Title: Bringing Him Back

Author: Still Waters

Fandom: Good Omens

Disclaimer: I do not own Good Omens. Just playing, with love and respect to those who brought these characters to life.

Summary: When Crowley walks on consecrated ground, his feet burn. When Aziraphale walks on desecrated ground, he faints dead away. Over the years, Crowley has learned different ways of bringing the angel back.

Written: 7/17/19 – 7/18/19

Notes: This was one of those ideas that came out of nowhere and I felt an immediate need to explore. While there are no graphic depictions of the Black Death, the Killing Fields, or the Holocaust in this story, there are brief mentions of those events. Dialogue quoted from the episode does not belong to me. I hope I did the characters justice. Thank you for reading as I explore this world.

The first time it happened, Aziraphale was at Gethsemane, trying to make sense of the young man from Nazareth's death and praying that his soul might find peace. One moment he was resting his hand on an olive tree, waves of emotional agony pulsing through him, the next moment…..well, he didn't recall. Crowley found Aziraphale crumpled on the ground, as white as his robes, dried tears on his face. Their friendship was still relatively new at the time, so Crowley wasn't quite sure what had happened or what to do. He did know that Jesus's death had hit Aziraphale hard (and honestly, crucifixion was a rather hellish human invention), but he'd never seen an angel faint. Crowley could already see that Aziraphale had an almost overly human ability to empathize, but an angel couldn't faint from feeling too much, could they? Unsure of what else he could do, Crowley took a page from Aziraphale's book at their first meeting. He spread his wings and sheltered the angel from the blazing sun and guarded him in his snake form when humans came near. When Aziraphale woke up a few hours later, they both pretended it was nothing and went on their respective ways.

It happened again over the coming years, at sites of ancient battles, plagues, famine, and religious wars. Not as often as one would think, given humanity's ability to be awful to one another, but a handful of times. Crowley would feel the world dim, like he had cotton in his ears and a cloud passed in front of the sun. He'd reach out to Aziraphale to see if the angel had noticed it too and would have a hard time detecting Aziraphale's presence. He'd find the angel unconscious wherever he fell, colorless, breathless, pulseless. One time, Crowley had to pull Aziraphale from a mass grave of Black Death plague victims, since the humans who had found him thought, quite rightly, that he was dead. Crowley would miracle the two of them somewhere safe; he couldn't bring them to a church since it would be difficult for him to stay and he refused to leave Aziraphale alone when he was like that, so he usually chose a garden or a park instead, somewhere with plenty of hidden areas. It was common ground for both of them, the place where their friendship began. Gardens were filled with positive things like life and growth, which were good for Aziraphale, while also being places Crowley felt comfortable. And if anyone ever questioned him, Crowley figured that he could always hide his interest in plants and gardening by playing up the fact that the soil was filled with decaying things, or that the garden reminded him of what he did to start humanity on its current course, or even that the worms reminded him of Hastur.

Crowley was beginning to understand that these episodes, as they called them, were a sort of empathetic overload, that Aziraphale's corporeal form just shut down from too much negative sensory input. But it wasn't just his body that reacted; Aziraphale's angelic presence dimmed too, making itself smaller and more difficult to find, either hiding himself away from the overwhelming feelings or simply being obscured by the weight of everything drowning him. Crowley's body reacted to consecrated ground, while Aziraphale's was reacting to particularly desecrated ground, to places overflowing with hatred, agony, and death.

Crowley thought that empathy would be considered a positive trait in an angel, especially one assigned to working on Earth, but Heaven considered it a human fault, a sign of too much time spent with people. And maybe it did come from being around people, as even Crowley was still haunted (not that he'd admit it) by the thought of all those dead kids in the Great Flood. Not trusting Heaven to leave Aziraphale alone when he was vulnerable, and not wanting any part of the angel changed to Heaven's specifications, Crowley stuck close during Aziraphale's episodes. He did a bit of gardening, created a few new hybrids, and threatened any creatures or weather that tried to interfere with his work. When Aziraphale woke up, it was to the sound of Crowley berating some poor piece of greenery that kept him in Aziraphale's line of sight.

"Crowley," Aziraphale would breathe, and in that one name were thousands of years of history, a gratitude that words alone couldn't manage.

"Angel," Crowley would nod back, worry, relief, and gratitude of his own layered under that one nonchalant word. "What do you think of this?" he'd motion at one of his new creations.

And they'd move on.

As their friendship continued to grow, the Arrangement was in full swing, and they began knowing one another down to an almost subatomic level, Crowley finally understood why Aziraphale, a seemingly perfect angel, got all those reprimands for "frivolous miracles." He was all about the little things, little ways of caring for individual people. The angel wasn't one for mass scale miracles; no newly discovered relics or weeping statues in grottos. No, Aziraphale expressed his love for humanity, and his own inherent goodness, in little things for little people that no one in Heaven or Hell would either know of or care about. A hungry family suddenly finding fresh food in the empty cupboards and the gas turned back on so they could cook. An extra few heartbeats so the daughter racing to the hospital could say a proper goodbye to her mother. The right song coming on the radio for the teenager curled on their bedroom floor wondering if they would ever find their place in the world. A cold cup of tea made piping hot again for the young man who had gone out and shoveled his elderly neighbor's snow-covered driveway. Crowley saw it in Aziraphale's delighted face and "oh, really?" when Crowley treated him to the Hamlet miracle. And never had Aziraphale's face been so openly touched as when Crowley saved his books from the wreckage of a bombed church. Aziraphale would call Crowley's actions nice, on par with the nice things Aziraphale did for the everyday people of the world. But Crowley would deny it. It wasn't nice. It was just a thing.

A thing he did for Aziraphale.

The twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were rough on everyone; it was a seemingly endless stream of wars, genocides, natural disasters, and religious discord. As technology developed into computers and smartphones, Crowley began to keep digital track of those events, a running list of places Aziraphale should avoid, or places to look for the angel when the world dimmed. For the most part, Aziraphale managed the emotional chaos well, perhaps because the angel and demon spent more time together those days and stuck closer to home. They were both pretty subdued after the world wars, but Aziraphale stayed on his feet. There was an episode in Cambodia, when they popped over because Aziraphale had a craving for chek chien and conversation with the street vendors. They wandered a bit after, and Aziraphale walked on soil that revealed a mass grave from the Killing Fields soon after, but he recovered fairly quickly.

Then came 2015. For several months prior to the event, Aziraphale expressed his desire to attend the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in Poland. Crowley tried to dissuade him each time. "You really think that's a good idea, angel?" he asked, eyes reflecting episodes of the past.

"Perhaps you're right," Aziraphale would admit.

He went anyway.

Crowley was out for a drive when he felt it, but this time it was like he went deaf, the sun blinked out of existence, and he forgot how to breathe all at once. Swerving to the side of the road, he reached out for Aziraphale's presence and felt a terrifying nothingness for far too long before sensing the tiniest spark of the angel's being. Checking the "keep Aziraphale away from here" app on his phone and noting the date, Crowley growled about the angel's blessed need to atone and grieve, words that ended with a sound deep in the back of his throat; a sound that was equal parts fear, frustration, and a desperate need to protect. With a snap of his fingers, he transported himself to the former concentration camp.

Aziraphale had at least had the sense to stay mostly hidden, away from the main event and crowds. He was on his left side, ashen, and to all human appearances, dead. A young man wearing a yarmulke knelt next to the angel, lips moving in silent prayer as he turned Aziraphale onto his back to begin CPR. He jumped at Crowley's sudden presence.

"Sir, do you know CPR?" he asked, pushing Aziraphale's jacket and waistcoat aside for better access to the anatomical landmarks.

"I've got him," Crowley said, moving to Aziraphale's other side.

"I didn't want to interrupt the commemoration, but he's not breathing, he needs help." The young man looked torn between the need to honor the more than one million people who had died there, and the need to keep the land from claiming one more life.

"I've got him," Crowley repeated, the roughness in his voice hidden under a threatening growl. He looked directly at the man through his dark glasses. "Go on," he nodded toward the main ceremony.

"But…."

"He's my friend," Crowley said, putting a hand on Aziraphale's chest, an action that could be interpreted as marking hand placement for chest compressions, while really being an attempt to feel for the angel's deeply buried spirit. "Go on," he said again. Aziraphale would have called his tone that time gentle, even a bit grateful.

Crowley would have told him to shut up.

Somehow, the man understood. Wiping tears from his eyes, he left the two alone, and didn't look back. Keeping his hand on Aziraphale's chest, Crowley miracled them back to the bookshop, to the place that had become home.

"Come on, angel," Crowley snarled, laying Aziraphale on the sofa. The pulse and breathing didn't concern him, as, unlike a human being, Aziraphale's body wouldn't die without those functions. But Crowley had never felt Aziraphale's presence so dim. In 6000 years, it had never been this hard to find him, and that was terrifying. He snapped his fingers, locking the door, closing the curtains, and clearing the dirt and scrapes from Aziraphale's face. He began pacing and adjusting books, perhaps subconsciously hoping that it would annoy Aziraphale into waking up, while, in reality, he needed something to do with his frightened energy. Finally, he made himself think back to the other episodes. Crowley really didn't want to move Aziraphale again, even to a garden, as the angel felt so spiritually fragile. Trying not to focus on the gray face, cyanotic lips, motionless chest, and slack face on the sofa, Crowley decided to improvise a garden. He moved over to the potted plants Aziraphale had added to the bookshop and began to antagonize them.

"Come on, come on," Crowley gritted out as he plucked a spotted leaf. "Where are you, you idiot? Get back here. I can't…." he choked on the possible endings to that sentence.

Crowley tried to think. He couldn't very well anoint Aziraphale with Holy Water to bring him back from the empathetically shattered depths he had gone to. Besides the fact that obtaining it would require leaving Aziraphale alone for a lot longer than he wanted, when Aziraphale woke up and found out what he did, the angel would have that worried, 'I can't have you risking your life' look on his face, which was almost as bad as the nothingness that was there now. Pacing in front of the sofa as he shredded the spotted leaf, Crowley suddenly stopped as if struck. That worried look. Like the look on the young Jewish man's face, concerned about the life of a man he'd never met, trying to do something good for a stranger. A lot like Aziraphale. Crowley thought back to the angel's shining face as they attended Hamlet's first standing room only showing; the way his hands ran over the rescued books from the church as he put them back in their proper places in his shop. He remembered how Aziraphale's face looked after doing good deeds; little things for little people, but little things that meant so much to him.

Whether from sheer desperation, a new, even deeper understanding of his friend, or a combination of both, Crowley decided to give it a shot. With a silent plea that he would never admit was a prayer, he thought about what Aziraphale would do, what would make him light up, and cancel out some of the agonizing history he had touched in Poland. Crowley told Aziraphale not to do anything stupid and forced himself to leave his side and go out for a short walk. It didn't take long to see and hear a lot of things that could do with a good deed or two. He passed by a flooded building of flats and miracled a family's beloved genealogy book safe from harm. Guided a lonely widow's eyes to the advert in a shop window about a dog for adoption that would change her life. Created a job opening for a man with the last of his savings in his pocket. Filled a stalled car with petrol. And put a blooming flower that had no business being in a London climate right alongside the park bench of a woman missing her deceased sister, who had loved that particular flower. It was all so nice, so sickeningly sweet, that Crowley needed to run his tongue over his teeth. But it was for Aziraphale. Things small enough that Hell wouldn't notice, but big enough that Aziraphale (hopefully) would.

Crowley appeared back in the bookshop an hour later. Aziraphale's lifeless body remained untouched. At least Heaven didn't care, that much was working in his favor. Crowley sat on the floor next to the sofa, willing Aziraphale to feel the good things that had just happened, to come back.

Two hours later, Crowley felt breath on the back of his neck.

"Crowley?" a fragile voice asked.

Crowley stifled a groan, neck cracking as he turned around to face the sound. Aziraphale's color was slowly returning, chest rising and falling. He was reaching a trembling hand to cloudy, wet eyes.

"Yeah, angel?" Crowley confirmed his presence in a voice Aziraphale would most certainly call gentle, watching life return to his friend.

"I….." Aziraphale struggled to find the words, tears threatening to spill over. His hands shook with emotional exhaustion, and a particularly extensive empathetic hangover. But the gratitude shone clearly through his weary face. Like a packed showing of Hamlet. Like demonic miracles and books plucked from dead Nazi hands in bombed out churches.

Like years of waking up safe in gardens with Crowley at his side.

"I'll put the kettle on, yeah?" Crowley unfolded himself from the floor and stood, fingers brushing Aziraphale's sleeve just long enough to confirm that the angel was truly and fully back.

"Yes, please," Aziraphale said, closing his eyes and taking a shaky breath.

That evening, thank you was a slowly savored mug of cocoa held in steady hands. You're welcome was a sunglasses-free demon sitting a hair's breadth away and yelling at a ridiculous television program. And as the sun set on an angel and a demon, neither of whom needed to physically rest, shoulder-to-shoulder and sleeping soundly on a worn sofa, the bookshop air relaxed with a contented sigh as the world was set to rights.