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bardraelyn · 1 year ago

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On Disaster Puppies, Anxious Angels, and Applesauce

*This post has been revised and expanded from a previous post.

So the key to understanding the end of S2 boils down to this:

Angel!Crowley = disaster puppy (all enthusiasm, not much sense)

Aziraphale = anxious kid who grew up in a house with plastic covers on all the furniture (this bit is important)

Let’s break it down:

When they first encounter each other, in the time Before the Beginning, Aziraphale shows signs of unease when he hears Angel!Crowley questioning God’s Ineffable Plan. I’ve seen it suggested that Aziraphale reacts this way because has doubts—that he doesn’t trust Heaven. Yet it’s well established in S1 that the loss of faith comes later, after the events surrounding Armageddon prove to him irrevocably that Heaven sees humans as no more than tokens in an elaborate game against Hell. No, Before the Beginning, Aziraphale trusts Heaven implicitly, and that trust is the root of his fear. Aziraphale trusts Heaven, Heaven has rules, and rules must be enforced.

Aziraphale doesn’t warn Angel!Crowley off questions because he thinks there’s something wrong with Heaven. He warns Angel!Crowley off questions because he lives in a restrictive environment with rigid rules and is terrified of (vague, unspecified) consequences. Anxious children don’t need to have erred or been punished previously in order to be afraid of punishment. They need only have an expectation (implicit from the mere existence of rules) that punishment of some sort is possible. In fact, having not been punished (because their anxiety mostly keeps them in line without need for actual adult intervention) makes the fear—not threat, but fear—of punishment that much more powerful because they don’t know what the punishment will be, and the unknown is terrifying. (What’s more, they are desperate for praise and reassurance that they won’t be punished and are doing the right thing, hence Aziraphale’s love language being words of affirmation.) Aziraphale is trying to protect the innocent, joyful angel he just met, even though he doesn’t yet know what he is protecting him from. He just knows you’re not supposed to muss the furniture, and what Angel!Crowley is suggesting feels dangerous.

Fear of the unknown explains why Aziraphale’s demeanor shows more of an edge in certain present-day scenes of S2. Thanks to his and Crowley’s post-Armaged-didn’t appearance swap, Aziraphale has now been to Hell and has a much better sense of what punishment might actually look like—not to mention a very up-close and personal understanding of exactly the kind of punishments that were intended for his beloved. Punishment is no longer a vague concept but rather a well-defined set of parameters, and Aziraphale knows how to deal with things that have edges. (Yes, that’s a flaming sword allusion, but it’s also a pointed reference to the notion that things that can be defined can be countered.) Because he can anticipate, he can plan. And planning is something Aziraphale excels at, because anxious children out of necessity grow into meticulous planners.

Having this knowledge of what punishment looks like leads our shades-of-gray angel to become less fearful for himself while simultaneously making him even more protective of Crowley. His thought process has gone from, “Punishment is big and terrifying, and I don’t know how I would cope” to “Punishment looks like this, and it sucks as much as or more than I expected, and I want my beloved to never have to endure it again.” It has also made him more protective of the innocents who are bound to get caught in the middle of Heaven and Hell’s unending conflict. Indeed, he goes truly fierce during the battle at the bookshop in a way that we have not seen before, even at the climax of S1. (While he did pull that tone with Furfur in 1941, that moment arose from disdain rather than aggression, so it’s not particularly relevant to this part.)

This also accounts for why, after his Fall, Crowley has become a demon who only “goes along with Hell as far as he can.” Angel!Crowley had no concept nor fear of punishment. Crowley now has both, but he’s already been punished in the worst way possible (loss of his angelic status and the opportunity to work on more projects like his beautiful nebulas), so he knows what punishment feels like. He knows where to toe the line and knows what to expect if/when he doesn’t. He’s not that bright and enthusiastic puppy anymore; he’s a wary old dog with a long memory, who is willing to take a stand to protect those he’s loyal to, even while he still cowers at certain types of threats (“We can run away together!”).

Angel!Crowley was punished and cast out of the restrictive home with all the plastic on the furniture, and the new house he’s been stuck in for the past 6000 years is run by the sort of abusive f*cks who beat puppies and raise them for dog fights. (I have a theory that Crowley was punished less severely than some of the other Fallen. He is, after all, one of the most beautiful demons we see, and that suggests that the person in charge of doling out punishments was more annoyed at him than angry, and so didn’t curse him with the truly nasty afflictions we see on the more repugnant of demons—like Hastur, who delights in pain, or Beelzebub, who had some leadership role in the Rebellion—but that doesn’t matter because his new home was terrible, possibly in part because of that lesser punishment. I bet that prior to the Rebellion, “Lucifer and the boys” delighted in the cliquish equivalent of “throwing sticks for the Disaster Puppy to chase,” and poor Angel!Crowley didn’t realize they weren’t really his friends so much as a different set of abusers who used attention instead of neglect. But after the Fall, they became his keepers, and his eyes were opened to a whole new level of loss and betrayal. Anyway.)

As a member of the Fallen, Crowley doesn’t remember the names of some angels/demons (Furfur, Saraqael, and yes, Aziraphale at first) but clearly remembers others (like the Metatron and Gabriel), even though they all remember him. I’ve seen suggestions that this is a trauma response or the results of a partial memory wipe, but I think it has a much simpler explanation: He only remembers the names and faces of entities who stood out to him. That enthusiastic angel who bubbled with joy and absolutely annoyed some of the other angels with his exuberance? Of course, he sticks in their memory! But they barely registered to him because they were each just one in a billion random strangers he played with in the park. The Disaster Puppy enthusiastically plays with everyone. He remembers the ones who had the power to slap him on the nose—and the one angel whose daring and kindness impressed him enough for his name to finally stick after it didn’t during their previous encounters.

At their very first meeting, Aziraphale introduces himself; Angel!Crowley doesn’t reciprocate. Names are irrelevant. He’s too caught up in his nebula to even take note of the introduction. So later, when they meet on the wall of Eden, introductions are needed again: Aziraphale because Crowley didn’t recall his name, and Crowley because he never gave his name at their first meeting (and probably never during any of their chance encounters in Heaven, because remember, Disaster Puppy just isn’t all that concerned with names), but also because even if Aziraphale did pick up Angel!Crowley’s name in passing sometime after their first meeting, he absolutely would not assume that the fallen angel still uses it. Rather than risk dead-naming him, he waits for Crowley (or Crawly, at the time) to tell him what he prefers to be called.

So, it’s obvious why Crowley didn’t remember Aziraphale’s name, but did he recognize Aziraphale at all before approaching him on the wall? I would bet on absolutely, yes, but with the vague sort of recollection of a conversation he probably should have taken a bit more to heart. He sees a being who tried at some point in the past to warn him, whose name he doesn’t recall because it didn’t seem important enough at the time, but who makes him feel comfortable enough to approach: “You tried to help me before, which means you are kinder than those other angels who didn’t, and so you probably won’t hurt me now, even though I’m Fallen. I’m feeling conflicted about this notion that knowledge of Good and Evil is a Bad Thing, and as someone who tried to advise me earlier, I feel like I can talk to you about it.” (What neither of them has yet realized is that knowledge of Good and Evil is the key to recognizing that Heaven and Hell are two ends of the same poison pill, and it’s not only humans who have been kept in the dark; a lot of the Angelic Host are also in need of some applesauce.)

All of this is why the memory-wipe theory simply doesn’t make sense. Think about it: Gabriel is the Supreme Archangel, and their intent with him was to perform the equivalent of a full hard drive wipe and reinstall of the base angelic software. They think of him as corrupted beyond repair. If even the highest of high archangels isn’t worth the massive effort of selective file deletion, why would they waste that same amount of effort on Crowley to wipe (and possibly replace) a few select memories from before the Fall? Yes, it’s clear that Crowley was an angel with a reasonably high level of access, given his ability to open the archives, but there’s absolutely no indication that he outranked Gabriel. In fact, his scorn for the Supreme Archangel is exactly the sort of scorn you’d have for someone who used to have authority over you and abused it extremely casually but was mostly the kind of negligent adult who ignored you until you were useful and/or pissed them off.

(As an aside, this also ties back to the question of why angels don’t eat while demons do. Aziraphale eats—with enthusiasm!—so clearly angels can eat, and Crowley mentions “food not that good anymore” in Heaven as part of why he started palling around with the other discontents, so angels certainly did eat at some point, but now they don’t. While Hell plainly has some sort of meal situation—not to mention a fiery beverage dispenser—we don’t see so much as a watercooler in Heaven. And well, yeah. Obviously. Because somebody in Heaven wants to keep everything pristine, so they won’t allow food anywhere near all that Heavenly furniture. It won’t kill the angels to go without meals, because they are immortal beings, so all the ban achieves is a) starvation, b) loss of pleasure, and c) control. After all, food control—control over the basic function of consuming sustenance—is a great way to exert and reinforce control over a group of beings that you want to ensure won’t rebel. And that’s really all it comes down to: Keeping everything pristine and spotless and perfect, and keeping everyone in line. Withholding the literal and metaphorical applesauce. And the Rebellion gave whoever is in charge of those decisions [my bet would be on the Metatron; God seems too self-involved to care about the furniture] the perfect excuse to change the house rules to ban food. And since it’s definitely a cult, all the ones who are deeply indoctrinated just sort of…go along with it. Anyway….)

If Aziraphale feels any guilt over Crowley’s Fall, it’s a mild twinge over the fact that he wasn’t able to convince the Disaster Puppy to stop jumping on the furniture. That’s not the primary motivating factor for why he’s so adamant about protecting Crowley at the end of S2 or at any other time in their long association. Aziraphale and Crowley are both, in their ways, protectors. That is established over and over again, throughout all of their actions and conversations. Protecting is a primary drive for each of them, something that is at the core of their beings, and it often puts them at odds over the exact same objective: Protecting the one(s) they care most about. They withhold information and behave in sometimes appalling ways to protect each other when what they really need to be doing—as they should have learned from the first Armageddon attempt—is working together to protect what they have with each other along with everything else that they love.

Because the reality is that if either one of them sacrificed themself to save the other, that very sacrifice would destroy the other. They are of one heart, and it cannot, will not live if it is not whole. But neither one fully trusts the other to coordinate a defense because of that same history and past trauma. Aziraphale thinks Crowley won’t listen to him because Angel!Crowley shrugged him off, and Crowley is still afraid of being kicked if he lets his guard down because he can see how much his beloved is still a victim of the cult programming (and Aziraphale is not above kicking if he feels panicked). Crowley doesn’t think Aziraphale will hurt him on purpose, but rather because Aziraphale doesn’t see all the angles and manipulations and therefore can’t see all of the threats—and in their conversation at the end of S2E6, the angel seemingly proves him right.

Now, here I want to pause for just a moment to address a certain type of anxiety response, because it’s vitally important to what comes next, and that is diving in without a plan. It is entirely too common for individuals with anxiety to go into a tailspin when confronted with something that feels overwhelming. This is followed by a prolonged period of recovery, which may then lead to meticulous planning to deal with the situation (if it can’t just be avoided entirely). Unfortunately, this process takes time—often too much time. This is why we sometimes see Aziraphale throw himself into situations with very little forethought or preparation (like, say, following the clues to surrounding the appearance of a certain ex-Supreme Archangel at his bookshop), because he’s tapping into a slightly more self-aware (if rather unhealthy) approach to handling things that trigger his anxiety: “I know if I get up in my head about this, it will paralyze me, and shit needs to get done, so fuck it.” He is short-circuiting the possibility of a tailspin by refusing to think before he acts. The kind of energy that accompanies this approach could easily be categorized as frantic.

When Aziraphale is telling Crowley the “good” news, he appears excited, but given one significant fact we do know—that Aziraphale is driven by anxiety—I would argue that his demeanor in this moment could more accurately be read as agitated. Now, we could debate all day what might have happened during his conversation with the Metatron to cause that agitation. It is plausible—indeed likely, given Neil’s intricate plots—that there was something more to it than we’ve been shown thus far. But we don’t need to know the details to understand Aziraphale’s response, because Aziraphale’s anxiety provides all of the necessary context. After spending several minutes enduring the direct attention of the Metatron, Aziraphale is acutely aware of one very important thing: that he and his beloved demon are, at the very least, still under intense scrutiny by his own former side, and that means they still are not, and have never been, entirely safe from Heaven or Hell’s interference. So he does what our darling Anxiety Angel always does when he is terrified and needs to act: He throws himself in before he can think too hard about what he’s throwing himself into.

So this brings us to Aziraphale’s return to Heaven.

I don’t think that Metatron’s intent is to kill Aziraphale. He will almost certainly resort to that if looks like Aziraphale won’t give him what he wants, but right now, he just sees a tool that can help him achieve his goal (provided Crowley is out of the way). Because here’s the thing: the archangels are clueless about some very important things. That has already been established (see: Job and conversations about human birth). Metatron is probably a bit less so than most, but there are things the Angels in Charge fundamentally do not understand, and they don’t know it yet, but Aziraphale is one of those things.

Metatron sees an angel who has not only lived on Earth long enough to truly understand humans, but also (and this is key) has collaborated with a demon—a tempter—and then effectively lived in the company of that tempter for the past four years. Metatron sees Aziraphale as��someone who can be tempted and manipulated. That’s why he brings him coffee. He’s trying to use that. He wants a tool he can control. But he, like all of the highest of the Host, is guilty of neglect. He has never paid close enough attention to Aziraphale to see the Bastard Angel: the one who pushes back against Crowley, and even against God, who offers his own temptations, who is stubborn and implacable (much to Crowley’s frequent annoyance even while he loves it), and who isn’t afraid to stand firm in the face of Heaven, Hell, and Armageddon to protect the world and the keeper of his heart. Metatron thinks Aziraphale's resistance to Armageddon was the result of Crowley's manipulation, so he figures he'll just get Crowley out of the way or keep him too busy to interfere, and use Aziraphale for himself. Metatron is so very wrong.

As to why Aziraphale hasn’t fallen yet (and isn’t going to fall, even in S3) in spite of all of his misdeeds and mini-rebellions: it all comes down to the fallout. The Rebel Host—including the poor Disaster Puppy angel running around with them—started a war. In Heaven. They didn’t just individually act up on occasion in ways that could be ignored. They engaged in a violent and bloody act of rebellion. The Fall wasn’t about the small sins; it was about the big one. They messed up the furniture. They had to go. Aziraphale’s not messing up the furniture—yet. By the time he starts, it will be far too late for Heaven to do anything to stop him.

See, that smile at the end of S2E6? It’s not pleasure at taking charge, and it’s not determination to fix Heaven. It’s a mask. Aziraphale spent that elevator ride bottling up his pain and hiding it down deep. Anxiety children become adults who are masters of repression, and he just went through his whole panic attack and packed away his grief in the elevator, while holding a straight face (a very tense, grief-stricken face—it’s all there in the micro-expressions, or rather, the desperate attempt at suppression of all macro- and micro-expressions, about which I could write a whole separate post—but essentially a straight face nonetheless). I would bet my immortal soul that he put on that smile right when the elevator stopped, just before the doors started to open. Heaven is about to learn the hard way why choosing Aziraphale was their fatal mistake. Because the Bastard Angel is broken and angry, and he’s done with their bullshit rules and their plastic-covered furniture. Maybe he pushed Crowley away to protect him. Maybe he really wanted Crowley to come with him to try to change things from the inside. None of that matters. All of the maybes that happened before Metatron came back to collect Aziraphale are irrelevant. Because Metatron doesn’t understand Aziraphale, and he just tipped his hand when he spoke the words “Second Coming.” Aziraphale has long since realized that Heaven is toxic—that’s what he wants to fix—but until that moment he didn’t have the context Crowley had to know why Gabriel left. But he has just learned that his love, his heart, and his world are in mortal danger, and he will stop at nothing to save them. Heaven hath no fury like an angel with a broken heart.

Aziraphale has never worried that Crowley was ever made to forget him. He’s intelligent and observant. He noted that initial un-introduction (and was even a bit disappointed by it), so he knows why Crowley doesn’t remember his name when they meet on the wall of Eden. Their coded-language dance around the depth of their association has never been about fear of rejection over imagined faults but rather the very real threats from their respective Home Offices, which they are too wary to immediately forget even after thwarting Armageddon and their own executions. (They are right not to trust that sense of peace!) It has taken them four years to let down their guards even the tiniest bit, and they are still speaking in code—hence the ball: It's Aziraphale's confession of love without saying the words out loud, because it still doesn't feel entirely safe. And he’s not going to Heaven to throw himself on some sacrificial alter to fix a mistake he thinks he made 6000 years ago by failing to keep an angel who barely acknowledged him from falling in with the rest of the Rebel Host. He’s just doing what he’s always done: trying his best to protect the innocent from Heaven’s caprice.

Only this time, he knows his own heart is innocent too.