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In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone…
“You know, when you said you wanted to make new, better memories here, I was hoping you’d mean something less depressing.”
“Hush. It’s carol singing, it’s traditional. Besides, the programme also includes more modern songs.”
“As if that makes it better. Look, if they start warbling about how they don’t want a lot for Christmas, I’m out of here.”
Aziraphale and the demon stroll right past her, bickering, not noticing her. Aziraphale is frowning in evident confusion. “What?”
The demon heaves a sigh. “The song that one kid sings at the school pageant in ‘Love Actually’. You know, that film you insisted we watch last week?”
“Oh — but that’s such a lovely song!”
“Yes,” the demon bites out, sounding aggrieved, “maybe the first time you hear it, and the second. When you hear it hundreds of times a year for a quarter of a century, it begins to wear on you.”
“But —”
“Hell uses it as a torture method!”
“Really?” Aziraphale sounds dubious. “I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”
Before they can walk too far away from her, she very pointedly clears her throat; and they both whirl immediately to face her.
The demon looks faintly surprised; Aziraphale immediately scowls. “Michael. You promised to leave us alone.”
“I have not come to harm you,” she reassures him. “I am merely a messenger.”
“A messenger?” the demon says, sounding utterly delighted. “This I have to hear.”
“I have it under good authority,” Michael says, with great dignity and not at all like someone who had drawn the short straw after Gabriel had informed the rest of them, in no uncertain terms, that he would not be taking this one, “that the two of you have recently started living in sin.”
There is a moment of utter silence — entirely coincidental, as the human choir at the bandstand has just finished one song and has yet to start the next; and then another song begins, and the demon starts cackling. “Living in sin? Really? Not mincing your words, are you, Michael? You may as well have said ‘knowing each other in the Biblical sense’, or perhaps ‘doing the horizontal tango’ —”
“Whatever you wish to call it, you should cease doing so,” Michael says, primly. Aziraphale has been getting redder and redder, she’s noticed; perhaps she can appeal to his sense of rightness and propriety, since the demon clearly has none. “You know this, Aziraphale. It is a sacred act, and should only be performed within the bounds of —”
“Come on, Mikey,” the demon interrupts, “even the humans mostly know better than that, by now. Lots and lots of living in sin happening, and it’s all just fine. I can assure you, nobody’s going to Hell just for that.”
“It’s different for angels,” Michael retorts. “They are creatures of God.”
The demon raises his eyebrows. “She made the humans, too. How’s it any different for angels?”
“It just is,” she says, firmly. “I will not be led into debating philosophy with you, demon.”
“Bit too late for that, innit? Come on, spit it out. What’s your real problem with it?”
“It is meant to be a celebration of the union between two souls! An act of love, not of lust!” Michael bursts out, almost shouting. It’s a good thing she’d thought ahead and made herself, and them, unnoticeable to the humans.
“There we go, that’s what I thought.” The demon grins, all teeth and no mirth. “Marry us, then.”
Despite herself, she is briefly stunned into silence. They’ve not been speaking in English, of course, they’re speaking in the language that existed before human language, the one all angels and demons share. There are many words that signify marriage, with varying depth to the bond they represent; and the demon’s used the oldest, truest one, the one that means a literal binding of two souls. For a moment, she considers that he might be sincere; but, she quickly reminds herself, he is a demon. He is incapable of love, and lies are part and parcel of his existence. He cannot possibly mean it. “I will not have you make a mockery of the sanctity of —”
“Michael,” Aziraphale says, stepping smoothly between her and the demon, hands raised in a conciliatory manner. “If I may have a word with Crowley for a moment? In private?”
“Of course.” Michael nods, politely, and Aziraphale and the demon step away from her. Of course, she has no intention of actually giving them privacy; it’s a matter of a small miracle to listen in on their conversation.
“You don’t have to do this,” Aziraphale says. “She’s given us her message. She’ll argue for a bit longer, probably, and then leave.”
“I want to,” the demon responds. “It’s not — how I was planning to ask. I was going to ask you at New Year’s. You know, fresh start, and all that. But —” the demon pauses. “If you don’t want to…”
“I want to. Oh, Crowley, of course I want to. Right now, though? With Michael? Are you sure? We could just do it by ourselves, in private. You’re going to need to —”
“I know what I’m going to need to do,” the demon interrupts. “I’m fine with it. Besides — this way, she’s going to be the one who needs to deal with the paperwork.”
Aziraphale chuckles. “Ah, yes, of course. Avoiding paperwork. Your first and foremost motivation for doing anything.”
“Absolutely.” The demon sounds amused. “You know me entirely too well. Shall we?”
“Let’s.”
They start walking back to her, and she lets go of the miracle, so they won’t notice she’s been listening.
“Marry us,” Aziraphale says, firmly.
And Michael looks at him, and finds herself hesitating. He is so certain, almost shining in his belief; and she has no idea what kind of game the demon is playing, but if they go through with this… “It is a bond based on love,” she says, cautioning. “It requires love to be formed. If there is no reciprocal love between the two of you, there will be a backlash.”
“And Aziraphale would live through it, because he is an angel, but I am a demon and would be incinerated.” The demon snorts, softly. “Now’s the time you decide to grow a conscience? Really, Michael? Only a few months ago you were perfectly fine with the idea of me taking a lethal dip in holy water. That would’ve broken Aziraphale’s heart just the same.”
He cannot possibly be sincere. “If you’d died then, he would’ve kept on believing you loved him.”
“For the handful of minutes he’d have had to live before your lot shoved him into a pillar of hellfire, yes.”
“That was not my decision.” It hadn’t been; she’d voted for helping Hell get rid of the demon, and reforming Aziraphale by any means necessary.
“Right. Then what’s your problem?” The demon bares his teeth at her again, in that mockery of a smile he seems to favour so much. “If I die now, Aziraphale will know that I never loved him. That I am, after all, incapable of it, as the common belief goes. That I lied to him. He will be heartbroken, and pliant, and you will be able to take him back to Heaven and console him, and bring him back into the fold.”
“Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs, taking the demon’s hand.
The demon shrugs. “What? It’s what she’d like to have happen. It’s her best-case scenario. She stood by and watched as Uriel and Sandalphon beat you up —”
“It was for his own good,” Michael bites out.
“See what I mean?”
Oh. So that’s his game. He expects to make her feel guilty, so she won’t actually go through with it; so Aziraphale will keep believing his lies. “I have important things to do. I would appreciate it if you would stop wasting my time. Shall we begin?”
“Not here,” Aziraphale says. “Somewhere quieter.”
The demon’s lips twitch into something that almost resembles a real smile. “You don’t fancy making new, better, happier memories here? I thought that was the whole point of why we came today.”
Aziraphale scowls at him. “Be that as it may, I am not getting married with a choir singing ‘Good King Wenceslas’ in the background.”
“Well, then. The Peace Pagoda, just north of here?” The demon points to a path which, to Michael, looks absolutely identical to all other paths leaving the bandstand. “Quiet and picturesque, and close enough that we won’t be wasting too much of Michael’s precious time.”
“That works,” Aziraphale says, cheerfully, and starts walking in the direction the demon pointed out, tugging him along by the hand.
Michael very deliberately does not roll her eyes, and follows.
The pagoda is picturesque, she has to admit; humans, in spite of their failings and despite their short lives, can craft truly beautiful things.
Aziraphale and the demon stop at the base of the stairs going up to the pagoda. “Here will do,” the demon says; and pulls off his sunglasses.
Michael has seen his eyes before, of course, when he failed to be dissolved by holy water in Hell; but she is still struck, as she had been then, by how utterly familiar he seems. She wonders if she’d known him, before the Fall.
Well — soon enough, it will not matter.
The ritual does not, technically, require a third person; Aziraphale and the demon could, indeed, have done it themselves, though having a third person to do most of the intricate casting does make it easier. Michael wonders, as she begins weaving it together, what the demon’s out would’ve been, in that case. It is not the kind of thing one can fake. Perhaps he would’ve tried talking Aziraphale into a different ritual, or invented a demonic version of it.
“Your oaths,” she calls, when the ritual binding is almost complete.
The demon moves first, grasping Aziraphale’s hands in his and bringing them up to kiss them, with a smile that Michael, no matter how much she tries to see the truth in it, cannot manage to read as anything but loving. The demon truly is an incredibly accomplished liar. “Forever,” he says, softly. “I’ve loved you from the very first; I’ll love you still at the very last.”
“Forever,” Aziraphale echoes. His smile matches the demon’s, and there are tears running down his cheeks. “It may have taken me a little longer, but — it’s forever, from here onwards.”
“Your sigils,” she says, when it’s clear that neither of them is planning on saying anything more. It’s the last part of the ritual; after this, there will be no getting out of it.
Again, the demon moves first; and Michael expects him to wrench out of Aziraphale’s grasp, and make a run for it, but he doesn’t. He raises his right hand, and draws his sigil in the air, in golden, burning light, and —
She knows that sigil.
She knew him.
She knows his name. Not Crowley, the name he calls himself; his real name, the Word that spoke him into existence.
He was —
Without even thinking, she tries to call out for him; but she cannot say his name, any more than he could — it was taken from him in the Fall. But if he’s still using that sigil, if he hasn’t made himself a new one to match his new name, he must still remember, he must still be —
Apart from his eyes, he looks just the same. How had she not seen it? She cannot let him be destroyed, she needs answers — she must stop the ritual, she must —
But Aziraphale has drawn his sigil, also.
The power of the ritual pulls tight around Aziraphale and Crowley. As Michael watches, Aziraphale’s signet ring vanishes from the little finger of his right hand to reappear on the ring finger of Crowley’s left — and then alters itself in shape and colour, becoming a silver feather. And though Michael cannot see its origin, because Crowley had not been visibly wearing any sort of jewelry, a red-gold snake-shaped ring takes shape on Aziraphale’s left ring finger.
The air trembles; the silence is absolute, though Michael can feel, thrumming down her spine, the echoes of a celestial chord.
The ritual is over.
Aziraphale and Crowley are married.
Crowley raises his eyebrows. “I do hope this puts your worries at rest, about us living in sin and all that.”
“You —” Michael cannot get out more than the one word; is sure she must be gaping like a fish.
“Me.” His smile is very wry, but not at all smug; she does not get the feeling that he’s mocking her.
“You love him,” she manages.
“I do. I did say. I am not, regardless of what you may think, in the habit of lying.” He sighs. “Let’s just go through this quickly, shall we? No, it’s not just me; all Fallen remember exactly who we were before, and most have the capability to love, though some did have it burned out of them in the Fall. It’s only that there’s as little of love in Hell as there is in Heaven.”
That rankles enough to provoke a response. “There is plenty of love in Heaven.”
It’s Aziraphale who answers, this time. “Generic, conditional, as-long-as-you’re-loyal love, sure. But that’s not the kind of love we’re discussing, is it?”
And that’s the kind of thing she would usually object to, except —
— except he is not wrong; and they know she has realised that, she can see it in their eyes.
“You had important things to do, you said,” Crowley points out, not ungently, after an extended stretch of silence.
She nods. She has questions; but she does not bother asking them, because she does not expect them to answer. She wouldn’t, if she were in their place. “You will be left alone,” she says, gathering her power to return to Heaven.
She has a lot to think about.