Crowley closes her eyes for a minute, letting those words sink into her somewhere to be kept and cherished and wondered over. Honored.
Then she sighs and steps back a step so Aziraphale has to let go of her, and shakes her shoulders a little. It's not a large room, but it's large enough to materialize her wings in, if they're kept folded. She sighs again--it's always a bit of a relief to have them out, like an itch or tension so familiar you've learned to ignore it suddenly vanishing. Carefully she reaches back and under, feeling at the feathers, and pulls at a small one. She winces a little as it comes out, but it is small. It'll grow back, and it's not one it harms her to lose.
Then she reaches up to her hair, plucks out a couple strands, and wraps them around the feather.
Right, base materials accomplished. Now for the interesting part. Crowley closes his hands around the feather and concentrates.
She could have just summoned a ring out of nothing, of course; she summons clothes and such for herself all the time. But it wouldn't be the same, wouldn't have the same impact. There's such a thing as style, after all. And gravitas. And equality.
I'd be honored.
It's been hard for Crowley to accept that they're on equal footing now, after centuries--longer--of seeing their relationship as one where she did all the chasing, all the tempting, all the yearning. Thousands of small acts of service to say the things she couldn't say, show the things she couldn't show. Smaller, safer gestures, things Aziraphale would accept, instead of the things he couldn't or wouldn't. But now does.
It's hard, learning to let yourself be loved without fear. For both of them, in different ways. But here they are.
Crowley's hands begin to glow, a pulse of starlight between her closed fingers. As Aziraphale did, she includes a small spark of herself, a grain of soul melded together with feather and hair and spun together, altered, transformed.
It only takes a few moments, and when she opens her hands she's holding a ring. It's a snake, of course, a serpent ouroboros, made from an unknown black metal with faint streaks of red running through it. The tiny, delicate scales shimmer in the moonlight.
No worries, of course. =) And gonna blatantly plagerize myself with this but I liked it so there.
Then she sighs and steps back a step so Aziraphale has to let go of her, and shakes her shoulders a little. It's not a large room, but it's large enough to materialize her wings in, if they're kept folded. She sighs again--it's always a bit of a relief to have them out, like an itch or tension so familiar you've learned to ignore it suddenly vanishing. Carefully she reaches back and under, feeling at the feathers, and pulls at a small one. She winces a little as it comes out, but it is small. It'll grow back, and it's not one it harms her to lose.
Then she reaches up to her hair, plucks out a couple strands, and wraps them around the feather.
Right, base materials accomplished. Now for the interesting part. Crowley closes his hands around the feather and concentrates.
She could have just summoned a ring out of nothing, of course; she summons clothes and such for herself all the time. But it wouldn't be the same, wouldn't have the same impact. There's such a thing as style, after all. And gravitas. And equality.
I'd be honored.
It's been hard for Crowley to accept that they're on equal footing now, after centuries--longer--of seeing their relationship as one where she did all the chasing, all the tempting, all the yearning. Thousands of small acts of service to say the things she couldn't say, show the things she couldn't show. Smaller, safer gestures, things Aziraphale would accept, instead of the things he couldn't or wouldn't. But now does.
It's hard, learning to let yourself be loved without fear. For both of them, in different ways. But here they are.
Crowley's hands begin to glow, a pulse of starlight between her closed fingers. As Aziraphale did, she includes a small spark of herself, a grain of soul melded together with feather and hair and spun together, altered, transformed.
It only takes a few moments, and when she opens her hands she's holding a ring. It's a snake, of course, a serpent ouroboros, made from an unknown black metal with faint streaks of red running through it. The tiny, delicate scales shimmer in the moonlight.
Silently, Crowley holds it out to Aziraphale.