Chapter Text
When it came to hardened, judgmental angels like Michael and Sandalphon, they saw Aziraphale as — to put it kindly — a doddering old fool of an angel, who was far too human to be of any threat at all.
As much as that fact had contributed to many of Aziraphale’s failures and frustrations in Heaven for the past year and seven months, it worked in his favor now, with the two Archangels having been set to ‘guard’ him. It was far too easy to give them the slip, which Aziraphale had done with a bit of well-placed misdirection before hurrying his way upstairs to one of Heaven’s top floors (as the alarms began to blare; Michael and Sandalphon were arrogant, but they weren’t idiots) and sneaking into the Metatron’s office.
Clearly, the Metatron (who was, mercifully, elsewhere) had also underestimated him. Though, really, he had been doing that from the very beginning. In assuming that Aziraphale had conformed so quickly, after only four months in Heaven and one sternly-worded lecture, he had unknowingly given the angel the only thing capable of changing everything as easily as breathing.
Not that He did so, of course — free will, and all that noise — but the sentiment remained nonetheless.
With likely very limited time, Aziraphale raided through the Metatron’s seemingly endless drawers upon drawers of files. He found nothing, and was close to panicking, when his attention fell upon something that his eyes, which had been glancing around the room frantically, had passed over at first — the righthand corner of the Metatron’s desk, which was engraved with runic, Biblical symbols and inscribed with Aramaic.
סִפְרָא
The Book.
It couldn’t be that easy.
Aziraphale brushed a tentative, trembling hand over it.
As he did, his halo burned, and he crumpled to his knees, clutching at his head with a low, keening wail of pain, waiting for the waves of anguish to pass. When it had finally dulled to a more tolerable piercing throb, he stood back up on shaky legs and found that the runes had come apart, revealing a hidden compartment.
His eyes went wide at the sight, and he dropped a hand from the crown of his head to press trembling fingers over his fluttering heart.
It had been that easy.
(Another fatal mistake, he would think to himself later on, was the Metatron offering him a promotion in the first place.
Any other angel could have smashed through the desk entirely, and found nothing.
But the Metatron had made him Supreme Archangel of all Heaven — and thus, the Book opened for him.)
There were two books in the hidden compartment, as a matter of fact. There was a leather-bound, scarlet Bible in its original, Aramaic text; and there was a gold-bound, thick tome, that — when Aziraphale flipped through it with shaking hands — seemed never-ceasing in its pages upon pages containing the names of every single thing, every single being, in the universe.
Aziraphale did not have to flip very far — though unlike any other book, the pages did not pile up as he made his way through them, and the book did not get any shorter, nor any longer; it simply continued — to find what he was looking for.
In fact, what he was seeking out was hardly a hundred pages in; one of Her very first Creations, as She had called legions of angels into being with a Word, and with a page of the Book.
At the top of the page was a scorch mark, in the shapes of what may once have been letters.
In the middle of the page was the name Crawly, with a thin line etched neatly through it.
At the bottom of the page —
Crowley.
Aziraphale slammed the Book shut and held it tightly to his chest. His eyes were burning with tears; his head was throbbing with pain.
He felt more overwhelmed than he had ever been in his long, long life, and yet he still had room in his chest for aching relief, and for, despite it all, the barest hints of optimism and hope. Hope — that as long as he had this Book, everything was going to be all right, because Crowley would be safe.
And then there was a bang, and the door to the Metatron’s office flung open — and there stood the man himself, in his Earthly corporation, face bulging with rage.
He held out a hand — to bring the Book to himself, certainly — and Aziraphale, without even thinking, his head still throbbing, shoved the Book under one arm, lifted his hands to the crown of his head, pulled away the halo of the Supreme Archangel (biting his lip so hard he bled, as it burnt through the skin of his fingers and singed a ring of fiery pain around his head), and hurled it directly at the Metatron, who screamed. First with fury — then with fear, and disbelief, and shrieking horror.
“AZIRAPHALE —!”
The following explosion was so extraordinary, it blew the entire room to pieces. The alarm began to wail impossibly louder, pristine white flashing with angry, searing red.
And in front of Aziraphale was a scorched shadow of what had once been the Metatron.
Aziraphale had seen it through a haze of pain so intense his teeth were chattering with the force of it, and it had not registered to him, exactly what he had just done. All he was focused on was the Book under his arm — which he pulled tightly back to his chest with burn-scorched hands — and getting the Heaven out of Heaven.
The good news in impulsively blowing up his halo was that Heaven should not be able to find him, so long as he didn’t use any noticeable miracles — and so long as he went to a place where they wouldn’t expect him to be.
And, against whatever odds had been so against him as of late — he did have such a place. A place that he had had his eye on for decades, back on Earth, but had only made his own after the averted Armageddon. A place that only he knew of, serene and tucked-away in a corner of peace.
A place that was exactly where he could go, so that Heaven would not find him.
(So that he could keep Crowley safe.)
Aziraphale fled to the elevator, pressing his shoulder into the button to summon it while keeping the Book held to his chest. As he leaned there, gulping in heaving breaths, Jesus very suddenly appeared at his side, looking as shaken as the Son of God could look.
It was not until that very moment that Aziraphale realized that the Metatron was dead.
It was not until that very moment that he realized — he had killed him.
He had killed him.
“Aziraphale,” was all Jesus said, His voice thick with sadness, and Aziraphale’s lips trembled. His head was throbbing, and his hands were burning, and there was grief and guilt and terror seizing at his chest, but he could hardly feel any of it over the numb shock creeping over the very essence of his being, making him go cold.
“Is he —?” He choked out, hoping against (or perhaps for?) himself.
“He is . . . gone. Very gone.” There was deep regret in Jesus’s gaze, though for what exactly Aziraphale did not know. He only knew that He looked as though He wished things had gone very differently — something Aziraphale recognized, because so did he.
“I — I needed it,” Aziraphale stammered out, trying to explain the unexplainable, because he had just killed someone. “The Book. He was — he said —,” Then, helplessly, unable to say anything else at all: “Crowley.”
Understanding dawned on Jesus’s face, and He closed His eyes for a moment, a look of intense grief and anger passing over His face.
“Of course,” He murmured with sorrow, lifting His scarred hands to His face and breathing out deeply. He dropped them again after a moment, lifting His gaze and looking Aziraphale in the eye.
“You should go to him.”
“I can’t,” Aziraphale choked out, shaking his head sparingly through the pain of it. “I mustn’t.”
Jesus looked at him sadly. “You know he would want you to.”
It was the first time Jesus was trying to convince him to do anything — and when the Son of God encourages you to do something, you really had best do it. But Aziraphale was afraid, and he was in pain, and he was rattled to his core, the sight of a mere shadow where a being had once been etched into the backs of his eyes, and —
And Crowley — Crowley had nearly been erased from existence, because of him.
He could not go to him. He could not bear it.
(He needed Crowley to be safe.)
And so he shook his head despite how much it hurt, and he blinked back burning tears, and he heard Jesus sigh before He spoke.
“Wherever you go, you must leave now,” He said urgently, as the elevator arrived behind Aziraphale and, simultaneously, there came the sounds of fast-moving, angelic footsteps from nearby. Aziraphale’s face paled, and Jesus reached out.
“But, wait — let Me heal you, first —,”
But Aziraphale had gone, and then, only a few moments later, he burst into the night of Soho in a flurry of white wings and soared away, not hesitating for even a heartbeat — because he knew that if he did, he would find himself on the doorstep to his bookshop, hoping against hope to find Crowley still inside.
Aziraphale flew and flew, beating his wings against the night sky with such vigor that each one of his feathers seemed to ache and quiver from the force of it. He clutched the Book to his chest with just as much desperation, clenching down his hands when they threatened to shake from the thoughts whirling through his mind.
He had destroyed the Metatron.
He had done that.
Even during the Great War, Aziraphale had avoided killing anyone. He had not so much as knowingly stepped on an ant, in his six thousand and four years on Earth.
And yet, he just had. He had ended a life.
(The worst part was that he was, in a way, glad.
The Metatron had threatened Crowley. He had been leading the charge for Heaven’s demands for a Second Coming. He had been playing things by his own rules, rather than his original intent at being the ‘Voice of God’ — evidenced as such that he had not even deigned to listen to Jesus Christ’s own words.
And — again — he had threatened Crowley.
Well. He was no threat, any longer.
And Aziraphale had done that — and he was glad.
But he was also horrified, and sickened, and angry with himself, and wishing beyond all hope that he could start everything over again and do them right. Only, he did not even know if that was a possibility, when things had always seemed to be so wrong, when it came to Heaven.
If only Aziraphale had seen that sooner. Or rather — had accepted it.)
It didn’t take him long to get to where he was going — the place where he thought that, surely, no one would find him, even the ones who might be looking. The door opened for him, and he stumbled his way inside, blinking around in dazed dismay at the unkempt state of it.
He had not thought of this place since he had left for Heaven; he had not really considered anything much that he was leaving behind on Earth, with the exception of Crowley. Without Crowley, anything else rather lost its point — even a place like this, which Aziraphale had taken ownership of with himself and the demon in mind in the first place.
On instinct, Aziraphale waved a hand for a minor restoration miracle — then froze, breathless, for a long, long moment, his hands beginning to shake in earnest around the Book. He was almost certain that even that small miracle would bring legions of angels down upon him, ready to cast him into Hell (or into the darkest, loneliest corners of Heaven as they awaited the Second Coming) and to tear the page with Crowley’s name on it from the Book of Life — but no retribution came.
He reminded himself, if only to calm his thundering heart, that Heaven did not track everything an angel did; if they did that, then he would’ve been cast out long ago for his Arrangement with Crowley, and the many temptations he had done over the centuries. It was only when they started getting high in volume, or large in scale, that they started noticing.
Things would be utter chaos Up there right now, anyway. On account of him having killed the Metatron.
With that hollow thought in mind, Aziraphale took a stumbling step inside. He pulled in his wings, and the force of the motion made him stumble; his knees buckled, and he fell to the floor in a curled-up heap, still holding the Book tightly to his chest. He did not even have the strength — physical or mental — to pull himself up to the nearest armchair; rather, he simply lay his head down on the floor, closed his eyes, and began to cry silently.
He was so tired.
He was so tired, and he had done something so terrible in the works of trying to do only the best things for all of humanity — only, that wasn’t it, really, was it? He had done that terrible thing, he had destroyed the Metatron, for something else. For someone else.
(And he was glad for it.
Because he wanted to save humanity — to save the world. It was why he had gone to Heaven in the first place; why he had accepted the role of Supreme Archangel, back when he had believed that he could change things. He wanted to help people.
But the thing he really wanted, the thing he wanted most . . .
Well.)
He may have wrecked everything with Crowley, when he had gone back Up to Heaven. He may have threatened the demon’s very existence, through doing everything he had only done to try and help the world.
But at least — now that he had the Book — Crowley would be safe.
And maybe, with the Book gone, and the Metatron destroyed, and Jesus on humanity’s side . . . everyone would be.
He could only pray — pray, and hope that Someone was listening.
Someone was listening.
And the very next day, Someone walked into Aziraphale’s bookshop, and smiled pleasantly at a rather disheveled-looking demon, and asked to speak with him about the very angel who had prayed to be heard.