Chapter Text
Aziraphale has everything a person could possibly want or need in the event of a world-shattering apocalypse.
He's got a pretty cottage with spectacular views of the smoking crater and mountainous piles of salt that had once, in a past life, been the sea.
Inside, he's somehow acquired books. Stacks upon stacks of books, some ancient, their yellowing pages falling out, some brand new, their spines perfect and uncracked, but all precious beyond the sum of what's actually written on their pages. They are the only books left in all the world.
As far as he is aware, anyway.
There's also an armchair and a sofa, a tea kettle and biscuits.
And, stashed in a dim corner, several bottles of very good wine that he's been saving for a special occasion. He's not really expecting there to be many of those anymore, not now, not ever again, but he can't bring himself to uncork one, all the same.
He doesn't know why.
Perhaps a stubborn, uncomprehending part of him has yet to accept this disintegrating heap of space junk as the permanent fixture of his existence that it is, refuses to acknowledge the futility of hope for brighter days to come. Not that there are days anymore, strictly speaking.
But Aziraphale has plenty to occupy him apart from drinking, so he leaves the wine to gather dust. And, despite himself, waits for some nameless, unquantifiable thing to prove his hope is more than a fanciful delusion to keep despair at bay.
His cottage isn't just packed with all the silly, meaningless little luxuries of a life long gone. He hoards a myriad of other things besides, useful things, vital things.
He's crammed his shelves with medicines and bandages and blankets, toothbrushes and soap and winter jackets in every size, jugs of water which refill miraculously just as soon as the last drop has gone. Food, too, and the seeds to hopefully grow more, if he ever manages to get the seasons in hand and suddenly develops a green thumb powerful enough to force delicate green stems out of the rocky, barren soil. An unlikely thing, after six thousand years of causing every plant he's ever attempted to tend to wilt and die almost instantaneously but needs must. He's willing to give it another go if there's the slightest chance that one human has something more to eat.
Every day, groups of bedraggled humans stop by to collect the little bundles of supplies Aziraphale arranges for them. They're usually grimy and shaking, eerily silent specters haunting a world that has abandoned them. But their faces brighten fractionally when Aziraphale passes over their packs. Thanks pour out in broken streams like some sort of malfunctioning fountain in the square of a ghost town.
Each time, Aziraphale shakes his head with a wan smile. They should not be thanking him. He knows this, even if they don't. They should despise him, curse him, damn him to hell and curse him still.
After all, it's his fault, isn't it?
Oh, to be sure, he's not the one who showered fire down on the world or scoured the streets of every city and village with white-hot flame. He's never once swung a sword in a mighty, careless arc or crushed entire families and perfect strangers alike under his heel. No, he's done none of that, but the breath-taking guilt gnaws at his heart, nevertheless.
The simple truth is while he has nothing to do with the obliteration of the planet and the creatures who inhabit it, (in fact, he'd fought furiously to stave off the worst of the damages to as many people as he could,) he can't help feeling he hadn't done enough. Not enough by half. And now, there's nothing and no one left, except for this tenuous bit of formerly idyllic countryside and the few hundred people he's struggling to keep alive on it.
If it weren't for them, Aziraphale knows he would have given up long ago. What's the point of existing if there's nothing, no one to exist for?
As it is, he's the only thing keeping these humans alive. Without his miracles to clear the air and water of ash and debris, everyone here would be dead within moments. They need him, almost as much as he needs them, so they all continue on in this codependent hellscape. Sometimes, continuing on is the best you can do. It's something, at any rate. And, as Aziraphale has learned all too well, something is better than nothing, even if it's a wobbly, fragile excuse for a something.
Eventually, as almost anything will, given time, it becomes a sort of routine.
While day and night don't formally exist in the same way they once had, the sun and Earth being frozen in space and time, suspended in an otherwise vacant canvas sky for all eternity, the humans have all agreed to block out chunks of space for it. It's amazing what a few miraculous clocks placed strategically about, and a thorough timetable can do to boost community morale.
Aziraphale works through the night to miracle up whatever people might need in the morning. When the dusky orange glow of the sun grows a bit brighter and the alarms begin to blare, everyone wakes. If they need something, they gather quietly around Aziraphale's door. He calls them in one by one and does what he can.
It's not always enough. People inevitably try to stray outside the magical perimeter from time to time, for reasons known only to themselves. Some even do it on purpose, Aziraphale is sure. They come stumbling back, burned, and wheezing and if they die, there's nothing Aziraphale can do for them. He puts another tally on the mental list he's keeping of all the people he's failed and his heart fractures just a little bit more.
Only when he's finished providing for the humans does he allow himself to rest. Usually, he's much too exhausted to read or make himself tea or do any of the things he'd done before to recover from the strain of using so much power, but that hardly matters. Nowadays, he finds no pleasure or peace whatsoever in such hollow comforts. So, he just sinks into semi consciousness, lets his thoughts drift away. It's not sleep, in the way humans sleep. He's merely losing himself in memory so as not to dwell in the present.
It's not good. It's not healthy. It makes him feel, if that's even possible, worse afterward, but sometimes he thinks he'd rather just let go completely, anyhow. He could do it. He could sit on this dead or dying world and relive better times forever. It's a sweet temptation and it's all Aziraphale can do not to succumb to the intoxicating oblivion of it.
But then, there'll come a knock at the door. Someone's ill. Someone's hungry. On one very memorable occasion, Aziraphale is called because a woman is in the process of giving birth and nobody knows quite what to do, least of all Aziraphale, but all goes surprisingly well.
The little family huddles together, parents staring in wonder down at their child that has been born into this desolate place, and Aziraphale is amazed to see the very first smile there's been since the war began.
Aziraphale smiles, too.
There is still life here. Earth is twisted and misshapen beyond all recognition, and yet these humans still dare to reach out to one another, still dare to laugh and cry and hug, still dare to poke their heads out of the rubble and live.
Aziraphale steps away to let them rest, curled close together under a pile of blankets. He can't help but marvel at their resiliency.
This is why he's here. This is what he's running himself ragged to protect. These seemingly delicate beings who have never fail to astonish him with how strong they turn out to be.
Aziraphale wanders home in a daze, passing one or two other people milling about outside their houses along the way.
When he'd first cast his protective miracle over the village, he'd been sure it would keep out the forces of heaven and hell and not disturb so much as a flowerpot from its proper place. He hadn't counted on the war going on for so long or being waged so brutally. Bolt after bolt of heavenly and hellish power battered his shield until he'd been certain it would give out, dooming everyone inside. It hadn't, though. It held strong.
Half the shops are nothing but cinders now, but luckily a good number of the houses remain standing, although most of the windows were shattered in the final conflict and have since been boarded up.
All in all, it could have gone worse. But then, it could have gone better, too. He should have done more.
He keeps a calm, pleasant expression on his face as he crunches through his withered garden, just in case anyone's around to see. It helps, he finds, to appear to have oneself together in times of crisis.
As soon as the door is safely shut behind him, however, his composure slides off like an ill-fitting mask.
His face falls into trembling hands. He takes several unnecessary breaths, projecting neutral, steadying thoughts.
The colour blue.
The scent of warm vanilla.
Pavement after a night of rain.
Anything, everything, just to have something to hold on to, something to keep him grounded.
The angel stumbles to his armchair and tries not to wonder what sort of life the child might have in a place like this, what sort of life any of them can possibly expect to have.
He can't miracle the world right again, can't mend the shatter landscape, can't reset the stars and planets in the sky. He can't bring back all they've lost, either. He can only preserve what he's managed to salvage and pray to someone he won't lose anything else.
He lets his eyes flutter shut, imagines he's in the back room of his bookshop... Oh, his bookshop! With a record on and a nice cup of coco. Or, perhaps, today he'll revisit the theatre. How he'd loved sitting in a box by himself, all thought fading to a background hum as the strains of the orchestra carried him gently away. It had been absolutely sublime. Just for a moment, he thinks he can hear the faintest echo of music ringing through the unnatural silence, but then it's gone, as if it had never been.
But he does hear a sound, come to think of it. It's not music. It's a sort of muffled shuffling, scrabbling noise followed by a thump. And then, unmistakably, a hissing string of curses.
"Shitshitshit!"
Aziraphale's eyes fly open. He leaps to his feet, ashamed to be caught out in such a state. He feels rather like someone's walked in on him in a dressing gown. Looking to the doorway, he's somewhat surprised to find it closed, just as he'd left it.
He scans the rest of the room. There's a presence here, a dark and foul tinge of evil. It's almost like... almost like...
But no.
That can't be possible. It just can't!
Surely Aziraphale would know. Surely, he would have sensed!
But there can be no doubt. At least one demon has survived destruction. And, somehow, he's made it through every last one of Aziraphale's carefully constructed barriers and is now lurking somewhere in his home.
Aziraphale spots the intruder almost immediately. The wretched creature is currently half buried beneath a tumbled stack of books. He looks up at Aziraphale through a pair of dark sunglasses, flinging his arms wildly about in a desperate attempt to break free.
"Well, angel, you gonna help get these off of me or what?"
Aziraphale blinks.
Blinks again.
Does a whole lot of useless gaping.
Feels his eyes go all prickly for some reason.
Blinks some more.
Finally, he collects himself enough to say: "Is that you under there, Crowley?"
"Course it's bloody me! Who else d'you think it's likely to be?"
What Aziraphale means to do is demand to know how and why this demon has decided to make himself so uncomfortable in Aziraphale's space. What comes out instead, in a truly humiliating, quivery voice, is: "So you're not... I mean, you weren't... I mean you haven't-haven't been... destroyed, then, I take it?"
Even from his place of indignity, sprawled on Aziraphale's lovely plush rug, Crowley rolls his eyes and huffs dramatically.
"I'm not a puddle of goo, am I?" he snaps. Then, surprisingly, he softens his tone. "No, angel, I haven't been destroyed. Didn't even get discorporated."
"How-how many? Others?"
Crowley sighs. It's a heavy, exhausted thing. Aziraphale imagines him shutting his eyes tight under those sunglasses, strangely wishes Crowley would take them off.
"No others. I'm the last. The only one left."
"Like me," Aziraphale thinks, stunned into speechlessness, "The only one left, like me."
He straightens up primly and glares down at Crowley, trying to force some angelic wrath into it. He's afraid the only thing he accomplishes is to sound mildly indignant.
"And you expect me to believe that? After you've broken into my home and trampled over my things?"
Crowley huffs again. He seems to do a great deal of that. "Firstly, I didn't break in. I knocked. Very politely, I might add. But nobody answered so I thought..."
"Thought you'd waltz right in anyway and ambush me on my return, then? Well, I'll have you know I shan't be as easily defeated as all that."
The demon has the nerve to grin crookedly up at him. "I bet you aren't."
"You think this is funny, do you?"
"Of course not. Why would you think...?"
"Looking to win one final triumph, I expect?"
This time, the grin vanishes completely from Crowley's face. His mouth opens and shuts a few times before he's able to form words.
"One final triumph! One final triumph for who, exactly?"
"Well, for hell, obviously."
Crowley groans and rubs his face. "In case you haven't noticed, angel, hell doesn't even exist anymore. It's gone. Wiped out of the universe. Nothing left but the smell of sulfur on the breeze. I mean, if there was a breeze, it would probably smell like sulfur, at a guess."
He flings a first edition copy of Pride and Prejudice off his chest and glares at the angel. Aziraphale can feel it through the sunglasses.
"Heaven is, too, you know."
"Yes, I'm well aware of that, thank you. So, you're really not looking to seek vengeance for your fallen comrades? Ah, oh dear! Forgive my rudeness." Aziraphale blushes, hating himself for choosing that particular turn of phrase, of all things, to utter in the company of a demon. The end of the world really has done a number on his manners, apparently.
Crowley appears unbothered. "Like I'd go to the trouble of taking vengeance for Hastur and his lot, right," he scoffs.
"You wouldn't?"
"Well, it's not as if we ever got on. They couldn't stand me down there and the feeling was mutual. Nah, angel, I'm not bothered about them, much. Besides, it's not as though you did any real smiting, is it?"
"I could have done," Aziraphale blusters.
Crowley waves his words away. "I'm sure. But you didn't, did you?"
Aziraphale is beginning to feel cross and more than a little attacked. He decides to flip the question right back at the demon. "Did you?"
To his surprise, Crowley slowly shakes his head. "No. No, I didn't. They wanted me to. Tried to drag me off to the front lines. But I was prepared. I got away."
"How?"
Crowley's wide grin is back. "Took a leaf out of your book. Dunno if you know this, but you've got quite the reputation, angel. Caused a huge uproar in heaven when you defected. So much so, in fact, we even heard about it downstairs. And I thought, hey, maybe he's on to something."
"I, I didn't defect, Crowley," Aziraphale says, "It was nothing so dramatic as that."
"Oh?"
"Yes."
"So, what happened, then?"
"If you must know," it's Aziraphale's turn to huff, "Gabriel appeared at my shop just before things started ramping up, demanding I take my proper place as a soldier. I merely stated that I had no intention whatsoever of fighting in any war and if they persisted insisting I do, well, they could all just..."
"Bugger off, is what I heard." Crowley, the absolute fiend, is delighted by this.
"I was under a great deal of stress at the time," Aziraphale says, though it's a shoddy justification at best.
Crowley just lies there, looking smug.
Aziraphale has had enough. Who is this demon to come traipsing into his house, throwing around his books, and questioning him on top of everything else?
"Be that as it may, you still haven't explained why you're here."
"What, you mean I couldn't have popped by just to enjoy the warm reception and charming company?"
His voice is serious, but Aziraphale isn't fooled. Once again, he wishes Crowley would remove those abominable glasses so he could see the mischief that's no doubt twinkling in his eyes.
"Honestly, Crowley, if you're planning to work your infernal wiles upon these poor humans..."
"My... my what?" Crowley splutters, cheeks going bright red.
"You know, sewing the seeds of misery and discontent and the like..."
Crowley sags in relief. "Oh yeah. Right. Misery. Discontent. Right. Love a spot of misery and discontent, me."
"If that's what you intend, I simply won't allow it. These good people have suffered enough. Every one of them has lost family, friends, everything they've ever known. I've been working hard to keep them as safe and, if not happy, then content, as I can. They've come a long way, and I won't have you skulking around, undoing all my progress."
"I wasn't gonna do any of that," Crowley says, "Why would I? Things are bleak enough as it is without me coming along and making it worse."
Aziraphale doesn't know what to say. He's off kilter, lost. "Then what...?"
"Look," Crowley says, clambering to his feet and finally, finally yanking off his glasses, "I didn't want this, alright, same as you. I-I liked the twenty-first century. Was really starting to get into the swing of things, you know? It was much better than the nineteenth, anyway. Or the fourteenth," he shivers in disgust, "Bloody boring, that was."
Aziraphale had been rather partial to the nineteenth century, but nods for Crowley to go on without a word of protest.
"I mean, the end of the world was good fun, in theory. But when you get right down to it, it's a lot of fuss and bother, and for what? This?"
They stare around Aziraphale's cramped little cottage. The blood red sun mingles with the steam rising out of the jagged pit that used to be the sea, and leaks in through the window, casting horrid shadows in the corners of the room. It's not a pretty sight.
"It should never have come to this," Aziraphale murmurs.
Crowley shakes his head. "No, it shouldn't."
Aziraphale turns to face him, meets those dazzling eyes directly for the first time in millennia. "Why have you come here, Crowley?"
He's expecting... No, he's hoping... oh, he doesn't know quite what he's hoping for... But whatever he thinks it'll be, it's nothing to Crowley's actual response.
He holds Aziraphale's gaze for a long moment, and then blurts, like he can hardly believe it himself: "Because-because I've got six humans in my car and if I don't find a safe place for them very soon, I'm worried they'll go mad and start ripping each other's limbs off."
Aziraphale clasps his hands tightly. "Six living humans?"
"Of course they're living! I'm a demon, not a monster."
"Oh, I know, my dear boy. I know. I'm just surprised. I didn't think.’ how did you ever...?"
"When-when my side was after me," Crowley begins, haltingly, hesitant, "I decided to get out of here while I still could. The plan was to go off to a star somewhere and get pissed. Only, only when I was just finishing up loading my Bentley with enough alcohol to last a couple centuries at least, I happened to glance up. There were dozens of angels and demons fighting overhead and there were these humans about to be caught in the crossfire and I just... I told them to shove in quick. Then, I sped out of there. Been roaming around all over. Haven't come across another living being since."
"Until now," Aziraphale concludes with a smile.
"Until now," Crowley confirms, returning it.
Aziraphale feels warm for the first time in ages.
"So, I was thinking, hoping," Crowley shifts awkwardly, fiddles with his glasses, but thankfully does not put them on. "That is... seeing as how you seem to already have a pretty good thing going here, and we're a small group and, well, I figure you, uh, you could probably use an extra hand with miracles and things. Not that you couldn't do it yourself, of course, but our powers do have limits and it might be easier for us both if we..."
Aziraphale is already nodding before Crowley can finish the sentence.
"Yes," he says.
Crowley stops short, eyes wide and dazed. "Wait, what? Really?"
"Yes," Aziraphale says again, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth as he watches Crowley's expression morph from surprise to something closely resembling joy.
Or maybe Aziraphale is kidding himself and it's pure relief at finding a suitable place for the humans and at not being alone. It hardly matters which one, because Aziraphale feels it too, and it feels like having another purpose to add to the list, like adding fresh fuel to the fire that urges him ever onward, even after the end of everything.
And it feels good. That's the important bit.
"Alright," Crowley says, "Okay." He clears his throat, fidgets, gazes at Aziraphale with those lovely eyes of his like he fully trusts him to know what they ought to do next.
Aziraphale isn't sure he's done anything to earn it yet, and he most assuredly can't begin to imagine why Crowley has chosen to settle here, instead of carving out his own place somewhere else. It's still a big planet, even if it's a mostly empty one. All he knows is that he's desperately, pathetically grateful that Crowley has.
"How about we see to your people, get them properly settled," Aziraphale suggests.
This seems to bring Crowley out of some hazy reverie, because he blinks and takes a few moments to come back to himself before answering. "Oh, yes, the people. Yeah, they'll probably be hungry and exhausted and angry. Best get them a meal and somewhere to sleep it off. I don't think being in the Bentley agreed with most of them all that well."
Aziraphale raises an eyebrow. "Why not?"
"Let's just say I had to do some very creative driving."
"I see. That will do it, I suppose."
He strides out the door, thoughts spinning too fast to stand still. There are six more people alive than he thought there were. Six! Seven, if he counts Crowley, which he very much wants to do. So, it's seven, then!
Crowley hurries along behind to catch up. When he does, Aziraphale slows down so that they're walking side by side.
"You know," Aziraphale says thoughtfully, "After this, I daresay we'll have a lot to talk about."
"Think so, yeah."
"And that is to say... if you'd like to... well, then, perhaps we might do it over wine? I think I quite need it after a day like this."
He casts a furtive glance to Crowley. The demon is grinning, golden eyes gleaming, just how Aziraphale imagined they would.
"Angel, that sounds like an absolutely fantastic idea."
Aziraphale grins a little bashfully back and hopes.
The world has ended.
Heaven and hell are no more, lost to their fruitless war.
For all they know, Aziraphale and Crowley are the last of their kind.
But tonight, if night it can be called, Aziraphale is going to drink with a demon for the very first time in his entire existence, and he finds he's looking forward to it very much indeed.