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Outside, the sky rumbles, a crack of light slicing through the grey-blue clouds, swollen with rain.
Aziraphale stares at his plate, his shoulders sagging a little at the prospect. Pottage. Pottage yet again. He really should dwindle his expectations when it comes to food; particularly at this side of the Channel. Aziraphale takes a spoonful and altogether shuts his taste buds off. Alas, no frivolous miracles to spare and no demon in the vicinity to thwart into miracling his morsel into something scrummier. He sighs and sets to the task to clean his bowl, toying with the idea that once Crowley comes back from Truro, they both could go to the south of France.
To sojourn next to the sea, watching the waves and revel in the salt-filled air. Aziraphale wonders if Crowley would enjoy the breeze, would enjoy the oysters as he did in Rome. They still have time, a decade or so before any of them gets summoned.
Just a little trip. Nothing fancy, something simple. An extent of the Arrangement, he will say, just business as it's always been.
Watch the birds. See the sun beams turn red into gold. Amber to liquid fire.
Bugger .
It never is.
The door of the inn swats open and a cloaked figure strides in. Wobbly legs. An axe perched at their back.
Aziraphale blinks. The axe. He forgets the pottage, not a hard task, and trudges forward. It's been ages, two ages. His heart swells with fondness.
“Andy? Dear, is that you?” he says, sitting next to her.
She throws back her hood and smirks, but her eyes don't follow through. “Hey, Az-Aziraphale, can’t say I’m not damn glad to see you.” Her hair is long, clumped in places with coal, mud, blood and grime. There's a gash over her left brow already mending, a constellation of purple nebulas over her neck.
“Oh, good lord. You look positively dreadful.”
“You don’t look so bad yourself.”
They've crossed paths before, enough times to know she's probably decanting the scale in a way Heaven wouldn't approve. Doing a job that should've been his. He tucks the guilt, neatly away as he always does.
“What are you doing here?"
The answer dies in a grimace as she clutches her side. "It doesn't get easier," she breathes as an apology. “You’d think I’d be somewhat more resilient but perish that thought I guess.”
A few people crane their necks. Eyes glinting at the light of the hearth; inquisitive, apprehensive, borderline hostile.
“I think- I think it’d be better if we go up to my room," he says glancing at the inn keeper and snapping his fingers. Humans are particularly wary of anything they consider untoward and watching a woman reconstitute open gouges on herself might just tick that box.
“Do you have a room here?”
“I have one now,” he says, apologetically.
She gives him a crooked smile, but says nothing. They climb the stairs in silence. On edge. Aziraphale doesn't know why but he feels as if balancing at the line of dread. That same feeling that soaks him when he thinks of Heaven. Of Heaven and Crowley.
Crowley so far away. He bites his lip and clenches his fist.
Once in the room, Andy sags unceremoniously on a chair and unties her muddied cloak, let’s go of her axe that clunks against the hardwood floor. She takes off her boots and tosses them to a side, sprawling in a way that would give Crowley a run for his money.
Aziraphale bussies himself grabbing a cloth and a washbasin, pouring water from a jug on a nightstand and kneels beside her.
“Are- are your feet charred?” he exclaims in horror, rubbing the washcloth over her face, her arms and her hair.
“Nngh. Probably. They were very thorough. It's taking me forever to heal and hurts like a motherf--" she trails off biting her lip when Aziraphale presses on the gash at her side.
“You know? You should ask Crowley to teach you how to deal with singed feet. Quite the expert he is by now.”
Her face, knotted in pain, relaxes just so. “Where is that sorry excuse of a demon, anyway?”
Aziraphale tuts, chastising, but his words are warm with fondness. “Up in Truro, doing something. I can’t tell you what, I’m afraid.”
“Tying people’s shoelaces together and calling it demonic?”
Aziraphale soaks the cloth and wrings it, staining the water red. Like the Nile, thousands of years ago. “That does sound like something he would do, rather.”
She chuckles her pain away as he rubs the soles of her feet, dragging the ashes and leaving seared skin in its wake.
“So, where’s Miss Quynh?" Aziraphale asks, now shifting his attention to her left foot. The skin there is almost pristine again. "Is she going to join you here? I believe she had a bet to settle with Crowley. Something regarding--”
“Ducks. Yeah. She told me," Andy says, her voice now gravel-rough, a sharp edge in her words. He finally sees , or perhaps, she finally allows it. Her eyes are red-rimmed, two heavy and haunted things.
“Andromache, what’s wrong?”
There's a twitch in her jaw as she clasps his hand vice-tight. “You need to help me find her. I've tried and I've tried-- Nicky and Joe can only do so much.”
“What are you talking about, dear?”
She exhales a shuddery breath, some of the agony bleeding from the line of her shoulders. "Tossed to the sea in a fucking coffin," she says tersely, with a pitch that encompassess a lot more than she's saying. "Only three days ago."
“That’s-- That’s horrifying-- despicable!” he yelps. Echoing in the unlit room, coarse.
“You needn’t tell me. I was there. It’s all so fucked up,” she says, standing and making her wobbly way to the pitcher of water. She drinks it all before continuing. “And they claim they’re doing it because God or Heaven or some other shit.” Her shoulders sag. When she speaks she’s almost pleading. Almost . A whiplash of a pleading. “Heaven should do something about it!”
Aziraphale feels too small. Recoils back a step. “Dear, I know, and perhaps they would if they knew but they don’t-”
“But they do know, Aziraphale,” Andy says, softly.
“Wh-”
“You. You know and you should do something. These are your charges, killing each other. Murdering and mangling and a fuckton of other things you already know.”
“We’ve talked about this,” he says, preparing to expound an argument that’s worn-smooth. It’s the same quandary that always radiates between him and Crowley. The one that makes his heart thunder and his hands sweat. “It’s not as easy as all that. I can’t intervene. The gift of-”
“Yeah, yeah. Free will,” she bristles. “Doesn’t sound much like a gift. More like a well crafted curse. And believe me I’d know.”
The rain patters against the windows, too clear in the silence that follows. .
“You do know, I’m going to help you find her, right?” There. A small mercy. “And I know Crowley will say the same.”
Andy gives him a nod and a small smile, some of the grief easing from the lines of her face. She sneaks a glance at the street below, then back at him. “Stupid demon, he’s too nice." She’s almost healed by now, the grime and sweat mottling patches of uncovered skin. Aziraphale should really spare a miracle. To suffocate the suffering in some way, if just to smother the racket in his brain. Brief relief tantamount to the burning guilt in his gut.
"Don't say that to his face,” he finally says.
She sits at the bed, a heap of dirt with eyes too bright. Aziraphale wrings his hands, toys with his ring. He hopes for a resolution, for a light at the end of a tunnel. At least for them. They’ve already walked and suffered enough on this Earth; flimsy creatures not made to last, now stretched too taut, set ablaze through time and lands. “I must warn you, though,” he finally says, “I don’t know how effective our miracles would be. I’m dreading-- what if we can’t find her?”
“That’s not an option. Not for me.” She seems to cower into herself, bends her legs on the edge of the bed and buries her face between her knees. Aziraphale sits on the vacant chair. “I was going to tell her you know?" Andy says, finally, voice worn around the edges. "Tomorrow, I said to myself. Tomorrow. And then the day after that. And after that. And then it was another war. More carnage. More blood. A thousand years. And I always thought I had more time. One more day, a month, a year. And then-- I didn't.”
Aziraphale's throat is dry. He tries hard not to think in the quite obvious mirror dirtying the linens in front of him. It's not the same, he tells himself. It's not.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, as if such wrongs could right themselves on words. "Why don't you rest for a moment? I'll keep an eye out."
Andromache lays down, and Aziraphale snaps his fingers. Clean sheets, clean clothes. Clean the spaces you're allowed to, a bit of Earth clear of soot.
He watches her breath softly, until her eyes flutter shut.
"You think you have forever until you don't. It's never fair," she says, before drifting off.
Aziraphale watches the storm unfold, and hopes Crowley finds some refuge tonight wherever he is. Somewhere neat and dry that make do instead of a downy wing. God, he misses him so dearly it's almost painful. He smiles ruefully to the empty room, wishing for things to be different, for this tongue-tied feeling to carry them through to the other side. They will have their time. They will.
He stares at the bed.
It's not the same for them, it's not, he tells himself yet again.
And this time he almost believes it.