Chapter Text
Aziraphale and Crowley loved, remembered, and believed in humanity. They did all these things intimately, close-up, and with deep connections.
They’d had millennia to form them, and though many of the people they had loved were long gone, many were not.
One had been, and was no longer.
“We should get Yeshua,” Crowley said. “He’s human, but he’s… well, he’ll be able to grasp the situation.”
“Adam, too, I should think,” Aziraphale replied.
They had kept in touch with all the humans they’d averted the Apocalypse with, out of friendship and fear and curiosity. They hadn’t been around much, but they were regular enough phone presences that Adam, now nearly done his undergraduate studies, wouldn’t be surprised by a call.
“And Warlock,” Crowley said, stubbornly, like he was prepared to fight over it.
After the world had failed to end, Crowley had taken less than a month to get back in touch with the Dowlings. He’d gotten himself hired as a tutor.
Despite the time that had passed, the difference in gender presentation, and the frisson of demonic magic he’d laid to allay suspicion, Warlock had said, “oh, hi Nanny, didn’t know you were a teacher,” and sat next to him.
Crowley had realized rather quickly that Warlock was a bit weird from being raised by him and Aziraphale, and decided he ought to do something to help with the kid’s development. That help had amounted to introducing Warlock to the Them, which worked wonders.
Crowley had got himself fired as a tutor shortly after that, because he hated the house and the parents and working with people who weren’t Aziraphale, and because he’d sort of told Warlock nearly the whole truth in a relief-induced breakdown, and because the pandemic had been far too much to navigate while trying to maintain a human job.
Warlock FaceTimed them both, but mostly Crowley, as Crowley was the only one who owned a device actually conducive to FaceTiming.
During the pandemic, Warlock had started streaming video games, and as up-to-date as Crowley tried to be, even he didn’t fully understand all that. Aziraphale didn’t understand it at all, of course.
What they did understand was that it had made Warlock enough money that when they came out to their parents at 17, their father’s reaction was as unimportant as his funding.
They had been a constant presence in Crowley and Aziraphale’s lives over the next couple of years, and then a distant presence in just Crowley’s for the time after that.
“That’s a wonderful idea,” Aziraphale said. “I’ve missed her very much. I expect she’ll be quite angry with me, yes?”
Crowley made a face. Warlock had, truthfully, always liked him best, and Aziraphale’s abandonment had not helped matters. What had helped matters was that she had tried school for roughly the middle two of the three years of Aziraphale’s absence, and grown so fantastically busy that she didn’t really know what Crowley had been doing, or why exactly Aziraphale was never in the background of calls anymore.
She loved entertaining far more than law, and so had dropped out to keep streaming and occasionally produce music. She was getting slowly back on speaking terms with her mom, and had a couple cousins she tolerated, but her real family consisted of Aziraphale, Crowley, the Them, and about fifteen other people from all ages and walks of life that she had managed to collect. She wanted to get into game design, and maybe go on tour.
Warlock hated homework, slow drivers, hot weather, their dad, and anything bright red. They loved esports, making cocktails, sewing, gardening (having taken after Francis and then learning a thing or two from Nanny), DJing, and their friends. They were a social butterfly and an angry kid and a microcelebrity, and generally wonderful.
“Ehh, not that bad, probably,” Crowley said. “They’ve been occupied.”
Aziraphale’s heart broke, just a little, at how truly alone Crowley had been for the past few years, but he pulled himself together. There would be time for that later, indeed there had to be. They would not make the same mistake after a second near miss of the End of everything that they had made after the first. They would talk. At length.
Aziraphale made a face at Crowley that he hoped conveyed all this, and judging by Crowley’s grimace, it did.
Crowley jerked his thumb at the bookshop doors, now showing the same view they had for the last two hundred years, excepting the last few hours.
“I should get himself first, probably.”
Aziraphale nodded, and Crowley stepped out onto Whickber Street.
Whickber Street, which had been more home to him than anywhere else. Whickber Street, which had seen him in heartbreak, in hangover, in happiness. Whickber Street, which he’d almost given up on with all the rest because of some abstract desire he thought had been long burned out of him.
He’d wanted to do the right thing.
‘You can’t leave this bookshop,’ he remembered saying to Aziraphale, who had proceeded to leave both Whickber Street and Crowley, driven by that same insidious desire.
Crowley had felt it, radiating off of him in waves. Aziraphale had wanted him, too, always wanted him, and Crowley knew it, but that wasn’t enough. Aziraphale had to choose him.
Crowley stepped onto the sidewalk, the sidewalk that still existed, that existed again, because Aziraphale had chosen.
He felt a sudden, desperate desire to turn around, to rush back inside, to be with Aziraphale and never let him out of his sight again, and for a dizzying moment it was his desire and Aziraphale’s at once.
He turned, making eye contact with Aziraphale through the window.
“BRB,” Crowley signed quickly, finger spelling.
Aziraphale smiled, pointed his index finger at his own chest, raised it to his cheek and moved it forward as he twisted it, then pointed to the ground.
I’ll be here.
The simple reassurance was enough for both of their auras to calm, and Crowley turned and took a couple steps down the street.
Yeshua was standing at an intersection, looking at his hands like he expected to see holes.
He was younger than the last time Crowley had seen him, but they’d done a good job of reconstructing his face. His eyes were the same as they’d always been, dark and deep and loving and full of life, though Crowley now knew what they looked like without that spark.
He looked up, and his eyes caught Crowley’s immediately. He realized too late that he wasn’t wearing sunglasses, but Yeshua beamed.
“Anah!”
Crowley shivered, having almost forgotten that particular quirk of Christ’s.
“Yeshua,” he said, forming the Aramaic syllables as easily as if he’d spoken them yesterday. His mouth, his mind, the man in front of him. They all remembered.
Yeshua smiled. “The translation index they’ve built in seems to make it Joshua. I assume I’ve become known as something else, too.”
“Jesus,” Crowley affirmed. “Would you rather be called something else?”
Yeshua smiled. “No. I like what my mother called me.”
“It’s good to see you again, Yeshua.”
“And you,” he said. “You didn’t seem to know me, before.”
Crowley wrinkled his nose. “Nghh, yeah, didn’t.”
“There is much I don’t know,” Yeshua said, consideringly. “Harry the Fish has taught me some.”
Crowley looked over, recognizing a man he’d once scammed out of the day’s winnings. He’d tried to scam Crowley first, so it was only fair.
“You two know each other?” Harry asked, wandering over.
“We did, two thousand years ago,” Yeshua said.
“Old friends,” Crowley supplied.
Harry eyed him, clearly evaluating. “You’re looking better.”
Crowley grinned, flashing his fangs, daring the man to talk about the last few years. He’d been in more embarrassing situations for longer, and scared people into not mentioning it more easily.
Harry had the mildly unaffected look of someone quite beyond demonic reach, and Crowley groaned internally.
“I am,” he drawled.
Harry nodded. “Glad to hear it.” He clapped Yeshua on the shoulder. “I’ll see you ‘round. I’m- I need to call my daughter.”
He wandered off, taking out his phone.
Crowley raised an eyebrow. “Don’t waste any time, do you?”
Yeshua shrugged. “I’ve died young twice now. I’m not foolish enough to think I have time to waste. I assume this is about the second time?”
Crowley nodded. “We could use your help.”
Yeshua smiled. “All you ever had to do was ask. I know I’ve missed quite a lot, though. Would you fill me in?”
Crowley raised an eyebrow, wishing for his glasses. “You do know who you’re asking for knowledge from, don’t you?”
“I always did,” Yeshua said, and Crowley knew it was true.
“You might be better off asking Aziraphale, if you want a history lesson.”
“Aziraphale?” Yeshua asked, frowning. “The archangel?”
“Uh,” Crowley said, eloquently.
Then Yeshua’s eyes widened, and he repeated Aziraphale’s name with an inflection Crowley hadn’t heard in a couple millennia.
“Mnf,” Crowley replied, then, “the world’s just been re-remembered, actually. Possible a couple things have changed. We can- I can show you, if you want.”
Yeshua smiled. “Yes, please.”
Crowley, demon of minor inconveniences, of the M25, of snakes, of the disadvantaged, of Aziraphale, and of knowledge, forbidden knowledge, useful knowledge, knowledge that had been locked up and stratified and put away, reached out.
Yeshua took his hand without hesitation.
Not much had changed, as it turned out. What had was only practicalities, the solidifying of what had been God’s little jokes, Her experiments. Dinosaurs had been real, now, and such like.
Crowley felt human history unfold in his mind’s eye, and took them forward to the end of Yeshua’s first life, then pressed play and sat back.
It should have taken far too long. It should have been far too much for any human mind to bear.
Crowley had never concerned himself with shoulds.
Yeshua let go of his hand as they reached modernity. He looked contemplative, uncertain. “They have done so much in my name.”
“I warned you.”
Yeshua smiled, and looked into his eyes, yellow like hazard markers. “You did.” He wrinkled his nose. “I would like to have a word with this Constantine fellow.”
“Check your timeline,” Crowley said. “Long, long dead.”
Yeshua nodded thoughtfully.
“Regret not listening to me?” Crowley asked.
Yeshua shrugged. “They’ve done so much bad, but so much good as well. I can’t trace half of the effects, especially once they become knock-on. I don’t know how I’d go about determining if my presence in the world made it better or worse. If I wasn’t there, what would be there instead? It’s been their choice for two thousand years, and they’ll continue making it, with or without me.”
Crowley swallowed. “We should’ve talked to you from the start.”
“It’s not my choice any more than it is yours and his.”
“Whose is it then?” Crowley asked, because that was the root of the problem.
Yeshua cocked his head to the side, and smiled. “I’m not sure!”
Crowley felt hope bloom in his chest. He’d always been an optimist, and it was hard not to be one around this man.
“Right. Come on then,” he said, and led the Messiah back to the bookshop.
~
Aziraphale picked up his old rotary phone and dialed Adam’s mobile number. He hoped it hadn’t changed in the last few years.
The Antichrist picked up on the second ring.
“Aziraphale?” He asked, incredulously.
“Ah, yes, hello,” Aziraphale said.
“You’re back.”
Aziraphale swallowed. He couldn’t quite read his tone. Adam hadn’t been a child when he’d left, but he’d been young enough to feel the absence acutely. Three years was a long time, even for immortals. For a boy who was barely out of the maelstrom of being a teenager, it was an eternity.
Adam had always liked Aziraphale very much, which he thought was lovely and rather strange. Crowley had always been better with children, but Adam gravitated towards Aziraphale from the start.
He told Aziraphale, once, that Crowley reminded him a bit of the Johnsonites, as if he was trying to be big and scary, whereas Aziraphale was just being himself. Adam liked people who were just themselves. Aziraphale also reminded him of his fourth grade teacher, who had been the only adult Adam had ever met who wasn’t afraid to admit it when he didn’t know something.
For his part, Adam reminded Aziraphale of all the people he’d loved, all his charges wrapped into one person. ‘Human incarnate’ he’d called him, and he’d meant it. Adam was free will, and bad choices, and trying to do the right thing, and his belief and love were strong enough to save the world. He held onto people and ideas and places with both hands and his whole spirit.
Adam also reminded him of Crowley, in some ways, refusing to be anything other than what he chose to be, refusing to be on anyone’s side but his own. Adam loved the world the way Crowley loved it: helplessly, hopefully, and fighting his nature all the while.
Aziraphale did not want to explain that he had abandoned the Earth in an attempt to make things better. He didn’t want to tell the boy who had saved the world for his friends that he had left his best friend and then almost let him destroy it. He certainly did not want to tell him that he would do it again.
“I am,” Aziraphale said, instead of any of that.
“I’m glad,” Adam said, disarmingly honest, disarmingly kind. “I missed you. And Crowley, he’s been useless.”
“I missed you as well, dear boy,” Aziraphale said, and he truly had.
He wanted, suddenly, desperately, to call Anathema, Tracy, and Maggie. His friends, all of them, beautiful, wonderful women who he’d only just begun to let himself love. He wanted to make an appointment with his barber and ask about their relationship, he wanted to see if his friend at the sushi place down the road had been promoted to head chef yet, he wanted to go to their regular table at the Ritz and ask how their waiter’s daughter was.
He wanted to do every bit of it with Crowley.
He wanted, and for the first time in his long, long life, he let himself.
‘You just wanted to be left alone to read,’ the Devil himself had said to Aziraphale. ‘You wanted to consume all the yummy human food!’
Evidence of his sins, laid in front of his face, because pretending not to want something is not the same as not wanting it, and pretending not to act on it is nothing but lying to Heaven after one has already acted.
And to God Herself, Aziraphale had responded yes, yes I did, yes I will continue to, and no that doesn’t make me bad, it doesn’t mean I wasn’t trying to do the right thing, I want and I want and I want and I am still an angel, still good, still worthy.
Self love is necessary. It is vital. It is Good. Aziraphale had taught enough humans about it over the years to know all the Bad that could come of refusing it, harm not just to the self, but to everyone they would not let themselves love. Self love is beautiful, and needed, and like all other types of love, extraordinarily powerful.
Aziraphale was beyond tired of ignoring and suppressing his own power.
“Something happened, right?” Adam asked. “With the world?”
“Yes,” Aziraphale said, pulled back to his conversation. “You felt it?”
“Started driving to Soho when things started disappearing,” Adam confirmed. “Neither of you were picking up the phone. I’ll be there in ten.”
Aziraphale’s heart lit up. A reunion, of sorts. Their godchildren.
“I’ll be very happy to see you, and I’m sorry to have worried you.”
“S’okay. We’re fixing it now, yeah?”
Aziraphale looked outside, and saw Crowley returning, hands half in his impractical pockets, leading Yeshua with a smile and his eyes uncovered.
“Yes,” Aziraphale said. “Yes, we are.”
“You better tell me what happened,” Adam said. “‘Cause I think I should know, if we’re gonna be saving the world again. Probably would’ve helped if I knew more last time.”
“I suspect it would have, yes,” Aziraphale admitted. “But you did very well without context.”
“Yeah, I know. I’m pretty great. And I had some help. Ok, you’ve got, uh, eight minutes according to my GPS. Start summarizing.”
Aziraphale did, putting the phone on speaker as Crowley and Yeshua entered the shop. Most rotary phones did not have speakers, but then, most rotary phones had been out of commission for decades and never exposed to angelic or demonic expectations.
“He’s sugarcoating it,” Crowley said, and Aziraphale could hear Adam’s smile as he answered.
“Good to hear from you, mate. Whaddya mean?”
Crowley shrugged, as if Adam could see him. “I chose to end it all.”
“It had already ended,” Aziraphale argued, sharply. “You wanted to put it back in a way that would be better.”
“I wanted to wipe it all out and start over,” Crowley said.
“Been there,” Adam replied. “Both of those. Dunno why you’d suddenly stop believing in free will, though. That’s kind of been your whole thing from the moment I met you.”
“Oh, for much longer than that,” Yeshua said.
“Who’s that?” Adam asked, and Aziraphale looked at Crowley, who also seemed to be trying to think of an answer.
“Your time seems to know me as Christ,” Yeshua said, looking a bit nervous, “but I prefer Yeshua.”
“Oh, wicked!” Adam said, excitedly.
Yeshua furrowed his brow at Crowley, who muttered “slang. He means like- عظيم ?גָדוֹל? Omaorb’iyn.”
Yeshua’s face smoothed, and Adam continued. “I’ve done a couple theology classes, always thought you were cool. Thought it’d be good to learn a bit more about how people saw me. I’m the Antichrist, but Adam to my friends. And enemies. Adam to everyone, really.”
“Pleased to meet you, Adam,” Yeshua said.
“You too. Ok, so the world ended, you tried to start it again with no superhuman stuff, but I’m still here, so what changed?”
“Nothing changed, exactly,” Aziraphale said. “We just- remembered.”
“I had to do that,” Adam said, thoughtfully. “Remember who I was.”
“We remembered everything,” Crowley said.
“Yeah, that seems like more work. So everything’s back?”
Crowley made a noncommittal noise. “More or less. God and Satan are sort of… scattered.”
“Oh, that explains it,” Yeshua said.
Crowley and Aziraphale turned to look at him. He shrugged.
“There’s more space, now.”
“Is that what that is?” Adam asked. “I thought maybe I was hungry or something. I’m pulling onto your street now, Aziraphale, see you in a mo’.”
He hung up before any other questions could be asked.
“He’ll have trouble finding parking,” Aziraphale fretted.
“He’s the Antichrist,” Crowley replied calmingly, doing something on his mobile. “I’m gonna get Warlock here.”
“Where is she, these days?”
“California, last I checked,” Crowley replied.
“Cali- well, they’ll just have to use the video call, I suppose.”
“Nah,” Crowley said, and vanished into Aziraphale’s back room as his phone began to ring.
Aziraphale heard “hey Nanny,” and then the door swung shut.
He frowned at it for a moment, then turned back to Yeshua.
“It’s good to see you again,” Aziraphale said. “I don’t believe we met properly, the first time.”
Yeshua smiled. “No, but I feel as though we did. Anah talked about you a great deal.”
Aziraphale’s breath caught in his throat at that, but he held the memories at bay. The last time Crowley had gone by a version of that name, as far as Aziraphale knew, had been in a job Aziraphale had asked him to cover in a molly house over two centuries ago. It had required a female alias, something he’d forgotten to warn Crowley of, but they’d both had plenty of human names of various languages and genders. It had startled him then, too, when the matron had told Aziraphale afterwards that ‘his Anna’ had taken good care of them.
“Did he?” Aziraphale asked, catching up with the rest of the sentence.
“Oh yes,” Yeshua said. “I reminded him of you, I think. You weren’t an archangel then.”
“I’m not much of one now,” Aziraphale said, “though I ought to have let you talk to your family, dear boy.”
Yeshua’s eyes shone. “I can?”
“You can. It’s not above-board, strictly, but it’s certainly possible. Commonplace, even. I will ensure that you do, once we’ve sorted things out here.”
“Thank you.”
Aziraphale shook his head. “There really is no need for that,” he said, and there really wasn’t. This was bare minimum, too late if not too little.
The bell above the door made him look up, and Adam strolled in, hair piled on top of his head, smile the same as it had been for the last eleven years.
Adam had grown into his aura, and the love flowing from him for his world was a balm on Aziraphale’s soul. He’d started school just before Aziraphale left, and for as long as they’d known each other had maintained that he would find the cure for cancer, or maybe malaria or some other such thing. Adam loved microbiology with an abiding passion. As it turned out, lots of things were wiggling and bubbling all the time, you just had to look closer. Explosions and big red buttons were all well and good, but the literal trillions of microorganisms in the human body were fun. Adam also quite liked reminding his parents that there were hundreds of mites on their faces at all times.
He kept in such close touch with his friends that he knew the details of their lives better than people they lived with. He’d gone on Warlock’s channel a few times with his face covered, and was something of a beloved cryptid in the streaming community due to his ability to absolutely master whatever game they were playing. He even held a couple speedrunning records, under the name ‘The Adversary.’
Adam went home to Tadfield and his parents every weekend without fail. Dog came and went with him, having never left Adam’s side since entering his life, and having been hidden from more than one landlord. Adam was definitely going to go into medicinal research, he just hadn’t decided what kind yet.
He hated meal planning, being awake after midnight, staying inside all day, autobiographies, and minimalism. He loved animals, sci-fi, nail art, and was learning to play guitar because he just felt like he ought to.
“Aziraphale!” Adam exclaimed, and walked over to hug him.
Aziraphale wrapped his arms around the boy, beaming. Guilt had a tight grip on his heart, but he knew not to listen to it, only learn from it.
“Thank you for coming, my dear.”
“‘Course,” Adam said easily, turning around. “Oh hey! Yeshua, right? I’m Adam.”
Yeshua opened his arms, and Adam hugged him too. Aziraphale fought the absurd urge to laugh as he wondered what everyone from John to Signorelli would have thought of this.
Adam then launched into a series of theological questions that made Yeshua’s eyes light up, and Aziraphale just watched.
Each of them, despite everything else they were, was fully human.
“Angel!” Crowley called, and Aziraphale darted into the back room.
To his surprise, Warlock was sitting on the couch.
Crowley’s miracles were more than back, because Crowley had believed they would be, and had needed them to be for the reconstitution of the universe. However, teleporting a young person halfway around the globe was rather more work than he usually did.
Aziraphale pulled up short, staring at them. “However did you manage that?”
“Pulled her through the phone lines,” Crowley said.
Aziraphale turned sharply to look at him. “She’s human! You could’ve killed her!”
“Nah,” Crowley said. “Too many memories in the air still. Usually I’d be jumpy about reconstituting someone from the ground up, but that’s just happened to everything. Never been safer than it is now.”
Aziraphale pursed his lips, heart pounding with retrospective anxiety. “Well. I’m glad you’re alright, dear.”
“Thanks,” Warlock said. “Nanny said you should fill me in.”
Aziraphale looked up at Crowley, who shrugged. “You’ll explain it better than I will.”
Aziraphale could feel, swirling in Crowley’s active aura, the desire for them to all be okay, to be something of the family they’d once been to each other. Crowley didn’t want to tell Warlock what had happened, because she would hate Aziraphale for it if it came from him.
“Alright,” Aziraphale said, soft. “Yes. Good idea. You’ll be with the other two?”
Crowley nodded, and walked out to join Christ and Antichrist in the main area of the bookshop.
“Oh, Crowley-” Aziraphale called after him, poking his head out of the back room.
He found Crowley already hanging the ‘EXTREMELY closed’ sign on the door, and drawing the blinds.
“Got it, angel,” he said. “Go on.”
Aziraphale tucked himself back into the room, and sat down across from his godchild.
“Right,” Warlock said. “What did you do?”
Aziraphale sighed. He wasn’t sure this would work in any meaningful way.
He and Crowley had always been able to connect with humans because their problems were, fundamentally, extremely human. People had to deal with awful families and oppressive systems and socially unacceptable relationships all the time. They had to choose between families of birth and families of choice, between survival and ethics, between the world and their own needs. Aziraphale could explain his decision in human terms easily, but the fact remained that Warlock was too much like Crowley to truly understand it.
If her parents were to suddenly re-enter her life, apologize for what they’d done, and offer to take her back provided she help with the family business and become an American politician, she would tell them to fuck off and likely lean further into anarchy. Warlock, like Crowley, had understood from a very young age that the system did not need to be fixed, but was working exactly as intended and needed to be changed entirely.
Still, Aziraphale tried. Tried to explain that Heaven had seemed willing to change, that he couldn’t bring himself to let things continue as they had been. Tried to convey the instincts of a Guardian, the inability to turn down any opportunity to help one’s charges. Tried to prove that he had been built for forgiveness, that he could not help himself, could not stop himself from forgiving his people, despite all their flaws and atrocities, because he understood them.
He tried, desperately, to convey that he thought he had been doing the right thing.
“Stop,” Warlock said, shaking her head. “Francis, stop for a second.”
Aziraphale did.
“I get it,” she said. “I get that you thought it would help. I get why you thought it would help. But I don’t- I don’t get why you did it.”
Aziraphale had looked the Devil in the eye, and told him that wanting things did not make him unworthy. Still, six thousand years of conditioning was a lot to set aside.
“I missed them,” Aziraphale said. “I loved them. I loved it. I believed in it, in Her. I wanted a purpose, and one was being handed to me, so I took it. I wanted my family back. I wanted them to love me, to respect me. I wanted power.”
Warlock smiled, clearly pleased with his honesty. “Yeah, I get that. What else?”
“I- I was scared. Of what they would do to me, or to him, if I said no. They’d tried to kill us once already.”
“Does Nanny know that?”
“About the execution attempts?”
“No. That you were scared.”
Aziraphale frowned. “I’m not sure.”
“He was like me,” Warlock said. “His fear was always channeled into ways to escape. You were like my mum. Trying to appease the beast so it wouldn’t eat you, or the people you cared about. It took me a long time to understand that she was scared, too. That she thought she was protecting me.”
Aziraphale stared at her, throat thick. Warlock shrugged.
“Doesn’t make it right,” they said. “Doesn’t make you right. But it helped me. Might help him.”
She stood, and walked to the door that led to the rest of the bookshop, then paused and turned back to Aziraphale with a smile. “Come on, then.”
Aziraphale went.
“Warlock!” Adam exclaimed, interrupting himself mid-sentence to throw his arms around his friend.
There were a few quick-fire sentences made mostly of phrases Aziraphale did not understand, then introductions between Yeshua and Warlock, who blanched upon hearing his other name.
“You have a problem with me?” Warlock asked, hackles clearly raised.
“Why would I have a problem?” Yeshua asked, frowning.
Crowley stepped in, placing a hand on Warlock’s shoulder, and Aziraphale was rather shocked to see she was actually taller than him now.
“I was a woman when he met me,” Crowley said. “Just as I was when you met me.”
Yeshua nodded, looking as though he wasn’t quite sure what this had to do with anything.
Warlock relaxed, and stuck out her hand. “Pleased to meet you, then.”
Yeshua shook it, smile back in place. “And you!”
“What did you two actually want us for?” Adam asked, settling himself in Aziraphale’s desk chair.
Aziraphale reached for Crowley, because he had spent too long not reaching for Crowley, too long pulling back, too long making Crowley bridge the gap between them while he stayed stubbornly put. He rested his hand on Crowley’s arm, grounding himself in this world, new and continuing and inheriting all that had come before it.
“We like to think we know humanity quite well by now,” Aziraphale said, “but we are not human. Given the choice, we nearly destroyed the world because we thought that was choosing humanity.”
He glanced at Crowley, and thought of Heaven, and of leaving, and of permanence. “It sounds strange,” Aziraphale said quietly, “but sometimes you believe you are choosing something when really you’re leaving it behind.”
Crowley twitched under his hand, but maintained his nonchalant slump against one of the bookshop’s pillars.
“I tried to choose free will by not giving any of you a say,” Crowley said. “Aziraphale showed me that’s bullshit, so now the say is yours.”
“The say?” Warlock asked.
“The fate of the world,” Aziraphale said, helpfully. “Or at least humanity's place in it.”
“There’s a lot of memory in the air right now,” Crowley said. “Reality is malleable. You can carve your species’ future.”
“We could stop all the bad,” Warlock said, sitting up, radiating excitement. “Like, actually all of it.”
“No,” Adam said, and his voice echoed with the power that was his birthright. “No. We can’t- if you guys couldn’t choose for us, how is it fair for us to choose for everyone? We can’t just rearrange the universe. We can’t choose what ‘the bad’ is. That’s not fair, and it never works anyway.”
“Quite right, my dear,” Aziraphale said. “I’m afraid you wouldn’t be able to even if you tried.”
“You can’t rewrite humanity,” Crowley said. “No one has that amount of power. Even She didn’t. You can’t go against free will and win, and honestly, you shouldn’t try.”
Warlock fell back in their seat, arms crossed. “What’s the point, then?”
“The point is that humanity has been nearly ended twice by inhuman powers,” Aziraphale said. “We need your help to determine what to do about that.”
Yeshua frowned. “You want us to decide the impact of Heaven and Hell?”
Crowley nodded.
Warlock wrinkled her nose. “Why do we deserve to speak for them, if we don’t even deserve to decide for our own species?”
“I hate that word,” Yeshusa said.
At the same time, Crowley said, “useless word.”
“Alright, but seriously,” Warlock said. “You want us to decide for groups we’re not part of? And just us? None of us are even religious, not in the way most of the rest of humanity is.”
“Well, we aren’t asking the rest of humanity,” Crowley said. “We’re asking you.”
“She has a point,” Yeshua said. “We’re not enough. Why are the three of us choosing any better than the two of you choosing, other than the fact we have an extra opinion?”
“We should call Pepper,” Adam interrupted. Everyone turned to him. “She’ll analyze this stuff better than I can, and I’d want her deciding my fate, if I was an angel or a demon.”
“Agreed,” Warlock said, and Adam pulled out his phone.
Pepper picked up on the second ring. “‘Sup bitch?”
Adam and Warlock gave a quick rundown, snagging slightly on the introduction of Yeshua, who Pepper had many questions for and who had to go to another room while Adam held the phone until she agreed to focus on the task at hand for a second.
“Right,” Pepper said. “Well, it’s not going to be fair. Stop trying to make it perfectly fair, that’s impossible. You could have a person from every group on the planet, and it wouldn’t be fair. We can’t speak for humanity, we don’t have one voice, or two, or two thousand. We have eight billion.”
“It would be difficult to fit eight billion people in here,” Yeshua said.
“And lots of us make terrible choices,” Warlock said, darkly.
“Right,” Pepper said again. “See, that’s the problem with informed consent. You can’t force someone to be informed.”
“Excellent point,” Aziraphale mused. “What do you suggest, dear girl?”
Pepper sighed. “Much as I hate the intrinsic biases inherent in modern democracy and our justice systems, I think you’ve got to follow the human lead on this one.”
“Huh?” Adam said.
“A few representatives with different interests working towards a common goal,” Pepper said. “Three’s not enough. Eight billion is too many.”
“That’s quite a wide range,” Crowley said.
“What about twelve?” Yeshua asked.