—you see, ‘unrest’ is a strong term—”
“Which way?” Mizrael repeated, not bothering to look at Aziraphale. She was scanning the uneven landscape around them again, as though she expected the Israelites to jump out from behind the scraggly bushes and jagged rocks at any moment.
Aziraphale sighed and motioned to his left, towards a low rise dotted with clumps of sage and brambles.
Mizrael nodded briskly and started towards the rise, Norioch and Amaliel falling into step behind her. Their long, purposeful strides seemed unhampered by either the incline or the uneven terrain, and Aziraphale scrambled to keep up with them.
“But, really, the news that reached you must have been exaggerated,” Aziraphale added hastily. “There is no serious unrest—and, besides, it’s natural for people to be having doubts; it has been nearly forty years now, after all, so surely they’re entitled—”
“Entitled to slandering our Father?” Mizrael interrupted, not breaking her stride.
“They’re just worried, is all. So many of them have spent their whole lives here, in the wilderness—”
“I shouldn’t need to remind you that they could have been spending those years in the Promised Land, had they kept their hearts pure then.”
“I know, I just—they’ve been doing such a good job, these past thirty-odd years,” Aziraphale fretted.
Only weeks after God had delivered the Israelites from Egypt and reconfirmed the covenant He had made with Abraham, the Israelites had begun to doubt God and His ability to deliver them to the promised land of Canaan. For this doubt, Heaven had sentenced the Israelites to forty years of wandering in the desert before the Promised Land would be opened to them.
Now they were less than a year from the end of that sentence, but the Israelites had started complaining and doubting again. Against his better judgment, Aziraphale couldn’t bring himself to blame them; there was certainly plenty to grumble about, from the almost exclusive diet of manna to the constant drifting across the same stretch of wilderness, unable to settle properly. But Aziraphale had done his best to keep these complaints from reaching Heaven’s ears, moving tirelessly among the twelve homeless tribes of Israel and reminding them that their leadership was strong and God was serious about the covenant He had made them, and about the Promised Land. Of course, Crowley had likely been cancelling out most of Aziraphale’s good deeds, but he liked to think that he had been doing a rather good job nonetheless.
“The Israelites must trust in God before they can enter the Promised Land,” Mizrael said dismissively. “We are merely here to ensure that that is the case.”
The group of angels crested the low ridge and stopped there for a moment, surveying the tribe of Judah laid out before them, a massive field of pitched tents crisscrossed with makeshift roads and a few semi-permanent mud dwellings. Beyond them, in the distance, was the encampment of the tribe of Issachar, and beyond that another encampment, and so on, for as far as the eye could see—the lost nation of Israel, over half a million strong.
“But you’re not going to do anything…drastic, are you?” Aziraphale asked anxiously, tugging worriedly at the hem of his sleeve, which was already threadbare from such ministrations. “Not like what happened to those poor Levites?” That had been the last time the Israelites had complained, only a few years into their forty-year exile. The offending parties had been swallowed up by the earth. Aziraphale didn’t like to think about it.
“That remains to be seen,” Mizrael said in that very calm, very unsettling voice of hers. “In part, it depends on how much of the sin was their own; I understand there is an agent of Hell operating in this area?”
The corner of Aziraphale’s mouth twisted uncomfortably. “The demon Crowley, yes. Quite a wily fellow.”
“And what role does he play?”
“Oh, well, mostly he just tempts the humans,” Aziraphale replied vaguely, and it was only then that he fully processed what Mizrael had just said. If Heaven really was willing to adjust the severity of the Israelites’ punishment based upon how much agency they thought the Israelites had had in their sin, then that meant…
Aziraphale made a very hasty decision that he would later regret.
“But he’s certainly been tempting them into all manner of wicked and demonic behaviour!” Aziraphale added quickly, expanding on the truth more than he probably should have been comfortable doing. “Usually not blasphemy, but I’ve noticed it’s a different tack he’s been taking lately—causing dissent among God’s people, you understand. Yes, now that I think about it that must be exactly what’s been happening! He’s a crafty fellow, you understand, and the Israelites are powerless to resist his wicked sway. He has been a terrible influence on them.”
For the first time, Mizrael properly looked at Aziraphale, her expression pensive and slightly approving. “I see.” She glanced back at Norioch and Amaliel, who hadn’t said so much as a word this entire time, their faces impassive. “This is excellent news, principality. If such a fiend is indeed responsible for sowing dissent, then perhaps the punishment upon the Israelites may be lessened.”
“Oh, absolutely,” Aziraphale agreed eagerly.
“Thank you for your insight…Aziraphale, was it?” Mizrael didn’t wait for a response, instead motioning with her head for Norioch and Amaliel to begin down the hill towards the encampment. “We will enact Heaven’s will and contact you if any further information is required.”
Aziraphale bobbed his head in nervous agreement as Mizrael turned and began to stride down the hill, relieved that he hadn’t been enlisted to help carry out the punishment.
Once they had gone, Aziraphale started down the ridge at an angle, taking a different path and hoping he’d be able to avoid Mizrael and her subordinates for the duration of their stay.
As Aziraphale strode down the rocky hillside, he did feel a faint twinge of guilt at throwing Crowley under the metaphorical cart, especially since he knew the demon was just as keen on seeing this exile end as he was, but he had his own problems to think about, the plight of the Israelites foremost among them. Heaven really had put them into a tight spot—wandering in the wilderness for forty years did not exactly make one keen to praise the deity who had forced them into such an exile in the first place—but they were good people and were doing their best.
And Crowley?
Well, Aziraphale answered his own question uncomfortably, Crowley could look after himself.
~
There was something wrong with the snakes.
Or, more precisely, there was something wrong with the snakebites.
The Wilderness of Zin was home to several species of snake, including vipers, cobras, and puffadders, but they were usually easily enough avoided if common-sense precautions were taken. Nevertheless, there were usually about a dozen cases of snakebite every month.
In the past four days, that rate had increased nearly a thousandfold.
What had started as an unfortunate incident in the Reuben camp had rapidly expanded into a serious problem and finally to a plague in its own right. The ten plagues that had so recently been brought upon Egypt were still very fresh in Aziraphale’s mind, and he feared that this plague might take as many innocent lives as those had.
Despite the recent arrival of Mizrael and her talk of divine punishment, Aziraphale’s first thought was that Crowley must be behind this, simply because it involved snakes. And it made a certain sense: as a serpent himself, enticing the local snakes to bite a little more vigorously would have been a straightforward and efficient means of stirring up trouble.
But as the number of incidents spiked astronomically in a matter of hours, sending the Israelites into a panic, Aziraphale quickly realized that this was beyond Crowley’s ability to orchestrate. And, besides that, it wasn’t Crowley’s style. They had been stationed opposite each other on Earth for nearly three thousand years now, and Aziraphale liked to think he had a reasonably good read on his counterpart. They had long since ceased active hostilities, falling into an uneasy stalemate founded upon the principle that neither would try to do anything too horrendous to the other, or to humanity.
Initially, Aziraphale had been surprised that Crowley had been able to restrain himself and follow this guideline, but as the centuries had passed he had come to understand that it wasn’t restraint at all; it was simply that Crowley didn’t operate that way. Perhaps it was because he was too subtle, or too interested in engineering complex schemes that caused the humans to willingly damn themselves, or perhaps it was simply because he didn’t have the heart for it—but, regardless, Crowley had a demonstrated record of doing everything but sowing evil on a large and obvious scale.
And this was the very definition of that.
So it wasn’t long before Aziraphale put two and two together, remembering Mizrael’s words and realising uneasily that this must be the punishment Heaven had seen fit to impose on the Israelites. Aziraphale supposed that this should have made him feel better about the whole thing, knowing that it was the will of God, but it seemed a hollow comfort, not when he was right there in the thick of it.
So he focussed on what was right in front of him, looking after as many of the injured Israelites as he could. Divinely inspired as they were, the snakebites were semi-impervious to miracles, but Aziraphale did his best, finding the youngest patients and pouring his magic into the twin puncture marks on ankles and shins and arms and slowly drawing the venom from the wounds.
He had busied himself with this work for two days before it occurred to him that he ought to find Crowley and appraise him of the situation. If nothing else, he’d probably appreciate the heads-up that Heaven was afoot.
It took him several hours to walk through the sprawling series of camps until he reached the tribe of Zebulun, where he knew Crowley pitched his tent. Aziraphale had visited him there occasionally over the last forty years, and though the exact location varied slightly every time the tribes relocated to a slightly different patch of wilderness, he had never had much trouble finding it.
Aziraphale reached the entrance to the black haircloth tent and nudged the flap aside with the back of his hand. “Crowley?”
When there was no response, Aziraphale stepped forward and ducked inside, his eyes adjusting slowly to the shady interior. The space was on the small side but surprisingly snug and tidy, holding a woven sleeping mat, a cluster of earthenware jugs of varying sizes and styles, two unlit lamps, and a vaguely flat rock bearing Crowley’s collection of mitpachot. He had taken quite the fancy to the brilliantly coloured headscarves that some of the Israelite women used to cover their hair when out in public. While not socially required, they added a splash of colour and provided some protection from the sweltering heat of the desert sun.
Crowley himself was nowhere to be seen, though, and, judging from the lack of lamp smoke, he hadn’t been here in a while.
Must be out, Aziraphale decided, and gave the matter no further thought.
Two days after that, Aziraphale was hunched over an unconscious young girl he’d found lying beside a handful of unconcerned-looking sheep, a snakebite bright on her ankle, when a shout came from the nearest street.
“Deliverance! We are saved! Praise Yahweh! Everyone, go to the outcropping by the tribe of Simeon and your snakebites will be cured! It is a miracle! Moses has intervened on our behalf with the Lord!”
Aziraphale looked around in a mixture of surprise and alarm as he saw a young man sprinting down the street in his direction, stopping every few seconds to gesture emphatically at the Israelites dotting the thoroughfare, some already beginning to cry out with relief.
“Go! Go, everyone, to the sons of Simeon—sister, you too…”
Aziraphale looked down at the girl he’d been healing, noting her returning colour and deciding he had done all he could for her. He checked her briefly for fever and then pushed himself to his feet, the motion making his head spin a little; performing so many miracles in such a short span of time was taxing.
He moved to the edge of the road and, when the young man proclaiming the good news reached him, Aziraphale stepped forward and held out a hand to waylay him.
Usually, the man would have only paused a second before continuing to rush down the street, appearing determined to spread the word to all twelve tribes himself, but Aziraphale convinced him to stay his progress with a small touch of magic.
“What’s this all about? Moses intervening?”
The man drew a huge breath, his face alight with faith in the miracle he had witnessed. “The tribes petitioned Moses of the Levites to intervene with God on our behalf, and He has! He appeared in the tabernacle and spoke to Moses in the voices of His angels and told them how we could be saved! And it is our fault that we brought such a terrible plague on ourselves through our lack of devotion, but Yahweh is good and kind and has given us a miracle through which we can be saved!”
Aziraphale nodded, but he hadn’t heard much after the mention of angels; he motioned that the young man could continue on his way.
That Mizrael was behind this new development he did not doubt. Revealing the miraculous solution to a problem of one’s own invention seemed a little underhanded, even to Aziraphale, but he did feel a little better knowing that a miracle cure was in the works. So many of the Israelites had been bitten that, had the plague of serpents continued unchecked, over half of them could have been killed or severely wounded.
It was only when Aziraphale was halfway to the Simeons’ camp that he realised he should have asked the young man what form this miracle cure took.
~
Once Aziraphale had reached the Simeons’ camp, finding the source of the miracle was as easy as following the shouts of wonder, proclamations of eternal fealty and devotion, and sobs of joy.
The outcropping of rock the young man had mentioned was a prominent local landmark in this temporary geography, studded with enough rough, scattered boulders and shards of jagged stone that no one had wanted to pitch their tent there. As a result, the sizeable outcropping had been left largely untouched, an island of wild, untamed nature amidst the sea of mismatched, threadbare tents.
Currently, the rocky ground was barely visible beneath the enormous crowd of Israelites packed into the space, each person struggling to move closer, jockeying to see past the heads of those in front of them as they pushed towards the source of the miracle.
Aziraphale navigated his way forward easily, using small miracles to open up narrow gaps in the crowd ahead of him. Then he stepped past a middle-aged woman raising her hands in praise and supplication and saw all at once the source of the miracle.
Someone had thrust a wooden pole into the rocky ground, its crooked shaft rising about four metres into the air. A second, shorter pole was crossed over the first at its top, forming more of a “T” shape than a proper cross, and wrapped around that crossbar, held in place by two large iron nails plunged straight through its slender body, was a serpent.
Despite the fact that several hundred serpents had been spotted in the Israelites’ encampment in the last day alone, Aziraphale didn’t mistake this serpent for one of those for even a second. Because he knew this serpent, had become well-acquainted with him over many cups of wine and worryingly friendly conversations, in this land and many others; it was Crowley.
Aziraphale stood rooted to the spot, gazing up at Crowley in nothing short of astonishment. Around him, Israelites were falling to their knees, crying out and prostrating themselves as they looked up at where Crowley was nailed to the pole, the brilliant sun dancing off his dark scales and making them appear almost bronze. The dazzling metallic effect was only heightened by Crowley’s movements; he was thrashing around wretchedly, clearly trying to free himself from the pair of square iron nails pinning him to the pole’s crossbar.
“I am healed! Look—look! The bite is gone! Praise Yahweh!”
Aziraphale moved his gaze sightlessly to the speaker, an elderly man on one knee not far away. He was gasping at his bare shin, his robes pulled up to his thighs. “Gone! Healed! I am saved!”
His cry wasn’t the only one; everyone at the outcropping seemed to be making their relief and joy known, their praises filling the air and making it impossible to pick out more than a few voices at a time.
For a long couple of seconds, Aziraphale struggled to process what he was seeing. On one hand, he grasped the basic principle of invoking a serpent to heal bites caused by other snakes—the idea of sympathetic magic had been around for centuries. But, on a very different level, he couldn’t reconcile how such genuine praise and joy could coexist with the sight of Crowley nailed up on the pole, bloodied and thrashing about and likely baking under the hot desert sun. Could no one see that he was suffering?
Numbly, Aziraphale moved his gaze over the sea of people surrounding the pole. It wasn’t that they couldn’t see Crowley’s suffering, he realized with a chilling feeling; it was that they didn’t care. Because when they looked at the struggling serpent they didn’t see a living creature in pain, but rather the will of God.
Then Aziraphale’s eyes moved a little further through the crowd, and he blinked in surprise when he recognized Amaliel, one of Mizrael’s angels, standing half-hidden behind a scraggly tree. Her eyes were trained on the crowd prostrating themselves before the pole, and her hand was repeating a series of small, meaningful movements.
Aziraphale understood in a flash that she was the one responsible for the Israelites’ miraculous cures, healing them as they coincidentally cried out for God’s aid. It was doubtful she was alone, though; Aziraphale scanned the outcropping again, with more purposefulness this time, feeling suddenly certain that Mizrael and her other subordinate, Norioch, must be hidden somewhere, all three angels working in tandem to heal the Israelites of their snakebites. Even together, it must have been an exhausting task; Mizrael had likely obtained permission to draw on additional reserves of Heaven’s magic to carry out this miracle, a mass healing of wounds Heaven itself had inflicted.
It was certainly an imaginative scheme, but that didn’t stop the entire situation from turning Aziraphale’s stomach. Especially…
Aziraphale’s gaze moved slowly back to Crowley, wrapped around the crossbar of the pole and nailed there like one might secure a strand of garland over the lintel of a door. The iron nails must have been causing Crowley a great deal of pain, because he kept spasming away from them, as though mere contact with the metal was excruciating. Yet each attempt to tear himself free seemed more futile than the last, the nails clearly not giving an inch.
Every instinct Aziraphale possessed urged him to intervene, to rush forward and cut Crowley down and then sharply chastise the Israelites for being party to such needless cruelty, but the knowledge of Amaliel’s watchful eyes stayed his hand.
Additionally, there was the bigger picture of think of. Because this was part of Heaven’s plan. The angels were healing the Israelites. They had been punished, and now they were being rewarded for returning to God. Personal repercussions of Heaven’s disappointment aside, if Aziraphale interrupted proceedings now, many Israelites would be left unhealed, and some of those would surely die from their snakebites. And that was a price he could not stomach, not even for Crowley’s sake.
Besides, Aziraphale attempted to reassure himself as he felt himself settle into this course of uneasy inaction, Crowley was a demon. He probably deserved this, for some dastardly scheme or another he’d cooked up over the millennia.
The thought had no sooner crossed Aziraphale’s mind than Crowley’s serpentine head happened to turn in Aziraphale’s direction. Crowley froze for an instant and then fell completely slack in what looked like surprise, hanging limply from the crossbar as he looked directly at Aziraphale.
A shiver went down Aziraphale’s spine as Crowley tried to free himself again, this time almost with excitement, pulling uselessly at the iron nails and staring at Aziraphale, his head bobbing slightly. Aziraphale knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Crowley was trying to speak to him, even if only using hisses and gestures. But Aziraphale didn’t need to hear spoken words to know what Crowley was saying, what he could only be asking for.
Aziraphale swallowed heavily and looked away, his gaze falling on where Amaliel was still busily healing the Israelites, her hand moving swiftly to direct Heaven’s magic. Aziraphale closed his eyes briefly and then, against his better judgment, he deliberately turned and walked away. His spot before the pole was immediately taken by a mother carrying her son, her expression alight with wonder at the miracle God had brought them.
Aziraphale walked until he had left the main flow of traffic behind, stepping into a narrow space between two tents and coming to a stop there. He closed his eyes again and forced himself to breathe regularly, trying not to think about what he’d just seen.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale said softly to himself, feeling that he had to voice his regret even if no one but he would ever hear it. “I’m sorry.”
~
Crowley stayed on the pole for three days.
By the end of the second day, most of the Israelites’ snakebites had been healed, leaving them rejoicing and praising God, all previous doubts and uncertainties washed away. Aziraphale didn’t have to consult with Mizrael to know that Heaven considered the mission a resounding success. Even the plague of snakes had vanished as swiftly as it had come, its purpose served.
During the third day, the outcropping in the Simeons’ encampment was still relatively well-trafficked, Israelites coming by to continue their supplications to God and bring any of the wounded who had not yet been healed. Aziraphale didn’t learn all this directly; instead, he strode nervously around the camp, overhearing snippets of conversation from a hundred different mouths. He made sure not to accidentally veer too close to the outcropping, though, unwilling to get another glimpse of Crowley.
When night fell on the third day, Aziraphale worked up his nerve and walked back to the outcropping. He had waited until well after midnight, and the winding streets were dark and quiet, the only sounds the chirps of the crickets and the faint snapping of the tents’ haircloth sides rippling in the breeze. Above him, the moon was nearly full, casting a faint but clear light over everything and washing out all but the brightest stars.
Aziraphale slowed as he reached the edge of the outcropping, looking around carefully and searching for any indication that he wasn’t alone. The outcropping was just as dark and quiet as the rest of the encampment had been, a cold wind rattling the branches of a handful of squat, gnarled trees and whispering past the pole still emerging from the rocky ground. He could faintly see Crowley’s silhouette, still wrapped around the crossbar.
When Aziraphale was certain he was alone, he began slowly picking his way across the uneven ground towards the pole.
He reached it without incident and then tilted his head back, looking up as so many of the Israelites had at where Crowley’s serpentine form was draped in silver moonlight, the two nails gleaming eerily in the darkness.
Aziraphale swallowed heavily and looked around himself again, but he was just as alone as he had been before. Then he turned back around, laid one hand on the pole at around chest height, and willed the wood to break.
It splintered beneath his palm, and Aziraphale hastily reached up with his other hand to steady the upper piece as it lurched slightly.
He heard a faint, disoriented hiss from the upper half of the pole as Aziraphale carefully lowered it down towards himself, Crowley coming into reach.
Crowley was beginning to stir, his dark coils tightening weakly around the crossbar as he tried to move, his motion quickly arrested by the nails. Now that he was closer, Aziraphale could clearly see the dark splotches of caked blood built up on Crowley’s scales around the nails, evidence of what must have been hundreds of attempts to break free.
“Shh, it’s only me,” Aziraphale said in an undertone, glancing around himself again. He secured his grip on the upper half of the pole and began striding purposefully away from where the bottom half was still wedged into the rocky ground. The outcropping wasn’t far from the edge of the Israelites’ encampment, and Aziraphale directed his feet towards the closest stretch of wilderness, unwilling to be apprehended by anyone taking a late-night stroll.
Crowley came to more fully as Aziraphale ducked between the tents, hissing brokenly and beginning to struggle against the nails.
Luckily, it took only a few minutes to reach the edge of the encampment, and before long Aziraphale was striding swiftly out into the desert, the sound of the crickets louder here.
Once they were out of eyesight and earshot of the camp, Aziraphale slowed his pace and directed his feet towards a secluded-looking spot behind several large boulders. He stumbled a bit as he went, the shadows cast by the moonlight making the uneven ground more perilous than usual.
Aziraphale reached the shadow of the boulders and knelt down, listening intently for the sound of footsteps or wingbeats. He heard nothing but the regular sounds of the desert, though, so he carefully rested the fragment of pole on the ground, taking care to put as little pressure on Crowley as possible.
Sensing he was about to be freed, Crowley began pulling restlessly against the nails again, the flanks of his serpentine body rising and falling in rapid, pained breaths.
“I’m sorry about all this,” Aziraphale told Crowley as he leaned towards him, examining the square, heavy iron nails carefully. “I’m going to pull these out now…please try to be quiet…”
Aziraphale steeled himself and wrapped his hand around the haft of the first nail, the one nearer to Crowley’s head than his tail. He laid his other hand on Crowley’s serpentine form, the shimmering scales tacky with blood and awfully cold under Aziraphale’s hand. Aziraphale drew a deep, fortifying breath, braced himself, and pulled back on the nail.
It had bitten quite deeply into the wood of the pole, and it took several mighty tugs before it pulled free, drawing out of Crowley’s serpentine body like the stem being plucked from a cherry. At the same time, Aziraphale felt the faint sensation of a mild blessing falling to pieces, and he realised with surprise that the nail had been semi-sanctified; that explained why Crowley hadn’t been able to simply miracle himself free. Then he remembered how wretchedly Crowley had been trying to free himself, and Aziraphale wondered bleakly if there had been more to that than just the desire for freedom; given Crowley’s demonic nature, the immediate proximity of even a slightly holy object such as this must have been a small torture in and of itself.
Crowley convulsed under Aziraphale’s hand as the nail left him, a fresh wave of blood spilling over his scales and surging into the void left by the nail. Crowley wasn’t a small snake, but the gaping hole in his midsection was far from inconsequential, going straight through his body and looking like the nail might have crushed some bones along the way.
Alarmed, Aziraphale hastily dropped the nail and moved to cover the wound with his hand, hoping to at least staunch the bleeding a little.
Crowley let out a strangled hiss as Aziraphale began to apply pressure, and he twisted his head around in Aziraphale’s direction. He bared his fangs and struck blindly at Aziraphale’s arm, but his movements were sluggish and clumsy, like he couldn’t summon enough concentration to land a coordinated blow.
Crowley’s message was wholly received, though, and Aziraphale only frowned at him for a moment before carefully releasing Crowley’s wound. Crowley hissed again, but he stopped trying to strike at him, so Aziraphale moved his hands to the second nail, now the only thing pinning Crowley to the pole.
Aziraphale glanced over at Crowley’s head, but it was only dipping wearily towards the ground, so he gritted his teeth and tore the nail free. Again, he felt the faint impression of a blessing breaking, the magic falling to pieces and fading away.
And then, all at once, a human-shaped Crowley was sprawled on the uneven ground in front of him, gasping for air and trembling and looking very pale in the moonlight.
“Well,” Aziraphale said, sitting back on his haunches to give Crowley some space. Not that he needed to, though; no sooner had Crowley materialized than he started scrambling away from Aziraphale, his heels kicking away the fragment of the wooden pole.
Crowley sucked in another deep, desperate breath, but halfway through it turned into a strangled cry of pain as his right arm jerked and then twitched spasmodically towards the shelter of his body. Crowley’s left hand jumped to his opposite shoulder, where Aziraphale’s eyes riveted themselves on a dark hole, the surrounding linen of Crowley’s robe already beginning to stain red. Crowley immediately clamped his hand over the injury, but there was more than the bleeding to be concerned about; the smooth line of Crowley’s shoulder was interrupted by a painful-looking bump, likely evidence of a broken clavicle or shattered shoulder blade.
Aziraphale automatically reached out a hand towards Crowley, not sure if he intended on healing him or just offering support, but Crowley flinched violently away from him, nearly tipping over backwards in the process.
“Get—get the fuck away from me,” Crowley hissed viciously, but it came out strained and weak, his voice cracking from prolonged dehydration.
Aziraphale froze, hesitant, but Crowley was still trying to scramble away from him. Since his only usable hand was still clamped over his injured shoulder, he had to resort to just kicking at the ground in front of himself, his feet knocking stones free as he managed to scoot backwards a few inches. Crowley had only been at this for a second when he let out a strangled sound halfway between a gasp and a whimper, his face going even whiter as he tried to jerk his left leg up towards himself.
It was then that Aziraphale saw the wound caused by the second nail, now a ragged dark hole in Crowley’s thigh, as large as if he had been stabbed straight through with a javelin. It must have been excruciating, but Crowley only struck out again with his other leg, trying to push himself further away from Aziraphale but only succeeding in kicking up some dust and rocks.
“You—that’s not good—” Aziraphale said uselessly, instinctively reaching out his hand again; if Crowley wasn’t careful, he could still wind up discorporated.
“No! Ssstay—stay back—” Crowley’s strained voice broke off with a gasp as, to Aziraphale’s immense alarm, he made to stand. Aziraphale didn’t know what possessed Crowley to think he was capable of doing such a thing, but he tried anyway, struggling to pull himself from the ground with one hand still clamped to his shoulder and his injured leg providing no help whatsoever.
Crowley didn’t make it very far at all before collapsing back to the ground as his injured leg shifted, pulling at the wound in his thigh. Again, Aziraphale automatically moved to help him, but Crowley only tried to force himself to his feet again, shaking violently and looking like he was on the brink of passing out.
“Crowley—please—” Aziraphale began, moving halfway to his own feet and spreading his hands wide, trying to calm Crowley as he collapsed back to the ground yet again, uttering cross, aborted noises that sounded like he was trying to swear but lacked the breath to do so.
At Aziraphale’s movement, though, Crowley’s head swung up towards him, and for a heartbeat Aziraphale caught Crowley’s eye. Aziraphale wasn’t sure what he expected to see there, but he wasn’t prepared for the flat panic reflected back at him, mixed with raw, debilitating pain and the sort of terror that comes from fully expecting that pain to continue. Then a set of startlingly black wings erupted from Crowley’s back, sweeping forward and sending a few grains of sand flying into Aziraphale’s eyes.
He took an automatic step backwards to clear them as Crowley beat his wings forward again, this time using his uninjured leg to push himself a little further upright. After another few strokes, he was able to lift himself slightly off the ground, the displaced air blowing Aziraphale’s hair back as Crowley half-staggered, half-flew backwards, dragging his injured leg and still clutching his shattered shoulder.
Then he got enough lift to leave the ground properly, and he turned and began flapping wildly, a few black feathers slipping free as he struggled to gain altitude. Almost immediately, he began weaving back and forth with dangerous unsteadiness, his wings seeming not quite up to the task of carrying him, but it was clear that he intended on doing everything in his power to get away from Aziraphale as fast as demonically possible.
Aziraphale just stood there at a loss for a long moment, one hand still tacky with Crowley’s blood, and wondered how Heaven could possibly condone something like this.
~
The next day, Aziraphale found Mizrael in the Levites’ camp, at the edge of the courtyard housing the tabernacle, where she was clearly enjoying the increased fervour among the priests as they eagerly discussed the recent miraculous events.
“I take it Heaven was pleased?” Aziraphale asked in a carefully calibrated tone as he approached the other angel.
“Hm? Oh, very.”
“I must say, though, your methods were…not what I was expecting.”
“One must be creative,” Mizrael said, and though her voice was just as clipped as usual, there was hint of what might have been smugness. “Were you satisfied with the fate of the demon? Given your report of his wiles, I found the part he played quite fitting.”
Aziraphale felt a guilty twinge in his stomach. “I…I don’t know the details,” he said cautiously.
“Suffice it to say that he’ll be discorporated in a day or two, if he hasn’t been already, from exposure if nothing else. You should enjoy this brief reprieve from his interference.” Mizrael paused momentarily as she eyed several Israelites who had just appeared at the courtyard’s entrance, appearing appropriately reverent as they gazed upon the tabernacle.
“And you must admit,” Mizrael continued, “there is a sort of poetry to it. Because he is the Serpent of Eden, is he not? While in the Garden, he brought death to humanity by telling them to break God’s rules, but here he brought life to the Israelites by reminding them to obey God’s rules!” Mizrael gave a short laugh, a sharp, self-righteous sound that spoke of the depth of certainty she had in herself. “That probably vexed him more than all the rest.”
Aziraphale drew a measured breath, carefully stamping out a spark of true anger. He made sure his voice was perfectly level and pleasant before continuing. “I couldn’t help myself from wondering, though, was it wise to use an animal to represent God? And a living one at that? Aren’t you afraid the Israelites might…misunderstand? The calf incident was not so long ago.”
Mizrael waved away Aziraphale’s words with a brief motion of her hand. “We made the distinction clear to Moses. There is no problem.”
“But, surely,” Aziraphale pressed, “what about the commandments? ‘Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image’? Was that not to prevent this sort of idol worship?”
Mizrael gave Aziraphale a sharp look. “The commandments are for humanity,” she said with a sudden coldness, sounding very much like she thought that Aziraphale should have already known that. “Humanity is incapable of behaving morally without guidance. But God does not need commandments to be moral.”
Aziraphale blinked at Mizrael, taken aback. “But—but surely—surely hurting any creature is wrong?”
Mizrael frowned at him, the Israelites around the tabernacle forgotten, and Aziraphale wondered suddenly if he’d crossed some invisible line. “Hurting any of God’s creatures, yes. But a demon isn’t one of God’s creatures—not anymore. It would have been worse had the Israelites strung up an innocent serpent; this way, I provided one for them, and no one was hurt.”
No one was hurt, Aziraphale repeated to himself in utter astonishment, appalled. He remembered Crowley, struggling to free himself from the semi-sanctified nails, and then scrambling away from Aziraphale in the desert, complexion ashen and clearly terrified out of his mind, trembling from head to foot.
No one was hurt? Aziraphale repeated again, and this time the thought had an edge to it.
Something of this must have bled onto his expression, because Mizrael’s voice hardened slightly. “Besides, the righteous ought to rejoice at the punishment of wickedness. It is justice to see such an evil, vile creature vanquished.”
Aziraphale just looked at Mizrael in disbelief, suddenly sensing just how wide the gulf between them was.
Over the millennia, he’d spent a lot of time with Crowley, and if he had learned one thing about Crowley it was that he wasn’t evil. He wasn’t nice or pleasant, of course, but he wasn’t evil, no more than Aziraphale was a paragon of celestial virtue. For one thing, he’d seen Crowley be forgiving, particularly of personal slights; he’d seen him be gentle, especially with children; and he’d certainly seen him be honest, often giving Aziraphale the truth with so little sugarcoating that Aziraphale rejected it at first, out of hand. Crowley was a demon, and therefore the enemy, but he wasn’t evil. Of that Aziraphale was unshakably certain.
And it was this certainty that suddenly rocked Aziraphale to his core—not because of the knowledge itself, but because it was unshakable. Because he knew that Crowley wasn’t evil, and therefore that what Mizrael had done to him was wrong, and that meant that he was on Crowley’s side. Because, in this one particular instance, the gulf that separated him and Crowley was so much smaller than the one between him and Mizrael.
This all occurred to Aziraphale in a single instant, immediately accompanied by the knowledge that this was Very Bad and Very Wrong, and that he was Very Fucked.
“Ah,” Aziraphale said, pushing aside this alarming revelation and hastily burying it deep in his psyche where he could revisit it only after several centuries of denial and procrastination. He turned his attention back to Mizrael, struggling to remember where their conversation had left off. “Well, in any case, I’m glad the Israelites passed the test. I look forward to them reaching the Promised Land.”
If Mizrael thought this change of topic suspicious, she didn’t comment, merely relaxing her shoulders ever so slightly. “Indeed.” She turned back to the courtyard, where several Israelites had started praying before the tabernacle, the tent’s blue and red linen sides fluttering slightly in the breeze. “It is good that the Israelites did not fail this test,” she said almost pensively after a moment, her eyes still on the tabernacle. “Another forty-year delay would have been tedious.”
Aziraphale missed a breath and then hastened to cover his surprise. “Another forty—you mean another forty years out here? In the wilderness?”
“Indeed,” Mizrael said shortly, and then she turned back to Aziraphale, a hint of a warning in her gaze. “So it is fortunate that they did not fail.”
Aziraphale nodded numbly as Mizrael moved to pass him, heading for the courtyard’s entrance.
“Forgive me,” Aziraphale said nervously, taking a hesitant step after Mizrael, “but, once the Israelites reach the Promised Land, will the tests continue?”
Mizrael looked back at Aziraphale coolly. “That is up to the Israelites. Should they stray, they will be punished. They must learn to obey.” Her mouth thinned slightly. “As do you, Aziraphale.”
Aziraphale felt a row of shivers go down his spine, and he gave Mizrael a weak smile. “I—I’m afraid I don’t—”
“Good-bye, principality,” Mizrael said, and then she turned on her heel and strode from the courtyard.
~
Not long after Mizrael had left for Heaven, Moses announced that the Israelites would be moving on again, calling on their newfound faith to remind them that it wouldn’t be long now before they reached the Promised Land. There was only a year left until their forty-year punishment was up, after all, and they weren’t going to find the Promised Land by staying in this particular stretch of wilderness.
The encampments were bustling with activity as Aziraphale walked slowly through the streets, young men pulling down tents and fetching carts while the women packed up the few possessions their families still possessed. Aziraphale knew he should go pack up his own things, but he had some time before the Israelites would set out in earnest, and he had something he needed to do first.
Aziraphale weaved his way through the busy streets in the Zebuluns’ camp, making for Crowley’s tent.
He reached it without incident, and when he pushed the flap aside and slipped inside he wasn’t surprised to find Crowley absent. Indeed, everything looked exactly as it had the last time Aziraphale had been there, the unlit lamps in the exact same location, the earthenware jugs untouched.
Aziraphale stood on the threshold for a long moment, his eyes falling on the stack of colourful mitpachot as he remembered how Crowley had lovingly worn each one over the past few decades, collecting them as swiftly as he’d been able given the limited supply available. They’d been made by the local Israelite women in their exile: spun from the wool of their sheep, dyed with woad leaves and madder root and safflower petals, and finally woven together with small portable looms.
Aziraphale eyed the colourful headscarves uncertainly for a moment more, and then, making up his mind, he moved forward and picked up the pile. He spied a small linen sack folded up next to the nearby cluster of earthenware jugs, and Aziraphale scooped it up too. He shook it open and carefully tucked the mitpachot into it. A moment later, he added a waterskin and several pieces of manna he fished out of one of the jugs. It truly was terrible stuff, the manna—utterly flavourless and prone to rotting and attracting worms if left out for too long—but it was about the only thing keeping the Israelites alive these days, and he and Crowley had grown rather accustomed to the occasional snack now and then. If nothing else, it was good for keeping one’s strength up when one’s magical reserves were occupied elsewhere.
Aziraphale stepped back outside a moment later, the sack’s tie secured to the sash of his belt, and started off through the maze of tents, heading for the wilderness beyond the Simeons’ encampment. Everywhere the streets were a mess of activity, children carrying belongings back and forth and men scouring the ground around the half-deconstructed tents for even the smallest nail or peg, unwilling to leave anything behind.
As Aziraphale neared the outcropping where Crowley had been so mercilessly strung up, he was obliged to wait while a man led an ox and a cart past him, the cart’s wheels catching on every dip in the rocky ground.
A bystander stepped forward to give the back of the cart a helpful push, and as the cart bounced free Aziraphale suddenly remembered Crowley collapsing as his injured leg refused to support him. He wondered a bit nervously how the demon was getting on.
Aziraphale was still fretting over the thought when he happened to walk past a donkey tied up outside a tent. The animal seemed unconcerned by all the activity, intent on sniffing the side of the haircloth tent with its white-tipped nose. Aziraphale paused.
He glanced discreetly around himself and then, making an effort to look like he had every right to be doing what he was doing, he walked over to the donkey and untied its lead from the tent stake. The donkey looked at him with dark, untroubled eyes, and Aziraphale tugged on its lead, drawing it away from the tent. The animal went willingly enough, trotting along next to Aziraphale as he led it down the street and towards the edge of the encampment.
As he skirted the outcropping, he noticed several Israelites standing at the base of the broken pole, pointing at its splintered top and arguing amongst themselves, doubtlessly demanding to know who had damaged this site of God’s great magnanimity.
Aziraphale averted his gaze and kept walking. It wasn’t long before he reached the edge of the camp, needing to magically avert only a couple of the Israelites’ gazes as he walked out into the wilderness, leading the donkey after him.
He had soon left the encampment behind, only faint sounds of activity wafting after him on the patchy breeze. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, but he angled his feet in the direction he had seen Crowley fly off in two nights before.
He walked for about an hour before tying the donkey to a sturdy-looking bush and spreading his wings. The donkey brayed and jerked away, startled, but Aziraphale had already pushed himself into the air, rapidly gaining altitude and scanning the rocky ground spread out beneath him. It was dotted with trees, bushes, and irregular outcroppings and ridges, but it took Aziraphale only a few minutes of scanning before he spotted a lone shape moving through the wilderness in the distance, black wings standing out starkly against the tan ground.
It would have taken only a matter of minutes to simply fly over to him, but Aziraphale hadn’t brought the donkey along for nothing, so he allowed himself to descend instead, mapping out the route to Crowley’s position in his head.
It took several hours to catch up, the donkey protesting any difficult terrain and now seeming rather resentful about having been taken from the encampment. Despite their slow pace, however, Crowley seemed to be moving even slower. By the time they were close enough for Aziraphale to tell that it was definitely him, Crowley hadn’t covered more than a mile.
Crowley didn’t seem to notice Aziraphale’s approach, one of his wings half-raised in an attempt to provide some protection from the sun, the other sagging behind him, the tips of his primaries making furrows in the sand. He wasn’t walking in a particularly straight line, if the furrow Aziraphale had been following was anything to go by, and he appeared to be limping quite heavily, his steps slow and laboured.
“Crowley!” Aziraphale called when he was only a few paces away.
At the sound of Aziraphale’s voice, Crowley slowly stumbled to a halt, his posture radiating confusion. Then he turned, his wing lowering, and blinked at Aziraphale for a moment. A heartbeat later, his expression hardened.
Aziraphale slowed to a stop and opened his mouth to speak, but Crowley beat him to it.
“I thought I—told you to ssstay away from me,” Crowley snarled, his breath hitching even as he took a quick, aggressive step towards Aziraphale. Evidently noticing the failure of his own voice, Crowley followed this up with an angry hiss, baring his teeth at Aziraphale and raising his wings threateningly, the black feathers flaring out as though to remind Aziraphale of the wickedness of their owner.
At Aziraphale’s side, the donkey brayed and tried to skitter away in fear, pulling at the lead in Aziraphale’s hand, but Aziraphale only felt a pang of sympathy as he took Crowley in.
For one thing, the demon was still very pale; he must have been running low on magic, or else unwilling to use so much that he was left with nothing to defend himself with. It looked like he’d focussed most of his effort on trying to heal his thigh, which did indeed appear much better. He hadn’t been able to heal it completely, though, and he was favouring that leg quite strongly, lines of dried blood still visible all down his calf. It didn’t look like he’d even tried to heal his injured shoulder, the affected arm tucked into a very crude sling made from what appeared to be the bottom half of his robe, leaving him with only a tattered garment that hung no lower than his hips. And, despite the flash of anger in Crowley’s eyes, Aziraphale could read his exhaustion in the drawn lines of his face, and the way his wings kept sagging as though he hadn’t the strength to lift them, and the deep, uneven breaths he was taking.
“Awfully brave of you to follow me,” Crowley snapped, taking another aggressive step towards Aziraphale. He had to quickly follow it with the other foot, though, his injured leg clearly unable to support his weight for more than a moment.
Aziraphale just gazed at him for a second, and then he carefully looked away. “I’m sorry about what happened,” he offered. “I didn’t know what Heaven was planning.”
Crowley gave a short, cutting laugh, but it turned into a sort of scratchy gasp, sounding like he’d had the wind knocked out of him. It was a moment before Crowley could continue, clearly struggling to regain his breath.
“Niccce—nice try, angel,” he said at last, bitingly, and turned away. His wings swiftly cordoned off Aziraphale’s view, but not before he saw Crowley’s hand jump to his injured shoulder, pressing at the space directly beneath his clavicle, where his shoulder met his chest.
The donkey was still pulling anxiously at its lead, so, after a moment’s hesitation, Aziraphale drew the animal over to a nearby bush and looped the lead over one of the branches, working slowly so that Crowley could use the time to recover. When he was done, Aziraphale set the linen bag down beside the bush and moved to rejoin Crowley, who had taken a few small, limping steps away.
“Where, ah, are you going?” Aziraphale asked.
Crowley cast Aziraphale a sideways glance, his gaze sharp, but then he drew a deep, ragged breath and seemed to resign himself to Aziraphale’s continued presence. “Canaan,” he said shortly. “Jericho, I was thinking.”
“The Promised Land?” Aziraphale asked in surprise.
“It’s the closest shred of civilization,” Crowley said, his voice turning bitter. “And it’s where we would have been all this time, had Heaven not had it out for the Israelites since the very beginning.”
Aziraphale blinked at Crowley, still limping along determinedly, face drawn. “Had it out for…?”
Crowley cast Aziraphale an almost scathing look. “Oh, don’t tell me you don’t see it. Heaven hasn’t changed a bit.”
“I—I don’t—” Aziraphale began, and then switched tacks. “I said I was sorry about what happened to you, and they truly gave me no indication—”
“This isn’t about that,” Crowley snapped, sounding suddenly quite cross. “If it hadn’t been snakebites, it would have been something else. Heaven doesn’t care about the means, only the ends.”
Aziraphale processed that. “And the ends are…?”
“Power. Obedience. Complete subservience to the divine will of Heaven.” Crowley waved his uninjured hand as he said this, making it clear exactly what he thought of it.
“I don’t quite understand what you mean.”
Crowley slowed to a halt, looking like he was preparing to say quite a lot and needed to catch his breath first. “The Israelites, for starters. God’s chosen people. Why did God choose them, and not some other people?”
Aziraphale frowned at him. “How would I know? God chose Abraham personally.”
“Ah, but Heaven must have been abuzz about it, surely? What do you think?”
Aziraphale bit the side of his tongue uncertainly, wondering if this was one of those temptations he should be resisting. When he couldn’t think of anything wrong with answering, he replied cautiously, “Well, he seemed quite passionate to me, I suppose. Spirited. And, really, very well-suited to the job; being the father of a nation, I mean. Noble and fatherly and all that.”
“Wrong,” Crowley shot back without missing a beat. “It was because he did as he was told. God said to go build Him an altar at Shechem, and that’s just what he did—and then even went and built another one at Bethel, prattling on about God to every passerby he happened to meet along the way. Heaven doesn’t care about spirit or nobility, or even common decency—all they care about is obedience, and that’s what Abraham displayed.”
Aziraphale opened his mouth to object, but Crowley spoke over him.
“Oh, don’t give me that face, like you think Heaven has never had an ulterior motive. Just look at this last big punishment. Forty years in the wilderness for doubting God and disobeying him. Forty years, Aziraphale—why that long? Why not ten? Or a hundred?”
Crowley paused, and it took Aziraphale a moment to realize that Crowley was waiting for a response, not just catching his breath.
“Well, it’s a generation, isn’t it?” Aziraphale said uneasily. “God had promised that the Israelites would reach the Promised Land, but then they spoke out against God and said that they didn’t believe in the covenant. But the promise had already been made, so Heaven found a way to honour both human decision and the covenant, by ensuring that it would be the next generation of Israelites who would see the Promised Land.”
Crowley scoffed in disbelief, but he kept the sound light, clearly making an effort not to strain his shoulder accidentally. “You call that honouring human decision? No, honouring it would have been letting those people go back to Egypt who wanted to. Instead, Heaven kept all of the Israelites in the wilderness, and sentenced them to forty years of solitary confinement.
“Don’t you see what they’re doing? They’re enacting change, but on a generational scale. The first generation was disobedient; they didn’t have enough faith in the covenant. So what does Heaven do? They give them a forty-year exile during which that entire generation dies off. And the next? All they’ve known is the wilderness, and the knowledge of the terrible punishment God exacted. They’ve been raised to fear God.
“Control through fear, that’s what this is. Heaven’s just killing off everyone who doesn’t agree with them. And what if the Israelites had failed this second test; what then? You can bet every one of your precious scrolls that Heaven wouldn’t have hesitated to sentence them to another forty years of exile. And then another forty, and another forty, and another, until they had bred the disobedience out of them, like…like they were domesticating cattle!”
Crowley really did have to pause to catch his breath this time, though his eyes were bright with indignation and the conversation had put some colour back into his cheeks.
Aziraphale, for his part, just stared at Crowley in shock, remembering his exchange with Mizrael and the other angel’s casual reference to prolonging the exile if needed.
“And you can bet that this was Heaven’s plan all along,” Crowley continued bitterly once he’d caught his breath. “Because why not weed out dissent while the Israelites were still in Egypt? Or deal with it once they reached the Promised Land? You know as well as I do that the journey from Egypt to Canaan only takes two weeks. Two weeks, Aziraphale—but, instead, we’ve been out here for nearly forty years. And that’s precisely because there’s nothing out here. This stretch of wilderness is the only place where the Israelites are truly defenceless, entirely at Heaven’s mercy. Egypt is too advanced, Canaan too prosperous—who wants to pledge undying, unconditional love and obedience to a distant deity when everything’s going great at home?
“And that’s why God didn’t let the Israelites go back to Egypt like they wanted, and why He’s preventing them from reaching Canaan now, even though it’s only three days’ travel from here. He has the Israelites right where He wants them, and He’s making them into His perfect, obedient little slaves while they can’t do the slightest thing to resist Him.”
Crowley took a deep breath as he finished, looking satisfied by the horrified expression on Aziraphale’s face. “And before you start protesting, remember history. It’s the Garden all over again. The moment anyone starts showing a bit of free thinking, God gives them the boot. All He cares about is utter obedience. If Heaven has their way, there won’t be an ounce of free will left among the Israelites by the time they reach the Promised Land.”
Crowley gave Aziraphale a pointed look and then turned and started limping away through the desert again, raising a wing to try to keep the worst of the sun off his unprotected head.
It clear that Crowley thought their conversation was over, and Aziraphale could only look after him for a long moment, feeling conflicted. He feared that there was sense in what Crowley had said, but it would take him some time to work through it all, and he’d come here for a reason.
Aziraphale walked back to where he’d tied the donkey and returned a moment later with the animal in tow, the linen sack from Crowley’s tent in his other hand.
“Crowley, wait,” Aziraphale said, and the demon lurched to an unsteady stop as Aziraphale reached him. Aziraphale drew a deep breath and held the bag out to him. “Here.”
Crowley eyed the bag warily, clearly recognizing it as his own but mistrusting the offering.
“It’s some of your things,” Aziraphale said by way of explanation. “I thought…well, it didn’t seem like you’d be coming back.”
Crowley’s serpentine eyes moved to study Aziraphale’s face, and Aziraphale saw genuine surprise there, along with guarded wariness.
Whatever Crowley saw in Aziraphale’s expression must have satisfied him, because he carefully reached out and took the sack from Aziraphale, looking like he half-expected it to bite him.
“The Israelites were breaking camp as I was leaving, and I happened to walk past your tent, and, well, it seemed a pity for you to lose all your scarves…” Aziraphale babbled nervously, feeling the need to fill the silence as Crowley suspiciously nudged open the sack, the action complicated by his inability to use both hands. Crowley blinked in surprise when he saw the colourful mitpachot, neatly bundled up beside each other.
“And I brought this, too,” Aziraphale said quickly, drawing the donkey forward by the lead and feeling rather silly even as he did so. Bringing the animal along had seemed like such a reasonable thing to do at the time, but Crowley still seemed so honestly surprised that Aziraphale had even thought to retrieve his precious headscarves that he wasn’t sure how this second gift would be received.
Indeed, Crowley looked very taken aback as the donkey approached him with marked reluctance, eyeing Crowley’s huge dark wings nervously.
“You…you didn’t seem like you could walk, earlier,” Aziraphale said nervously, struggling to find some way of framing his action that downplayed the fact that he’d been dreadfully worried about Crowley. “And clearly you’re doing a little better now, but, well, I found this fellow just wandering around loose…”
“Why…why are you doing all this?” Crowley asked, sounding honestly confused as Aziraphale pushed the donkey’s lead into his hand. As their fingers brushed, Aziraphale couldn’t help but notice how cold Crowley was, despite the heat of the desert sun. “Why would you help me?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Aziraphale answered fretfully, tugging at the threadbare edge of his sleeve and trying not to think about the recent realization he’d had that perhaps he had more in common with Crowley than some of Heaven’s agents. “It just…seemed like the right thing to do. And, you know, angels are supposed to do the right thing.” He gave Crowley a weak smile, but Crowley was still looking at him with that puzzled expression, like he was trying to figure out what Aziraphale could possibly stand to gain from helping a demon.
“So,” Aziraphale said brusquely, brushing his palms together and taking a step back, leaving Crowley with the linen bag and donkey. “Canaan, eh? The land of milk and honey. I’ll be seeing you there, then. In just a year, hopefully.”
“Yeah,” Crowley said, still looking a little confused. “I’ll…I’ll save some figs and wine for you, how’s that sound?”
“That’d be great,” Aziraphale said, and it came out a bit more wistfully than he’d intended; he really had missed the comforts of the civilized world during these last few decades.
Crowley noticed Aziraphale’s tone, and he smiled a little, the first genuinely friendly gesture he’d made since before Aziraphale had seen him nailed to the pole.
Aziraphale gave Crowley a slightly sheepish smile in return, and then he reached to scratch at his ear, giving Crowley a parting wave as he started to turn away. “Well, then. Take care!”
Not a heartbeat later, Aziraphale was lurching to a horrified halt, immediately balking at the implications of his own, completely automatic choice of words, but he heard Crowley chuckle faintly from behind him. “Thanks, angel.”
The tips of Aziraphale’s ears burned as he started striding purposefully away from Crowley, relieved that he would have at least a year of peace before Crowley could tease him about this particular slip-up.
His embarrassment faded as he put distance between them, and he paused when he reached the top of the first rise, looking back over his shoulder at the rocky plain.
He spotted Crowley right away, riding on the donkey now and with his wings tucked away. Though it was hard to tell from this distance, Aziraphale imagined that Crowley had swathed his head in one of the mitpachot, the colourful fabric providing shelter from the light and heat. And though the donkey wasn’t, on the whole, likely to cover ground much faster than Crowley had been limping along, travelling that way would allow Crowley to rest his injuries and regain his strength.
Crowley had been right when he’d said that Canaan wasn’t so very far away, and Aziraphale found himself quite optimistic that Crowley would make it there all right. In fact, he envied the demon a little, being able to return to civilization that much sooner. He imagined Crowley sitting at a table in some trendy tavern in Jericho, fishing dates out of a bowl and enjoying the finest wine humanity could provide while Aziraphale trekked around with the Israelites in the desert. Oddly, Aziraphale found himself slightly heartened by the thought.
Smiling a little to himself, Aziraphale turned in the direction of the Israelite encampment and let his wings melt into view behind him. He was looking forward to rejoining Crowley in Canaan, but he knew that it would only be possible if the Israelites came with him. Heaven could punish them all they liked, for offenses real or imagined, but Aziraphale would do his utmost to get them to the Promised Land as soon as their exile ended, and not a day later. They’d been wandering long enough.
Then Aziraphale took a deep breath, spread his brilliant white wings, and pushed off skyward.
The Brazen Serpent
Numbers 21 (English Standard Version)
5And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.”
6Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. 7And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people.
8And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” 9So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.
Fiery serpent, originally שׂרף, is pronounced seraph.
(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-18 02:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 03:04 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-19 12:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-21 03:11 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-20 05:20 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-27 02:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2019-12-30 11:17 am (UTC)And you can't help but feel angry at Aziraphale.. But then he worries so much, and comes and offers his help (even though he gets hissed at and threatened by the injured demon, oh poor dear snek, I want to hug him <3) and even thoughtfully brings him his things that he treasures.. I love both of them and I love how you show this in-between place in their relationship.
Beautiful and vivid story!
(no subject)
Date: 2020-01-07 03:37 pm (UTC)And yeah, Aziraphale's in a bit of a tight spot here—wanting quite genuinely to help Crowley but knowing that his first allegiance is to Heaven—so he has to make some unsatisfactory compromises. And of course, eventually, he gets tired of making such unsatisfactory decisions, and so switches his first allegiance to Crowley. XD