Queen of Infinite Space

This time round, Icarus takes it slow. Anyone who told him that his failure was in thinking himself exceptional just doesn’t know what they’re talking about. He could have become a thing to be marveled at the first time, and he will be that again. But not even a genius can go from standing still to soaring overhead on the wings of glory, and Icarus is far from a genius, merely brilliant. He never knew in his former youth, or he forgot, that you have to run before you can fly, and he plans to do just that.

He practices in the early mornings, just as the sun begins to grace the sands with her light, but before the surface of the beach can burn his feet up with so much love. For the first few weeks he doesn’t even bring the wings of wax and wood with him. He runs for long stretches and then jumps up, where he seems in the air to stick. He never had a problem with take-offs before, but practice means every part, even what is already known. And he never learned how to land, either.

The first dawn that he takes the newly constructed wings out of his sack brings him to tears. The feathers used were mostly white and dun, built as a tool but not themselves a work of art. But when the sleepy strands of daylight wrap themselves around those ordinary colors, they are transformed into pink and aching blue; water and flame and flights of fancy. To think that he could soon be a part of that, and not because he’s fleeing, but merely for the joy and beauty of it, it makes him tremble.

It wasn’t only patience he lacked before, but humility, and the understanding that no one is in this alone. His body and its movements are art, but so is the contraption that gets him up there against the canvas of the sky, as is the sky itself, and even all the poetry that’s been written about his failure. He keeps inching forward while giving thanks for everyone who’s helped him along the way, until the day he is ready to take a running leap off the nearest cliff.

To any onlooker he would seem to plunge straight to his doom, but he catches the air beneath him at just the right instant and swells back up in an inferno of plumes. He approaches the sun again, but he’s smart about it: it is not an imposition, but an invitation, and when she accepts, they dance. He’d love to stay forever, but he can tell when it is time to gracefully dismount the stage.

In this new life of his, Icarus never fell once.

Crowley’s hand closes around Aziraphale’s wrist just in time, and he holds on tight for Somebody’s sake. This isn’t fingers twined in hope and goodbye while the ground opens up for the Morning Star. That was simple compared to this: one grand gesture versus two scared and lonely people who don’t know what they can do for each other.

“Just let me go.” Aziraphale doesn’t scream or beg, his voice too deadened to even sound resigned to the Fall. “Please. It hurts so much.”

Crowley, flaming sword between his ribs, forces himself up from the floor and crawls forward, limb by Fallen limb.

Gabriel still wears that blessed smirk, still waves a lofty hand at a pillar of flame, still sips a fruity drink, waiting for an angel to deliver himself into doom.

Remembering a burning bookshop and the taste of ash he screams the angel's name, and smashes a Principality's ring into the floor.

And an infinity of floors down, in a coffin shaped like a bathtub, Aziraphale glimpses the crack that might flood his brain with light.

*

this is an apocalypse story, maybe there are cycles where they switch roles, maybe they learn to shake each other out of it each time