An Ineffable History

Chapter Fifteen: I'll see your heart, and I'll raise you mine

Notes: this chapter is more compliant with how the bandstand scene was in the script book: night time, with a beautiful starry sky above them.

St. James Park, London, 2019

Aziraphale paced back and forth across the width of the bandstand. He knew where the antichrist- the actual antichrist- was.

Adam Young. Tadfield.

He ought to tell Heaven that he had found him. If they knew where he was, they could do something about it- there didn't need to be a war at all. He should tell Heaven. Any other angel would have done so without hesitation. Aziraphale wanted to tell Crowley. More than anything he wanted to tell Crowley. He deserved to know, didn't he? After all, the whole thing was Crowley's responsibility in the first place, it made sense to tell him. But he couldn't. He needed to tell Heaven first. Aziraphale had meant to, when he had gone to visit head office, but he had gotten rather side-tracked with the whole "nothing between Heaven and Hell was ever really settled" conversation. If he could just talk to them, make them listen, they would see that the war could be prevented.

Aziraphale pulled out his pocket watch. Crowley was late. Aziraphale so badly wanted to tell him, that way they could figure it out together. They could make it work, they always had before. But there was a part of Aziraphale that was holding him back. It whispered in the back of his head that he still shouldn't rust Crowley, that we was a demon, the Enemy, that they were on opposite sides. There was still a part of him that was convinced that meeting with Crowley the way he had been for the past six thousand years was something to be hidden and ashamed of.

Aziraphale wandered out of the bandstand and looked up at the black sky, filled to the brim with stars and planets and galaxies. Aziraphale hadn't seen them in a very long time, and now it seemed like he never would again. He felt a familiar presence pull at him as he looked up at the stars that prompted him to go back to the bandstand just as Crowley happened to be arriving.

"Any news?" Crowley asked, gesturing with his hands.

"Um. What kind of news would that be?"

"Well? Do you have the missing Antichrist's name, address, and shoe size yet?"

"Shoe size? Why would I have his shoe size?" Aziraphale said, feeling the guilt slowly creeping up in him.

"Joke. I've got nothing either." Aziraphale could tell him right now and it would all be fine.

"It's the Great Plan, Crowley." Aziraphale said instead.

"For the record: Great pustulent mangled bollocks to the Great Blasted Plan!" Crowley yelled at the sky above them, as if he were speaking to God Herself (which, Aziraphale assumed, he was).

"May you be forgiven."

"I won't be forgiven. Not ever!" Crowley snapped, "That's part of a demon's job description. Unforgivable. That's what I am."

I would forgive you, Aziraphale thought, I already have.

"You were an angel once." Heaven's prodigal son.

"That was a long time ago." Crowley walked up to Aziraphale until they were almost chest to chest, whispering angrily, "We find the boy. My agents can do it..."

"And then what? We eliminate him?" Aziraphale asked, hoping that Crowley had been able to come up with a better plan than what he had suggested with Warlock.

"Well... somebody does. I'm not personally up for killing kids." Any other day Aziraphale would have been grateful that Crowley trusted him enough to admit that out loud (and while sober), but was he suggesting that Aziraphale should be the one to kill the Antichrist?