#welsh things

'I was adjusting it,' Aziraphale says primly, flaming sword in hand. This can't be his fault. Cleanliness is next to goodness and so forth. It wouldn't do to have the weapon that's about to determine the king of Logres be just jammed in a stone at an untidy angle, surely.

Besides him, Crowley is hooting. A devil outright hooting at an angel- Aziraphale imagines what Gabriel would have to say about that, and then stops. He's already in enough trouble without imagining what heaven is going to make of his muffing this years-long assignment literally last minute.

Stubbornly, as if he hasn't already tried this ten times already, he attempts to put the sword back into the stone from whence it came. The stone, so butter-soft as it was when he'd inadvertently- quite inadvertently pulled it out, is now behaving exactly like the chunk of granite that it is.

Oh dear.

'You've got about thirty seconds before Uther's son shows up,' Crowley says, not helpfully, because Aziraphale knows that already. Arthur has been trained for the moment, oh so carefully, years of calculated upbringing between him and Crowley to make sure that Uther Pendragon's son will be neither too good nor too bad but just- human. Brilliant plan. Or it'd seemed that way at the time.

in a burst of desperation, he takes Crowley's hand, wraps it around Excalibur's hilt. The flames immediately go out, and Crowley shakes his head.

'No, no, nobody's gonna believe that I pulled the sword out. Face it, Aziraphale. That sword doesn't want to wait around for any mortal, not when it's got its angel back.'

'I gave you away!' Aziraphale wails at it. 'Garden of Eden, remember? To the humans? This isn't fair!'

Crowley hands the sword back to him. 'Face it. It likes you. Who knows, maybe it even missed you.'

'My liege!'

It's Arthur.

He kneels down, staring at Aziraphale with reverence and awe. 'King of Logres! Of course it would be you!'

Aziraphale is not usually in the habit of swearing, particularly not in front of the rightful heir.

But oh dear, he doesn't even need Crowley to make it a temptation right now.

*****

After the ceremonies, the official crowning, the anointment, the oaths of fealty, it falls to Merlin to restore the psychic balance of the universe, cursing enough for any ten angels and then some.

At least he's waited until the three of them are alone, but Crowley still tuts at him. 'Is that any way to treat your new liege lord?'

'This,' Merlin snaps, gesturing at Aziraphale's 'was not the idea. Worse than that. It's completely at variance with every version of this myth- do you know what it does to a soothsayer to try to foresee a reign in as many variants as Arthur was destined for? Tintern, Camelot, Glastonbury, Avalon- the thousands of different versions, the innumerable noble quests, the knights, the fae folks? Everyone and everything?'

He gestures, not politely. 'All of which has now gone up in smoke, because we're faced with King Aziraphale, first of that name. Was this always the idea, or did you just recently realise the temptation of all that power and couldn't resist?'

'Good point,' Crowley says, and it's only his grin that keeps Aziraphale's blood from running cold. 'Maybe heaven thinks that it'll need a few miracles to keep this court from going to the dogs. After all, that's what's due to happen, isn't it? It always ends badly, doesn't it? One stupid cup and blam, that's it for the whole miracle- unless, surprise surprise, you have a king who can actually see the Holy Grail without exploding. Hey. Maybe that's not such a bad thing.'

'What's the point of designing a society that can guide humans to the miraculous if it's not actually humans doing it?' Merlin asks.

'What's the point of you?' Crowley retorts. 'The ineffable plan isn't required to explain itself, particularly to a technical demon like your own bad self. We are on the same side, remember?'

Merlin looks deeply exasperated. 'I don't know what goes next! Anything could happen!'

'Good,' Crowley says casually. 'More fun that way.'

Aziraphale touches the thin circlet of gold wrapped around his curls. 'I can promise you, this wasn't in heaven's plan. I shouldn't be '

'Of course, there's an easy get out, if you two are really determined,' Crowley says, with studied nonchalance. 'You could always die. Sword goes back into the stone, Uther's brat pulls it out this time, boom chicka wow wow.'

'Um,' Aziraphale says. He thinks of the paperwork for unanticipated discorporation. He thinks of having to explain how he muffed the assignment. He thinks of the way that his name has already been woven into improvised englyn and triads by bards, ready for any occasion.

He thinks of having to explain that the sword missed him.

Maybe he's been missing it too.

Maybe it won't hurt to just hang on to it for a little while, and sort out a few problems. Arthur's still only sixteen. That's very young.

'I could be a sort of regent,' he says experimentally. 'Just until Arthur's…ready to lead a country into battles. There's quite a lot of battles coming up, after all. He doesn't need to have blood on his hands at his age.'

'We already had one of those,' Merlin says sourly.

'Oh, cheer up,' Crowley says. 'Maybe you can avoid getting shoved into an ice cave by your own apprentice this time.'

Merlin looks stiff. 'I was prepared to countenance that for the sake of prophecy.'

'Right, but since your prophecy's now completely useless,' Crowley says calmly, 'you have the chance to make your own fate. Maybe a better one. Maybe worse. It's all up to you.'

Merlin opens his mouth, shuts it again, looks thoughtful. 'Are you trying to buy me off by adjusting my fate?'

'Oh, I'm not,' Crowley says. 'It'd take a miracle. Obviously.'

Aziraphale can see where this is going.

The trouble is, he's not at all sure how to get out of it.

*****

'It's all about precision,' Cei says. 'Not taking more than our due.'

He is supposed to be called Kay. He is supposed to be the level-headed bureaucrat to Arthur's heroic warrior king. He is supposed to be thoroughly at home in Logres.

Instead of any of that, he's Brythonic. Aware of Cymry, endlessly willing to argue in its favour, and not terribly interested in what happens past her

'We don't want all this,' he says, stabbing a map of the island with the point of his knife 'We don't want to bother with the continent, all those plans Merlin had about us charging off to conquer Rome and messing with the buried head at Londinium and . Cymry's quite enough for us. No use having a round table if we have more territory than can be represented there.'

'Quality over quantity?' Taliesin says. 'That seems a wiser course in any event.'

There's a certain sort of irony, Aziraphale reflects, to the fact that the actual devil's son Merlin is dedicated to the Christian religion, whereas Taliesin, bard and poet, simply acts as if the whole problem of faith is the province of underlings. He has been everything from corn to salmon, he thinks he's telling the story-

now, that can't possibly be right. That's Merlin's job. Merlin's the prophet, after all.

Aziraphale thinks of the story about Merlin, how he talked his way out of human sacrifice by simply being cleverer than anybody else in the room, knowing that there was a red dragon and a white one fighting for the soul of-

the soul of-

what is he talking about? Humans have souls. Kingdoms don't. Angels don't. Demons certainly don't.

'That's what I'm saying,' Cei says. 'We don't have to be telling the story of our would-be conquerors. Why isn't it enough to just worship our own gods, our Braint and Gwyn ap Nudd and Arawn, and leave it to the Romans to take what they'll take?'

'You're saying, build a court around what? A language?' Crowley asks.

'Taliesin shows it's possible,' Cei points out.

'You're a battlefield poet. You speak of deaths in battle and the glories of fights,' Crowley says, almost lazily. Aziraphale's seen him do it before- just leaving the temptation sitting there- it would hardly take anything. Taliesin looks conflicted. He is one of the finest voices this island has ever found to glorify war, and warriors, and blood.

'No,' Cei says. 'There's enough to tell about Cymry as it is, Taliesin. Leave it be.'

'No,' Aziraphale says firmly. 'What about that one glorifying ale you sang the other night? We could do with more verses about ale. Or mead. Everybody likes mead.'

'Anything to please my patron,' Taliesin says, readily enough. 'More ale it shall be, then.'

He's king now, Aziraphale realises dazedly. He's allowed to make decisions like this.

This must be how human kings feel. As if the power they've been gifted, deservedly or not, is enough to change the course of fates, for better rather than worse.

It's so tempting.

But when he looks at Crowley, the demon seems almost asleep.

*****

'I don't trust you,' Gwenhwyfar says to Aziraphale.

All things considered, that's a relief. Being king is one thing. Being married would be taking things a step too far, even for an angel.

Cei is in favour of the wedding, of course- something about binding dynastic ties for the good of Cymry. Merlin is in favour of it, trying frantically to salvage his visions of a future that isn't.

'No past,' Gwen says, counting off on her fingers. 'No loves. No sins.'

'I think somebody else is in love with you,' Aziraphale says, then starts. 'What's wrong with not having sins?'

'It means,' Gwen says calmly, 'that nobody knows what you're capable of. And that's not a goodness, in a king.'

Aziraphale remembers, distantly, an ark and the animals he helped gather for it, while leaving human souls to drown and die. He remembers Job. He remembers watching the Crucifixion.

'Perhaps you're not wrong,' he says huskily.

Crowley looks startled. 'Him? Aziraphale? He's one of the sweetest beings ever manifested on this troubled earth.'

'In any event,' Aziraphale says, 'what about that French knight? Lancelot was his name, wasn't it?'

'I can't marry him,' Gwen says, making a face. 'A Cymry-French romance? It'd never hold, I don't need Merlin to tell me that.'

'There's always Arthur,' Crowley says easily. 'I've seen him making eyes at you.'

'I can't be thrown away on a churl with no respectable breeding,' Gwen protests. 'I may not trust you, my liege, but don't diminish me by marrying me off to such a man as that.'

Aziraphale thinks about this and decides it's not his problem. Another nice thing about being king.

(He's starting to forget what it was like being an angel, influential but not powerful.

There's a tremendous difference.)

*****

'I took something away from you,' Aziraphale says to Arthur, when they're alone. Strictly alone. He doesn't want to know what Crowley would have to say about this.

(He can imagine, and that's bad enough.)

'What would that be, my liege?' Arthur asks.

He is, in a word, useless. In a court that's run on equality and diplomacy, prioritising peace over conquest, there's no place for the warrior-king that he and Crowley raised- they'd done their best at training.

But Aziraphale's carried this flaming sword before without ever using it, and he still hasn't now; it may look impressive but he hasn't baptized it in blood. The difference between thinking and doing- it's made him something more stubborn than he used to be. More aware of the responsibility of power. More defiled.

Because, after all, this was meant to be Arthur's reign. Arthur's table. Merlin's great gift to Christianity, the making of a king who would exemplify the Christian virtues for a millennium and beyond.

What does it say about his service to heaven, that he's letting that slip in exchange for just- peace?

'Excalibur,' Aziraphale says. 'It ought to have been yours. Nobody else could possibly wield it.'

'A sword that's on fire,' Arthur says. 'My liege, I think it knew who was best to carry it.'

He's humble, that's what. Something that he never picked up from Crowley.

Which means this really is all his fault, Aziraphale concludes. Oh dear.

'Are you sure you don't want to hold it? Just as an experiment?'

'Quite sure, my liege."

*****

There are quests, but not sanctioned by the court. There are raids, small affairs that are thrashed out with blood but not allowed to develop into larger affairs. There are temptations that Crowley invents, just to keep his hand in he says.

And the court that Aziraphale leads understands those temptations for what they are, worldly affairs that aren't allowed to be more than they are.

He's starting to realise that he doesn't have the stuff in him to be a Christian king. The tales of Annwn, for instance- now that's something that has no business being told about, but Taliesin needs something to do if he's not narrating battles, so he sings about Pwyll. Cei arranges poetic competitions, with marks and chairs as reward, for stories of perhaps-fae whose origins are never defined surely enough to quite contradict the Church's doctrine.

'You realise,' Crowley says to him one evening, as a blood-red sun sets over Camelot, 'that we've fucked up the Arrangement.'

'How so?' Aziraphale asks muzzily. His head is a little stupefied by the wine from dinner- there's so much drinking in Cymry that he'd stand out if he didn't keep up, and while he could miracle it away he- hasn't. He's been avoiding miracles lately. Less chance of higher management noticing what he's been doing.

'I'm a demon. You're an angel. That's a very straightforward business in Christianity- but we're not in Christendom, are we? This is something else. Paganism, disguising itself at best.'

'Ummmm. Quite.'

'They think we're fae.'

'I'm not sure they're wrong about that. As long as they know that there's a God up above, and I suppose a devil, to be consistent-'

'Angel, that's exactly the point. Suppose there isn't. Suppose we're all that there is. They could dream us up, the humans could, but they couldn't dream up something omnipotent and immortal. Maybe we're the closest they could get.'

Aziraphale frowns. 'You mean, no- ineffable plan? No God? I'm sure that's ridiculous. I mean, what created everything?'

'We did. Or we dreamed we did,' Crowley says, moodily propping a hand against his chin. 'I think dreaming's more likely. Because if we could design a world- it wouldn't look like this, would it?'

Aziraphale bites his lip. 'You mean, a world we built wouldn't be this bloody, or have so much fear in it, or start the story with a- a flaming sword?'

'Exactly what I'm talking about, angel. Maybe we weren't given life by some being more powerful than us. Maybe we are fae, and just imagined a past that never happened.'

His head is swimming worse. 'You think that we're the best the human race can do right now? Imagining ourselves into being?'

'And maybe not doing such a bad job at it, either,' Crowley says. 'After all. Why not an angel instead of a teenager with a taste for bloodshed?'

Aziraphale blinks.

Because that is Arthur. That's the Arthur they'd trained.

And maybe that wretched sword of his knew better than to let itself ever be used in battle.

'If I ever tried suggesting this to heaven,' he says faintly, 'I'd be accused of heresy and blasphemy.'

'You're probably going to be in trouble anyway for this whole kingship business,' Crowley says. 'Thought about what happens when you discorporate?'

'I'm not- not planning for that to happen any time soon…'

he trails off, because he can see the problem. Humans do discorporate. He's pretending to be human, he's only allowed to keep this up for a couple of decades, unless…

'Oh,' Aziraphale says huskily. 'You're not asking me. You're tempting me.'

'Tempting you to run a utopia for as long as we can get away with it. We're not making a big splash, we're not hustling for souls. We could do this '

'What's a utopia?'

'Something Merlin dreamed up,' Crowley says. 'And I think he might have known what he was doing, for once.'

Aziraphale considers.

He's giving up so much, to bind himself to this one place, this one language, this one land, when he used to stride the globe. It means giving up on the ineffable plan. It means exile from heaven.

And yet, and yet-

'If I'm not already a fallen angel,' Aziraphale says, voice as steady as he can make it, 'I think now's the time for it to happen, God. Always assuming they're there.'

And nothing happens.

Nothing.

They'd assumed all this time there was a plan, and there wasn't. Just them.

'I don't think I'd better go back to heaven any time soon,' Aziraphale says.

'They'll never miss you,' Crowley says cheerfully.

*****

A man named Culhwch comes to Camelot, to ask for aid with the wooing of his beloved Olwen.

Taliesin sings of the tragedies of Branwen, and Rhiannon, and Arianrhod. There is more blood in them than the king considers entirely tasteful, but he allows the tales winding out their fate. The tidy, dignified world of Christian motives fades away, against Merlin's wishes; and the magician applies for an audience with Aziraphale.

He never gets it. Cei is there, and so is Crowley- and so is Gwydion, who is not crippled by the half-belief in a god who would destroy all other claims of magic in this world.

And Aziraphale's faith in what he's doing- in shining Camelot, content to just be, and not to conquer beyond its means- is such a tale as to outweigh any temptation Merlin has to offer, even he was to hear.

And the flaming sword, kept in the sacred stone, would taste blood sooner than allow Merlin to make his case.

Blood is not, after all, unfamiliar to it.

And Crowley would do much worse, to preserve this Arrangement.

'I love you,' Arthur says to Gwen.

'I love Lancelot,' she says. 'Don't spend your life pining for me, Arthur.'

He does, though. He can't help it.

After all, no story can be altogether perfect for everybody.

*****

'How long can we keep this up?' Crowley asks Aziraphale, when a decade has passed. Cymry is

'For as long as they're worshipping, I suppose,' Aziraphale says.

There are vague and tattered notions of a Over God above all the gods, a relic of the Roman presence, but that is a distant notion in Camelot now. They have their homegrown fae, their own mythology, their own stories, and not without bloodshed- some things are out of even the king's control- but these things are in proportion to the size of the realm, and not beyond.

'I think we collapsed the distinction between the fae world and the human one,' Aziraphale says. 'Which, er, wasn't my idea.'

'I swear, sometimes I think the sword was smarter than you are,' Crowley says dryly.

'…because if there was a god,' Aziraphale says softly, 'I'd have had to explain what happened to it, and nobody ever asked me.'

And there is a sort of terror in it, that there's nobody to look after them. Maybe to discorporate really is to discorporate. Nobody's looking after them, except for the people they're looking after.

Maybe that's what godhood is. Maybe that's what paganism is.

Maybe this is all they'll ever have; a castle, and a round table, and a story about a curly-haired king who loved his realm too much to force it into battle.

Maybe it's not the stuff of legends.

Arthur is singing to the birds of Rhiannon.

Gwyn stares at him, mantle covered in colourful feathered creatures, the only sound in the clearing his fine tenor voice carrying far. No one in Cymry would mistake these birds for anything else. To think of them not singing is a strangeness bordering on blasphemy.

And yet here they are, and here Arthur is, a ballad of simplicity and beauty rolling off his tongue, and they perk their little heads, mouths open- staring? Yes. As if they too acknowledge a liege lord, and are honoured by his presence.

She might speak, even join in under other circumstances, but to do so now would be interrupting. Instead she waits until the song ends, and Arthur ruffles the feathers of a few fortunate birds.

'That was very beautiful, my lord,' she says.

'Was it? I thought they might like to hear something different, that's all.' He looks at the birds fondly as they begin to twitter, nothing formal, just full of life. 'I know what it's like, to be expected always to be on formality.'

He breaks bread as he speaks, an impromptu feast of crumbs.