An Ineffable History

Chapter 16: When I watch the world burn, all I think about is you

Soho, England, 2019

Crowley stepped through the flaming doorway of the bookshop, ashes and soot clinging to his clothes and hair and skin. He pulled off his ruined glasses, and his uncovered eyes glazed over the scene before him: firefighters watching the flames creep up the walls, people standing behind them and murmuring about what could have caused the three-hundred-year-old shop to light up the evening.

It didn't matter. None of them mattered.

Aziraphale was gone.

Numbness crept up in him, making him feel further from earth than he had ever been before. Crowley watched himself hold out his glasses.

"I shouldn't litter, should I?" Crowley heard himself say, not quite in control of his own body, "I mean, I probably should litter, I'm a demon after all, but nobody's really keeping score anymore."

Crowley dropped the ruined glasses onto the sidewalk and felt himself walk over to the Bentley. He watched his hands clutch the steering wheel and suddenly he was driving away from the rubble of the bookshop. He stared wretchedly out the windshield as he kept driving, not sure where he was going. His mind was spinning with images of burning books, of ash and fire, of soot and smoke that burned his lungs and stung his eyes.

Images of fire.

Crowley reached into the glove compartment and pulled out a new pair of glasses. He had tried so hard, had done everything in his power to keep Hell away from his angel. Had made sure to always throw off any suspicions Hell may have had, was careful to thwart and cancel out every good deed with one of equal consequence. But he hadn't done enough. He had been too fucking late and now Aziraphale was gone. He should have fought harder, should have taken Aziraphale by the hand and dragged him to the stars. Alpha Centauri. It wouldn't have solved all their problems, Heaven and Hell would still be after them, they would constantly be running; but they would have had time, and they would be together, and Aziraphale-

Aziraphale would still be alive.

A wave of grief overtook him, replacing the numbness with a fresh and sharp pain. Crowley didn't need the heart that his corporation stored, but over millennia he had gotten used to it, and right now it felt as if where there had once been an aching heart was a gaping hole that went past his human body and into his infernal soul. He somehow felt both hollow and filled to the brim with pain.

Crowley slammed his head on the steering wheel. What was the bloody point of it? All of it. Six thousand years for it to all go up in flames.

Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!

He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to get some control back over his sodding human corporation. But it was of no use, tears began to fall down his face as he struggled to keep himself together.

Aziraphale was gone. Completely and truly gone. There was no trace left of him, no angelic presence anywhere near. The bookshop was burning. Aziraphale would never let his bookshop burn, even if he had been recalled to Heaven, he would ensure that his beloved bookshop was safe from harm. Which left only one option: Aziraphale was dead and there was nothing else Crowley could do about it. Crowley clutched at the book in his lap: The Nice and Accurate Prophesies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, charred almost beyond recognition. He didn't want to open it lest his fingers make the paper crumple to ashes, didn't want to lose what little he had left.

What little he had left.

The thought shook Crowley to his core. Six millennia of life, of time with Aziraphale, and what did he have to show for it? A statue in his flat and a burned book. There wasn't even a body to bury, presumably lost along with Aziraphale.