Crowley dealt with the years after the bookshop the way he has always dealt with things that hurt. He drank. He gambled. He stayed away from the shop entirely, not once going back, not even to check whether it was still there. Aziraphale, in the meantime, had gone back to Heaven and thrown himself into the work he had agreed to do. The Second Coming was his responsibility now, and he was doing his best to make it something the world might actually survive.

Then things started going wrong in Heaven. Jesus left. The Book of Life went missing. The Metatron and two archangels vanished without explanation, erased from existence before anyone understood what was happening. With Heaven unravelling around him, Aziraphale had no choice but to call Crowley. Six thousand years and one devastating argument later, that part still had not changed.