The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 35: A New and Separate Pain

Chapter 35: A New and Separate Pain

"Tell me what you will, then."

"The rest....the rest.... Found another place, found a way, found a small life for us for two brief years. Her flaw was the speed of her growth. A year every month. Maybe I set her clock ticking with that act of mine. I'll never know. I don't know what she was robbed of."

"What did you name her?"

"I use to call her my little jinn, because she granted all my wishes."

"Oh, sweet boy!"

"Don't get me wrong. Stubborn little thing. But there was joy in that too. After a while, I just called her Jinny. She called me Crowley, and it wasn't a name to her. It was a paternal description."

"It sounds so wonderful, and so harrowing."

"All those things and more. I kept her safe, for a time. But other flaws came to find her. Bad Luck. Despite all my efforts, war came to our doorstep."

"Which one?"

"A nameless one, a war like all wars. It found us, and I tried to flee with her. But by then she was a young woman, as stubborn as her father. Wouldn't leave the only home she ever knew. And then, her final flaw came into play. Two hearts."

"She was injured."

"What were the chances? Slaughtered through here," he touched his right side, "and here," his left. "No time to stop the gushing, came out like water thru a broken dam. Marked my entire body crimson. Swore from that day forward I'd never be anything but a ginger. And...I took a life that day, like I had taken a life at her birth. In fact," he narrowed his eyes, looking inward, shocking himself with his own capacity for fury," I took out an entire army. In a blink of an eye, in a shockwave that disintegrated all of them. I've never had that kind of power before. I-I"

He blinked up at the angel. They were both crying. "Those warm, loving hearts opened up and spilled her life's blood out on me, angel. Like she was a fountain. And she locked eyes with me until her spirit just flew away."

A sudden rage took him, and he clasped the angel's hand tightly, and growled thru his gritted teeth, "And I will never know where!"

The rage released him, leaving him slack as a rag doll. He wiped his eyes, now returning to their normal size, and found there were no more tears left for him to cry. But he finished. "I did something else for a second time. I laid her body on the bed, and I set the house on fire. I never looked back."

The angel kissed the top of his head," Until now."

"This thing out there...it's targeting me. Posing as my child and doing a poor job of it, but it's getting better. It knows it can't fool me, but I can't figure out its game. It might be trying to enrage me with its insulting mimicry."

"Oh Crowley, I should have been there!"

"No, don't go there. Don't do that. Lots of things happened to me, as they did you. And I can hide my circumstances."

"From me?" The angel drew away and went back to his chair.

"Not often. Not anymore. It was a different time, angel."

The room fell silent, and Aziraphale bowed his head. And what next came out of his mouth stunned the demon out of his malaise.

"There was a pool."

Crowley leaned in, his eyes growing wide. "What?"

"A...a..pool. There was a sort of lake."

Crowley swallowed, "Oh, angel, no."

Aziraphale's finger started to tap the table. "Oh my, this is...alarming. I never recalled this before." He rose his head, his face exhibiting the signs of his trance. Crowley grabbed his hands, as if trying to tether him. This wasn't like before. There was no peace there. Just a sort of detached shock. The angel's eyes scanned back and forth as if a sepia-toned film played out in his mind.

"Speak words," Crowley led him thru. "Tell me what you're seeing."

Aziraphale recounted. "A pool, and moonlight. Well, look at that. It's early in the earth's life. And there a dusky young woman, so radiant under this moon. Maybe she is a witch, maybe not. But I feel no...intent in her other than, "his eyebrows raised, "curiosity. She's wading out to me. Oh, hello. Yes, I'm real. Well, I don't see the harm. Yes, oh!"

"What, what's happening?" Crowley's butt raised out of the chair.

"She just touched my cheek. Would—would you look at that. It was like our first kiss, Crowley, you and I. Right there, in the water." Wonder filled his voice, and then his face went blank. "Oh dear. I can feel a shift. I...oh Crowley, there's a new spark of life...." The angel's lip began to tremble.

"I don't think it can happen that way, Aziraphale."

"Maybe not under the normal circumstances." He tilted his head. "She has some power after all. But only with water. She meant no harm. Oh, dear girl. You just wanted to touch me, and I let you. Crowley, you should see how surprised she is, and bashful. No, no wait. Don't drift away! You didn't do anything wrong! Shy girl, where are you?" He shuttered, boggled eyed, looking at Crowley's hands clasping his. He grew very still, and sighed.

"It's all back now."

"Then tell me about it."

"I went looking for her, but I never saw her again. I left, until I heard the stories."

"Of what?"

"Of monsters roaming the area, strange beasts with gray fur and claws. Must have been, oh twenty or thirty years later. I went back and I searched, but never found one sign of such things." The angel's mouth drew thin. "Then or the next 100 years after. And I think by the end of it I forgot what I was looking for to begin with."

"You became Dora the Fish."

"Apparently so. Crowley," the angel ventured, turning his profile to the window. "Do you suppose I will ever know? What really happened?"

"I'm afraid not, angel."

"I hate not knowing. This is..." he sighed hard, and swallowed, "a new and separate pain."

"I'm sorry you feel that way."

"Yes well, I can endure it," he turned back, smiling sadly, "You endured yours."

"I never looked back."

"You wouldn't have had to struggle so, if I had been there."

"I never wanted you to be beholden to me, angel."

"Don't you mean the other way around? Or are you playing with words again?"

"Yes. I have let myself be your slave, and I knew your nature, even then. If I had ever let you help me that day, well, that's when your real worship would begin, and an extraordinary rendition would have come much sooner. Couldn't risk it. I liked having you in the world."

Aziraphale smile waned," My empathy is my undoing. And yet I can be so cold, so aloof."

"Another performance, and a good one. Until last month we lived in dangerous times. You always tried so hard to walk the line. And one pull from me—"

"I would have held on this time, Crowley. I would have caught you, this time."

"I know, angel. I came close so many times, but I left it to the Arrangement."

"We were on our own side, remember?"

"Yes, but you weren't the only one walking that line for the sake of the other."