Chapter Text
The Garden of Eden
4004 b.c.
Thunder rumbled ominously and loudly. The dark clouds which had been gathering all day on the horizon finally climbed overhead. Aziraphale stared after Adam and Eve as they shrank farther away, the flaming sword glinting like a lighthouse beacon. Or it would have, if lighthouses and beacons had yet been invented. The wind picked up, cold after the hot desert air and baking sun. Next to him, the demon called Crawly shivered.
Aziraphale was first and foremost a guard: God had put him on Earth to protect the Eastern Gate of Eden. But now the people he’d protected from the outside world were gone from within its high walls, and with them, his purpose. So he'd given them his sword. He couldn't protect them anymore, not like he had done, but he could at least help them to help themselves. It was the best he could do.
It didn't feel like enough.
The first fat drops of rain fell, and Crawly shifted slightly. Aziraphale immediately, and without considering why, stretched his left wing as high and wide as he could. Crawly shuffled under, not saying anything, but with a look on his face that seemed grateful, and not a little surprised. Aziraphale decided not to analyze it all overly much. He laced his fingers together and turned his eyes back to the last few glints of the sword.
They stood together for a long time, the angel and the demon. The storm kicked up, wind whipping their robes about their ankles. Cold water drummed onto Aziraphale, flattening his curls, dripping down his back, soaking him all over. His wing held steady, shedding water so that Crawly stayed dry. Neither of them spoke. The sword, and with it the two humans, disappeared behind a sand dune.