The Known/Unknown Quantity

Chapter 115: Comfort in Coils

Chapter 115: Comfort in Coils

Nothing prepared them when they discovered Crowley and saw the state of his eyes.

                "Glory be!"

                Aziraphale quaked. "Anthony....oh....your face!"

                The demon could not hear or see them. Black thread held his shuttering eyelids together. His ears were mere ornaments on the side of his head, with no canals. Deaf and blind, bloody and bound, the demon's visage was massacred.

                "You taught him that trick?" Shadwell accused. The angel ignored him. Desperately, he fell to his knees and placed his hand against Crowley's gaunt cheeks. Almost immediately the demon leaned into his palm, but the despondent expression remained.  So, the angel took up one of Crowley's yielding hands, and started to sign. Shadwell watched with irritated curiosity. "What's that yo be doin?"

"Talking to him," Aziraphale snapped, "Now, shut up, you horrible little man, just for a moment."

Shadwell growled, but remained silent.

The angel brought his worried attention back to his friend.

Crowley, what happened?

It took a moment. But the demon's digits came up, searching blindly for the angel's, and he responded.  His expression never changed. He paused, and Aziraphale's face screwed up, and he answered back. This went on for a few minutes, until the angel fell back on his haunches, one hand covering his trembling lip, the other holding Crowley's limb fingers. Shadwell fumed. "What did he say?"

"He's begging to change his form."

"Why?"

"He can't take the reflections anymore," the angel whispered, trying to compose himself. He started to point around the room, indicating all the sheened surfaces shattered or in disarray. "She was in every one of them, taunting him, striking him with her magic. This," he furtively touched the demon's precious lids, and Aziraphale's voice broke," was an act of ultimate desperation. "

But he paused, and reached back in, starting another rapid-fire conversation. The last thing the demon did...was nod. The angel choked, and gently waved his hands over Crowley's face.  When he removed it, Crowley's lids became untethered, unblemished, his yellow eyes freed and healed, his ears normal. He tilted his head, gave a small, sad, tired smile to Shadwell, then let his eyes fall back on Aziraphale. "Angel," he rasped. Aziraphale reached in and held his face, kissed his mouth, his ears, his lids, his forehead. He pulled back and squeezed him in a tight embrace. Shadwell was aghast, not understanding what might happen next.

Crowley tried to sooth his friend, but he was exhausted, so deep in despair. He tried to laugh, but all he could do was tick the edges of his mouth. "Not for long, angel, not for long."

Very carefully, Aziraphale held up the photo of the woman Shadwell had met in the street. "Was this her?"

Crowley nodded.

"And she looked more real to you the day she touched you?"

"Yes." It was such a soft reply, as if the demon's tongue lay wooden in his mouth.

"Then there is hope yet, my love! Please cling to that! I beg you!"

"I will, angel."

"I shall miss your embraces, sweet boy. Are you sure...this is the only way?"

Crowley nodded. "Just for a few hours. Please. I need a time out," The angel sat back a little way, wiped his tears, and nodded solemnly. He kissed him full on the lips, one last time, as if the demon was going off to war.  Crowley was finally able to smile at him. Then he succumbed to the angel's palm on his cheek.

Shadwell jumped back, hollering, Crowley...folded up. Like a dancer, he drew in his arms and legs in a beautiful performance that left him in a fetal position. But as soon as his knees hit his chest, and his arms pulled in, and he bowed his head, he changed. And as he uncoiled, ropes of black muscles rolled away from the center of his body, and a diamond shaped head emerged, and flickered its tongue at both of them.

"Ye...ye turned him into a snake!"

"No, I just gave him the head space to do it." The angel also folded in on himself, his hands on his knees, his head bowed to his chest and sunk between his shoulders. He was crying. Shadwell could only stare.

"What's the meaning of this...angel?"

Aziraphale looked up, startled by Shadwell's non-insulting address to him.  The man was offering him a manky handkerchief. He took it, and wiped his wrecked face. "Thank you," he whispered, before turning back to the snake.

"Shadwell, this is what he wants for a while. I didn't change him. I just guided him there. He was in such a state he needed help."

"Is he still in there?" The angel nodded. "Blimey."

"It's still Crowley, but with the appreciations of a snake. He won't see the reflections as we do, and his concerns are more basic."

"Like?"

The snake slowly moved into the angel's lap, making him laugh wearily, "Warmth, comfort, touch."

"For how long?"

"A few hours?" The snake wrapped in further and further, but could not be contained. Parts of him rolled in heaps on the floor.

"Won't he smother ye like that?" The angel shook his head, and petted the snake's sides. It began to flicker its tongue at both of them, before laying its head on the angel's sternum.

"No, but he's so weak. He's having trouble. He can't shrink down. And, it's doubtful that I can lift all this, oh!" His hands grazed the snake's back, and as the angel felt further, two white wings spread themselves before him.

"What the deuce?" Shadwell breathed.

"Those...those....Crowley?" The snake regarded him. If it had shoulders if would have shrugged.

"Can he fly?"

Clip them, came a demand inside the angel's head. He glared at the snake, alarmed.

"He wants me to clip his feathers."

"How is he even..."

"I don't know. Crowley, I'm not clipping anything!"

Bind them.

"Dear boy, just make them go away."

Tried.

"If you're afraid you'll take off, it's unlikely. They're beautiful, but too small."

Please, can't look at them. Don't want to feel them. Bind them.

The snake was starting to shutter. Aziraphale ran his hand longingly over the pale white wings, then snapped, and encased them in light gold chains. The tremors stopped.

"Did he ask you to do that?" the angel nodded, his face sagging. "Can't look at old glories, aye?"

Aziraphale blinked. "Sergeant, how observant of you."

"Cut from the same cloth, is all. He's not in a place for that right now, innit he?" The angel agreed. "Well, we all make wrong turns in life. If we're lucky, we live long enough to amend them."

Perplexed at his next move, Aziraphale tried to rise with the snake, but fell back breathless.

"Ye can't take 'em out like that!"

"I have no choice."

"Ye have a choice!" Silence lingered, waiting.

"The wings? I can hide that."

"But, can ye carry'em without falln' t' ye knees?"

Aziraphale tried to stand up. He wavered. "No," he admitted solidly, looking directly at the former witchfinder.

And so, from Mayfair, to a space-traveling bookshop in SoHo, two mismatched men were seen carrying a 12-foot black snake together. Not the oddest thing to see, but, you had to wonder.

Didn't you?