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go_exchangeTitle: The Hand of Satan
Rating: T. No content warnings
Summary: Crowley recruits Aziraphale for a mission to investigate a phantom island and the monstrous creature that supposedly lurks nearby. For kaijuusandkryptids, who requested a melancholic, mysterious tale of the sea.
Aziraphale was not expecting Crowley’s visit. That made it all the better, of course. Aziraphale felt the slight shimmer in the air, the parting of molecules that had every right to be in his room to make room for molecules that definitely should not. Aziraphale turned to his left and there sat a beautiful red-haired demon, quite scandalously dressed.
“Oh, good gracious,” Aziraphale said, because he’d found that if he opened Crowley’s visits with some slight disapproval it made him feel like he was less likely to gush out something terribly flattering. Crowley never seemed to find the disapproval off-putting. Most likely, he considered it a compliment.
(Proper dress for the period consisted of shirt and hose, with a doublet over them, and an overrobe on top of that, something longer that concealed the garments beneath. Crowley, naturally, wore his quite indecently short, looking like a little skirt over his hips.)
Aziraphale crossed his legs, glad that his overrobe hid any message that his body wanted to communicate to Crowley’s body. It really would have been helpful if angels had been created immune to demonic temptation. And who knew, perhaps they had. Perhaps Aziraphale was just in love.
“Here on business?” Aziraphale asked.
“Me? Yes.” Crowley was grinning. “You? No.”
“I am here to bless the miracle of the printing press,” Aziraphale informed him.
“The printing press,” Crowley said, in a lightly mocking voice, “is five years old. Doesn’t take five years for a blessing. You’re infatuated, angel. I wouldn’t have guessed it, really. Thought you’d turn up your nose at technology replacing the hand-lettered tomes.”
“It won’t replace it,” Aziraphale said, although he did sound rather unconvinced. “But Crowley, it’s marvelous. So many books can be printed so quickly. Why, eventually, even I won’t be able to read everything that’s been printed.”
“Not that you won’t try, though,” Crowley said, looking fond. “Listen, I need a favor of the angelic type.”
Aziraphale stood, beginning a search for glasses and a bottle of wine. “What could a demon need an angel’s help with?”
“Eh— a little bit of this and that, here and there— possibly a smiting.”
Aziraphale had his head in a cupboard. “And whom might I be smiting?” he called.
“Sea monster.”
Aziraphale stepped back from the cupboard with a sigh. “Now, I know how you like your fanciful stories, Crowley, but there’s nothing in the sea that She hasn’t put there—”
“Yeah, but She doesn’t tell you everything, does She? God knows what’s down there, angel. Literally.”
Aziraphale decided that this was the sort of idea on which it was best not to speculate. “Well, why are you so opposed to this— this beast, then?”
“Got assigned it.” Crowley said, accepting a serving of a very nice red that Aziraphale had managed to find among all his books and papers, in a glass created by miracle. “I don’t know who I pissed off, but I got thrown this thing. The humans are calling it The Hand of Satan, except it’s not. Satan’s got his hands busy elsewhere, I guess.”
Aziraphale also did not want to speculate on that. “Well, what does this hand do?”
“Sinks ships.” Crowley leaned back, and Aziraphale attempted not to look at the new curves of calves that Crowley’s hose were revealing to him. He was not completely successful. Thankfully, if Crowley noticed— you could never quite be sure what Crowley was looking at behind those awful dark glasses— he gave no sign of it.
“See, what happens,” Crowley said, “is that the humans come out in their ships, exploring the North Atlantic, looking for anything undiscovered that they can fight over, and they come upon an island that’s not on any charts. It’s rocks and sand and cliffs, and then the fog comes up around them, and—” Crowley smacked his hand down on his leg. “Bam! Down comes Satan’s hand, and drags the ship under.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “It’s not an island at all. It’s a massive iceberg. They’re quite capable of sinking ships when they roll over.”
“That’s what I said!” Crowley exclaimed. “That’s why it’s not on charts, because those things are always moving! But Beelzebub’s having none of it. The humans are calling the island em>Satanazes, Island of the Devils. Beez doesn’t want the island or the monster being labeled as satanic without being officially condoned by Hell.” Crowley made a dismissive snorting sound. “So now I have to go out and disprove its existence. But, um, I did think, if it turns out that it’s not an iceberg— an angelic smiting might be just the thing.”
“Yes, I suppose it might,” Aziraphale said. “Heaven would certainly agree, which is the important part.” It was not at all the important part, but Aziraphale did have to toe the official line. “Where is the island supposedly located?”
“Up north of Antillia. Which, yes, I realize is also not a real island, but they’re quite determined about that one. So like 300 miles west of the Azores.” Crowley leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “I’m based in Portugal right now. I figure we can go there, hop on a ship to the Azores— the Portuguese are just starting to settle there— and then fly from there. Could make 300 miles pretty quickly if we needed to, and we can always miracle up a raft if we need a rest. And if the island’s not there, we turn around and come back.” Crowley’s voice dropped a little lower, into his I’m tempting you tone. “Be like a holiday, angel. You could do a lot of reading on the ship.”
“I’m sure,” Aziraphale said.
But something in his voice must have alerted Crowley that things were amiss, because his posture changed, softening. “I know you don’t like the spooky ones,” Crowley said. “But I’m sure we won’t see anything remotely scary. Just an iceberg. And if not, well— I can be quite spooky myself, can’t I? So that’s a plus for our side.”
Aziraphale decided this was not the time to acknowledge to Crowley that his talents ran more to fevered desire than fright. Nor could he acknowledge the way our side got into his chest and hummed. “All right, then,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s go sailing.”
Aziraphale did love to sail. And he loved to read. And he loved Crowley, who loved to cause mischief on ships, and those forms of entertainment kept Aziraphale quite occupied until the Azores were reached. After that, it was the flight.
But to make 300 miles quickly, they’d have to go quite high, and here Aziraphale was the one to reach out in unspoken comfort. Crowley didn’t like to fly so far above the earth. Aziraphale thought perhaps it reminded him of something— of Heaven, of being a starmaker, of the Fall afterwards. In any case, Aziraphale was careful to fly to Crowley’s right and just above him. Crowley seemed more at ease in the air when he was within Aziraphale’s shadow.
After a while, though, there was no more shadow. The air thickened with fog and thinned with cold, and Aziraphale was glad now that he was not on a ship, at the mercy of the sea and... whatever was within it.
Crowley led them downwards, toward the water, but there wasn’t much they could see in the fog. “How will we ever find the island?” Aziraphale asked. “If it’s even here.”
“Well, something’s here,” Crowley said, sounding surprised. “There’s a light. A fire. Not even Hellfire. Human fire.”
Whatever Aziraphale had been expecting, it wasn’t that. They flew lower, and where the fire chased the fog they saw land: rocks and sand, with the ocean breaking into waves at the shoreline. The fire was on a platform built high in the air, lined with sand, smoking wetly.
“There are humans here,” Aziraphale said.
“And that’s no cooking fire. They’re signaling someone.”
“But whom?”
Crowley flew closer, and they landed together, their shoes sinking into soft sand. Aziraphale shivered and pretended it was just him putting his wings away.
“Hello?” Aziraphale called.
For a moment, there was no answer. And then, voices. Out of the fog ran two men, in ragged clothing, staring as if they thought they’d been confronted with apparitions. “Where did you come from?” one of them demanded.
“Lifeboat,” Crowley said. “We were, ah— marooned. Set adrift.”
“Mutineers!” the man exclaimed.
Crowley smirked. “Well, I certainly am.” Aziraphale gave Crowley a look of more than slight disapproval, to which, of course, he grinned.
The other man spoke up. “Doesn’t matter now. There’s no one here to rebel against. We’re the only survivors of our ship. We sailed into the fog, and then—” He exchanged a look of fear with his companion. “We found this island. We volunteered to take a boat to land. There was not much here, but some signs of earlier landings. Broken wooden planks, ashes in stone rings. But while we were gone, our ship—”
“Sunk by the Hand of Satan,” Crowley said. “Yeah, we heard all about it. Didn’t think it was real.”
The other man’s mouth worked a little, silently, and then he said in a low voice, “Wasn’t really a hand. Something thicker. Flatter. But definitely from Hell.”
Aziraphale shivered again, and Crowley stepped closer, the movement perhaps even more comforting because it seemed to be automatic.
“We lit the signal fire to call for help,” the other man said. “But every ship that comes near either runs away or goes straight to the bottom. We were talking this morning about dousing the fire for good.”
Aziraphale was listening to the story, but also listening to a little voice in his head telling him that something was not quite right. “Crowley,” he said. “This island—”
“Yeah, angel. I feel it.” Crowley dug into a pocket of his too-short robe and pulled out an improbable amount of food, which the men fell on like starving men would. Crowley drew Aziraphale away, back into the fog. Once it closed around them, it was completely isolating, enough that if the whole rest of the world disappeared at that moment, they might never know.
“This is not an iceberg,” Aziraphale said.
“But it’s not an island either.”
“There’s something out here, Crowley. Something alive. Something— big.”
Crowley made a face which suggested that he was more displeased than usual that he’d been proven wrong. “I think we might be standing on it.”
“That’s a myth,” Aziraphale said. “A whale big enough to be an island—”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
Crowley began to roll his shoulders. It was a familiar move, which had Aziraphale objecting at once. “Crowley, absolutely not. You aren’t going to turn into a serpent so you can slither into the water and talk to a living island—”
Crowley snorted dismissively, as if that were not exactly what he was planning to do. And then he did it. A moment later, Aziraphale was looking at a massive snake curled up in the sand.
“Absolutely not,” Aziraphale repeated. “I’m not letting you do that alone.”
The serpent shrugged its shoulder. Aziraphale was never sure how it managed to do that, but it was a common gesture. “You can’t come with,” Crowley said. “You’ll get your featherssss wet.”
“They’ll dry,” Aziraphale said, but then he brightened. “But oh, that makes much more sense. Hang on.” Aziraphale summoned his wings back out, but not for flying this time. For seeing.
The myriad eyes on the feathers watched as Crowley hissed and curled up into a pile of surprised and disgruntled snake. “Angel, for Hell’s sake. You’re brighter than the signal fire.”
Aziraphale discovered this was true as some of the eyes behind him picked up two terrified humans gazing at a demon snake and an angel in glory. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Um, be not afraid!” Aziraphale pointed a finger at Crowley. “And you, you be afraid enough to be careful. Promise me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Crowley opened his mouth to accept a plucked feather bearing an angelic eye, which would function both as light beneath the waves, and as a direct line to a very nervous guardian angel.
The snake disappeared into the water with a slither and a splash. Aziraphale put his wings away and sat down in the sand. The moments ticked by, one after another, in silence. Aziraphale watched as Crowley dove deeper, down to where the island seemed to begin, down much farther than Aziraphale wanted him to go. And then Crowley followed the base of it— what might be the stomach, Aziraphale feared— around to a huge, flat protrusion. And there it was. The Hand of Satan, thick and flat. A massive fin. It moved restlessly, stirring up the water around it. Aziraphale held his breath until Crowley was past it.
The question then was whether Crowley was heading toward the front of the beast or the back. The answer was revealed in the discovery of a giant dark eye.
Aziraphale kept his feather-eye open. The snake and beast and angel regarded each other for a while, and eventually Aziraphale realized there was probably some communication going on between the demon and the fish, something angels could not pick up. Or perhaps the conversation was just muffled by the water. Aziraphale’s eye was there, but his ears were quite far away.
Crowley finally swam upwards, and Aziraphale met him at the island’s shoreline. He miracled up a blanket for a newly-human-shaped, very wet demon.
“Well?” Aziraphale asked.
“Curse,” Crowley said. “There’s a curse on this place.”
“Whatever could the humans have done in the middle of the uninhabited ocean to deserve—” Aziraphale broke off. “Oh. It’s not on them.”
Crowley shook his head, spreading droplets of seawater. Aziraphale took the blanket rather aggressively to Crowley’s hair, leaving him looking bedraggled and adorable.
“So someone cursed the monster fish,” Aziraphale said.
“Yeah. And I know who— one of yours.”
“What, an angel?”
“Nah.” Crowley brushed at a few lingering scales on his arms, which faded back into skin. “Human. But a saintly one.”
“Oh, good lord,” Aziraphale said. “Brendan.”
“Good old St. Brendan’s out wandering these waters. He finds an island. Climbs out of his boat, goes to say mass, the island sinks under him. Brendan gets mad—”
“And curses the island to never sink. Crowley, Brendan was here almost a thousand years ago. Oh, this poor fish!”
“Might be a mammal,” Crowley said, as if that was terribly relevant at the moment. “Anyway, I’m not sure what we’re going to—” Crowley abruptly hissed and covered his face with the blanket as Aziraphale let his wings and eyes blaze forth once again. “Angel, a little warning!”
“If I warned you, you’d tell me not to appear in glory,” Aziraphale said. He plucked his removed feather from Crowley’s hand and replaced it in his wing.
“Yeah, because it’s horrifying,” Crowley said.
“Well, it’s necessary, if I’m going to undo the curse.”
“Hang on.” Crowley peeked out from behind the blanket. “I thought you weren’t supposed to undo the doings of saints.”
“Well, Brendan wasn’t following any orders from—” Aziraphale pointed up— “to curse the poor beast. Like you said. He just got tetchy.”
“Yeah, all right,” Crowley said. “I’ll get the humans off. Miracle them to the nearest ship, I guess, wherever that is.”
Aziraphale opened every eye and reached out with his aura, his essence, into the air around them. He found what he was looking for soon enough. There in the fog were tendrils of something strong and sharp, holding the monster, holding the sea. They were old and gnarled and painful. Aziraphale cut through them with a holy light. Beneath him, the island gave an immense shudder.
Aziraphale rose up into the air as the fish sank down below him, the sand and rocks washing off of its back, the fins used not to swat away ships but to swim away.
“Well,” Aziraphale said to Crowley, who was hovering next to him over what was now empty sea. “I think we accomplished our mission. Should look nice in both our reports.”
“Fancy another ship voyage?” Crowley asked. “We’ve got a good story to tell now. Might even make it into a printed book someday, if I tell it often enough.”
“Oh, no, if you tell the story it’s going to be—”
“Spooky,” Crowley said with a wicked smile. “I’ll do my best.”
Rating: T. No content warnings
Summary: Crowley recruits Aziraphale for a mission to investigate a phantom island and the monstrous creature that supposedly lurks nearby. For kaijuusandkryptids, who requested a melancholic, mysterious tale of the sea.
Germany
1445
Aziraphale was not expecting Crowley’s visit. That made it all the better, of course. Aziraphale felt the slight shimmer in the air, the parting of molecules that had every right to be in his room to make room for molecules that definitely should not. Aziraphale turned to his left and there sat a beautiful red-haired demon, quite scandalously dressed.
“Oh, good gracious,” Aziraphale said, because he’d found that if he opened Crowley’s visits with some slight disapproval it made him feel like he was less likely to gush out something terribly flattering. Crowley never seemed to find the disapproval off-putting. Most likely, he considered it a compliment.
(Proper dress for the period consisted of shirt and hose, with a doublet over them, and an overrobe on top of that, something longer that concealed the garments beneath. Crowley, naturally, wore his quite indecently short, looking like a little skirt over his hips.)
Aziraphale crossed his legs, glad that his overrobe hid any message that his body wanted to communicate to Crowley’s body. It really would have been helpful if angels had been created immune to demonic temptation. And who knew, perhaps they had. Perhaps Aziraphale was just in love.
“Here on business?” Aziraphale asked.
“Me? Yes.” Crowley was grinning. “You? No.”
“I am here to bless the miracle of the printing press,” Aziraphale informed him.
“The printing press,” Crowley said, in a lightly mocking voice, “is five years old. Doesn’t take five years for a blessing. You’re infatuated, angel. I wouldn’t have guessed it, really. Thought you’d turn up your nose at technology replacing the hand-lettered tomes.”
“It won’t replace it,” Aziraphale said, although he did sound rather unconvinced. “But Crowley, it’s marvelous. So many books can be printed so quickly. Why, eventually, even I won’t be able to read everything that’s been printed.”
“Not that you won’t try, though,” Crowley said, looking fond. “Listen, I need a favor of the angelic type.”
Aziraphale stood, beginning a search for glasses and a bottle of wine. “What could a demon need an angel’s help with?”
“Eh— a little bit of this and that, here and there— possibly a smiting.”
Aziraphale had his head in a cupboard. “And whom might I be smiting?” he called.
“Sea monster.”
Aziraphale stepped back from the cupboard with a sigh. “Now, I know how you like your fanciful stories, Crowley, but there’s nothing in the sea that She hasn’t put there—”
“Yeah, but She doesn’t tell you everything, does She? God knows what’s down there, angel. Literally.”
Aziraphale decided that this was the sort of idea on which it was best not to speculate. “Well, why are you so opposed to this— this beast, then?”
“Got assigned it.” Crowley said, accepting a serving of a very nice red that Aziraphale had managed to find among all his books and papers, in a glass created by miracle. “I don’t know who I pissed off, but I got thrown this thing. The humans are calling it The Hand of Satan, except it’s not. Satan’s got his hands busy elsewhere, I guess.”
Aziraphale also did not want to speculate on that. “Well, what does this hand do?”
“Sinks ships.” Crowley leaned back, and Aziraphale attempted not to look at the new curves of calves that Crowley’s hose were revealing to him. He was not completely successful. Thankfully, if Crowley noticed— you could never quite be sure what Crowley was looking at behind those awful dark glasses— he gave no sign of it.
“See, what happens,” Crowley said, “is that the humans come out in their ships, exploring the North Atlantic, looking for anything undiscovered that they can fight over, and they come upon an island that’s not on any charts. It’s rocks and sand and cliffs, and then the fog comes up around them, and—” Crowley smacked his hand down on his leg. “Bam! Down comes Satan’s hand, and drags the ship under.”
Aziraphale rolled his eyes. “It’s not an island at all. It’s a massive iceberg. They’re quite capable of sinking ships when they roll over.”
“That’s what I said!” Crowley exclaimed. “That’s why it’s not on charts, because those things are always moving! But Beelzebub’s having none of it. The humans are calling the island em>Satanazes, Island of the Devils. Beez doesn’t want the island or the monster being labeled as satanic without being officially condoned by Hell.” Crowley made a dismissive snorting sound. “So now I have to go out and disprove its existence. But, um, I did think, if it turns out that it’s not an iceberg— an angelic smiting might be just the thing.”
“Yes, I suppose it might,” Aziraphale said. “Heaven would certainly agree, which is the important part.” It was not at all the important part, but Aziraphale did have to toe the official line. “Where is the island supposedly located?”
“Up north of Antillia. Which, yes, I realize is also not a real island, but they’re quite determined about that one. So like 300 miles west of the Azores.” Crowley leaned forward, bracing his arms on his knees. “I’m based in Portugal right now. I figure we can go there, hop on a ship to the Azores— the Portuguese are just starting to settle there— and then fly from there. Could make 300 miles pretty quickly if we needed to, and we can always miracle up a raft if we need a rest. And if the island’s not there, we turn around and come back.” Crowley’s voice dropped a little lower, into his I’m tempting you tone. “Be like a holiday, angel. You could do a lot of reading on the ship.”
“I’m sure,” Aziraphale said.
But something in his voice must have alerted Crowley that things were amiss, because his posture changed, softening. “I know you don’t like the spooky ones,” Crowley said. “But I’m sure we won’t see anything remotely scary. Just an iceberg. And if not, well— I can be quite spooky myself, can’t I? So that’s a plus for our side.”
Aziraphale decided this was not the time to acknowledge to Crowley that his talents ran more to fevered desire than fright. Nor could he acknowledge the way our side got into his chest and hummed. “All right, then,” Aziraphale said. “Let’s go sailing.”
oOo
Aziraphale did love to sail. And he loved to read. And he loved Crowley, who loved to cause mischief on ships, and those forms of entertainment kept Aziraphale quite occupied until the Azores were reached. After that, it was the flight.
But to make 300 miles quickly, they’d have to go quite high, and here Aziraphale was the one to reach out in unspoken comfort. Crowley didn’t like to fly so far above the earth. Aziraphale thought perhaps it reminded him of something— of Heaven, of being a starmaker, of the Fall afterwards. In any case, Aziraphale was careful to fly to Crowley’s right and just above him. Crowley seemed more at ease in the air when he was within Aziraphale’s shadow.
After a while, though, there was no more shadow. The air thickened with fog and thinned with cold, and Aziraphale was glad now that he was not on a ship, at the mercy of the sea and... whatever was within it.
Crowley led them downwards, toward the water, but there wasn’t much they could see in the fog. “How will we ever find the island?” Aziraphale asked. “If it’s even here.”
“Well, something’s here,” Crowley said, sounding surprised. “There’s a light. A fire. Not even Hellfire. Human fire.”
Whatever Aziraphale had been expecting, it wasn’t that. They flew lower, and where the fire chased the fog they saw land: rocks and sand, with the ocean breaking into waves at the shoreline. The fire was on a platform built high in the air, lined with sand, smoking wetly.
“There are humans here,” Aziraphale said.
“And that’s no cooking fire. They’re signaling someone.”
“But whom?”
Crowley flew closer, and they landed together, their shoes sinking into soft sand. Aziraphale shivered and pretended it was just him putting his wings away.
“Hello?” Aziraphale called.
For a moment, there was no answer. And then, voices. Out of the fog ran two men, in ragged clothing, staring as if they thought they’d been confronted with apparitions. “Where did you come from?” one of them demanded.
“Lifeboat,” Crowley said. “We were, ah— marooned. Set adrift.”
“Mutineers!” the man exclaimed.
Crowley smirked. “Well, I certainly am.” Aziraphale gave Crowley a look of more than slight disapproval, to which, of course, he grinned.
The other man spoke up. “Doesn’t matter now. There’s no one here to rebel against. We’re the only survivors of our ship. We sailed into the fog, and then—” He exchanged a look of fear with his companion. “We found this island. We volunteered to take a boat to land. There was not much here, but some signs of earlier landings. Broken wooden planks, ashes in stone rings. But while we were gone, our ship—”
“Sunk by the Hand of Satan,” Crowley said. “Yeah, we heard all about it. Didn’t think it was real.”
The other man’s mouth worked a little, silently, and then he said in a low voice, “Wasn’t really a hand. Something thicker. Flatter. But definitely from Hell.”
Aziraphale shivered again, and Crowley stepped closer, the movement perhaps even more comforting because it seemed to be automatic.
“We lit the signal fire to call for help,” the other man said. “But every ship that comes near either runs away or goes straight to the bottom. We were talking this morning about dousing the fire for good.”
Aziraphale was listening to the story, but also listening to a little voice in his head telling him that something was not quite right. “Crowley,” he said. “This island—”
“Yeah, angel. I feel it.” Crowley dug into a pocket of his too-short robe and pulled out an improbable amount of food, which the men fell on like starving men would. Crowley drew Aziraphale away, back into the fog. Once it closed around them, it was completely isolating, enough that if the whole rest of the world disappeared at that moment, they might never know.
“This is not an iceberg,” Aziraphale said.
“But it’s not an island either.”
“There’s something out here, Crowley. Something alive. Something— big.”
Crowley made a face which suggested that he was more displeased than usual that he’d been proven wrong. “I think we might be standing on it.”
“That’s a myth,” Aziraphale said. “A whale big enough to be an island—”
“Do you have a better explanation?”
Crowley began to roll his shoulders. It was a familiar move, which had Aziraphale objecting at once. “Crowley, absolutely not. You aren’t going to turn into a serpent so you can slither into the water and talk to a living island—”
Crowley snorted dismissively, as if that were not exactly what he was planning to do. And then he did it. A moment later, Aziraphale was looking at a massive snake curled up in the sand.
“Absolutely not,” Aziraphale repeated. “I’m not letting you do that alone.”
The serpent shrugged its shoulder. Aziraphale was never sure how it managed to do that, but it was a common gesture. “You can’t come with,” Crowley said. “You’ll get your featherssss wet.”
“They’ll dry,” Aziraphale said, but then he brightened. “But oh, that makes much more sense. Hang on.” Aziraphale summoned his wings back out, but not for flying this time. For seeing.
The myriad eyes on the feathers watched as Crowley hissed and curled up into a pile of surprised and disgruntled snake. “Angel, for Hell’s sake. You’re brighter than the signal fire.”
Aziraphale discovered this was true as some of the eyes behind him picked up two terrified humans gazing at a demon snake and an angel in glory. “Oh, dear,” he said. “Um, be not afraid!” Aziraphale pointed a finger at Crowley. “And you, you be afraid enough to be careful. Promise me.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Crowley opened his mouth to accept a plucked feather bearing an angelic eye, which would function both as light beneath the waves, and as a direct line to a very nervous guardian angel.
The snake disappeared into the water with a slither and a splash. Aziraphale put his wings away and sat down in the sand. The moments ticked by, one after another, in silence. Aziraphale watched as Crowley dove deeper, down to where the island seemed to begin, down much farther than Aziraphale wanted him to go. And then Crowley followed the base of it— what might be the stomach, Aziraphale feared— around to a huge, flat protrusion. And there it was. The Hand of Satan, thick and flat. A massive fin. It moved restlessly, stirring up the water around it. Aziraphale held his breath until Crowley was past it.
The question then was whether Crowley was heading toward the front of the beast or the back. The answer was revealed in the discovery of a giant dark eye.
Aziraphale kept his feather-eye open. The snake and beast and angel regarded each other for a while, and eventually Aziraphale realized there was probably some communication going on between the demon and the fish, something angels could not pick up. Or perhaps the conversation was just muffled by the water. Aziraphale’s eye was there, but his ears were quite far away.
Crowley finally swam upwards, and Aziraphale met him at the island’s shoreline. He miracled up a blanket for a newly-human-shaped, very wet demon.
“Well?” Aziraphale asked.
“Curse,” Crowley said. “There’s a curse on this place.”
“Whatever could the humans have done in the middle of the uninhabited ocean to deserve—” Aziraphale broke off. “Oh. It’s not on them.”
Crowley shook his head, spreading droplets of seawater. Aziraphale took the blanket rather aggressively to Crowley’s hair, leaving him looking bedraggled and adorable.
“So someone cursed the monster fish,” Aziraphale said.
“Yeah. And I know who— one of yours.”
“What, an angel?”
“Nah.” Crowley brushed at a few lingering scales on his arms, which faded back into skin. “Human. But a saintly one.”
“Oh, good lord,” Aziraphale said. “Brendan.”
“Good old St. Brendan’s out wandering these waters. He finds an island. Climbs out of his boat, goes to say mass, the island sinks under him. Brendan gets mad—”
“And curses the island to never sink. Crowley, Brendan was here almost a thousand years ago. Oh, this poor fish!”
“Might be a mammal,” Crowley said, as if that was terribly relevant at the moment. “Anyway, I’m not sure what we’re going to—” Crowley abruptly hissed and covered his face with the blanket as Aziraphale let his wings and eyes blaze forth once again. “Angel, a little warning!”
“If I warned you, you’d tell me not to appear in glory,” Aziraphale said. He plucked his removed feather from Crowley’s hand and replaced it in his wing.
“Yeah, because it’s horrifying,” Crowley said.
“Well, it’s necessary, if I’m going to undo the curse.”
“Hang on.” Crowley peeked out from behind the blanket. “I thought you weren’t supposed to undo the doings of saints.”
“Well, Brendan wasn’t following any orders from—” Aziraphale pointed up— “to curse the poor beast. Like you said. He just got tetchy.”
“Yeah, all right,” Crowley said. “I’ll get the humans off. Miracle them to the nearest ship, I guess, wherever that is.”
Aziraphale opened every eye and reached out with his aura, his essence, into the air around them. He found what he was looking for soon enough. There in the fog were tendrils of something strong and sharp, holding the monster, holding the sea. They were old and gnarled and painful. Aziraphale cut through them with a holy light. Beneath him, the island gave an immense shudder.
Aziraphale rose up into the air as the fish sank down below him, the sand and rocks washing off of its back, the fins used not to swat away ships but to swim away.
“Well,” Aziraphale said to Crowley, who was hovering next to him over what was now empty sea. “I think we accomplished our mission. Should look nice in both our reports.”
“Fancy another ship voyage?” Crowley asked. “We’ve got a good story to tell now. Might even make it into a printed book someday, if I tell it often enough.”
“Oh, no, if you tell the story it’s going to be—”
“Spooky,” Crowley said with a wicked smile. “I’ll do my best.”
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-02 02:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-02 07:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-02 05:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-02 07:07 pm (UTC)<3 Nautical Noel <3
Date: 2021-12-02 11:32 pm (UTC)Re: <3 Nautical Noel <3
Date: 2021-12-03 12:39 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-03 05:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-03 06:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-05 10:47 pm (UTC)(From Ri)
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 07:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 02:53 am (UTC)“And who knew, perhaps they had. Perhaps Aziraphale was just in love.” You can’t just SAY THINGS LIKE THIS (I’m so glad you did)
God, you really captured the way Crowley is with him, flippant one moment, tempting the next, soft immediately after, it’s so good
“I can be quite spooky myself, can’t I?” <3
““Mutineers!” the man exclaimed.
Crowley smirked. “Well, I certainly am.” I LOVE this
““Oh, dear,” he said. “Um, be not afraid!” Aziraphale pointed a finger at Crowley. “And you, you be afraid enough to be careful.” XD
Love the image of Aziraphale drying Crowley’s hair, too
SPOOKY. Ahhh, I loved every bit of this :D
(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-06 07:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-13 02:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2021-12-13 04:20 pm (UTC)