Work Text:
In retrospect, Aziraphale should have realized Crowley was on her way here. She'd been feeling a certain creeping unease for almost a week now, pacing around her little cell at night instead of working on her manuscripts, but she hadn't been able to tell why she was feeling so squirrelly -- not until the evening Aziraphale was in the kitchen peeling potatoes and several of the local men burst through the door, supporting a thin, wan person between them, a person with long red curls. The sight of Crowley made Aziraphale's breath catch.
"I'm fine, I'm fine," Crowley was saying, attempting to peel hands from her person, but her eyes were carefully screwed shut and Aziraphale could see a greening bruise on Crowley's wrist as one of the local folks was convinced to let go of her upper arm. (The bruise was old; why hadn't Crowley healed it yet?)
"Please, over here," Aziraphale said, gesturing to the chair nearest the fire. It was late spring, early summer really, but the nights were still quite chilly, and she knew that Crowley didn't do well in the cold. Crowley's face turned toward her when she heard Aziraphale's voice, or so Aziraphale fancied, anyway.
"We think she was thrown from her horse, Sister, got separated from her party," one of the young men said. He was the son of one of the nearby farmers, and this was likely his group of friends, out walking together when they found Crowley.
"Horses," Crowley muttered, like an epithet. "I'm fine. You got me here, didn't you?"
She sprawled in her chair as if posing for an artist, head tipped back toward the fire until the color of her hair blended with the shape of the flames, and she'd kicked one long leg out as if to trip anyone else who might come near her, revealing a thin ankle tucked into a soft shoe. She had her arm thrown over her face, still hiding her eyes away.
"Thank you for bringing her here," Aziraphale said to the young man and his party. "Did anyone perhaps see the lady's smoked glasses and pick them up?"
They all shook their heads. "Do you know her, Sister?" one of them ventured. "Never seen her around here before."
His voice was tinged with a bit of awe, and Aziraphale would admit it warranted. Crowley was clothed in a deep green color, almost black, and although her dress was torn at the hem and scuffed besides, it was clearly the garb of a noblewoman. There were earrings glittering at her ears and a necklace at her throat.
"Erm," Aziraphale said, noncommittally. "Miss Crowley--"
"Lady Armitage, for all it's worth," Crowley interrupted, pursing her lips and turning her face to the fire, radiating disgust.
"We have met before," Aziraphale said. "Some years ago."
Aziraphale hadn't seen Crowley since he'd clanked away in full armor some centuries earlier. Aziraphale had stayed with the Round Table, watching his beloved family of knights fall to pieces over politics and romance and betrayals, despite his very best efforts. They'd never found the Grail, nor had the quest brought them together, in the end.
He'd wondered for a while if it had been Crowley's influence, the end of Arthur's reign of peace, but Crowley had seemed so miserable then (and now) that he didn't like to ask. And then Aziraphale had been called to this shape and this position, guiding these nuns to help the poor and needy, and women fleeing unbearable lives, and she hadn't thought about Crowley in quite some time[1]. But now Crowley was darkening her door yet again.
To thank the young men for their generosity in helping a traveler, especially considering that they didn't know she was a devil in disguise, Aziraphale sent them on their way with some additional food from the nunnery's stores, including a lovely cake she was sad to let go, because she'd been planning on it for Sunday dessert this week.
But now that Crowley was here, she'd forgotten dessert entirely. She'd soon have more serious concerns than the week's meal planning.
After the young men left, Crowley stretched languidly, rather like a cat, and waved the fingers of the hand she'd had stretched over her face. A pair of sunglasses manifested in her hand, which she placed across her eyes, and then she stretched again and Aziraphale watched as the bruises healed and her clothing resettled itself neatly on her person. Crowley looked down at her sleeve, considering, and poked the fabric with one finger. As if dye was spreading outward from her touch, the cloth darkened, shading to a familiar black. Aziraphale observed this performance with narrowed eyes.
"Why are you here, Crowley?" she asked. She picked up the knife and returned to her work with the potatoes. Unless Crowley was planning to burn this place down in the next few hours, the girls would need feeding. Aziraphale hoped dearly that this wasn't why Crowley had come. There were warring feelings in her bosom: excitement, intrigue, and concern. Those feelings often arose in strength when Crowley was present.
"Well," Crowley said, "there's whispers in this area that a woman who's tired of being beaten near to death or bearing babe after babe might find a safe place here, for a while, and husbands and fathers are turned away. Is that true?"
Aziraphale said nothing, her fingers moving automatically across the knobbly tubers. Crowley was clearly waiting for a response. When she didn't get one, she adjusted her skirts across her knees and continued.
"There may have been some trouble," Crowley said.
"Is that so?" Aziraphale murmured. "Trouble enough to put you on a horse voluntarily? Not with a party, perhaps, but leaving one?"
"You have to know the right time to esc -- to leave," Crowley said. "Or you'll find yourself doing it too late."
Aziraphale wondered how many men she'd be turning away at the keep's door in the morning, and how angry they would be. Surely, the thumping in her heart was caused by that concern, and no other.
"Only the church itself is consecrated here, luckily for you. We sometimes have visitors stay in the cells for a while," she said, throwing the last potato in the bowl with some satisfaction.
"So you'll let me stay?" Crowley said, almost seeming surprised.
"At least tonight," Aziraphale said. "If you promise--"
"I'm not here for any of your girls, angel," Crowley interrupted, impatient. "Promise. Just need a bed for the night."
"All right," Aziraphale agreed. She'd put Crowley in her room. She rarely slept anyway, so she'd hear if Crowley got up to something. This wasn't Crowley's style, though, to show up somewhere in disarray, asking for help. Crowley liked to saunter into a place as if she owned it, or slink without anyone noticing.
Aziraphale put the potatoes away and cleaned up her things as Crowley relaxed by the fire. A sister came in for some milk for a child she was minding, and another passed through on her way onto the grounds, but they ignored Crowley entirely, as if she wasn't there.
"Don't need rumors getting out," Crowley said, waving a hand, when Aziraphale lifted her eyebrows meaningfully.
"Come on then," Aziraphale said, when she could think of nothing else that needed to be done. Crowley tipped herself off out of the chair and followed.
*
All of the cells were identical: large enough for two small beds, a skinny window between them, and little else. It was a little selfish, perhaps, that Aziraphale had a room to herself, but she needed to be able to stretch out her wings, metaphorically, once in a while. Rooming alone meant that she didn't keep anyone else up at all hours, and it gave her a private space in case of Heavenly messages. Plus, there was no one else to notice that her candle never burned down to the stub.
Aziraphale went in first and started picking the paperwork off one of the beds. She often left everything spread out to dry after doing some late-night work, and although she hadn't been doing much of it lately, she hadn't cleaned up. She hadn't exactly been expecting company.
Crowley snorted, touching the thin blanket on the bed.
"I suppose it will have to do," she said.
"Beggars can't be choosers," Aziraphale sniffed, stacking the pages together carefully, carrying them across to the other bed and picking those up too. She turned around to see Crowley holding a bottle in one hand, a pair of cups in the other. It didn't look like something she'd nicked from the nunnery's kitchen -- the bottle didn't match the style they used -- so that was something, at least.
The last time they'd spoken, they hadn't broken bread together. They might have, if Crowley hadn't started talking about skiving off work again, as if Aziraphale could just --
She never could just let the humans take care of themselves. That's why she was here, wasn't it? She accepted the cup and let Crowley pour. She took a long sip. This was definitely better wine that she usually saw here.
"So have you changed your name again, Lady Armitage, is it?" Aziraphale said, settling onto the bed opposite the one Crowley was occupying.
Crowley groaned, slithering onto the bed and throwing her arm over her eyes again dramatically.
"For my sins," she said. "Got married. Hell was so sure the lord would listen to the wise counsel of his wife. He listens to me about as well as he listens to his horses. Probably uses the same whip."
Aziraphale had heard versions of this story from too many women over the last few years, and normally they provoked a sort of resigned determination from her. At least the women had escaped --- they'd done the hardest, most dangerous part, and now that they'd arrived, Aziraphale could keep them safe.
Hearing this from Crowley, though, made her wings vibrate incandescently in the other plane where she kept them.
"And you let him?" she asked, and she knew her voice was too judgmental, almost accusatory, but she couldn't prevent it.
Crowley shrugged and didn't respond for a long moment.
"Pour me another," she said, waving her cup vaguely in Aziraphale's direction, and Aziraphale did.
They finished the bottle, and then a second of lesser quality that Aziraphale had had tucked away mostly to pour into wounds. It burned all the way down her throat, but by the time they were done, Crowley was laughing, despite Aziraphale's sincere attempts at hushing her so as not to wake the other girls.
"It's all right," Crowley said finally. They were both pressed up against opposite walls, facing each other, legs dangling over the edge of their beds. "It's all right. I've written down every single thing he's done to me, and I'll be delivering that little book in person to Intake when it's time. They're lazy Down There, they'll take it as instructions."
Aziraphale pursed her lips but found that she couldn't exactly bring herself to disapprove. One reaped what one sowed, didn't they?
But then again, she didn't want to think too much about that -- about all the miracles she'd done for her own comfort, or the ones that Crowley performed to tarnish human souls. If there would be a reckoning someday, well--
She didn't think about it. She barely remembered to sober up before the morning call to prayer, and left Crowley snoring loudly in her bunk to join the nuns.
*
Crowley appeared mid-morning in the garden, where Aziraphale was watering. Glasses in place, dress clean, she looked much as Aziraphale was used to seeing her: brash, confident, gorgeous.
"Better for them if you do it early in the morning. No, lower to the ground, the leaves don't need it," Crowley said to her.
"I was with you early this morning," Aziraphale reminded, lowering the watering can to address the roots of the plants more than the leaves.
"Have they come?" Crowley asked, and for a moment Aziraphale wasn't sure what she meant. When she realized, she shook her head. The mob she'd expected at the gate this morning hadn't appeared. The dairy cart had been the same as usual, with no hint of gossip.
"Suppose that's good. Maybe they found the gold," Crowley said. Aziraphale set down the watering can and put her hands on her hips.
"What have you gotten me into, Crowley?" she demanded, and it was just a moment -- just a second where she could see Crowley's eyes go wide behind her sunglasses, her body cower away -- before Crowley stepped forward, squaring her shoulders, and grinned.
"You'll see," Crowley trilled, but before Aziraphale could question further, one of the sisters came to relieve her of her task. When she turned back around, Crowley had disappeared.
Crowley was elusive for the rest of the day. Aziraphale could feel her presence on and off, but she had better things to do than try to tease honesty from Crowley. And she couldn't stop thinking about the way that Crowley had shrunk back from her.
Crowley hadn't done that for a long time. They never fought physically if they could help it. It was better to win the battle of wits, they'd both agreed, after a few minor scuffles early on in which neither had come out the victor.[2]
Aziraphale was maybe a little too aggressive with the weeding, thinking about it. Potatoes were forgiving though. Keep them in the dark long enough to grow eyes, and they could go back into the ground. New things sprung from the dirt all the time, healing over old losses.
The chores and the prayers gave Aziraphale a lot of time to think. (Since Aziraphale had a rather more direct line to the Lord, she fancied, there didn't seem to be anything wrong with pondering other things while her lips moved.) But instead of thinking about tomorrow's work, she was worrying.
Whether Crowley meant to be or not, her presence here was destabilizing. If the two of them were meeting, it meant trouble. Aziraphale had been planning to move on soon, but she hadn't been in a hurry. Now she found herself considering how best to start her handovers. The women here were fiercely independent and the ones who found them learned fast. But Sarai was still healing from her recent birth, and Aziraphale had been helping her along as best she could without anyone noticing. They all knew to bar the door to the men with the same anger on their faces as their husbands and brothers. They'd be okay here, without her.
But Aziraphale liked it here. She'd miss it.
She sighed. There was nothing to be done here but her duty, as always.
A long day of work concluded, she slipped into her bedroom to find Crowley already asleep, sprawled across the second bed. Crowley didn't wake as Aziraphale came in, so deep in sleep that Aziraphale could hear slight snores coming from her. If she hadn't been used to the wild way that Crowley tended to take up all available space, Aziraphale might have wondered for a heart-stopping moment if the demon was a corpse. She was stretched diagonally across the bed, one leg thrown over the side toward the floor, bare foot dangling, showing off the long expanse of her skinny, well-turned calf. One arm rested casually across her body, the other stretched above her head, her pale wrist glimmering in the candlelight that Aziraphale was shading with her hand.
Astonishing, Aziraphale thought.
She set the candle-holder on the desk. It was astonishing that Crowley hadn't woken when she sensed Aziraphale's presence -- that she could be so lazy not to have a ward to warn her of an angel. Did she expect that Aziraphale would be able to protect her if Gabriel came without warning? (Although Gabriel tended to favor a male corporation even when it was inconvenient, which might have benefited them here.) Crowley's chest rose and fell evenly, despite Aziraphale's stare.
She pulled her eyes away and settled into the desk chair. The candle would last as long as she needed. So she worked through the night on her copying, while Crowley snored gently, until she could hear the nightingales begin to sing.
*
The army came on the third day. Well, it wasn't exactly an army, but it wasn't not an army either. Lord Armitage apparently kept his own troops (for protection, of course) and he had sent them on this quest to rescue his beloved wife from herself.
At least that's what the sergeant told Aziraphale, when she came to meet them at the gate. They'd seemed a bit confused when a single nun had come out to meet the crowd of heavily armed men. Of course, that could also have been because she'd appeared without unlocking the enormous barred door in front of them, but she didn't think they needed the temptation.
"Women are always welcome to come here for healing," Aziraphale said to the sergeant, who had simply rattled off his statement and stood waiting for admittance as if traveling under the lord's name would guarantee it. Probably it would, in many circles, but not here. Not when the angel could prevent it.
"The lord would rather have her at home," the sergeant said.
"I can't even say that the lady is present here," Aziraphale answered carefully. "Many come and go, moving on when they feel it is appropriate. As long as they are willing to share our labor and worship with us, we accept them into our fold. This is our duty as charged to us by God."
The sergeant shuffled his feet, hand on the hilt of his sword. Aziraphale rarely felt the loss of hers, freely given as it had been, but she did now. She generally made a point not to push into the surface thoughts of humanity, as they deserved their privacy, but there were too many men here shifting impatiently from side to side, hands near to their weapons, eyes rolling as the sergeant tried to negotiate with a being they thought was a useless woman.
"We'll soon know if she's here, with very little disruption, I assure you. My men know how to properly treat the women of God," the sergeant said, a statement ruined by a man behind him who let out a snigger. The snigger would have been there in spirit if not in sound, Aziraphale knew, but hearing it made her toes tighten in her shoes, to avoid the tell of a clenched fist.
"I'm sure that's the case," Aziraphale said. "However, no men are allowed beyond the kitchen here."
"Sister, I need you to open that gate," the sergeant said, his patience clearly dissolved. "If the lady isn't present, we'll simply look around and leave. No man here wants to risk his immortal soul."
"They are risking it right now," Aziraphale said, her voice stern. "You will leave and report that the lady cannot be found here."
She hated doing forceful suggestions. There was almost always a way to gently convince a person to change their ways, using kindness or persuasion or sometimes simply by helping them fill their bellies, but she was one nun facing fifty armed men. She was hoping that one little miracle on the man in charge would be enough. Heaven never minded this type of manipulation, but if they knew who she was protecting--
He'd never know. Crowley would leave soon. Then they'd both be safe. That was the only way to be safe.
"Sister," the sergeant said, and there was a flash of steel. Aziraphale reacted, grabbing the flat of the blade and holding it absolutely still -- a sword that could not move could not cut.
There was an uproar of sound -- men screaming, praying, moaning -- and it wasn't until Aziraphale felt the air move due to her flapping wings that she knew they were out. Oh dear. There weren't any angelic visitations scheduled nearby this century, and with all these witnesses, there was no way this would go unnoticed. Several of the men fell to the ground, weeping. Others turned to run.
Well, she might as well lean into this. It wasn't as if she could take it back.
"Begone! Begone and never return here! These people are under my protection!" she said, letting the divinity shine through her voice and her wings and her face.
Even the sergeant was stumbling over the rest to get away. They fled in a disorderly fashion, tripping over themselves, and the few who had drawn weapons left them behind at Aziraphale's feet. It made her wish momentarily that she had time to start a defense training program with the women here, but that would probably be going too far, wouldn't it?
Her wings itched. Humans, fortunately, never seemed to notice a few metaphysical feathers out of place. Crowley, who must have sensed a massive display of celestial power, dropped down off the wall behind Aziraphale and whistled.
"You're overdue for a molt, angel," Crowley said, and Aziraphale hurriedly tucked her wings away. She hated manifesting this closely to Crowley, who seemed to have no sense of self-preservation about it. A few times she'd given the demon a metaphysical sunburn.[3]
"They sent an entire regiment after you, Crowley!" Aziraphale snapped, shaking out her shoulders. She'd feel unbalanced for the rest of the day after that.
"So they didn't find the gold," Crowley said. "But they'll be back, because they weren't the only ones who saw your little display. There were half a dozen initiates watching from the little window in the tower, and I don't think they're going to be quiet about it."
Aziraphale sighed. "I should get my things. It will be easier to smooth this over if I go now."
She turned toward the side door she'd exited from, but Crowley put a hand on her shoulder.
"Just the contents of your room, right?" she said, clicking the fingers of her free hand, and a pair of soft leather bags manifested onto each of Aziraphale's shoulders, heavy with scrolls and ink and the rest of her few possessions. The bags were nicer than the ones a nun would normally carry, but Aziraphale wasn't going to protest. It was going to be a long walk today, and probably tonight as well, unless she wanted to change her shape again for the purposes of disguise. It was funny how altering a few secondary sex characteristics, or just some clothing to suggest the same, would completely throw off any humans looking for her. She didn't often have to resort to the tactic, but she wondered sometimes if that was why Crowley always seemed to be changing her gender presentation.
She'd never asked -- it was the kind of question Crowley wouldn't have answered seriously, anyway. But it was something she thought about sometimes, when she thought about Crowley, and how well Crowley fit as a man or a woman or neither. Crowley seemed comfortable straddling the lines. Aziraphale still tended to spend most of her time in masculine shape because it tended to make assignments and travel easier.
She couldn't change here, not in front of the nunnery and her former sisters. So she began walking, and she wasn't too surprised when Crowley fell into step beside her. They'd seem like an odd pair, the nun and the noblewoman, unaccompanied by guards or carriage, but a don't-notice-me miracle would hardly make a difference now, would it? She might as well, she thought, and clicked her fingers.
They walked together in silence for some time, and Aziraphale found that the countryside was lifting her mood, despite everything. She hadn't had much time or inclination to leave the nunnery and travel for some time, and when she'd arrived here, it had been during a bitter winter some years back. There were flowers gleaming in the summer sun, trees stretching up towards a sky so blue it could have been painted. Someone had, at some point, hadn't they? Aziraphale wondered what angel had been so lucky as to sketch each cloud -- if that angel was up there now with a brush, tweaking each wispy shape.
But then that made her think of Gabriel again, of Heaven. It might take him a few months, if he was busy with quarter-century planning, to call Aziraphale and ask her to explain why she had done a full angelic manifestation for a bunch of mercenaries. If she wrote a nice enough report about it, maybe she could get in front of it and get out of a patronizing lecture.
Well, that was a good twenty souls at least, who might have slipped to evil, and the people they told --
"You're thinking too hard, angel," Crowley said. The demon's walk was more of a meander, crossing the small path to more closely examine an ailing tree or to poke at a weird bug. The movement of her hips was infuriatingly distracting. Aziraphale preferred to gaze at the sky.
"At least I'm thinking," she answered, irritated. "Gabriel is going to ask me about that mess back there, and I need to have an answer for him. Even if I don't mention you, he won't think my actions were justified, and he's been a bit tetchy with me since the Round Table fell."
"You should mention me. There you were, all snug in your nunnery, guardian of nuns and babes, and then a snake came in to ruin it all. You discovered my presence and had to manifest all your Goodness in defense," Crowley answered. "Terrible battle, I was forced to flee, bunch of baby nuns locked in on committing their lives to God. Sounds like a win for yours."
Crowley made it sound so simple. Aziraphale bit her lip.
"What if -- won't that sound horrible for your report?" she answered. Angelic feet didn't need to tire, but there was a rock in her slipper, and she detoured to the side to sit down for a moment and take it out.
"I married the bastard, drove him into rages due to my insolence and barren nature, stole an enormous sack of gold from under his nose, and when that search party comes back empty-handed it's going to be the sword for the whole lot. So now he's gone from influential to influential mass-murderer, bunch of guys aren't repenting in their warm beds forty years from now, and Armitage will be broke within the year with the way his steward has been cheating him. Which I also encouraged," Crowley said. "Don't have to mention the nuns at all. Easy."
"Then how did you end up at the nunnery?"
"It wasn't as if you waited to smite me until I answered your questions, angel," Crowley said easily. "Gabriel and Beelzebub aren't trading reports, right? You don't have to know how I ended up in your nunnery and I don't even have to mention I saw you. Probably the safest thing to do. They'd be surprised how often we end up in the same places, I expect."
Crowley opened her mouth as if to continue, and then her jaw snapped shut. Aziraphale knew what Crowley was thinking. It was the same thing she'd been saying all this time, that even now with millions of humans on the planet they were still constantly stumbling over each other, cancelling out each other's work or just sharing a bottle of this or that while the humans damned or saved themselves.
"What did you do with the gold?" Aziraphale asked finally. Crowley winked in the exaggerated way she did when she wanted the gesture to be visible behind her smoked glasses.
"Wouldn't you like to know?" she said, stretching up towards the sky, fingers laced together. "Come on, now, at this rate we'll be walking all night."
She reached over and took the lighter of Aziraphale's bags as Aziraphale found her feet again. Crowley had, before this assignment, been holidaying[4] in a little city in South America where they were quite fond of snakes. Apparently the priests hadn't known what to do when a snake demigod showed up and started complaining about the amenities.[5]
The way that Crowley told the story distracted Aziraphale from their walk, the dust of the road and the fact that they hadn't left with many provisions. Still, they heard the horse coming from far away -- the rider wasn't trying for stealth. Aziraphale's miracle was still in effect, but they eased off the path into the trees to avoid being trampled.
Aziraphale saw Crowley swallow as the single rider passed and noted the color of his livery -- the same deep green that Crowley had been wearing when the boys had brought her to Aziraphale, what felt like ages ago. The man didn't even glance in their direction, bent on his mission. If he kept going like this, he'd ruin the horse, or turn her lame. Aziraphale wondered what he expected to accomplish, hurting such a splendid animal like that in the service of his master. Why was it so important that Crowley return to the lord? Surely this wasn't all because of the theft.
Aziraphale laid another miracle on the nunnery to protect it from afar, and she blessed the poor horse too. She'd figure out justifications later. Once they could no longer hear the horse, Aziraphale took her bag back from Crowley and they started walking again, but the pleasant atmosphere had been punctured.
"Angel," Crowley said finally. "I'd never -- Look. There are things I'd never ask you to do, even if we did come to some kind of arrangement. That's all I'm saying."
Aziraphale said nothing for a moment. Yes, it was her job to encourage people toward virtue, to back the correct side in conflicts, and to generally leave places in better shape than she found them. But that meant that some days she found herself in the kind of places that Crowley might be more familiar with -- dodgy bars, lawless streets, tiny kingdoms ruled by despots. It was her job to find the spark of goodness in people who sometimes knew little else than toil, violence, and hate.
So she led people away, as Crowley led them in -- no, that wasn't quite right, was it? Yes, sometimes Crowley did act so explicitly as that, but Crowley had often told her that it was the human's choice that mattered more than anything else, and so Crowley preferred a light hand at temptation.
And so did Aziraphale, not that she called it temptation from her end. She tried to help people see the better choices around them, and sometimes she succeeded. And maybe that person would have made the same choice, even if Aziraphale hadn't been there -- it seemed to happen often enough. If she showed up to help after a disaster, the humans had always already been there working first.
The sun was sinking. Aziraphale could just see Crowley's jaw, tight, in the rising grayness.
"I know, Crowley," Aziraphale said gently. "Just as I'd never send you to encourage a priest."
It wasn't exactly the same -- honestly, it would be more dangerous for Crowley in that situation than it ever would be for Aziraphale to mingle with murderers and thieves. None of them would be able to summon hellfire, after all, and there was more holy water in this country every day.
"Not with these eyes," Crowley said, voice light. "Not with this mind. Ticket straight to apostasy, I'm afraid."
"You might be giving yourself too much credit," Aziraphale answered, just to tease, and the resulting argument took them into the outskirts of the closest town and into the pub, where the local men took little notice of them, as they liked.
*
It wasn't until several centuries later that Aziraphale found out what had happened to Lord Armitage's gold. Gabriel had asked Aziraphale to sort out the saints -- an irritatingly vague request, which Aziraphale eventually understood as Heaven not having kept good enough records to know why some of them had qualified for sainthood and therefore nicer accommodations -- and that meant that Aziraphale was spending a lot of time in papal libraries, reading old books and journals, when he came across the story of his manifestation in front of the nunnery. The place had become a sacred site afterwards, and one of the odder nuns had insisted that the angel had visited her in her dreams many times afterwards, which Aziraphale had not, but he was glad it had been a comfort to her.
It seems that when the initiates had gone to find Aziraphale, they'd discovered her room emptied and set perfectly to rights, and they'd sworn the angel must have taken Aziraphale up to Heaven directly. But then no one had been able to find the records of when Aziraphale had come to the convent, or any of her history, so she hadn't managed to be canonized for her own manifestation, which was good. Crowley never would have let her live that down.
In the middle of the empty bed, there'd been a sack of gold coins, unstamped and unclaimed by any lord, and judicious stewardship had allowed the nuns to feed many through a famine that occurred not long after due to warring lords nearby. Neither of the lords were named in the book, this being uninteresting to the writer, who was focused on the religious blessings emerging from the conflict.
Aziraphale marked the page, more for his own amusement than anything else, and continued on with his work. When he ran into Crowley at a fete in Germany a few years later, he produced the book with a flourish.[6]
"Bit showy, a sack of gold," Crowley said, grinning at Aziraphale after he finished skimming through the story. "Can't imagine why you thought that was a good idea. Girls were probably going around for years asking for that angel to come back with another huge bag of money."
Aziraphale opened his mouth to protest, but changed his mind.
"Angels are supposed to be generous," he said. He knew, Crowley knew, what good would saying it do?
"Generous enough to refill my drink, I hope," Crowley said, shoving his glass in Aziraphale's direction, and it did turn out that angels were generous enough for that, after all.
*****
- This was not strictly true. Aziraphale thought briefly of Crowley every time she ate a meal, especially when she ate an apple. [back]
- And it had been very hard on Aziraphale's clothing, which she tried to keep nice. [back]
- Funnily enough, as time passed, Aziraphale's radiance seemed to hurt Crowley less. By the time they moved together to the South Downs, she admitted to Aziraphale that she'd begun to think of the angel's celestial presence more like a warm sunbeam than anything painful. [back]
- "A working holiday, I've just invented it, a special kind of slow torture," she said.[back]
- "Who actually wants to bathe in blood? Not very sanitary."[back]
- There were so many books in that library and it wasn't as if Aziraphale didn't take good care of the ones he borrowed. He'd send it back when he was done with it, if the library was still standing then.[back]