Title: A Broken Hallelujah
Author: Carmarthen (caerfyrddin @ gmail.com)
Fandom/Pairing: Good Omens; Crowley/Aziraphale
Disclaimer: I only wish I were PTerry and GNeil. The boys belong to Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman and I intend no harm. I'm just having a bit of fun, so to speak. Delilah (generic demon plot device) is mine, but you can borrow her if you want her. The song "Hallelujah" was written by Leonard Cohen, but I wrote this with the Rufus Wainwright version in mind.
Rating: R for vague sex, snogging, and general unhappiness.
Spoilers: Minor spoilers for the end of Good Omens.
Summary: After the almost-Apocalypse, Crowley and Aziraphale confess certain things. This story concerns the rather unhappy results of those confessions. No happy ending. Song epigraphs, but not a songfic.
Warnings: This is slash, although of a very vague and after-the-fact nature. That means Crowley and Aziraphale, two technically sexless but male-identified beings of Hellish and Heavenly natures respectively, in love and doing rather vague but nonetheless naughty things. This story largely concerns the days after, but does have a flashback or two. No
happy ending.
Archive: Yes to CrowleysAngels and my personal site
(http://thewritegirls.populli.net/carmarthen), others ask.
Notes: I'd been wanting to write an actual Good Omens fic for a while, but somehow, aside from a couple crazy crossover ideas, the ideas never came. Then I became obsessed with the Rufus Wainwright version of the Leonard Cohen song "Hallelujah" (also covered in-between by Jeff
Buckley, before anyone feels obliged to inform me) and thought it the slashiest song I'd ever heard (until I heard Rufus Wainwright's other music, that is). The bunny bit and here's the fic. It's a songfic in the sense that lyrics from "Hallelujah" form epigraphs for the chapters, but not a songfic in the sense that said lyrics are not interposed in the text and can be safely ignored. Being as how Good Omens is a British book, I took advantage of my nice new UK English spell-checker and Britified the text. I have seen "foxed" used as a slang term for "drunk," although I believe it's fairly archaic now and means something else. Any references on such would be much appreciated. The ending may not work for some; I have an afternote to that effect.
thanks to Quiara for useful beta, particularly on paragraphing comments
to afrai for comments and help on revising the ending
and to Katy (imperfectcircle) for encouragement, reassurance, and helpful comments
I heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
Well, it goes like this: the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall and the major lift
The baffled king composing hallelujah
The girl in the flat above Aziraphale's was playing her piano again. She was a university student, Aziraphale knew, because Aziraphale knew all his neighbours, even when they did not know him. She was also a tall, slender girl with long, pale hair, who blushed when people looked at her directly and who spoke in a nearly inaudible voice.
Sometimes on the weekends her young man would visit, bringing flowers and laughter into her quiet rooms. Aziraphale had always smiled indulgently and thought blessings for them, but now he only listened to the mournful notes of the piano and stared out the window at the rain with a look of infinite sadness in his eyes.
A cup of cocoa sat cooling on the table beside him, next to a book entitled Spindle's End. Aziraphale had thought that perhaps a go at some modern literature would take his mind off things.
He had been wrong, of course.
The girl in the flat above was singing now in her thin, reedy voice. Through the ceiling Aziraphale could hear the muffled strains of an hallelujah.
Few remembered or cared to know that hallelujah was the one word of the angelic tongue that had been heard by living men. Even hallelujah was but a bare approximation, the pure tonal harmonies of angelic voices transliterated by inadequate human vocal cords.
Crowley had developed a fondness for human music, but he and Aziraphale both knew that it paled by contrast when compared to the angelic harmonies. With the Fall he had lost the hallelujah. Aziraphale had seen it during the battle, how the Fallen ones would slump a little in their once-Heavenly armour and become somehow smaller, greyer, as the hallelujah left them. Crowley never spoke of it, but Aziraphale had known, with an angel's acute sensitivity to suffering, that Crowley missed the hallelujah more than anything. The irony was that Aziraphale had not known Crowley then, one angel among the multitudes of the Host.
Aziraphale picked up his cocoa and took an absent-minded sip, realised that it was cold, and thought it warm again. The moon was just rising out his window, and Aziraphale could see into the flat across the way, where elderly Mr and Mrs Reed were eating dinner in their cosy dining room as they had every evening for the past eleven years. At times like this, Aziraphale envied mortals, with their relatively uncomplicated lives and loves.
They didn't have to think about Apocalypses and Ineffable Plans and Eternal Damnation, not unless they so chose. Technically, neither did Aziraphale, but perpetual drunkenness paled after a few hours. Besides, it was hard to keep an angel drunk.
Crowley's first slip had been so small; one moment of doubt, of question at the wrong time. Then another, larger, slip. A disagreement -- not to the Almighty's insubstantial face, no, but whispered behind His metaphorical back. The wrong friends: Azazel, Samael, Ariel. Another disagreement, louder this time.
All it took was one slip.
Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew you
She tied you to her kitchen chair
She broke your throne, she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the hallelujah
Hell had been angry. Heaven had been angry. Crowley and Aziraphale had gone to the Ritz and gotten themselves royally foxed while a nightingale sang for the first time in Berkeley Square.
They had not wanted to think about tomorrows, about what would happen to Crowley. Hell did not take disobedience lightly. And if for once the drink had loosened their tongues (not that Crowley's forked tongue wasn't loose enough already) and they spoke of things an angel and a demon with uncertain futures oughtn't to speak of, well, who could blame them? They had just narrowly averted Armageddon, after all.
"You know," Aziraphale had slurred, sending a plate sliding off the edge of the table to hover unbroken a centimetre above the ground, "When I said I liked you earlier--"
"Yeah?" Crowley's sunglasses slid down his narrow nose, threatening to fall into his angel cake.
"Never mind." Aziraphale turned his attention to his own barely-touched mango custard.
"Really, what is it, angel?" Crowley reached across the table and touched Aziraphale's cheek.
When Aziraphale looked up, he found to his surprise that Crowley's yellow eyes were gazing steadily at him over the rims of the sunglasses.
Aziraphale shivered. "I...I maybe love you, Crowley."
Crowley raised one eyebrow. "Tell me something I don't know."
Aziraphale felt his eyes widen in panic. "What?"
Crowley removed his hand from Aziraphale's face and shoved the sunglasses back up on the bridge of his nose. "You're an angel. Angels love everyone."
"Oh. Er. Well."
"Drink up, Aziraphale. We've a long evening and we're not nearly drunk enough yet."
They had not talked of such things again until later, after the Ritz closed, when they were sitting in Crowley's flat, surrounded by plants that looked considerably less cowed and considerably more carnivorous than usual. The shiny hi-fi set played Vivaldi's "Four Seasons," the sound crisp and clear despite the lack of speakers, or, indeed, an electrical connection.
At one point Crowley leaned over and whispered, "I knew what you meant, angel. Back in the Ritz. And 's okay."
And Aziraphale smiled and found himself kissing Crowley as if it were the most natural thing in all infinity.
It was too wonderful to last.
The representative from Hell showed up at Crowley's door the next morning.
"Delilah," she said, waving one pale hand, fingernails painted gunmetal black. "Bugger off, angel," she added to Aziraphale, grinning amicably and flashing pointed canines. "My business is with Crawly here."
"Crowley."
The glare Delilah turned on Crowley looked fit to melt plastic, and Aziraphale was shocked to see the usually belligerent Crowley shrink into himself.
"'Lo, Del," Crowley mumbled, looking distinctly pale.
Aziraphale put one arm around Crowley's shoulders. "I'm not leaving," he said, looking Delilah in the eyes.
One corner of her black-lipsticked mouth twitched and something red glittered deep in her eyes. "Listen to me, angel," she hissed. "There's nothing you can do, and it will really be easier on all of us if you just leave. Now."
"She's right," Crowley said, squeezing Aziraphale's hands in his. "Good-bye, angel," he whispered, and spoke the hallelujah for the last time.
Aziraphale, feeling rather like a small, rodenty animal that had just narrowly escaped being eaten by a very sadistic mountain lion, watched Crowley walk away with Delilah. He knew he would never see Crowley again.
Baby, I've been here before
I know this room, I've walked this floor
I used to live alone before I knew you
I've seen your flag on the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
Aziraphale stood in the centre of Crowley's flat. He had come in hopes of finding some memory of Crowley to comfort him, but the flat was, as always, modern and sterile and unlived-in. Crowley had stayed there, but he had never lived there.
The only remnant of Crowley left was a single plant that had somehow escaped Delilah notice. It was a tiny philodendron, almost hidden behind an elephant-shaped bookend that held up several ornate, leather-bound, and entirely blank books. Crowley hadn't been much for reading, and when he was, he had no problem reading the books.
If Aziraphale had not been an angel, he would have been furious that Delilah had not even left the plants. She had destroyed only the things that were truly Crowley's, leaving the impersonal fixtures and decor pristine. But Aziraphale was an angel, and so he only felt a great sadness as he picked up the philodendron and touched its leaves gently. Its soil looked a bit dry, so he dug around under the kitchen sink, which had no plumbing attached to it but which worked perfectly anyway, and found the green plastic plant mister Crowley always used.
"Er. Darn you, you rather undersized specimen of philodendron," Aziraphale said as he misted the plant, woefully aware that it was a poor substitute for the fear of Crowley. He had the terrible suspicion that the plant was laughing at him as it absorbed the water. As he set the philodendron on the kitchen counter, he happened to glance down. He dropped the plant mister, hardly noticing as the nozzle came off and water spilled over the floor.
A perfect circle burnt into the linoleum. In the centre, Crowley's beloved sunglasses, shattered into a thousand shards of mirrored plastic.
Aziraphale closed his eyes, swaying back against the counter for support. He had known in his heart that Crowley was gone forever, despite his attempts to convince himself otherwise. Now he could no longer pretend.
Crowley was gone. Truly gone. Not only gone, but gone to Hell, where he would be ill-received, to put it mildly.
If Aziraphale had been human, he would have felt sick. Instead, he carefully picked up the philodendron in steady hands, stepped daintily around the charred circle, and returned to the lounge. As he stood there in the middle of Crowley's modern flat, staring mindlessly at all the shining chrome and white paint and holding the pitiful little philodendron, Aziraphale began to laugh. It was a broken, crazy laugh, the laugh of one holding onto sanity by the tips of his fingernails. Aziraphale laughed for a long time. When he was done, he set the plant down on a table near the window and pulled the shade halfway up to give it a little sun. He sat down in an easy chair that had probably never been sat in, and fell into unnecessary sleep.
The dirge-like wailing of bagpipes drifted in through the window as the philodendron rustled its leaves in contentment, free of fear for the first time in its short, green life.
There was a time you let me know
What's really been going on below
But now you never show it to me, do you?
And remember when I moved in you
The holy dove was moving too
And every breath we drew was hallelujah
Like his lounge, Crowley's bedroom was also modern, elegant, and had not been lived in. The curtains were always crisp, starched, and drawn shut. If they had been opened, the mourning doves nesting outside the window would have been visible. Unlike others of their ilk, these doves were silent.
Crowley had been rather fond of the doves, but the cooing had irritated him.
Aziraphale opened the curtains, allowing the thin sunlight into the room, and unlatched the windows. With a thought, he found bread crusts in his hand. The doves came when he scattered them over the windowsill, and with another thought their soft cooing filled the air. The windblown curtains felt like a caress against Aziraphale's skin, and he closed his eyes again for a moment.
The sheets on the large, comfortable bed were always black and always made up perfectly. The bed had been used once.
An image of Crowley, pale against black silk sheets, his eyes slitted with contentment, flashed into Aziraphale's mind, and he gathered the sheets against his face. They smelled like detergent and cloth. Different sheets, and for a moment Aziraphale regretted his habit of tidiness.
Alcohol and a shared tendency to acquire human habits had combined and led to a more-or-less sober decision by Crowley and Aziraphale that maybe, for this, the human ways were best. Taking on their true forms would have been too risky, too likely to draw the attention of Above or Below. It was dangerous enough to do this at all.
As human first times went, it was average: messy, clumsy, and downright ridiculous in places, but not lacking in joy. On a metaphysical level it was far more. Aziraphale sighed as he remembered Crowley moving helplessly under him, speaking, moaning, crying out the hallelujah for the first time since his Fall, his eyes flaming golden-orange as summer.
Afterwards Crowley had kissed Aziraphale for the first time as if he meant it, as if he would crawl inside Aziraphale's skin and never come out.
They had slept in each other's arms then, not because they had to but because it was almost as good as the joining. Even as he drifted off to a dreamless sleep, Aziraphale was aware of a shining thread of being connecting him to Crowley. It was still new, still weak, but he had assumed in his hopeful, blind faith that they would have the rest of eternity to strengthen it.
Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot at someone who outdrew you
And it's not a cry you can hear at night
It's not somebody who's seen the light
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
Sometimes Aziraphale wondered about God. He knew God existed, for angels cannot doubt that, but he wondered if God was still watching, if God still cared. Sometimes he thought that God must have left, moved on to another plane of existence and left the angels to patch up the gaps, or, more often, widen them.
Most of the time Aziraphale felt secure in the knowledge that God was there and God was love. He was an angel, after all, made to worship and adore. Doubt did not come naturally to him. Those who doubted Fell, and Aziraphale did not want to Fall.
But now Crowley was gone, and no matter how much Aziraphale wanted him back, he knew Crowley would never return from Hell. And because Aziraphale was an angel and knew perfect delight, he could also imagine all too well the torments Crowley would suffer. Aziraphale had discovered the pain of love directed not at the Universe but at an individual.
In the stories, Aziraphale would have ridden into Hades on a white stallion, clad in shining raiment and wielding a flaming sword, to rescue his beloved. But this was no story, Aziraphale's flaming sword was long gone, and angels could not enter Hell without special dispensation from the Almighty. Aziraphale could petition for a special dispensation to rescue his demon lover from Hell's own justice, but that would be a fool's quest. Aziraphale smiled grimly.
So he sat in his darkened flat and stared out the window at the rainy night. At one point he buried his head in his hands and his shoulders shook with tearless sobs. Angels are meant to be beings of praise and worship. They cannot weep, no matter how much they wish to.
Then he turned to the table, calmly picked up his book, and began to read. The cocoa beside him steamed.
From somewhere far away came the sound of someone singing hallelujah.
Aziraphale looked up, set down his book again, and thought very hard.
Doe pointed out, after I finished the story, that Aziraphale would have tried to rescue Crowley, hopeless as this might be. I thought about this, concluded that she was right, and then agonized over how to fix that without entirely rewriting the ending. I didn't want a happy ending, I didn't want to write a hopeless rescue attempt. Then Afrai said that her impression of Aziraphale in this story is of him being in shock, stunned. I thought about this, concluded she was right (wishful thinking?), and with that in mind, made some small changes to the ending to make it more open-ended. Aziraphale is in shock in this story; it's not like the almost-Apocalypse this time. It's personal. Perhaps later he'll ride, or walk, or saunter into Hell, but right now he's too stunned to do anything but grieve. I think even Aziraphale should be allowed grief.
Of course, if this doesn't work for you, please feel free to tell me. I'm open to advice and suggestion.
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