The following day was much like any other, weirdly enough. Aziraphale could almost pretend that nothing at all was out of the ordinary in his own personalized slice of heaven on earth, where the biggest stressor in his life was trying to scare off potential customers before they tried to buy any of his precious books. Yes, it all seemed rather normal as he managed to convince a rather insistent young woman that the book in her hands was most definitely far outside her price range. He spent several hours merely agonizing over prospective buyers that he just wished would go away, and yet he welcomed this normalcy as a distraction from other, more troubling matters.

He knew this fragile peace would be ruined eventually, but that did nothing to ease his anxiety when he inevitably felt a change in the air that he recognized as being some form of supernatural being. Of course, he also knew that it wouldn't be Crowley, since he had only just left the shop late the night before. On another note, it was rather absurd how disappointed he was to know that it wasn't the demon, but he could chalk that up to just being afraid of speaking with Gabriel again in light of recent events.

He tried to act pleased to see them when he recognized Gabriel walking into the shop, followed by an angel he didn't recognize but who looked very vaguely familiar. No doubt this was something important, sure to ruin this otherwise perfectly normal day with more thoughts of Armageddon and the world being turned into one of the bloodiest battlegrounds in celestial memory.

But he couldn't risk letting Gabriel know about his traitorous thoughts.

"Can I help you?" he asked politely, hoping it sounded sufficiently unassuming to the surrounding humans.

"I would like to purchase one of your material objects," Gabriel explained as he picked out a book at random and held it out.

"Books," the other angel corrected.

"Books!" Gabriel amended, smiling far too much for the given circumstances to pass as normal. "Let us discuss my purchase in a private place, because I am buying...uh..."

"Pornography?" the other angel suggested.

"Pornography!" Archangel Gabriel agreed. Now they both had ridiculously large, proud smiles on their faces, as if they had come up with the most ingenious deception in human history. Maybe they had, to their limited knowledge of human history.

Aziraphale did his absolute best to act natural as he gestured further into the bookshop and said, "Gabriel, come into my back room."

They began to follow him but the unfamiliar angel continued addressing the other customers, to Aziraphale's horror, "We humans are extremely easily embarrassed. We must buy our pornography secretively."

At the very least their comments might serve to frighten off potential customers, Aziraphale thought to himself, trying to put a positive spin on it as he eagerly herded them into the back room.

"Human beings are so simple!" Gabriel proclaimed with a light chuckle as he set down Mrs. Beeten's Book of Household Management on the table. "And so easily fooled."

"Yes," Aziraphale agreed with a forced laugh of his own. "Er. Good job. You-you fooled them all."

"You remember Sandalphon?" Gabriel asked, gesturing towards the other angel.

Yes, that name did ring a bell now that he mentioned it. "Uh...Sodom and Gomorrah. You were doing a lot of smiting...and turning people into salt. Hard to forget."

It had been a rather mortifying experience for Aziraphale, from what he recalled. Obviously they were fairly terrible cities and all but...well, there were some fairly impressive restaurants for the time period that Aziraphale had grown rather fond of. It had also been a time when he had run into Crowley on a few memorable occasions and he seemed to recall learning quite a bit about the demon at that time. He vaguely wondered if he remembered one of them bringing it up during their drinking last night, as a matter of fact.

As if on cue he noticed Sandalphon sniffing the air suspiciously, just before he commented, "Something smells...evil."

Aziraphale was gripped by panic for the briefest moment. There was no doubt in his mind that he was smelling Crowley all over the back room of the bookshop. Maybe he, too, had grown accustomed to his scent over the years. He suddenly felt a little guilty about finding it so unusual that Crowley made it sound obvious that he recognized his scent.

But no time to dwell on that now. Luckily he had an excuse pop into his head just in time, "Oh, that'll be the Jeffrey Archer books, I'm afraid."

He was glad to see the archangel shrug in response, readily accepting that answer. "Well, we just wanted to stop by and check on the status of the Antichrist."

The fear returned as Aziraphale spluttered, "Why? What's wrong? I-I mean, if there is something wrong I could put my people onto it." He was sure that he would be making little to no sense to anyone, but if the angels picked up on his nervousness they made no comment.

"Nothing's wrong," Gabriel assured. "Everything's going perfectly. There's a lot happening. All good."

"All good?" Aziraphale repeated. He had a sneaking suspicion he and the other angels had a very different definition of good in this case, but he did so hope that he meant good when he said it.

Gabriel quickly explained, "Well, all going according to the Divine Plan. The Hell Hound has been set loose, and now the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are being summoned. Death, Pollution, Famine, War."

"Right," Aziraphale said awkwardly, once it was confirmed for him that his superior's definition of good was most definitely not the one he had hoped for, but both angels seemed positively elated. "Who exactly summons them?"

Gabriel made a face and said, "Pff...not my department. I believe we outsource that sort of thing."

"About time, that's what I say," the other angel, Sandalphon, pitched in. "You can't have a war without War."

Aziraphale's eyebrows furrowed in confusion, just as he heard Gabriel from behind him say in an impressed tone, "Sandalphon, that is very good. You can't have a war...without War? I might use that, huh?"

Aziraphale didn't see any alternative, so he smiled with them as if he could agree that it was some ground-breaking joke that rivaled any he had ever heard. It was a bitter reminder of how...bland things seemed in Heaven compared to how they were on earth. At least he had renewed motivation for putting a stop to this whole Armageddon business to the best of his ability.

"Anyway, no problems?" Gabriel asked. "Oh! How was the Hell Hound?"

"I-I-I didn't stick around to see," Aziraphale lied easily. Perhaps too easily, his loyal angelic side thought bitterly.

"Thank you for my pornography!" Gabriel shouted into the main area of the bookshop before Aziraphale knew what he was doing, before he even had a chance to stop him. There was nothing he could do now but smile and go along with whatever the archangel said.

"Excellent job," Gabriel said, reassuring Aziraphale just the slightest bit. Then he turned to Sandalphon and poked him in the chest, saying, "You can't have a war without War. Clever."

Sandalphon chuckled with what looked almost like pride to Aziraphale, but no, angels were supposed to be immune to such sinful human vanities. Then again, he couldn't help thinking about how his priorities seemed very different from the ideals of Heaven, at least in this day and age. Crowley's words echoed in his head on an endless loop, reminding him over and over of everything he would be losing if the world came to an end. Well, he certainly felt that Crowley was right in trying to save the world. But how? It was troubling to think that he could be taking the side of a demon over Heaven. No, surely Heaven understood as well that saving the earth was part of the greater good.

But he was forced to put these thoughts aside as the two other angels left and he was promptly approached by another all-too-eager customer who had the audacity to assume that they had a right to ask if they could purchase a book from his collection.

~

Crowley strode through his flat with a heaven of a lot more on his mind than his celestial counterpart faced, though that was probably only because he was more willing to face his feelings and let them tear him up. It didn't help that he didn't have a distraction readily available. Meanwhile, as he knew, Aziraphale was only just starting to realize that he didn't belong with the heavenly host.

The demon, on the other hand, had long been aware that he didn't fit in with other demons, and that he felt no loyalty toward Hell. Some obedience was required, of course, and beyond that a demon wasn't really expected to have loyalty per se. But if they knew just how Crowley felt about his supposed allegiance there would certainly be some problems. Any sort of belonging he felt with Hell–as far as one can feel belonging in Hell–had decayed from his being a few thousand years ago, along with any of his genuine evildoing desire.

All he'd had to do for so long was keep up appearances as he lived his life. Now, he was faced with the end of it all, either with him spending the rest of eternity with other demons or whatever horrible unknown awaited a demon in death. Truthfully, he couldn't decide which sounded worse.

And then there was Aziraphale. That damn angel was going to be the death of him. Crowley still had no idea what he wanted them to be. Whatever they were, he knew that Aziraphale made up some of the highlights of his time on earth, but there was hardly space for both of them in the post-apocalyptic universe. But, infuriatingly, Aziraphale denied that there was anything between them. But Crowley knew. There were signs.

There were always moments: the briefest glimmer of acknowledgement when Aziraphale seemed to forget their differences and let how he truly felt show. Crowley was assured, if only for a short time, that there was something between them. He had foolishly convinced himself that they weren't imagined, and yet they were so subtle that at times he began to doubt and he couldn't be sure if he was reading too much into it.

The worst thing was that there was hardly anything he could do about it now. If he tried to bring it up again it was more than likely that the angel would refuse to speak to him until the end of time. Which, in all likelihood, was only a few short days away. He wasn't sure he could live his last few days on earth with the one entity who actually mattered being mad at him.

Speaking of which, he was quite certain that he didn't want to spend his last days thinking about spending time with the aforementioned entity. He picked his phone up off the receiver and was about to dial Aziraphale's bookshop...then grimaced as he decided against it and put the phone back down. He was probably busy running around the bookshop trying to evade customers anyway, and they had only just left each other's company less than half a day ago. With a scowl he snapped his fingers to turn on the T.V. and flopped back into his throne-like desk chair heavily.

He lost interest within seconds as the show's hostess babbled on about international tensions and whatnot. That only served to remind him of exactly what he was trying to forget. He grimaced again as he heard a brief moment of static and was fairly sure he knew what that meant.

"Morning, Crowley," a familiar voice said, confirming his suspicions. "Just checking in. Nice chair."

"Hey guys," he said conversationally, as if it wasn't two demons reaching out to him from the depths of Hell to discuss the end of the world.

"It's about the Antichrist," Ligur said, as if that wasn't obvious.

Crowley wasn't in the mood, to say the least. "Yeah. Great kid. Takes after his dad."

Hastur ignored his little quip as he explained, "Our operatives in the State Department have arranged for the child's family to be flown to the Middle East."

Ligur continued for him, "There, he and the Hell Hound will be taken to the valley of Megiddo."

"The Four Horsemen will begin their final ride," Hastur said.

"Yay," Crowley cheered halfheartedly, pumping his fist into the air before letting it slump back down over the arm of the chair.

"Armageddon will begin. The final combat. It's what we've been working towards since we rebelled," Hastur said. "We are the fallen. Never forget that."

"Well it's not the sort of thing you forget," Crowley responded.

Hastur glared at him as he murmured in a voice cold enough to freeze Hell itself, "I don't trust you, Crowley."

"Everything's going just fine," Crowley retorted.

With a snap of his fingers the T.V. switched off and he was left to his own devices once again. Back to the crushing reality he had tried so desperately to avoid.

To himself he muttered mournfully, "I didn't mean to fall...I just hung around the wrong people."

There was only deafening silence to answer him.

"Easy job," he grumbled angrily. "Deliver the Antichrist. Keep an eye on him. Nice, straightforward job, eh? Not the kind of thing any demon is going to screw up, right?"

With that he blessed under his breath and leapt out of his seat. He had one destination in mind, one sure-fire way to rid himself of the stress and pretend he had control over something in his life. They had been looking a bit too relaxed lately anyway, and he had a responsibility to keep them in check.

He strode leisurely but purposefully over to the verdant collection of plants and snatched up his trusty water squirter, spritzing the plants as he surveyed them critically. He was disgusted at how quickly he found an imperfection in the foliage, mere moments after he had begun to water them. He almost pitied the poor newer plant, who just maybe hadn't quite learned how serious he was about having the perfect plants.

Almost.

"Is that a spot?" he asked. "Is it?"

The leaves started to quiver a bit around him. The older plants had been around long enough to understand what would happen next. They knew damn well what would happen, and knew just as well that it could happen to any one of them next if they let down their guard. But he had to be sure.

"Right, you know what I've told you all about leaf spots," Crowley said flatly, like the brief moment of calm before the ferocious storm that was to come. His voice began to rise as he continued, "I will not stand for them!"

He picked up the little potted plant forcefully, likening it to prying a newborn babe from its mother's breast as he had seen some cruel figures do throughout history. He gave the small plant a scathing look as the plants around them began to shudder with more intensity. Good, he thought cruelly. Can't let them get too comfortable.

"You know what you've done," he told the little plant. "You've disappointed me." He tutted and shook his head sadly, muttering, "Oh dear, oh dear."

Then he held the weakest link aloft for all to see and called out to all the other plants to make a spectacle of the little failure in their midst, "Everyone! Say goodbye to your friend. He just couldn't cut it."

Then he turned toward the hallway. It was the hallway every plant in Europe envisioned in their worst nightmares. The hallway that Granny plants told their little ones about to teach them a lesson about behaving. Well, at least it would have been if plants really were personified like that outside of Crowley's overactive imagination.

To the little plant in his hand he hissed, "Now, this is going to hurt you SO much more than it will hurt me." Turning to the rest of the plants for a final time he roared, "And you guys...GROW BETTER!"

The demon let his piercing amber gaze fall on each plant for emphasis before turning on his heel and walking down the hallway. The little failure in his hands was shaking now as it no doubt began to realize what was happening.

Most people might try to tell you that plants can't feel pain. Recent studies would suggest that plants are actually capable of emitting a scream-like noise when subject to harmful effects, such as being cut down or drying out. Crowley knew from personal experience that any plant that got on his bad side would have preferred to be a human subject to all manner of medieval torture methods before facing whatever it was that he did to them.