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It was very strange, Aziraphale found, to see his own corporation housing his best friend’s essence.
The person inside the body presently sprawled on the awkwardly grandiose living room throne was, without a doubt, Crowley.
And yet, the body itself was equally unmistakably Aziraphale’s. The same corporation he had taken such care to tailor to his comfort and preferences over the years — whatever Gabriel or Sandalphon might have had to say about that comfort and preferences. The face (wisely chosen, or so he very much hoped) was Aziraphale’s face; the clothes were his clothes; the hands with the well-manicured fingernails were his own hands; even the faintly noticeable cologne was the precise same scent recently recommended by his barber.
Looking at Crowley in this shape felt like looking into a mirror.
Except for the fact that when Aziraphale actually did cautiously look into the mirror hanging on the wall, it was Crowley he saw staring back at him. And that was stranger still.
To his own surprise, he shivered.
“Angel?” came a voice from the direction of the throne. Aziraphale’s voice; Crowley’s inflection.
Aziraphale saw the Crowley-in-the-mirror jump, then carefully turned. He managed an uneasy smile, and felt facial features that were almost but not quite familiar working to persuasively form the expression. “Shouldn’t I be the one calling you that now?”
“Nghhh.” And that noise was one hundred percent Crowley, no matter the shape of the mouth with which it was spoken. Aziraphale felt an obscure sense of relief as the nose currently in use by the demon wrinkled expressively. “Nah. Definitely not. I mean, yeah, I’ll remember not to say it outside where someone might hear. But I’m still not an angel. And you’re still… you.”
A simple statement, that, and an obvious one; so very obvious, and casually spoken to boot.
Yet for all that, Aziraphale felt his — or Crowley’s? — eyes widen behind the dark glasses perched on his nose as the words, and all their significance, sank in.
Still me.
The thing was, Aziraphale had had more than his fill of identity crises for the day, both physical and ideological.
His longest-lasting and most important relationship — one of the few positive constants in his life throughout the millennia — had come to a bitter and permanent end, or so he had thought at the time. He’d lost his corporation, the physical embodiment to which he had become far more attached than a proper angel was supposed to be. He’d expressly, publicly, irrevocably broken ranks with his Side, the framework within which his entire existence to date had been premised. He’d spent a brief period existing as an incorporeal spirit. He’d been in and out of the heads of strange humans in Australia, in Haiti, in America… only to end up possessing (or, as he preferred to think of it, sharing) the body of a woman who took her tea with two lumps of sugar.
He’d let go of some of the certainties that had always given him the strength to go on, and somehow found the strength beyond it to turn other certainties on their head.
And now, having finally regained his own corporation, having had just enough time to start tasting the concept of Their Own Side and nowhere near enough time to start figuring out what that meant for him, here he was once again in a shape belonging to somebody who was not Aziraphale.
It wasn’t a stranger’s body this time, at least; Crowley’s was a corporation he knew and loved. Indeed, he was honored to be trusted with its care. But the fact remained that it was still not Aziraphale’s body.
And yet… his voice, Crowley’s words, echoed in the flat. You’re still you.
The demon was still staring at him, one hand lifted questioningly, perhaps beginning to look concerned at the lack of response.
Slowly, experimentally at first and then more comfortably, Aziraphale smiled again. It felt more genuine the longer it went on.
He stretched, serpentine back muscles moving oddly, and let the slightest of miracles flow over the fabric at his throat. He didn’t have to look at the mirror to picture the stylish tartan now lining the inside of the collar.
Subtle, secret. A little bit of Aziraphale, to carry with him into Hell and — if all went as planned, and he was not willing to contemplate the alternative — out again. Proof, for his own sake if to go unnoticed by anybody else, that he was and would remain himself.
He reached out and took the upraised hand. Their fingers interlaced smoothly, plump and narrow, fitting together with as much ease as ever.
“I suppose, my dear boy,” he said, and felt the weight of the words as the linked hands squeezed each other, “you’re right. We’re still… us.”