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I forgive you
Something shattered inside Crowley.
He stood there in the midst of the crowd near the bookstore waiting desperately for his angel to approach him one last time, but Aziraphale didn't even glance at him. He didn't even look. He didn't even turn around when he ascended to Heaven, leaving Crowley behind in solitude.
Nothing lasts forever
Crowley didn't even notice how he got into the car, gripping the steering wheel like a drowning man. He was truly drowning, drowning and burning alive from within. If this was his curse, then even for a curse, it was too much.
Throughout the centuries, Crowley had believed, hoped, had the hope that there was something more between them, that Aziraphale could respond to his feelings. Crowley desperately wanted to believe that Aziraphale didn't care that little. But the truth was bitter and cruel.
It should have been understood earlier. He should have remembered all those times when Aziraphale spoke with undisguised disdain about who Crowley is.
Well, obviously, you’re a demon
Certainly, the angel considered him sick, crippled, wrong. Of course, he wanted Crowley to "recover" and become an angel again. Could Crowley blame him for it? Could Crowley blame his angel for anything at all?
The voice on the radio station, which Crowley didn't even bother to turn on, was talking about an unexpected storm with thunder along the entire coast. It was what he had coming. It would have been harder to endure with sunshine outside.
Crowley slammed the pedal and sped somewhere far away from Soho and London, without looking back. The speed brought tears to his eyes, and he couldn't see any traffic lights or other cars.
Of course, the speed.
You go too fast for me, Crowley.
He tried. He tried to be slow. He should have understood back then that it wasn't about the speed. It had always been about who he was. It had always been about who he could never be again.
***
In the trunk of his Bentley, small vials of holy water were carefully concealed. His personal insurance. It had worked wonders with Ligur, although it had brought even more trouble afterward. He was so grateful to the angel for the thermos, but he understood that it would never be enough. He could never shake free from him.
"I just wanted him to help me, to care"
"he WASN'T indifferent. Aziraphale was worried that you were going to end it all"
In the end, he was right.
It wasn't the first time Crowley had thought about suicide. Thoughts of how to stop the relentless pain had been with him long before their meeting in the Garden of Eden. It had always been there. But there was an angel by his side. Crowley felt like he had someone there with him.
Friends? We’re not friends
But now, Crowley knew that Aziraphale never truly considered him a friend, only a disgraceful reminder of someone who had genuine significance for him. For the sake of that someone, Aziraphale tolerated Crowley, treated him with disdain and condescension.
I don’t even like you
Obviously, he hadn't deserved anything in this world. Perhaps that was Her answer. Clearly.
The water he had requested was indeed his insurance. It was insurance against eternal torment and hellish agonies that undoubtedly awaited him. It was the only way to end it all one day.
Forever.
And today, that day had come.
***
Once, Crowley wanted to say something to the angel like "I'd be happy to die by your hands" and see his reaction. But Crowley never said it, not once, because he was afraid of hurting him. He was even more afraid to hear the response that one day the angel would have to kill him.
There is no our side, Crowley! Not anymore! It’s over
Their sides had never truly existed; Crowley had simply invented them. It had always been a choice between Hell and Heaven. There had always been a need to choose. But Crowley didn't want to play that game without hearing what Aziraphale had to say.
It was never a game.
***
"Leave this message on the answering machine at that blasted bookstore in Soho."
Aziraphale didn't have an answering machine at his bookstore. Technically, he no longer had a bookstore. And technically, Aziraphale himself was no longer there either.
There was nothing left.
Nothing lasts forever
But still, he has to do it, for himself.
Crowley speaks. He speaks and speaks, pressing the phone to his ear, alternating between whispers and shouts. He grips the Bentley's steering wheel with one hand, as if it will give him courage. It's funny. Crowley was never brave.
"...I wish you'd understand me, even just once…"
But he speaks the whole truth, and for some reason, tears sting his eyes so painfully that he throws his glasses out the window. There's no more hiding.
"...And I love you."
Crowley utters the words that have burned in his throat for centuries.
He leaves the message, thinking about his plants, now planted in the botanical garden. He thinks about them, about the damn M25 or London Orbital Motorway about the unimaginably distant Nebula and the tiny photograph taken by the damned Furfur in the cursed 1941.
At least after Crowley will leave more behind than after Ligur.
Crowley presses the gas pedal and accelerates rapidly, throwing the phone out the window. And that's it.
In the end, everything truly becomes so light.
***
Bentley crashes into the church gates, tearing off the hinges.
***
If you're left without hope and answers for six thousand years, if you're punished so brutally and horrifically that no one deserves it, if in response to your most desperates scream, you hear ineffable silence... then what is truly left for you?
Only a tiny, all-encompassing, boundless hope and love that you can invest in a single being that once treated you kindly after all the suffering.
And that was everything.
There's always a limit to what one can endure and what becomes impossible to endure.
There's always a threshold beyond which even the fear of the unknown of death simply disappears.
There's always something after which you just want to cease to exist.
Here it is.
For six thousand years, Aziraphale had been by his side only to fix him, to heal him. For six thousand years, Aziraphale had been there only for the sake of a past that Crowley couldn't even remember.
All those six years, their meetings, their words, those touches and glances, all of it meant something only to Crowley. How blindly he believed that it truly meant something.
There was only one truth - Aziraphale didn't love him, not even a bit.
Crowley closed his mouth to stifle choking sobs. On his lap lay the thermos with holy water.
I knew the angel you were.
All those years, all their interactions had truly been about that.
He hadn't even been lying. He hadn't even been lying to him from the very beginning. That's why it was even worse.
"He loved, LOVED that angel, the one I could never become and could never be again. Everything in me is just a disgusting reminder to him of his beloved. All of me is his pain and longing for his love, a futile hope that something can be fixed. Everything in me is broken, poisoned, unforgivable."
Crowley opens the thermos lid with trembling hands. Something fragile and pitiful deep within his soul coils in fear. But then, emptiness quickly sets in.
Maybe this was the ineffable intention all along?
Crowley lifts the eyes upwards and freezes, no longer expecting to hear any response.
Of course, he hears nothing.
He closes his half-blind serpentine demonic eyes and pours the holiest water over himself.