(no subject)

[ineffable-angel.livejournal.com]

Date: February 20th, 2000
Setting: Aziraphale's room
Status: Private - Aziraphale and Crowley
Summary: Michael Falls, and there are consequences.

They were lying in the angel's bed, languidly enjoying a golden afternoon. Aziraphale was sitting, back against pillows, humming contentedly with a book in one hand and the other stroking Crowley's hair. The demon, lying stretched out with his dark head conveniently in Aziraphale's lap, was dozing, making occasionally murmurs of assent with his eyes closed as Aziraphale pointed out this or that or read out an interesting passage.

It was, all in all, a great scene of unique and peaceful love.

He'd just begun reading out a new section of a discussion on Rambaldi when Aziraphale felt it. A tiny sliver of dysfunction, of chaos and pain. It grew in his mind and stomach, almost inevitably, and he began to feel quite ill, sweat beginning at his forehead.

"My dear," he said, nudging Crowley urgently, as the nausea welled up. "My dear, wake up. Something's wrong."

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[anthony-crowley.livejournal.com]

Crowley knew instantly what it was. An echo of the Fall. Curling up protectively, he tried to block out the sudden pain. It didn't matter whether it was real or remembered. It hurt either way.


Alone. Empty and alone. Though the physical wounds from his long and terrifying plummet* were considerable, they paled before the dark and angry abyss inside. There existed only a gaping chasm of loss where his hope, his happiness, his love, his heart had been.

Though the air was burning, he felt desperately cold and he wrapped his wings around his nearly broken body. White wings. A cruel symbol of what he could never be again. Snarling, he used most of the rest of his energy to make them black as death. A mark of the betrayed.

He wept thick and bitter tears. He ranted, screamed, and fought those around him. He turned his anger on himself, slicing flesh with sharp new claws and fangs, tearing out feathers a handful at a time. Nothing helped. Nothing was enough to fill the massive, howling emptiness.

Even as Dis and Pandemonium were constructed, even as other demons accepted and rejoiced in their new bodies and roles, even as time, which meant nothing in this place yet, passed, for one demon it was never enough. He learned only to deny his pain, to hide it, to deceive, but it never lessened.

Until one day when a green snake arrived in the center of a verdant, flowering garden to bask in the warm sunlight, and saw his heart standing near a gate, daydreaming...


"Raphael," he finally gasped. "Has to be. Raphael has Fallen."

Keening slightly, Crowley wrapped his arms around himself, curling into a tighter ball and mourned. For whom, he didn't know.


*He wouldn't say he sauntered until a few thousand years later.