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[a_fell]

I.

They arrive in Iceland in near-darkness concealing a dense, freezing fog that gives way to low clouds once outside of Reykjavik. It's a long drive to the tiny village of Laugarvatn, 70 miles in the blackness, and when they finally reach the place they're spending the night (to call it a hotel would imply there are more than six rooms), they're too tired to do more than kick their shoes off before falling into bed.

The next morning isn't much of a morning; it's lightening by the time Crowley is conscious enough to get out of bed with some prompting from the angel, fully daylight after he gets through the shower, and it doesn't take much longer than that to get the lay of the land. The town has 300 people, a post office, grocery store, restaurant, and not much tourism in the winter. It's hard to stay under the radar in such a place, so the few hours of daylight are spent asking quietly for the best sites to see the aurora and watching the cloudy skies, tense and dark. The sun, never far above the horizon, sinks slowly into a hesitant twilight. And then it's time to go.

The jeep-shaped vehicle they borrow from the nice gentleman at the (surprisingly open) tourist office bumps along over patches of rock and ice and who knows what else; Aziraphael is less than comfortable with what they might be rolling over with 'adventure' style suspension and no visible road. The headlamps illuminate a small patch of sameness directly in front, and the rest of the world around them is an unknowable black. All the ground that he can see is a grayish white dotted with darker patches of jutting rock. The heat blasting in the vehicle is just short of oppressive, but Crowley's face behind the wheel is grim and uncomfortable. Aziraphael tries moving one hand to the edge of Crowley's seat so that the side of his finger brushes the material of the demon's trousers, but he can't tell whether Crowley actually notices.

"I think the clouds might be lightening up," he says encouragingly. "I'm almost certain I saw a star or two over there."

Comments

[aj_crawley]

It doesn't all register at once. First, distantly, the sound of Aziraphael's voice, and then the fact that the angel is not beside him.

It's only when Crowley turns to look for him, and sees him still standing there by the jeep, that -

The first thing that flickers across his face is confusion. Bewilderment, even, that Aziraphael should not even be looking at the sky; should instead be standing there asking such a deeply, stupidly banal question.

The second is hurt.

The third is contempt.

"Everything's fine," he says coldly, and - just a little - indistinctly.

(He's standing in a patch of slush, but he can't feel his lips.)

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

"All right," he says, bewildered again. "Er. Let me know if you're too cold."

But Crowley isn't in any mood to let him know, apparently, so while Aziraphael turns his attention back to the wonder in the sky, he glances down at Crowley every few minutes. Just to make sure.

The wonder of this - of Creation - will never cease to amaze him. He can see neither the beginning of the ribbon of light, nor the end of it, but that doesn't stop him from trying.

"I wonder what it looks like from above," he muses aloud.

[aj_crawley]

Crowley bites it back (We'll find out, soon enough, not that you - ).

Because he doesn't want to say it.

He doesn't want to say it for the same reason he didn't want to look - as though it might, somehow, keep it from being real for just a little while longer.

Not that Aziraphael seems to -

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

It's for the best, maybe, that Crowley doesn't mention it; he doesn't like to think that way, and is stubbornly clinging to the idea that it will all work out somehow.

Someday, of course, he'll be proven wrong.

"Or from inside it," he adds, wide-eyed. "Perhaps it's like a rainbow, though, and only visible from far away."

He learnt that lesson early on about rainbows. Eventually.

[aj_crawley]

There's a ringing in Crowley's ears.
There's something in the air.
He doesn't care, Crowley says to the sky, from somewhere behind the great, fierce constriction in his chest. He doesn't care, but I do.
It's more pure than Heaven. It's more merciless than Hell.
Who was it that he first heard say it? Simon, maybe. He can't remember, except for this: five hundred years from now, they call it Earth-That-Was.
It's a compound, comprised of honesty, and belief.
He can't feel his fingers, or his feet. Only his chest, and the bright, impossible colours in the sky, and the clear flash of understanding.
In fact, of faith in something.
( I set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be the sign of a Covenant )
A great crackling white (White) force looking for something to be grounded in.
Above Crowley's head, the aurora flickers, flickers, and then - for a second, and only that - it flares, as straight and true as an arrow, east to west, streaming off beyond the edge of the world.
Even a tyre iron.
Five hundred years. How long does that give them? (Times are changing. They're coming to an end, for a start.) Only time, Crowley says to the sky. Only give me time.
Even a demon.
They (won) will win. Crowley knows that already. He has five hundred years to make it happen. And as for Earth-That-Was?

( and it will be the sign of a Covenant )

All floods recede eventually.

And that's a promise.

All Crowley has to do is save the world.

(Again.)
( come come commala )

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Aziraphael takes a few steps away from the jeep (though in a different direction). He's not too particular about which; only that he's following the stream and he can keep Crowley in sight.

"Could fly up there and see," he muses in a low mutter, "but it's really too cold for that sort of thing. Freezing the wings isn't... isn't."

He hesitates. Looks up again, and keeps looking.

[aj_crawley]

He barely hears it in the first place. But it's the pause. That's what makes him glance over, checking to make sure Aziraphael hasn't taken off to investigate.

(For just a moment, he contemplates - )

( come and see )

"No," he agrees, voice rough from the cold.

He folds his arms, tight across his chest, to tuck his hands under his armpits.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

He's still staring at the sky when he hears it; it takes a moment for him to refocus on Crowley.

"Wouldn't make it," he says. "Most likely. Still."

He looks back again, frowning very slightly. "Still."

[aj_crawley]

Crowley's boots crunch over the ice: one two, one two, onetwo (a little erratic), one two.

"'F you want."

Sometime in the last few seconds, he's put his sunglasses back on.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

"It would be miles and miles up," he points out, still half to himself. He hears the slight hitch in Crowley's step, but doesn't say anything. Not yet, at any rate.

"It's quite possible that even if I did make it that far, it would disappear."

[aj_crawley]

He shrugs (not much of a movement, except for the muted rustle of his coat), and looks back up at the light.

A single breath mists in the air in front of him.

"Beats me."

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

He blinks at the light, steady for now, and then back at Crowley. His eyes are blinded by the afterimage at first, so it takes some adjustment.

"Would you stay in the car," he asks hesitantly, "while I'm gone? I don't know how long it will take."

[aj_crawley]

"No."



His movements are a little slow, a half-second behind. He looks back at Aziraphael with a black, searching gaze, reflected light shimmering across the dark glass.

"If you want," he says instead. More carefully, this time - more clearly.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

He shifts a little uncomfortably.

"I'll know you're all right if you're in there," he says. "What else did you have in mind?"

[aj_crawley]

"I meant - "

He looks down at the shimmering ice under their feet, and then back up. There's something frail hovering around the edges of his expression, something -

"If you wanted to go alone. I'd wait in the car."

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

"Oh," he breathes.



"I don't have to go alone, but. I could."

Terrible flashes of possibilities - hypothermia, frozen limbs, and worse - pop into his head and are immediately suppressed.

"Do you want to go?"

[aj_crawley]

Whatever it is - whatever it was tinging Crowley's expression, it's seeping away, leaving only a dull, grey frustration in its place.

"I'll wait," he says. "Do what you like. I'll - " he stumbles over his words a bit; simply jerks his head towards the jeep instead. "Wait."

He turns on his heel, before Aziraphael can start to argue the point.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

Aziraphael watches him silently until he's sure that the footsteps crunching over the ice are bringing Crowley towards the jeep. He stares upward again at the tempting, shifting ribbon of green light, tendrils filtering straight down as though through water. Miles and miles. He hears the car door close.

"I'll be back as soon as I can," he says, though it's unlikely that anyone can hear him. There's a rustling sound as his coat arranges itself around newly-manifested wings. It's a trick he learned from watching Crowley; only a small cheat, but he feels it's going to be necessary as he takes off.

[aj_crawley]

The engine's still running (of course), and the heater's still on (of course); the sudden, solid wave of heat is almost painful on Crowley's icy skin. A rough jerk of his hand flips the headlights on, and he winces into the glare.






He thumps the wheel once, twice, then scrubs his face with shaking hands.






When he can close his fingers around the knob to turn it, he tips his seat back a few degrees - the better to rest his forehead against the window, and watch Aziraphael grow smaller against the light.

(Why he thinks the angel won't freeze up and fall out of the sky if he's watching him, Crowley doesn't rightly know. But there you go.)

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

It’s even longer than he’d expected. Up and up and up and up. He’s been half-prepared for this to be a disappointing illusion, some trick of refraction that appears farther away the harder he tries to approach it. To his surprise, the lights do seem to get closer, but the process is achingly slow. After a while the air grows thinner, and once he reaches a point where beating his wings against it hardly keeps him aloft, he gives another wink to logic and gravity so that he can continue.

There’s no boundary that he crosses, per se, but at some point he slows from the breakneck (and unlikely, if he’d been bound by physics) pace he’s set thus far. There are colours standing out strongly to the east and west, and above him he can see black sky through the glowing mist. The ribbon’s edge that appeared so sharp-edged from below is here much less solid, like a cloud that seems so much more than a collection of water droplets until one is inside.

The perspective doesn’t make it any less impressive, however. With some relief, he follows the course of the aurora now, moving slowly and gaping into a glowing fog. His eyes can’t seem to take in enough of it, and he keeps pausing to turn in different directions. He’s used to seeing incredible things in the natural world, in human nature, even in things created by human hands. But being in the centre of a physical manifestation of raw Creation, stunning and so much larger than himself, and simply a part of Earth’s natural spectacle... well, miraculous is the best word he has for it. The little tweaks that got him here barely even register. It’s a pulse of life, the lights shifting around him. He feels a part of a celestial dance usually reserved for the stars.

It’s glorious. Ineffable.

[aj_crawley]

It was Aziraphael, the first time. Who chided him gently out of his car with a tyre iron in his hand, who shook the other and walked with him to face the end of all things.

Crowley doesn't understand.

All things. Maybe that's the difference. Angels love all things. One man, or another. One planet, or another.

(It's warm in the car, and cold outside. His slow breath fogs on the window, misting the aurora into a single shimmering cloud in front of him.)

They love all things under Himself.

(They love all things, below Himself.)

T h e y  -  w e l l ,  t h e y ' r e  a n g e l s

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

It's the sound of the passenger door opening that jolts him back to the present, and a very cold angel climbs in. Aziraphael is windblown and wide-eyed and half-laughing, and there are tears frozen on his cheeks which begin to melt as soon as he gets in range of the heat inside, closing the door against the cold.

"Crowley," he gasps, his face shining. "Crowley, it's - oh, it's like it's alive. Not really alive, you know what I mean, but it's moving, and there's light above and below and everywhere you look, and it's like there's a glowing road stretching out in front of you, and it goes on forever, I think it's a circle, and there's just - there's nothing like it, anywhere, I feel like I've put my hand on the pulse of the whole world."

He pauses for an unnecessary breath, beaming.

[aj_crawley]

"Wuh," Crowley says, sunglasses half-askew on his face. "Hm? What?"

He feels heavy. Like he could sleep for days. But there's something, there's something in Aziraphael's tone, an urgency, that keeps him trying to focus his eyes.

[a-fell.livejournal.com]

He laughs again - or sort of laughs through his chattering teeth - right up until he reminds himself that all this shivering really isn't necessary.

"The aurora. From the inside, it's." He shakes his head, and fresh tears threaten to replace the ones thawing on his cheeks.

"It was worth the trip."

[aj_crawley]

Something something pulse of the whole world, and what (Crowley finally pushes himself upright on one elbow) silly bugger put his seat back?

When he tries to rub his eyes, he dislodges his sunglasses, swears fuzzily as they bounce from his lap to the floor, and then notices that Aziraphael's eyes are red. And that there are wet trails on his face that only start halfway down his cheeks.