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If Hell is your home, when does virtue become vice? If love is God’s terrain what becomes of it when the Devil is your exile?
Can the damned love the holy without penance? Can the holy love the damned without forgiveness?
Crowley never found an answer. Then again, when has he ever been allowed the question?
“My dear, what is it you’re thinking about? I can sense when your mind starts to overwork itself, you know,” Aziraphale says, from where he’s settled in his chair. He doesn’t look away from his book as he speaks, his concern isn’t yet palpable enough to warrant it.
“Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall,” Crowley responds, not shifting his gaze from the ceiling. He’d taken to lying on the floor hours ago, having made the bookstore’s roof transparent with the snap of his fingers — his eyes hadn’t left the sky.
“Reciting Shakespeare, are we?” Aziraphale says, still reading without interruption. “Surely that’s not what has you in a fuss.”
“It’s the gospel of it,” Crowley admits. “Sometimes I wonder what it means to love you.”
Aziraphale shuts his book.
“Crowley,” he says, looking down at him, gently. “What does that mean?”
“It means…” Crowley starts, then trails off. Aziraphale watches his eyes trace the constellations. “If a demon, against its very nature, loves, do they surmount the hellfire or descend deeper into it? Does God grant the blessing or does the Devil dole out a curse?”
“Well, it depends,” Aziraphale says, softly, as he uncurls from his chair to sit carefully on the floor. “Are you loved in return?”
“Yes,” Crowley says, easily, and finally turns to look Aziraphale in the eye. “But can a demon’s devotion mean anything to an untainted creature?”
“I’m hardly untainted, dear,” Aziraphale says. “And you needn’t be made holier to love without trial.”
Crowley goes quiet. He stares at Aziraphale — just stares, with a look that anyone might classify as heartbreak. Aziraphale gingerly takes Crowley’s hand in his own two and silently acknowledges that yes, it is heartbreak. But it’s the breaking of a heart that’s rearranging itself in order to fit bigger truths.
Crowley turns his eyes back to the sky and gently tugs at Aziraphale’s hands. “Lie down with me, angel,” he says.
Aziraphale obliges, shuffling down until he’s shoulder to shoulder with his dearest, clasped hands between them. When he looks up, he glimpses Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. He outlines the rest of Canis Major, and its neighbors – Monoceros, Puppis, Lepus, and Columba. Living so long gives one the favor of knowing the stars, loving Crowley demands it.
“Why ‘The Great Dog’?” Aziraphale asks. He’d always wondered. Crowley had named it, in his time parading as a mathematician in Ancient Greece. He’d managed to pull off a long term deception by spreading the word that Earth was the center of the Universe. At the time, Aziraphale thought the act was simply that of a demon meant to trick mankind, but now he sees it for what it was – not a prank on humanity but a slight against God.
“Something familiar, something friendly and good,” Crowley says. “Humans, they’re so small. They didn’t know what was up there, not like they do now,” he explains. “Something so vast and dark, how do you make sense of that? They needed something to hold onto.”
“You loved them first,” Aziraphale says simply. “Before God. Before me. When I first met you, you were building this. For them.”
“I built it for them,” Crowley confirms. “And when I was cast down I was ready to tear it all apart. But then I saw you, with your naive hope and mercy,” he continues, squeezing Aziraphale’s hand. He turns his head to face him again when he says, “I kept it burning for you.”
“And you were worried your devotion , as you put it, couldn’t mean anything?” Aziraphale asks, looking back at him. There’s a confession in Crowley’s eyes, one that’s already been professed by every star in the sky.
“Crowley,” he continues, softly, “in all time – and before time, and the almost end of time – I’ve never been able to look up without seeing you. God can’t take that away anymore than Hell can.”
And in that, Crowley thinks he’s found his answer. He folds himself into Aziraphale and his thoughts slow to one:
Does love require holiness or does a thing become holy because it loves?
When the stars light the way, and your beloved is in your arms, does it matter?