Chapter Text
As soon as Aziraphale took his first step into that lift, Crowley knew that it was time for him to go.
The angel made his choice.
That choice wasn’t Crowley.
So Crowley chooses not to linger. He climbs into his car, and he leaves.
As he drives, the ache in his heart grows. It digs in its claws, settling into each fibre, creeping into each cell, boring into each atom. It builds up the pressure, and something in his chest begins to give.
He ignores it. He bites back the resentment and vitriol, and presses his foot just a bit harder against the accelerator.
Not here, he thinks to himself. Not. Here.
The Bentley doesn’t try to play any more music. It knows better.
Crowley deliberately focuses his mind on the road and only the road. He knows better.
The drive passes by in silence.
He doesn’t stop until he’s just outside the building that houses his flat. He pulls himself out of the Bentley and into the unfairly pleasant weather. A cool breeze ruffles his hair; he scowls at it and slams the car door shut behind him.
He stalks up the walkway, his face flat and his arms languid. To a bystander, he would look calm, collected, just a typical bloke heading home.
Crowley is none of those things.
He might have looked composed on the outside, but that was because there was a battle on the inside. There were a myriad of feelings, all clamouring for their turn at the wheel, so many that none of them can win out. He’s angry, fucking pissed even, and miserable and for Someone’s sake, he still loves that stupid angel and is terrified of what might happen to him up there while he’s all alone. He’s furious at himself and at Heaven and he wants to scream and rage, maybe get hit by lightning a few times just to burn away the chaos unfolding in his mind.
He doesn’t want to feel this way. For even the promise of relief, he would tear his still-beating heart from his chest: cut out his troublesome emotions and give them lives of their own so they could walk away from him like everything else.
Crowley blinks, and he finds himself standing in the open entryway of his flat. He limps inside, closing and locking the door behind him.
All of the lights are off. He doesn’t turn them on - he wants to stay in the darkness.
(It’s a demon’s natural state of being, after all, to stay in the shadows, untouched by radiance. But that’s not why he skirts by the light switch, instead heading for the windows, where he rolls down all the blinds.)
With the world shut out, and Crowley shut in, he leans against a wall and pants out ragged breaths between clenched teeth.
He’s feeling even worse now.
The conflict, the confusion, wrenches his heartstrings in all directions. They pull and twist on each other, ripping him apart from the inside. They twine around one another and tie elaborate knots, each tug undoing him a little more, each tangle adding to the ever-growing snarl.
He pauses.
There’s a strange sensation forming in the left side of his chest. It feels tense and painful, as if his heart were about to break.
And then it does.
More than that, it explodes. It shatters into tiny fragments that spray from his chest and scatter across the room. Glass-like shards pepper every nearby surface, falling like hail wherever they land.
It’s over as quickly as it begins.
Crowley stares out over the ruins of his heart, his hand hovering uncertainly over his chest. The ache is gone, and is replaced by… nothing. He doesn’t feel anything.
He blinks once, twice. His arms slowly fall to his sides. The surprise and shock and morbid curiosity he should be feeling aren’t there; instead, he is completely numb.
(Surely, seeing the fragmented remains of his emotional core dispersed across the room like a grotesque confetti would make him feel something. But apparently not.)
Crowley takes a step back from the scene. Not because it makes him feel saddened, or sick, or any sort of way at all, but because he is tired. He did have quite a long day, after all.
He turns on his heel and walks out of the room. He doesn’t look back as his footsteps recede down the hallway and diminish into silence.
All that’s left is an empty room, with the broken pieces of a shattered heart sitting quietly in the darkness.