#too tired to keep working on this and also forgor to take my adhd meds today so here ya go. kind of hate parts of this but wtv lol

[sentientsky]

When she first Fell, the sky had been all embers, all vicious touch. They’d felt nothing but the bite of flames and gore and the sulphuric acid of a mother’s love turned corrosive. Crowley had burned—heavenly bone, muscle, flesh, the chemical antiseptic of the ether stripping away to bare nerve tissue.

In the eternities since, they’d held their breath, kept herself small. They’d learned to amputate the desire that settled in the tips of her fingertips and in the scarlet ends of their hair. She—alone, ever alone—had dragged herself from the brimstone and out of the bonfire. She’d taught herself to exist in the jaws of an unmuzzled universe, under stars that no longer called their name. Now the sky is blue, and the bookshop burns. The bookshop burns and Crowley’s heart is in her throat, eating its way out of their body. The bookshop burns and yet their angel must be fine. (He has to be fine because the world still spins on its axis and the sea hasn’t swallowed her whole. And if breath still lives in her body, and the universe has yet to collapse in on itself, then their angel has to be fine). But something coils deep in her belly: an oil-slick, a poisonous berry. They bite their lip a brackish silver, the taste of ichor rotten in her mouth.

As though in a trance, she presses forward, and the frantic thrash of panic in her chest forces the double doors wide without so much as a thought. The interior of the shop is all orange-red teeth and flaming claws, tearing into bookshelves and loveseats and oh. Oh, the two of them had just been sitting there not three days ago. (Crowley had tried so hard to stay on her side of the room, to keep her fingertips from brushing the edge of Aziraphale’s as they passed silver-stemmed goblets between them. Skin to skin, breath to body—the indirect touch of their mouths. The passive desperation of six thousand years of want left fermenting under their skin).  

They call for him, heat searing her lungs. It comes out ragged and desperate and too late (always too late). 

Heat knifes clean through her now—a gutting sensation, a disembowelment in the middle of an already-burning funeral pyre. For as long as they had been on Earth together, she’d always been able to sense their angel from anywhere in the world—a steady, beating heart of a presence. An inevitable gravity that wrapped itself around her arms and tugged her forward. It had been axiomatic, a fundamental truth of how the universe functioned: a hand extended always finds purchase. A heart in motion remains in motion. 

So, in a room choked with smoke and two hundred years of memories, she reaches out, expanding the edges of her consciousness, pressing her mind into the outer reaches of the bookshop and Soho and the whole, cluttered universe. She searches for a pulse. And then something within her is breaking. Something is shaking apart in the depths of Crowley’s being—a star turned supernova turned withering, all-consuming black hole. No heartbeat, no flickering warmth, no pull in the periphery of her awareness. The corpse of gravity turns to dust in the corner of the room. 

And she knows—knows with the unflinching inevitability of too many questions, of an ink-winged angel falling from grace—that Aziraphale is gone. Outside, the sky remains blue. The world stays upright. And the bookshop still burns.

(thank u to the incredibly talented @actual-changeling for helping me fix the first part of the fourth paragraph)

#too tired to keep working on this and also forgor to take my adhd meds today so here ya go. kind of hate parts of this but wtv lol #i'm rly normal about the bookshop fire. i totally don't think about it all the time (<- lying through gritted teeth) #also giving characters your pronouns is rly fun btw. she/they crowley my most adored <3 #good omens #crowley #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #aziraphale #ineffable lovers #ineffable wives #gomens #wren writes crow #david tennant #tw: fire #good omens ficlet #gomens fanfiction #good omens fic #long post #tw: childhood trauma #<- just in case #good omens angst #Crowley angst #az fell and co