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Seated alone on a bench in St. James’s Park, Aziraphale stares into the middle distance.  His mind is far away, his skin insensate to the warm drizzle of rain as it gathers like clotting blood.  His thoughts are a wound, at once raw and knitted, oozing and bandaged.  His gaze may be vacant, but his ethereal senses are immersed in another place: a place of scabby knees and dirt-crusted fingernails, of sunlight skewering through branches and the rapid percussion of cards snapping on tire spokes.  Aziraphale is physically in London, but his thoughts circle Tadfield in silent flight.

There they are, in Hogback Wood – three children, one Antichrist, and one former Hellhound.  The children are all dressed in striped shirts and tattered jeans.  The girl, Aziraphale forgets her name, she has a bandana cinched around her head, wiry wisps of curls escaping every which way. The bespectacled boy wears a carefully-arranged eyepatch.  The grubby boy is sleeved in smeared ink marks on both arms, designs that bring Crowley’s serpent mark to mind.

Standing at the center of their group, a wooden sword clasped in one hand – little more than a short stick tied to a long one, playacting hilt and blade – is Adam Young. He lifts his chin, resolute.

“You’ve mutinied for the last time, first mate Brian,” he says in a tone of unshakable authority.  “Now you gotta walk the plank.”

“But it wasn’t just me!” Brian protests.  “Wensleydale made me do it!”

“Actually,” says Wensleydale, “I’m only the pirate cook.”  His voice is the tonal equivalent of a side-eye.  “I can’t make you do anything.”

“I told you,” Adam cuts in, “you can be first mate next time.  Brian’s first mate now because he picked the longer straw.  ‘Sides, without you, we’d all starve on the high seas.”

“Why’re the seas high?” Brian asks, unperturbed by his death sentence.  “Are the waves taller than normal?”

“Don’t be stupid,” the girl sneers.  “It means they’re full of adventure.”

“Pepper’s right,” Adam says.  “It’s only a figure of speech.”

Aziraphale’s mind floats, unbidden, away from the bickering children.  It floats away from the time and the place, rising and rising through the years, the decades, the centuries, the millennia. It alights in another world, an older one.  A harder one.

He sees them, each face stark and cut-glass precise even in memory.  The children before the flood.  Most were ordinary, of course:  human through and through.  But there had been others.  Children with an uncanny brightness in their eyes, children who were stronger, sharper, and more beautiful than the others.  They grew immense, formidable, and left their human playmates behind to wriggle and rot in the dust.  People whispered that such children were favored by God, but that was only propaganda. Giants, the Hebrews called them.  Nephilim.

Heaven’s mistake, that’s what they were: children born of unions between angels and human women.  Back then, when the world was new, the angels had looked upon God’s favored children with envy.  Envy breeds contempt, and contempt breeds a desire to see a foe laid low.  And what better way to ruin the humans than to defile their women?

Aziraphale had never been involved in the mess with the Nephilim.  Perhaps he had been soft toward humans, even then, or perhaps he had unconsciously seen the writing on the wall and known to keep his distance.  He was but an innocent bystander.

“Not the kids,” Crowley had said, the words tinged with shock, disgust, horror.  “You can’t kill kids.”

God hadn’t liked the Nephilim.  She hadn’t liked a great deal of things about the new world She’d made.  And so, in Her infinite wisdom, She rent the world apart. A handful of humans survived, but not one of them carried a drop of angelic blood in their veins.

Aziraphale had thought himself an innocent bystander.  Now, looking back, he wonders.

Lost in the mire of memory, Aziraphale is startled back to the present by a blow of occult energy.  Reeling, hands unconsciously clutching the seat of the bench, he strains his sight on Hogback Wood.  Adam Young stares back at him, brow furrowed.

Then, abruptly, the Antichrist is sitting beside him on the bench.  The stick in his hand is transformed, a sword gleaming with tongues of hellfire.  The angel startles.  “A-Adam. What a pleasant—”

“Why’re you watching me?” Adam asks, without venom or preamble.

“I…”  Aziraphale trails off, considers making excuses.  Decides against it. I don’t know.”

Adam gives Aziraphale a narrow look, and the angel fights an urge to shrink back.  This boy could crack open his head like an egg, spill out his thoughts in stringy runnels. Aziraphale knows this, and so does Adam.

“I could make you tell me,” the boy says, “if I wanted.”

Aziraphale remembers uncanny eyes, minds as keen as honed blades.  “If you wanted to, yes.”

Adam swings his legs and stares at Aziraphale.  Drizzling rain clings to his curls, runs down his face in rivulets. Droplets hiss and steam off the burning steel of his sword.  “Where’s your friend?”

Aziraphale blinks, thrown.  “I… I don’t know.”

“Seems wrong, you without him,” Adam remarks.

“It is,” Aziraphale admits, and is startled by his own candor.  Adam must be leaning on him, just a little.  “Now, that’s hardly sporting.”

“You were spying on me.”

“Aha.  Point taken.”

“Seems to me that if someone tries to shoot you and then spies on you, you should be allowed.  A little.”

Aziraphale gives a nervous titter.  “W-well, you do forget that we helped you.  Between those two things.”

“Yeah.”  Adam lifts his sword, considering.  Firelight plays hellish and bright across his face, and his gaze is distant.  “Guess you did.”  He lowers the blade and looks at Aziraphale.  “What’s wrong, then?”

“Nothing,” Aziraphale sighs.  “Only I’m very old, and I’ve made many mistakes.”

“Huh.”  Adam shrugs. “I don’t see why grown-ups are so stuck on what they did wrong.  They can always try and do better.”

Aziraphale turns and stares, owlish, at the boy.  He sits, slouched and rain-damp and grubby, all the power in the universe clasped in his fist.

“Your friend’s coming,” Adam says.  “I think he’s worried, so I’ll go.”

“Oh.”  The sound is barely more than a breath.  “Well. Until next time, Adam.”

“Bye.”

When Crowley happens upon Aziraphale – looking for all the world like he’s out on a stroll, belied only by the tense line of his shoulders, the briskness of his steps – he finds the angel alone.  Aziraphale looks up at him and offers a faint smile.  “Crowley.”

“Aziraphale.”  An edge rasps along the syllables of his name.  “You should’ve let me know you were back.”

“I only just arrived.”

“Still.”  Crowley’s mouth slants, purses.  Aziraphale wants to learn the corners of that mouth, the softness and demand.  “You could’ve…”

He really was worried, Aziraphale realizes. All the fretting and discouragement – all to cover his fear.

Aziraphale stands and Crowley trails off, knowing before he’s aware.  The angel has made many mistakes over the millennia – things he’s done and things he’s left undone – and suddenly it seems the simplest thing in all of Creation to do one good thing, and enfold the demon in his arms.  Crowley is angular but pliant, stiff for just an instant before seeming to melt against him, into him.  His mouth tastes of rain.

“Oh,” Crowley says when they part.  His face is flushed up to the tips of his ears.  “Huh.  Missed—missed me, did you?”

“I did,” Aziraphale says, smiling gently.  “For a very long time.”  He takes the demon’s hot, damp hands in his own.  “Let’s go back to the bookshop.”

“Right.  Right.” Crowley coughs.  “Right.”

“I have a Bordeaux that would be quite to your liking.”

“Hnngh.  Right. Yes.”

“Do you mind if we walk?  I’ll cover you if the rain gets worse.”

“I know you will.”

“Of course.  Let’s be off, dear.”