The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 73: A Gateway Nearly Opened

Chapter 73: A Gateway Nearly Opened

9 am....ish.

The two sat in the study with hands folded, buried in their own thoughts. Every so often one of them would look up, followed by the other, then look away. And then all at once they locked eyes and words fell out of their mouths, fast and furious and practically babbling. They stopped. They were talking over each other.

"So." Crowley tried again.

"So," said the angel.

Silence.

They looked sheepishly around the shop.

"Tea?" Aziraphale queried.

Crowley shook his head.

"Yes, me either."

Again, silence.

"Crowley?"

The demon rose his eyebrows.

"Where do we begin?"

The eyebrows fell. He wrinkled his nose and grimaced, shaking his head in frustration. "I have no idea. I thought...dunno...after the last few hours I would be ready to talk. And," he looked up," I am. But..."

"Yes, yes. I know."

Where to begin?

Aziraphale was the first to move. His eyes cast about the room for some sort of segway, and then he saw it, and rose. Crowley watched him travel over to his desk, and come back with a sealed envelope. He stood before the demon with him looking up, waiting. Then he made a decision, and handed him the note.

"Whot is this?"

"The dream."

Crowley's mouth silently opened. He turned the envelope over and over. "You wrote it all down?"

The angel steepled his fingers over his stomach, and nodded. "After I spoke with Anathema."

"And then you folded it, put it in an envelope," he turned it over again," and put a wax seal on it?"

"Um, yes?"

"Then wrote my name in a flourishing script, and attached a thin red ribbon, angel?"

"Well, maybe I got carried away."

Crowley thumbed the corner. "Not too far. You never put a forwarding address on it."

The angel sat down next to him, a genuine look of confusion on his face. "Why would I need to do that? It wasn't going to the post."

Crowley smiled. "Of course not."

"It was staying right here, where you could find it."

The grin broadened. "Of course." His fingers traced the edges of the envelope, then slid to the lip. As his nail caught the corner and pulled, the angel's hand fell onto his, and stilled him.

Crowley turned. "Whot?"

"Read it aloud," the angel said softly.

"Why?"

"This is an ugly thing, Crowley. I need to hear in your voice how much it affects you."

The demon could have said a million things just then. Protests or reassurances. Sarcasm. But instead, he just nodded. A moment longer his eyes lingered on Aziraphale, who edged closer, and he tore open the envelope without ruining it, removed and unfolded the note, then looked away.

The angel laid his head on his shoulder. Crowley cleared his throat, and recited.

Five minutes later he lowered the note and stared at the opposite wall. The angel had been squirming on his shoulder, and had turned his head away in shame. Crowley dropped the note on the coffee table and with the same hand rubbed the top of the angel's head weightily.

"So, there it is."

A quick shake. The angel wouldn't look at him.

"Pretty dark."

The angel muttered something incoherent. Crowley squeezed his shoulder, and he turned back, sniffing.

"I said," he tried again, "I said it's a complete mockery."

"You don't really know what it is, truly," Crowley corrected. His friend glanced up, and nodded.

"Your thoughts?"

"My thoughts are it's a jumble, angel. A roit mess of unattached thoughts and impulses. Would you like me to be blunt?"

The angel wiped his eyes, and sighed heavily. "Absolute bluntness."

"Well, there's no call for harshness, is there?"

A shrug.

"It's the chains, angel. All of 'em."

That made the angel pull up, and give him his full attention.

"It's the ones from Amsterdam, and the ones from All Soul's Day. It's the ones that swung me from the ceiling, and the ones I removed from you the night you entered my soul. It's this," he pulled out his silver links, with both the pendant and the medallion hanging off it, "and this," he tenderly reached under Aziraphale's tie and slid a finger over what lay beneath. "It's even this." He snapped his fingers, and the links became light torcs, solid bands of twisted metal with the medallions dangling down but halted by end caps. He snapped again and they transformed back. "It's even these," he touched the angel's snakes through his vest, making him shiver, and then pulled down his own shirt, indicating the softly glimmering indentation. "And finally, it's this," he took the angel's hand and smoothed a thumb over the pinky ring. "That's what I think. Do you comprehend?"

"A jumble."

"A jumble."

"Is there a center to this jumble?"

"You, wide open."

"How wide open is too wide open?"

"A hole. A giant angel-shaped hole."

"Crowley, that sounds like gibberish."

Crowley cupped the nape of his neck, and explained as if to a child. "You have to be in there somewhere, don't you? Not just fade away to nothingness?"

Aziraphale worked it out in his head.

"Think of yourself as a book. You open it up to find what it has to say. But the reader has to make the words come out, right? Has to do the physical act of walking his eyes back and forth over the pages, and comprehending? The only difference is in this case, the book opens and closes itself."

"But the same could be said of an empty journal."

Crowley barked a laugh, and left a peck on his nose, just to get a rise out of him. When the angel made an irked face, he told him," You are definitely not that. Maybe you have a ton of bookmarks, sticky tabs, highlighted lines, coffee cup stains, and notes scrawled in the margins, maybe even naughty scribblings," he guffawed at the irked crinkles formed around the angel's eyes," but you are not, in fact, an empty journal."

"You make is sound as if one can have a relationship with a book!"

Crowley glared wide-eyed at him. Spreading his arms out wide, he exclaimed, "Angel! You have a relationship with millions of them!"