For the prompt thing "I'll carry you if i have to!"
Also published on my Ao3.
Hours after the crucifixion, Crowley sits on the edge of a potter’s field with no memory of how she got there. The dirt is baking-hot beneath her, the dying sunlight a suffocating weight on her shoulders. She is scorched through and through, but still her heart is a cold stone in her breast.
Crowley stares out across the field. A vast, lifeless expanse of dirt and dead grass, unloved and unmourned. Thirty silver pieces purchased this plot: the price of one man’s lifeblood. One man hangs dead from a cross and another hangs dead from a tree, and this godforsaken spit of land is all that’s left between them.
Crowley grits her teeth, throat tight, eyes stinging. She has not yet surrendered to weeping, not after Sodom and Gomorrah, not after the Flood. She will not surrender now.
A presence feathers across the edges of her senses: a light, gossamer brush. “There you are. I thought I had lost you.”
Crowley shakes her head. “Go away, angel.”
“Crowley.” Softly, kindly. Tenderly carving her apart. “Where will you go now?”
I don’t know, she thinks. Maybe I won’t go anywhere. Maybe I’ll sit here until my body returns to the dirt. Join all those poor fools in the field.
“Crowley.”
“Angel.” A rasping scrape of sound. “Leave me be.”
Aziraphale is silent for a long moment. Then, just when Crowley thinks he may have gone, his fingers brush her shoulder. She stiffens. “Aziraphale. Don't.”
“You shouldn't be alone right now,” Aziraphale says. “Please. I… I have a room at an inn. Come with me.”
Crowley wants to snap and cut and cast him off, but the weight smothers her words. She is inert, limp and cast into deep waters, and the touch on her shoulder is a lifeline just within reach.
Crowley doesn’t know what she wants – to hold on with all her might, or to let the line slip through her fingers. Let herself sink.
Perhaps Aziraphale senses her indecision, for, with a hearty dose of no-nonsense briskness, he says, “I will carry you, you know. If I have to.”
She tries to laugh, really she does, but it comes out raw. Lifting her head, she pushes back her hair and swallows past the threat of tears. It’s this weak body, she thinks, this mortal shell with its hammering heart and salt-choked throat. She hates it.
“Right,” she manages. “We don’t want you embarrassing yourself, after all.”
The barest hint of a smile. “That’s the spirit.”
Crowley follows the angel away from the potter’s field, but still it lingers in her mind. The dusty odor of grave dirt. The stalks of grass, brittle as desiccated bones.
They go to a small, quiet inn on the outskirts of Jerusalem, passing strangers unseen and unremarked. Aziraphale ushers Crowley into a stuffy room – scarcely bigger than a broom cupboard – and closes the door. A candle lights at a flick of his fingers. He leads her to a little cot and sits, patting the spot beside him. His voice is gentle but firm. “Lie down. You look wretched.”
Under normal circumstances, Crowley might have made a joke, but she cannot dredge up the energy. She sits. The weight is still upon her, deadening her to the world.
A memory comes to her, unbidden – a man who lived and died hundreds of years ago. A man whose strength was shorn by the woman he loved. The candlelight dances orange and yellow across Aziraphale’s still face, his unblinking stare.
The weight is pushing Crowley down, crushing her. She can’t breathe – you don’t need to breathe, you blighted fool – and suddenly her shoulders are shaking, sobs clawing up from deep in her chest, and her vision blurs, and she is weeping for the first time since the world began. Her lungs are full of water and she is drowning.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale murmurs. His arms are around her, keeping her in one piece. “Dear girl, dear girl…”
He says little else until her tears are spent, until she has sobbed herself into exhaustion. When she is done, she miracles a pair of shears into a trembling hand. The metal gleams in the yellow light as she offers it to Aziraphale.
The angel’s fingers are gentle as they run through her hair, nails rasping faintly on her scalp. With each snip of the shears, a hank falls away. The weight eases. Snip. A silver piece tumbles upwards, back into a Pharisee’s hand. Snip. A rope slithers off a tree branch. Snip. A bloody nail falls, a wound knits together. Snip. Aziraphale is slow and methodical. Reverential. His thumb brushes the shell of Crowley’s ear.
“There,” the angel says. The candle has burned down low.
Crowley straightens and touches a hand to the nape of her—no, his neck. He shivers. “You forget how it feels,” he says, feeling Aziraphale’s gaze on him.
“It’s a bit of a botched job,” Aziraphale says, apologetic.
“It’ll do.”
“Stay here tonight.” Aziraphale fiddles absentmindedly with a coil of red hair. “You needn’t be alone.”
Later, in the dark, he asks, “Where will you go?”
Crowley knows where he’s meant to go – Hell has bound him for Rome, but he has no stomach for the Colosseum, the lions rending prisoners for sport. Be kind to each other. What a laugh. “Dunno. Maybe Germania. I can foment unrest among the beserkers.”
Aziraphale hums, but the careful aversion of his gaze is eloquent enough. You’re running away, you old serpent. “Just as well. I would take care if I were you. The Romans will be there soon enough.”
Crowley makes no response. For hours, he tries to sleep, but he cannot quiet his thoughts. When dawn stretches the first pale rays of light over Jerusalem, Crowley gives up and rises without a sound. He goes to the door.
“Be careful,” Aziraphale murmurs, softly. So softly it might have been a sigh of the wind outside. Crowley hesitates for the briefest moment before opening the door and slipping out.
There are whispers, later, rumors that penetrate even the wild pine forests of Germania.
Jesus of Nazareth has come back to life.
No, his Apostles stole the body to fool people into thinking he had returned.
He is alive.
He is dead.
He is gone.
Crowley brushes each aside and tempts the beserkers to wrath, felling Roman soldiers like wheat beneath the scythe.
And then, a whisper: An angel rolled away the stone in front of the tomb, then sat on it.
Of all the rumors, Crowley believes that one without a shadow of doubt. It’s such a little thing, really, but it’s so plainly Aziraphale that it must be true. Of all the angels in Heaven, only one would carry out an impressive feat and then cock it up so completely by squandering it.
Crowley can practically hear Aziraphale wheezing as he plops down on the stone. “I’ll be with you in just a moment, dear ladies, I only need to catch my breath…”
Deep in the harsh, pitiless wilds of an untamed land, Crowley laughs for what feels the first time in millennia. He runs a finger through his close-cropped hair. His heart is light.
