Sapphire Tides

Chapter 11: And Then There Was Silence

Crowley took the chance to run with the injured angel to the other side of the of the boat. The men quickly snapped out of gazing at their doom and tumbled one after another to book after the raft. Aziraphale limped after Crowley while slowly lowering his side of the boat so there was less weight on his arms. "We're almost there Angel stay with me dear." Crowley huffed as they approached the split end of the ship that was bubbling into the black cauldron of the ocean. Crowley who was still shirtless placed the raft on the sides away from the suction of the ship. The men drew in closer ripping, punching, and shoving each other out of the way to somehow get to safety. "Aziraphale this is going to be beyond freezing. This is going to be painful but I need you to swim to the raft darling." Aziraphale was barely keeping consciousness but understood what he had to do. He was loosing too much energy to tell Crowley anything like any last goodbyes or inspiring messages. Instead, he took Crowley's hand and kissed it and gave him a nod. Aziraphale took a deep breath and jumped into the icy waters. Crowley turned to face the men who charged towards him drunk with fear. "Get away from him you roaches!" Crowley screeched as he pulled his fists up. The leader of this pack of brutes swung a punch and knicked Crowley in the collarbone. Crowley swung his arm back and pitched a punch that hit the greasy faced man directly in the nose with broke it. The rest of the man's army fumbled and reached it right in front of Crowley but they didn't get a chance to get their hands on him. The floor split open causing the men to plummet through the boards. The lower class deck had burst into flames and helped light up the night. "That had to of hurt. Perfectly timed electrical fire though." Crowley said to himself. He decided to look back at the wailing children and shuddering priests. Crowley closed his eyes and a focused on a fainted noise. It was the musician from the lower class with his guitar. Crowley found the location of the sound, he was sitting on a barrel that was nailed to the deck. The guitarist had tears dripping down his face as he played a sorrowful solo alone. The rest of his band was nowhere in sight so Crowley had assumed they had perished. The musician had finished his last chord before walking into the flames. Crowley could not bear to see this scene any longer and lept into the ocean. The water felt like needles piercing through his skin making his flesh tighten. There were a few hundred people who had survived their leaps of fate into the water and were paddling and screaming through their life jackets. Crowley swam and dodged the panicky crowd trying to avoid being bludgeoned to death by men who wanted to use him as a floatation device. "Crowley! Crowley over here!" Aziraphale who was still weak as ever steered his way to his demon with a load of lower class women and children aboard with their tears and mucus frozen to their pale blueish faces. Aziraphale hoisted Crowley up by his belt buckle up onto the raft and signaled the women to help row. Crowley shivered in a fetal position on the wooden table as the drops of the Atlantic froze to his hair in the frigid air. One of the young women who sat with a curly headed toddler set a trench coat over Crowley and began to rub Crowley's arms and back at a fast pace to create friction. "I'll need you to stay awake sir." The woman encouraged Crowley in a heavy Irish accent. Crowley tried to move to his knees so he could stay sharp. Aziraphale was paddling but clenching his teeth in pain as his cloth was now a mix of burgundy and the fresh blood was stained onto it. One of the younger boys on the raft pointed and babbled something loudly. His mother glanced over at whatever his spindly fingers pointed at. "Sor! Sor! Különben meghalunk" The boy's mom and three of the other women in the group looked over with panic-stricken faces and grabbed whatever they could to begin paddling. Aziraphale who's mind was getting increasingly more hazy was trying to figure out what had sparked the passengers on his handcrafted pontoon to passionately sweep the water. He then heard the familiar creek of metal on the Titanic behind them. Aziraphale hesitated to see what produced everyone's sudden alarm and slowly turned his head. One of the vessel's three smoke stacks was tipping towards them and falling because of the weight of the water on its base. Crowley didn't have his eyes open for even two minutes before he thrashed upward to help paddle. "Aziraphale help us move this bloody thing!" Aziraphale shook his body awake and scrambled to find an oar or stray piece of debris to use but couldn't find one in enough time. He cupped his hands and began to splash the water so they slightly propelled forward. The metal pipe was now shortly to collapse onto them and the flailing bodies in the water who now sitting ducks. "Hurry! Move,move, move!" Crowley yelled strenuously with water vapor huffing from his mouth into the cool atmosphere. Through beared teeth and determined slashes at the water they moved almost completely out of the shadow of the tube shaped structure which was already squishing and crunching bodies underneath itself. The children cried at the sight of the men and women being sentenced to their gruesome deaths. They believed they were in the safe zone and halted their propelling. With a crash and splintering clunk the tip of cylinder drilled through the end of the boat. Some of it's passengers were ejected from the force on the opposite side. They flew in the air and hit the metal beam at a lethal rate and slid off of it into the water. The rest of the women and children who had strapped into the raft safely howled screams and she'd tears at the grotesque scene. Crowley and Aziraphale were struggling to shovel the water out of their creation and were squirming around to find a way to keep it afloat. He spotted that one of the remaining children aboard had on a life jacket. "We could strap this on the bottom in place of the lost ottoman." Crowley approached the mother of the child and frantically stated. "I need his jacket to fix the boat." The mother with ice crusted hair and eyelashes shook her head no quickly. Crowley grew more anxious as the raft continued to sink into the inky abyss. "We need this jacket now or we all will perish." The woman put her hands up as if to blocked Crowley from her son. "No my son needs it." She said in a cruel but motherly tone. Crowley was fed up with her selfish ways and pounced at the child and tried to rip off the jacket as the kid wiggled around crying. The mother and two other women were smacking and hitting Crowley trying to take the boy out of his grasp. "Crowley let him be it is too late now." Crowley stopped and starred angrily at the mother who had barely flushed cheeks and a greenish complection from the cold and then released the child from his grasp. He looked around at the dark waters for something he and Aziraphale could cling to. He spotted one of the the upperdeck sun chairs floating not too far from the raft. Crowley swiftly moved over to Aziraphale who was still frantically removing the water from around him. "We'll have to swim to it before they find it love." Aziraphale looked at the general direction Crowley was so that no one was pointing at the object in question. Aziraphale glanced worryingly at the remaining women and children who were now as white as the moonlight. "I just can't let them die." Aziraphale thought to himself, but a small voice in the back of his mind slithered in. "Look at them, at this rate they are bound to die anyways." On a whim Aziraphale listened to the voiced and said "Yes, but we must wait until the the raft is completely sunk." Crowley nodded with his teeth chattering from the cold. The butt end of the Titanic was already almost finished bubbling down into the water. People continued to scream, cry, and paddle for help from the now far away lifeboats in the waters. Corpses were being dragged under the force of the sinking vessel as well as the still living. The raft had completely sunk and the women and children were struggling to stay afloat without the aid of life preserver. Aziraphale and Crowley swam in small shaky strokes towards the chair that had thankfully floated closer to them since they had discovered it. Crowley grabbed the piece of furniture and hoisted himself on to it and turned to aid Aziraphale. Aziraphale took one big slap at the water before he blacked out. Crowley without hesitation dove into the sea and pulled Aziraphale up to the chair. He rolled his pudgy hardly pigmented body onto the raft briefly noticing Aziraphale's bright blue veins onto his pasty skin. Crowley hopped onto the chair himself and took a staggered breath. The unsinkable ship was now on its way to the ocean floor and the people on water slowly died off one by one. The women as well as the men lessened their panicking and decided rest their eyes as their life jackets kept them buoyant. The light was absent from the night with the moonlight being protected by the clouds. As the minutes went by the water was a motionless battlefield of scattered bodies. And then there was silence that enveloped the night that made the air somehow colder than before. "Aziraphale, this is no time to take a nap. It is time to wake up now Angel." Crowley was shaking the unresponsive Aziraphale. Crowley shook him harder by his shoulders. "Aziraphale wake up now. Please." Aziraphale blinked awake and tried to process his surroundings. He remembered where he was and looked around for the chaos he had left earlier but only received the echos of the empty night. He looked at Crowley whose skinny body no longer shook from the cold but still remained peaked sat with his knee bundled to his chest. "Crowley you aren't reacting to the cold anymore. You must have hypothermia." Aziraphale laid on his back with the water lighty breaching through the cloth hitting his back. "Lay on me, our body heat will keep each other warm." Crowley moved like a rusty machine over to Aziraphale with his bones creaking with every inch he moved. He gently placed himself on top of Aziraphale and wrapped arms around him similar to a hug. The light waves bounced them lightly up and down. The clouds had cleared to reveal the hidden moon and stars. The moonlight danced around them making art within the shadows. Both Crowley and Aziraphale gazed at the millions of glowimg specks that covered the sky. "Remember the day we were all assigned to make one of those?" Crowley asked as he pointed to the stars with his bent arm. "Yes." Aziraphale hoarsly said with happy affection in his voice. "I designed that bright one over there." Aziraphale looked over at a large star with a purple hue to it. "That is quite a beautiful piece dear but I find it quite humorous." Aziraphale was unable to see him but Crowley's ice covered eyebrow raised in curiosity. "Why's that Angel?" Aziraphale continued to gaze contently at the balls of gas. "Well you see, mine is the one right above yours." Crowley looked above his creation to see a star with a pure white center and a yellowish tint around the edges. "What were the odds that the Almighty happened to hang our creations in the galaxy right next to each other?" Aziraphale asked rhetorically asked. That left Crowley to ponder. "What were the odds the two of them had found each other on this cursed ship? The odds that the two of them would attract to their oppositions?" Crowley got lost in those thoughts for some time but was brought back to reality when Aziraphale tapped him. "Crowley look I see a light!" Crowley pulled his body that was frozen to the chair up and looked around for the source. It was a lifeboat yelling out looking for survivors. Crowley sprung up lightly with excitement. "It's a boat! We're saved! We gotta get their attention." Aziraphale and Crowley began to scream and use whatever energy was left to wave down the boat. Whoever aboard must have heard the two of them because it began to row towards them. Aziraphale and Crowley cheered with their scratchy voices and kissed each other. They both sighed with relief and began to paddle the chair so that they could get to the boat faster. The light on the lifeboat was shining bright against the darkness almost completely blinding them as it drew in closer. The boat finally arrived to them and an arm reached out to Crowley to pull him up. Crowley weakly took it and began to pull himself up. Another arm appeared and slashed Crowley in the throat. Crowley gagged and his blood ran thick from the cold out of his cut." Gabriel moved the light out of Aziraphale's eyes as Micheal threw Crowley's suddenly lifeless body into the water.