Chapter Text
“Angel? Angel! It’s alright, I’m here, it’s all ok.”
“Crowley?”
Aziraphale looked up, hands dropping from his head, where he’d been cowering beneath his arms. He was crouched in a corner, balled up as tightly as his limbs would allow, trying to make himself small enough not to be perceived, holding his breath against the chance it would be heard, willing the traitorous heart of his corporation to stop, stop! lest it attract their attention.
“Crowley, what are you doing here?” Aziraphale hissed, eyes darting wildly, “They’ll get you, they’ll get you too—”
“Woah, hang on angel—” Crowley shuffled closer. He too was crouching there in the gloom beneath the eaves, in the garret of this drafty tenement. “No one’s coming to get you. Just me. You called out for me and I came, right?”
“I did?” Aziraphale stared. He remembered racing wildly through the corridors, up the stair with the voice and shapes and windy, whispering hands clutching at him; he’d felt like screaming, terror gripping every part of him. In his panic and fear he must have cried out, with his mind or with his voice— or maybe both, he thought, gulping and feeling the rawness in this throat. “I suppose I must have.” Crowley’s eyes gleamed gold in the breath of moonlight that filtered through a nearby window, and Aziraphale realised he wasn’t wearing his glasses. “But Crowley, they—”
“Who?” Aziraphale gulped again, and a third time, before he managed to croak in shaking tones,
“Ghosts.”
“Ghosts?” Crowley straightened up sharply, tilting his head up as if he could scent something on the air. After a moment’s silence, he gave a small nod. “Ah, them.”
“Them?”
“Ghosts,” Crowley confirmed, “It’s alright, angel. They don’t mean you any harm.”
“How do you know? They chased and hounded me and I’m sure they would’ve—”
“Demons are closer to these kinds of things than angels. Let’s get you out of here, can you stand?” Crowley unfolded himself and rose, but Aziraphale trembled, unwilling to move from his corner of seeming security. Crowley’s lips twitched upward. “It’ll be okay, Aziraphale. Just take my hand.”
Aziraphale looked at the hand, proffered toward him at just the right height, then at Crowley’s face, where even in the dimness he could see kindness circling. He took Crowley’s hand. With a heave Aziraphale was on his feet, but Crowley did not let go.
“Listen,” the demon said quietly, holding up his free hand, “Just listen.” Aziraphale tried to listen, over the beating of his heart and the shortness of his breath. Both quietened, and as he concentrated, suddenly Aziraphale could hear—
“Children?”
“Children.” Crowley confirmed.
“But I thought—”
“Ghosts. Children.”
“Oh.”
They stood in silence, listening together to the faint, shivery voices, piping as if from behind a sheet of water, and the sound of footsteps with no weight behind them running up the stairs. A curl of wind swept around them, and a distant peal of laughter.
“Oh, Crowley,” Aziraphale gasped, and suddenly his chest was tight again, but this time with the weight of the water behind his eyes, “Children!” Crowley’s hand squeezed his.
“I know, angel. Why did you come here in the first place?”
“I was passing, and I thought I heard someone calling out for help, so I came in. I could tell the place was abandoned, you know, likely to be dangerous— but then they started throwing things and grabbing and chasing me and I lost my wits completely, I can’t think why—”
“I told you, angel. Demons are closer to this sort of thing than you. I can’t explain, and you can’t explain, and no one I’ve ever talked to can properly explain, why this happens. But lost souls, or impressions of souls, caught between worlds? Sounds like a fairly demonic existence to me. And these— they’re just kids.” Crowley shook his head. “Who knows whether they were angry you came into their house, or whether they were just messing with you, or whether they smelled an angel and revolted against whatever religion their parents told them would take care of them.”
“I wonder—”
“Best not to ask. Not just now, anyway. Come along, angel.” Crowley pulled gently at Aziraphale, and hand in hand they left the room, winding slowly down the spiral of the central stair. Voices and footsteps and what felt like small bodies brushing past accompanied them, while seeming to pay them no attention. Crowley was smiling, looking about almost as if he could see the beings behind the sounds, and Aziraphale stared in wonderment. When they reached the ground floor and started down the narrow corridor that led to the main door and the street, the patter of small footsteps began to retreat up the stairs. Abruptly Aziraphale turned, a cry bursting from him,
“Goodbye!”
“Goodbye!” a piping voice replied. Then it, and the footsteps, were gone.