Archive of Our Own ^beta

Malton, 1566

All right, this was honestly beginning to get out of hand.

“I'm telling you, I didn't kill her,” Crowley insisted as they dragged him up on the gallows. “It was just a weird coincidence! I would never hex someone who was that good at draughts.”

Malton in Elizabeth's time was too small and too northerly to require the attention of any of the witchfinders running around on the continent. Instead it had to make do with one rather nasty priest, who was currently giving Crowley the willies.

“So you would hex someone who wasn't skilled at your games?”

“That wasn't what I said at all, and you know it!”

“Let the record show that the accused claimed a hatred of poor gamers and would consign them to death.”

“Oh, come on!” Crowley cried. “Where's the nuance? Where's the bloody mercy that your lot are so well known for?”

“It is a mercy to find a witch and to prevent him from doing further harm. It is a mercy to offer him a chance to repent, which you have now twice turned down.”

“Make that thrice because I'm still not going to,” Crowley said as they positioned him over the trapdoor. “I've not done anything to be sorry for, and you all can go hang.”

There was an awkward silence, and the executioner, who Crowley was not fucking well going to tip no matter how suggestively he coughed, cleared his throat.

“The accused is allowed his last words so that they might be recorded for posterity. Are those your last words?”

Honestly, he could do worse than I've not done anything to be sorry for, and you all can go hang, but fucked if he was going to make anything easier on them.

“No, they're not. I'm just going to say that I didn't hex that poor old woman, and when you lot figure out what a myocardial infarction is, oh boy, are your faces going to be red.”

“Myo-?”

“Is that a curse? Is he cursing us?”

A frightened murmur went up from the crowd, and Crowley rolled his eyes.

“You think that's a curse? Honestly, you bloody lot. You don't know what a curse is. I do. There were some curses back in Mesopotamia that would curl your hair and turn it to snakes, and believe you me, if I used any of them, you would all be having a very bad time right now.”

The murmur grew louder, angry and afraid and flavored with that kind of restlessness that usually got someone killed. Crowley bared his teeth as the executioner came towards him with the noose, so vicious that it gave the man a pause.

“You want to see a curse? You want to see what I can call up?”

The priest at the gallow's foot gave him a disdainful look.

“Of course there is nothing you can do,” he said contemptuously. “Evil is helpless in the face of good.”

“Precious little of that round these parts,” Crowley spat. “All right. You asked for it.”

The executioner looped the noose over his head, and Crowley glared wildly around. His skills had a great deal more to do with getting into the theater without paying and suggesting that maybe bucking off the social contract involving personal property was a great idea. Still, these fuckers didn't know that, and if he had to go to all the trouble of going downstairs and requisitioning a new body, then he was going to give them one hell of an almighty scare before he did.

“Lahar, Kusu, Isimud, Siduri. Ninkasi and Nanshe, Great Bull in the sky...”

The crowed stirred fitfully, and Crowley grinned.

“May your tongue dry up in your mouth, may your legs dry up, that sulfur and fire may burn you. May your body be struck by scalding water, and so you will be disturbed in the eyes of all who see you...”

“Shut him up,” the priest said, and then more loudly, “Executioner, shut him up!”

“And may you be banned, broken, lost, finished, vanquished,” hissed Crowley, “and behold, for the instrument of your end is-”

The executioner finally managed to work the stubborn lever, the trapdoor opened with a dull thud, and Crowley dropped through, ready for the fatal jerk and pop...

Which never came, and instead he was lifted up before he even got to the end of the rope. He blinked, standing safe back on the platform with the rope severed to dangle down his chest, and beside him, towering, glowering, and flaming like anything was a figure in antique black armor, a six-foot sword completing a slow showy arc in his hands.

Drude, Crowley's mind supplied, rabbiting with terror, drude, a knight infernal, what the fuck, what the fuck...

Your will, lord?

The voice echoed like the thunder of distant cannons, and below, the people of Malton stared up in horrified fascination. It took Crowley a moment to realize that in fact he was the lord in question. Apparently someone was looking out for him (Tamaat, who owed him one? Medoc, who would like to be owed?) and he was going to take full advantage.

There was a moment, a vision of falling timber and leaping fire, a place where things could have gone really dark, but then he was only himself after all, and with his neck intact, he was feeling generous. He leaped down lightly from the gallows, enjoying the way the people scattered from him.

“Well, why don't you see this lot off?”

I hear, and I obey.

It was like some great cosmic boot coming down, the way the drude spoke, and the sword swept up and came down on the gallows, shattering the planks and breaking the timber like it was kindling. The structure fell under the onslaught of preternatural strength like a certain tower had a little while ago, and now Crowley was looking closer, watching the way the armored figured moved like a whole army himself. The people fled before him, and he followed, steady and utterly unstoppable.

The only saving grace for the people of Malton was that they were a little faster than the drude, and that was probably by design. They had time to snatch up their children, their pets, and even their hyperventilating priest before they fled the slow sweeps of the black sword.

All are punished! All are punished!

The words tolled out, and the drude took down the new town hall with a pair of heavy blows and the stone church with three, and at that point, Crowley was sure if he ever hadn't been. A demon might call up a miracle to crush something, but only an angel would do it by hand. Now there was nothing left to do but enjoy the show, climbing up on the wreckage of the gallows to sit and watch as a hay cart nearby went flying, and the windows blew out of the mayor's house with extreme prejudice.

The rain that had been threatening all day finally came, falling down on a town that was quite empty. Before the drude could continue, Crowley whistled from his seat on the gallows.

The hell knight turned, his helmeted head cocked, and then he came to stand before Crowley with his sword point on the ground.

Your will, my lord?

“Well, how about if you take off that ridiculous helmet, and I'll stand you a bite to eat? You're probably starving after a show like that.”

The drude lifted his sword, swinging it around in a drill that Crowley remembered from way back when, and when he went to sheathe it, it disappeared, along with the armor, the flames and a good foot and a half of height. Then it was only Aziraphale, fussing with the laces on his doublet and shaking out his sword hand.

Do you know- Ah, sorry. Do you know, I think I really could use a nibble? What did you have in mind?”

“Saw this place over here, thought of you immediately...”

Malton was empty from north to south, and no one stopped them from going into the baker's shop, where there were pierced loaves hung with twine along the walls. Aziraphale smiled in delight at the variety, black and white and garlic and sage and plain and fancy, and soon enough they were sitting at the table in the back. Crowley found a crock of butter somewhere, and he basked in Aziraphale's thanks, leaning back in his chair because after all, he'd had one hell of a day. Anyway, it was easier to give Aziraphale poppyseed bread and sweet creamy butter rather than thinking about a rescue that had come all unlooked for.

“Hey, are you going to get in trouble for that? Not every day you see a principality impersonating a hell knight, you know.”

“Oh well, I'm putting it down as a smiting,” Aziraphale said complacently. “It rather was, wasn't it, the delivery of an innocent from the hands of those who would persecute him?”

“I'm the farthest thing you can get from innocent,” Crowley insisted, and Aziraphale blinked.

“Well, I don't think that that needs to go into the paperwork, do you? I mean, Gabriel's spent centuries telling me he 'does not care about human names,' and that I should 'keep it short and snappy.' I have been trying ever so hard to get better at being succinct and to the point on my reports.”

“Well, here's a hint for you, maybe in the future you could just say 'I'm not going to mention that.' But.”

Crowley bit his lip. It felt like too much, maybe, too risky, too fraught, but he found himself speaking anyway.

“The church,” he said. “Is that. That is. Um.”

Aziraphale looked up from his meal, and yes, he was a round-faced man-shaped thing who was sweet and soft, not unlike the bread in his hand. At the same time, Crowley could see behind it where the angel waited, something older than the earth and built from divine will and fire and the dreams of war to come. Drudes had been principalities to a one, and though there was nothing fallen or infernal about Aziraphale now, it was easy to see that they all came from the same stock.

Then Aziraphale only smiled serenely, finishing his meal and patting his lips with a cloth.

“It is a shame when some things are lost in the rescue of innocents. If it is worth the time and effort, perhaps it will be rebuilt. If it is not, well.”

It was piously said, but Crowley could finish that if it is not very easily with, no great loss.

Principalities, designed to be guardians and protectors, weren't supposed to think like that, but after all, Crowley had never been one. He didn't know why a principality might rain down rage on a church or even why one might show up in Malton, all unlooked for, to lend a demon a hand.

Aziraphale was the principality at the table, the one who chose what he was going to protect and what he would avenge, and Crowley quelled a dangerous little flutter in his heart.