Chapter Text
“When they were filled, he said unto his disciples, Gather up the fragments that remain, that nothing be lost.” —John 6:12
Aziraphale looked up at the old stone edifice. It wasn’t ancient, not by his standards. But it was old, even for him. A seventh of his life on the earth God had made. Longer, actually, as the building had been something else before it became a church. Something else entirely, though equally as divine.
Aziraphale took a breath to shore up his resolve. It was hard, this particular day. So much had gone right, at least in his estimation, and yet so much had been left unsaid, undone. Change had always been tricky for the angel, like a clock trying to operate with several gear teeth missing. He could adapt to the alternate workings with time, but it always took discipline and effort.
Not so with his counterpart. He took to change like a duck to…well, whatever it is ducks take to. But Aziraphale always struggled at first. And the faster things changed, the more he struggled. Fast and large changes were the worst for him, so the averted apocalypse threw him for quite the loop. While it was true that nothing on the surface of the earth had changed, the opposite was true for Aziraphale—everything had changed for him.
He’d taken a holiday, after. And then that holiday had expanded into a sabbatical. Which then elongated into a permanent leave.
But he’d taken care to return on the anniversary of the Arrangement. He couldn’t not.
“Still licking our wounds, are we?” came Crowley’s smooth greeting, as he sauntered up to Aziraphale.
The angel lightly scoffed but returned the greeting. “Hello to you, too, dear.”
“You gonna go in?” Crowley asked, gesturing with his chin at the church.
“We both can,” Aziraphale said. “It’s been decommissioned, which means it’s no longer consecrated. It would be nice to see it again before they knock it down, don’t you think?”
Crowley shrugged in the way that meant it mattered too much to him to show that it mattered at all. Aziraphale’s earlier irritation melted completely upon seeing the familiar gesture. He wasn’t the only one hurting, then, which just made him hurt all the more.
Crowley shouldered open the old wooden door. They didn’t make doors like that anymore, solid, heavy, ornate. Doors today were more likely glass or even open air. The year-round balmy weather made doors like this undesirable, and modern materials were a wonder that never ceased to amaze Aziraphale. What humans wouldn’t come up with next.
The darkness of the interior fell on Aziraphale like the welcome shade of an oasis in the desert. The domes and arches of stone, though small in comparison with other churches he’d known, held a resonance for him born of history and familiarity.
“Hello, you,” he said softly, as he stroked a nearby pillar.
“C’mon, angel.”
Crowley seemed a bit pensive, hands stuffed in his pockets, shoulders caved in, as he glanced furtively around, no doubt cataloguing all of the changes since they’d been there last. For his part, Aziraphale had given up mourning the losses as the building had changed hands over the centuries. What mattered was what it represented, that it was still there after everything, though he supposed it wouldn’t be for much longer.
“Are you alright?” Aziraphale asked.
“Tip top, never better,” the demon replied.
“Not terribly convincing, dear. Would you care to try again?”
Crowley stopped to light a stub of a votive candle with his finger. The flame bloomed brighter in the dim alcove than it had any right to, given the layers of dust over the votive stand and that none of the candles had much in the way of wax left.
“I’m fine, angel,” he said without looking at Aziraphale. “Just…s’been awhile.”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said simply, because it had.
“I was half convinced you wouldn’t show up this time,” Crowley said.
The urge to reach out to the demon gripped Aziraphale, but it would pass eventually, if he waited long enough. “Of course I came. I will always come.”
“Even after…?” Crowley swallowed the rest of the question, and Aziraphale understood his reluctance. He, too, didn’t want to admit how much he’d miss this place.
“It’s just a building, Crowley," he said, hardly more convincing than Crowley had been a moment ago. He tried to force a bit more brightness into his tone as he continued. "Something will replace it, and we’ll come back and tour that instead.”
“It isn’t just a building, though, is it?”
“How do you mean?” Aziraphale said, though he knew exactly.
Crowley had already meandered along the narthex, though, towards the northern aisle.
“It’s all a bit surreal, isn’t it?” Crowley went on finally.
“Which part?”
“Evolution,” Crowley answered, stopping at a fresco of the Last Supper. “Remaining a fixed point in a universe that dances.”
“I do know how to dance, Crowley.”
Crowley grinned at him then, a flicker of his old self glinting through. “The only angel that ever did,” he said, sounding proud.
Aziraphale blushed. “Oh, hush. We both have. We both…”
He’d been about to say do , but when was the last time he’d danced? A century ago? Two? He was forgetting the steps, the names of the people he’d danced with, and it filled him with immeasurable sadness.
“I-I see your point, dear. The world does rather move on around us.”
“Don’t look like that,” Crowley said, chastened. “I didn’t mean to rain on your picnic or anything.”
Aziraphale gave him a small conciliatory smile. “It’s alright. And anyway, it’s not just my picnic. We both played a role in saving the world.”
“Eh, not me so much,” Crowley said. “Mostly just cocked the whole thing up.”
“Which made it possible to prevail at all, you know.”
Crowley shrugged again and picked a pew to slide into. Aziraphale was less sure about following him. Sitting in a pew felt much more intimate than touring the building. But then the demon patted the wooden bench next to him.
“I won’t bite,” he said.
Aziraphale obliged and settled in next to him, though not close enough to touch. There were some boundaries one couldn’t cross, not after imprisoning oneself so long behind them. The trench had been dug too long and too deep by this point.
Crowley leaned back against the pew, long legs stretched out in front of him, and he sighed deeply.
“It’s a Hell of a thing, isn’t it?”
“What?”
“That,” he said, gesturing to the centerpiece mosaic, the focal point of the sanctuary.
“Ah, yes. That.”
Aziraphale’s eyes flicked up at it and down again quickly.
“You can’t even bear to look at it, can you?” Crowley said, arms crossed and sounding bitter. It was a sore point, and Crowley knew it. Why was he bringing it up again after all these years?
“I feel as if it is…sacrilegious.”
“Sacrilegious for you to look at it? Or sacrilegious that they made it at all?”
“Both, I imagine.”
“But sacrilegious to who ?”
“‘To whom,’ dear,” Aziraphale corrected automatically.
“Don’t you remember, angel?” Crowley carried on, ignoring him. “Heaven and Hell gave us the axe. Literally.” He sighed again, more heavily this time. “What happened to us having our own side?”
Aziraphale struggled through the fog he floated through most of the time lately. So many days he sort of came to, discovering the date had advanced by a month or more, though he had no memory of doing anything in the intervening days. Perhaps he should mention this to Crowley to see if the demon had experienced something similar. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he didn’t really want to know the answer.
Either way, he didn’t like to think about their near deaths, but he did remember.
“It’s not that easy, Crowley. There are certain modes and … and … conditions that are woven into the very fabric of one’s being, even without Head Office breathing down one’s neck.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said, sounding weary. “But you helped them, and they just…wanted to remember it. Nothing wrong with that.”
“I didn’t do all that much,” Aziraphale whispered, hearing his voice carry through the nave regardless. “And I didn’t do it alone,” he added with a soft look at the demon that he couldn’t seem to help.
“Well, if you won’t look at it, shall I describe it to you?”
“I wish you wouldn’t.”
But Crowley barreled on regardless. “You know they made it out of broken bits of stained glass and pottery they collected as a community. All the colors of the rainbow.”
“Crowley…”
“I’m not going to stop, Aziraphale. This church will be gone tomorrow, and you’ll never see it again. You owe it to them to remember.”
“I thought you just said they were trying to remember me .”
“It goes both ways. Remembrance keeps the candle lit,” he said, gesturing with his head to the votive in its dusty red glass, still beating back the shadows against the wall.
Aziraphale settled into a resigned silence.
“Where was I?” Crowley continued, affecting the air of a storyteller. “Ah, yes, the rainbow..."
"It was about restoration, if I recall. Taking something broken and making something new out of it, something beautiful.”
Aziraphale fidgeted, uncomfortable on so many levels he couldn’t even count them all.
“Let’s start with the wings. Garnet, amethyst, and aquamarine feathers that glisten when the light shines through. Open and inviting. Inclusive.”
He paused to shoot Aziraphale a look, no doubt to see if he was listening. But Aziraphale couldn’t shut out Crowley’s voice if he wanted to. The tenor of it soaked into his being like a spring rain into the deep cracks of the Namib desert.
“The Sword is a burnt amber, stretching all the way to the top of the frame and flaming like anything. Protection, salvation.”
“War,” Aziraphale reminded him.
“Not to them. And anyway, it’s balanced by the book. The treasures of the mind. Symbolic of everything worth fighting for.”
“I just…like them.”
“Liked them, you mean,” Crowley said.
“I still see some, from time to time.”
“‘For time is the longest distance between two places…’”
“Why are you doing this?” Aziraphale asked, starting to feel more vexed than hazy.
“Because you won’t see it again.”
“Why are you really doing this?” he challenged.
“Because you won’t see me again.”
All Aziraphale's vexation whirled away in a blink of shock and dismay.
“I beg your pardon?” he said. He must not have heard correctly.
Crowley growled in frustration and stood up, abandoning the pew for the chancel. Heart pounding, Aziraphale hurried to catch up to him, banging his hip painfully on the edge of the pew next to theirs in his rush.
“What do you mean, I won’t see you again?” he said, breathless with more than just haste. “We always see each other on the anniversary of the Arrangement.”
“And only on the anniversary.”
Aziraphale waited for Crowley to clarify.
Crowley stopped and turned to face Aziraphale, his sharp features drawn with exhaustion. “I’m tired, angel. I slept through most of the year since I saw you last, and a good bit of the year before that. I don’t know who I am without—” He cut himself off abruptly, as if he’d nearly said too much.
“Without Hell?” Aziraphale hazarded. “I do understand, dear boy. Without Heaven’s direction, I also struggle. Even to remember things, sometimes. It’s as if my grace is… Well, never mind. But there is more to life than mayhem and temptations.”
Crowley rubbed his eyes under his perpetual glasses, though he needed them less and less these days. His eyes were hardly remarkable anymore, what with all the body modifications humans had invented.
“I can’t anymore, Aziraphale. I can’t…not knowing…”
“Not knowing what, dear?”
Crowley pressed his lips together, closing himself off. “Never mind,” he said, then slinked over closer to the mosaic.
Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure what had derailed their easy camaraderie. Crowley was often enigmatic and sardonic, but this prodding was new. What was he trying to say? If only Aziraphale could think as quickly as he used to. The angel cast about desperately for a way to draw his companion out again.
“I don’t know why they chose me,” Aziraphale said, hoping a return to the original topic would do the trick.
“Because you chose them, obviously. You sheltered them, protected them, guided them when you could. You were their guardian angel.”
“It wasn’t intentional,” Aziraphale said, already regretting bringing it up again. “I didn’t intend to become a…to become a…”
“A saint?”
Aziraphale frowned at the demon. “Saints are human. I’m ethereal.”
“Of course,” Crowley said with an indulgent smile. “Regardless, you became it , whatever it was, because when they were mistreated, ignored, abandoned, or lost faith, you found them and you gave them hope. You gave me hope.”
“That a fall from grace could be survived?”
“That a fall from grace could be the beginning of something better.”
Aziraphale shook his head. Something about that didn’t feel right, but he had difficulty remembering why.
“There is nothing better than God’s love. It’s all part of the Ineffable Plan,” he said by rote.
Crowley sighed heavily, as he continued up the steps to the altar, pausing to wipe a finger through the dust gathered on it.
“That’s the problem, isn’t it?” he said softly, looking sad. “You still believe there’s a plan.”
Aziraphale snorted in exasperation. “Of course there’s a plan, Crowley. The great plan was wrong, but there is an Ineffable one. We agreed on that. At the air base.”
“ Agreed . As in past tense, angel. It’s been ages since that day, and not a word from You Know Who.”
“Just because we can’t see it or hear it or feel it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Crowley turned his back to Aziraphale, crossing his arms, and looking up at the now much closer mosaic.
It was large. It filled the back wall of the sanctuary with color and light. The sword alone had to be as tall as Crowley. It must have taken the artist several months, if not years, to collect enough bits and pieces to finish.
“It’s the green that gets me,” Crowley said at last. “As if they wanted to offer you earth, invite you to stay.”
“It’s the green that gets you?” Aziraphale said, a thread of amusement unspooling through his sorrow. “Not the giant black snake wrapped around my—its—torso?”
Aziraphale knew Crowley well enough to be able to tell when he was rolling his eyes, even with his glasses on.
“Obviously, I was there. They’d have known that.”
Aziraphale sobered again. Crowley had always been there, hadn’t he? Even after Aziraphale had treated him so abominably for Heaven’s sake. It made sense for him to want to distance himself. He’d said as much after their last argument, how long ago now? The years were blurring into a watercolor.
“I wish I could go back,” Aziraphale said aloud without meaning to. “I wish I could change things.”
That made Crowley turn away from the mosaic and stare hard at the angel. Aziraphale fidgeted in discomfort.
“You wish you could go back?” Crowley said with a sardonic twist of lip. “What specific point would you go back to? What would you change?”
Aziraphale opened his mouth to admit he wished he’d never let Crowley stay away so long, but instead what came out was, “I should not have interfered so much. Perhaps it would not have gone as badly as it did if I had let Heaven have its way.”
“Clearly, your memory is lacking,” Crowley said with disdain. “Perhaps I can fix that for you.”
Then with a click of his fingers, the church around them changed, architecture rearranging, the mosaic swirling away, harsh stone taking its place. Dark and dank and cold descended. Aziraphale had forgotten how cold it had once been in this part of the world.
“Crowley, what are you doing?”
“Don’t recognize this place, angel?”
Aziraphale looked around, this memory even hazier than most, but he did recognize it eventually. It was the Streoneshalh Abbey. Sometime around the eighth century? Or perhaps the seventh?
“I recognize it. I just don’t know why you brought me here.”
“Wait for it.”
So Aziraphale waited. Soon enough, a young man opened the door to the confessional box, slipping meekly out, shoulders bowed as if a monolith rested on them. Shortly after, a familiar figure, tall and broad and radiating arrogance on all that surrounded him, exited the priest’s reticule, a smile of gratification carved into his chiseled face.
“Gabriel,” Aziraphale said in unhappy acknowledgement. This was why Crowley had chosen this place. This, ostensibly, was where, and when, it had all begun. “But what—?”
Aziraphale stopped, having turned and noticed that Crowley was gone. Aziraphale frowned in consternation. Interfering serpent. It’s not as if dredging up all of this now would make any difference.
“Gabriel, was that Caedmon I just saw stumbling out of the chapel? He looked—well, upset hardly covers it. He looked destroyed.”
The Aziraphale of this time had wandered in from the scroll room. Neither angel seemed to notice the Aziraphale of the future watching their interaction play out.
“He came to me for confession. I gave him his penance.”
“What penance did you give him that would make him look so grim?”
“Mortification of the flesh. Ten lashes. And repudiation of the sin, of course.”
“Self-flagellation?” Aziraphale-of-old said, as present-Aziraphale flinched. “That practice is antiquated. No one issues that sort of penance anymore.”
“It was appropriate in this case,” Gabriel said. “The sin was of the flesh, so must the remedy be.”
“An eye for an eye? That is fairly Old Testament, don’t you think?”
Gabriel turned, facing Aziraphale-of-old directly. “Which is as it should be, as it’s the Old Testament that identifies the sin in question.”
“Which sin might that be? Adultery? Murder?”
“The man is a confessed sodomite, Aziraphale. Claims to be in love with one of his fellow parishioners. Can you imagine? One of these mud-grubbing mayfly mortals imagining themselves to be in love.” Gabriel snorted in disbelief. “As if they have even the slightest concept of what love is.”
“Oh, Gabriel,” Aziraphale-of-old said in a tone of disappointment, just as present-Aziraphale said the same.
Then Aziraphale-of-old turned to follow Caedmon out of the abbey and into the hills, with present-Aziraphale following close behind. Both Aziraphales came upon Caedmon at the edge of the East Cliff, staring out over the water.
“Caedmon, wait,” Aziraphale-of-old said, while present-Aziraphale watched, knowing what would come next. “I know what Father Gabriel told you, but I am granting you an indulgence and commuting the penance. A few Hail Marys should be sufficient.”
“You don’t have the authority to do that, Brother Aziraphale. And even if you did, it wouldn’t make my conduct any less a sin.”
“There are sins, and there are sins , dear boy,” Aziraphale insisted. “If you truly love the person who you…” Aziraphale cleared his throat awkwardly. “If you truly love him, then God will forgive. Love is the whole point.”
“I thought salvation was the whole point,” Caedmon said, peering down from the cliff as if assessing the length of the fall.
“‘For love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.’”
“I don’t understand.”
“Love is God. God is salvation. Therefore, love is salvation. They are all the same.”
Caedmon shook his head. “That’s not what Father Gabriel says.”
“Father Gabriel and I have a small doctrinal disagreement there, but everyone agrees that we are all part of God’s Ineffable Plan. God would not have put love in your heart for this man without a reason.”
Caedmon crossed his arms, his shoulders rounding, as if protecting himself from a blow.
“Father Gabriel says that His reason is to test my faith. But the truth is, I don’t want to live like this, fighting my own heart. It’s constant and bitter and without hope.”
Aziraphale-of-old’s expression softened into an empathy so deep that present-Aziraphale felt it like a knell against his own shadowed heart—an echo of a feeling, faint but still there.
“Do you know the psalms, dear boy?” Aziraphale-of-old said.
Caedmon shook his head.
“Oh, the psalms are absolutely lovely. You simply must read them, or even better, hear them sung. They explain all of this so beautifully, but there’s one in particular: Psalm 139. Let’s see, I believe it goes,
O lord, thou hast searched me, and known me...
Thou ... art acquainted with all my ways.
For there is not a word in my tongue, but thou knowest it...
Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me...
I will praise thee; for I am fearfully and wonderfully made:
marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right well.
“That is beautiful,” Caedmon said softly when Aziraphale-of-old had finished, his face flush and eyes wet.
“My dear,” Aziraphale-of-old said, clasping Caedmon’s hand and drawing him away from the edge. “You should not punish yourself for how you were made. There is hope. Always.”
“You are so kind,” Caedmon said, half wonderingly, half suspiciously. “I’ve never met a man of God as kind as you.”
“Well,” Aziraphale-of-old said, blushing. “I suppose I should say thank you, but I am simply doing my job as a Princi—er, as a priest. Now, let’s get you someplace warm. It is far too cold on this cliff in the midwinter, you know. You’re all such delicate creatures, really…”
Aziraphale watched as his prior self led the young man away.
“He wasn’t the last you talked off a ledge,” Crowley said as he appeared out of the ether and circled Aziraphale from behind.
“How did you know about this?” Aziraphale said. “I barely remember it.”
“I was here. I witnessed the whole thing,” Crowley admitted. Then he pointed to some nearby brush, where a now-obvious coil of black snake lay perfectly still, watching with unblinking yellow eyes. “I was tempting him to turn back, to ignore Gabriel’s penance, to live his life in sin if it meant his happiness. But I hadn’t gotten very far before you showed up and did the tempting for me.”
“I never!” Aziraphale spluttered. “I was simply showing him a different perspective.”
Crowley shrugged. “To be fair, you did a far better job of it than me. Did you know that he ended up growing closer to the church after this? Wrote religious poetry, just like your bloody psalm. And love poetry as well, though as you can imagine, only the religious poetry survived.”
“I didn’t realize he was that Caedmon,” Aziraphale said. “It was a common name back then. You kept watch over him?”
“Now and then. I wanted to see how your interference would turn out. To be honest, this incident was what gave me the idea for the Arrangement in the first place. When I saw you tempt him—”
“Encourage him!”
“Whatever. When I saw that, I realized that our aims might not be that far apart after all, even if we went about them differently.”
“Our aims were not at all the same,” Aziraphale protested.
“Weren’t they, though? Do you remember what you did after this?”
“I…” Aziraphale thought hard, rubbing his foggy head. “I went and talked to Gabriel.”
“You knew he was a hindrance at best and a threat at worst to the Almighty’s grand experiment.”
“Good lord, I said that?”
“Of course not, don’t be silly. But you convinced him that he was more suited to upper management than to field work. And you dealt with the repercussions of that personally for over a thousand years until the Apocalypse-that-Wasn’t.”
Aziraphale shivered, drawing his coat tighter about himself. “Why did you bring me here?”
“Because I wanted you to remember what would have happened if you hadn’t interfered, if you’d let Heaven have its way. Do you really think Caedmon’s death would have benefited the Ineffable Plan?”
Aziraphale’s stomach felt queasy and his heart hurt. He believed everything he’d told Caedmon, of course he did. And it would seem that his interference had had a positive effect on the man, turning him more towards Heaven rather than away from it. But it didn’t prove that on the whole he’d been right to intercede.
“Take us back, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, his voice sounding resigned even to his own ears. “I’m getting cold.”
Crowley sighed and raised his hand to snap. The medieval landscape disappeared, and the mosaic of himself once again filled Aziraphale’s vision.
“Now do you see it?” Crowley asked softly.
Aziraphale opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by another voice behind them.
“Good day, gentlemen. Might I be of service?”