#im not aziraphale bashing but i cannot live in a world where i dont acknowledge that he's in the wrong here

[ephhemeralite]

listen. i understand the fact that aziraphale's part of everyday is a lot of new and interesting bits of character development that are very fun to tear apart. but i've seen tons of people discussing what heaven and forgiveness and crowley-as-an-angel mean to aziraphale without the corresponding look at what it means to crowley. so i would really like to do that

cw: discussions of abuse, indoctrination, trauma, and a Really Very Long meta post

it super surprised me when s2 opened on an angel!crowley scene because that kind of scene isn't typically necessary for the kind of character he is. crowley's character is one that revolves around the absence of who he was Before -- so you can understand all that you need to know about him by the ways that he deals with what he's lost (looking at where the furniture isn't, right?). he talks about stars and creation now because they were the most important parts of his angelic life and he cannot leave them behind. he mentions how he fell for asking questions because that's still a large part of who he is; he doesn't believe in hell's mission and he questions the goals and ethics of hell/heaven (the whole graverobbing ordeal, as well as the opening in s1 with hastur and ligur where you can see that his demonic strategy is fundamentally different from more traditional demons, not to mention having a permit from heaven during the job scenes and still disobeying orders according to his own morality). we get a really solid understanding of crowley and what he's about perfectly well from his current demon iteration, because the most important tenants of his character have stayed consistent or formed after the fall.

so what do we gain by such a scene to open the season? well, we learn that this is when aziraphale met crowley for the first time, we learn that aziraphale is immediately besotted by crowley, we learn that aziraphale expresses concern for crowley's questions (and imminent fall). this scene focuses on aziraphale experiencing crowley as an angel because this is an important moment for aziraphale's story, not anything to do with how crowley is or where crowley's story is going.

some other things we know about crowley are that he is the one constantly pushing for "their own side," for separation from heaven and hell, for a person that understands him as someone outside of the angel/demon binary. crowley is the one to approach aziraphale first as agents of opposite sides on the wall of eden, to suggest the arrangement, to convince aziraphale that armageddon would be bad and that they should work together to stop it. he's the one pushing aziraphale further from acceptable angelic behavior. hell, we even find out that he tempts aziraphale into trying food for the first time, which is aziraphale's greatest vice as a character.

this isn't because crowley wants aziraphale to fall or because he's set out to corrupt an angel, though. he sees aziraphale sin (or separate himself from heaven as a collective) first with giving away his sword, then through continued conversation with crowley (The Enemy), and the various other historical scenes where aziraphale lies or indulges in consumption or doesn't follow the divine plan to a tee. this culminates in the arrangement, which crowley sees as a concrete acknowledgement of the futility of heaven and hell, along the lines of "if we can both do the other side's acts and we're both canceling each other out, what's the point in doing any of this in the first place?" (this is NOT, notably, a question on the futility of life itself. crowley covets some material items like the bentley and alcohol that point to a personal valuation of living on earth, but he also has a strong and consistent emphasis on actual, living creatures: the goats, job's children, his plants, the children drowned during the flood, the antichrist, and the line from s2e6 where he says "if heaven kills all life on earth it will be just as dead as if hell had done it.") he believes that this is a clear indication that aziraphale no longer subscribes to the traditional opinions of heaven and hell. obviously, he discovers that he's very wrong come the last scene of season two, but it's helpful to understand the mindset he walks in with.

there's been a lot of gorgeous meta about how the two of them communicate and what their relationship is like in the present, so i'll try not to reinvent the wheel too much here while i look at the conversation in everyday. there's two particular things id like to look at: how crowley can never truly tell aziraphale no (this is pretty well-established so i don't feel the need to go into it, yes?) and the consistency with which crowley denies being the angel he was before the fall -- there are the unsubtle lines about not being the angel who fell, his time as an angel being a long time ago; there's also the slightly subtler moments where he refuses to acknowledge any memory of working with any particular angel/demon during their time as angels (both the pencil-pusher demon and saraqael, if not anyone else im forgetting), as well as his rather iconic reaction to being described as good or nice (this is typically interpreted as a reaction to being seen as not demon-like, but crowley really doesn't care about demons or hell beyond what his association requires. no one cares who's doing the job so long as it gets done, yeah? its more interesting to me to see these moments as times where crowley is described in angelic terms and refuses to let himself be seen as something he can no longer be.)

so if you take crowley at his word, what does it mean to no longer be an angel?

it means that there was a point where crowley was an angel, as we've both heard and seen. it means that he spent time in heaven, had a role, experienced and valued a lot of typically angelic things like kindness and forgiveness. it means that he was eventually cast out for, as we've heard and seen, being curious and headstrong. it means that he lost his place in heaven, his role, his identity, his values and experiences (using experiences here to refer to things he has done and can no longer do, rather than his memories, since i don't have enough textual substance to discuss any ideas i might have about memory). this is the really important part, i think: that crowley had all of these things and that they were taken from him because of who he is as a person (who he already was as an angel, before the exacerbation that came when he became a demon). not only that, all of this loss also took the form of an extremely traumatic fall (as in, a single event that caused crowley not only emotional but assumably physical pain, as well as being a generally physical ordeal).

abusive situations can often thrive because of the manipulation the people within them experience. unquestionable, morally just figures like parents to children or gods to angels get away with what they do because they are able to turn the victim's doubt around onto the victim (what i do is right because i'm The Parent/God/The Boss and you as The Child/The Angel/The Employee have no right to question me, thus if you do you must be Wrong) as well as the ephemeral nature of words (did they really say that or am i exaggerating to make them seem worse in my memory? this is where the physical aspect of falling comes in). this is something i fully see happening to aziraphale within the show.

however, one of the things that can knock an abused person out of their abusive situation is something that's too big to go unquestioned and an absence of the manipulating force to direct the shape of their conclusions. this is where crowley and aziraphale's character stories differ: crowley fell, lost all connection to heaven, and then had no one to tell him heaven was in the right and he the wrong. after landing in hell (which could have also been a bad and manipulative situation) crowley is removed from the manipulating forces by being stationed on earth, where he is allowed to experience life out from under anyones thumb (relatively), process this giant trauma and loss, and find his own answers. he then does what a lot of people who have been abused do when they're no longer being abused: he goes out and does stuff that he couldn't do before. this is where he meets aziraphale, who is also stationed on earth and doing a number of (aforementioned) things that don't align with heaven. the thing that crowley doesn't understand is that aziraphale hasn't had these same experiences that lead to crowley's epiphany nor is he isolated from heaven's manipulation (often seen as gabriel in the first season and metatron in the second). each time aziraphale does something that does not align with heaven's ideals, he either sees that as a reflection of what a bad angel he is or he tries to rationalize it into fitting into his/heaven's world view (the ineffable plan. it was literally right there this entire time i could SCREAM about this GOD'S INEFFABLE PLAN)

so aziraphale is holding onto this idea of an angel that does not exist anymore and crowley is projecting an understanding of similar experiences that did not happen. they're miscommunicating, wow, what else is new? we understand that aziraphale is rationalizing and being manipulated, but why did crowley act the way he did during the fight instead of falling into the familiar and consistent pattern of following aziraphale and going where he leads?

that's right, i said i wanted to talk about how crowley can never tell aziraphale no!!

from crowley's point of view, their entire relationship revolves around their experiences on earth where he has perceived aziraphale defying heaven and he felt intense kinship with that. he's delighted about giving away the sword, he watches aziraphale eat a LOT, they definitely like to drink together, he protects aziraphale from the consequences of lying (crowley protecting aziraphale from falling deserves a billion metas right this instant really). these are all major moments to crowley where aziraphale distinguishes himself from the celestial system. when aziraphale asks crowley for things, he does them because (yes, he loves aziraphale, but also) aziraphale is the one person across heaven, hell, and earth that crowley feels he is actually allied with. he has to go through the motions with hell, deal with all of the pain surrounding heaven, but this one angel is a place where crowley can be genuine, whether that be good or bad or none of the above (this is literally manifested physically within the text with crowley's glasses). the foundation of their relationship, to crowley, is their side. this is why crowley's reaction at the end of everyday is both so intense and pivotal: aziraphale asks crowley to join heaven's side with him and crowley says no.

crowley is not an angel. when crowley was an angel, before the beginning of time, he was too incompatible with heaven and so he fell. that is what being an angel got crowley. there have been some points made about how unhappy being a demon makes crowley and how sweet and innocent he seemed as an angel, but i think that line of thinking falls into the same trap that aziraphale does, which is in assuming that being an angel is in some way inherently better than being a demon, or that crowley wasn't unhappy as an angel, or that aziraphale isn't unhappy as an angel himself. because crowley is happy, when left to his own devices or with aziraphale. his unhappiness comes from the interventions of heaven and hell within his life (thus the importance of crowley questioning the point of heaven and hell and not life itself) because he would like to be separate from them, not restored to some prior state of belonging within their system. the truth is that crowley will never become that angel that aziraphale met again, because that's not how trauma ever, ever works, but that does not mean that crowley cannot have a full and meaningful life in his current state. he's not broken, he's just someone who has been rejected by heaven.

crowley responds to the most fundamental aspect of his identity being questioned and dismissed (i can make you an angel again), with, frankly, a respectably low-key amount of upset. he tells aziraphale that they're better than their sides because his ultimate goal is to separate their side from that of heaven and hell. when aziraphale reveals that he wants to fix heaven, crowley hears him. this is so important to me, because this is a moment where crowley is trying to communicate. he changes his approach and tries to speak to aziraphale instead of reacting out of emotion. after this moment, crowley doesn't speak out of anger at all, even in response to when aziraphale does. instead, he tries to confess his feelings to aziraphale and offers up the option to leave heaven and hell behind again. this is such an important moment because it's crowley trying to break out of their long, deep-instilled habit to hide and double-speak and he gets really close to saying what he means explicitly, even factoring how intensely emotional it makes him to do so.

his offer to run away isn't done to ignore aziraphale's needs but to show him that there is another way out, if aziraphale is willing to take it. there are other options that aziraphale hasn't considered, but crowley is, because crowley is still trying to solidify the existence of their side. from their side, they are free to ignore the angel/demon dichotomy and just be themselves, whatever that looks like. this is what crowley wants, above everything else in the world.

aziraphale rejects this entire concept when he lets go of his bookshop and earth as a whole with the nothing lasts forever line. aziraphale is rejecting earth, the middle ground that they've built their entire lives together on, forcing them into the roles of angel and demon exclusively. this, of all moments, is when crowley puts his glasses back on. because he cannot be an angel, the only role left to him is demon, and thus his vulnerability is not safe or welcome to be exposed to aziraphale.

crowley tries to acknowledge their life on earth twice in the next few moments: the nightingales, which represent everything they went through in the last season (which aziraphale is not thinking about, because he's already left their role as representatives of earth and/or humanity behind) and the kiss itself, which is as explicit as crowley is physically able to be about his own feelings and the future he wants them to have on earth as their own side. he is asking aziraphale, as well as he can, to stay. he's physically closing the divide between their roles in an attempt to show aziraphale how little it all really matters in practice and

aziraphale does the most angelic thing he possible could and Forgives crowley. this is not said out of kindness or as an instinctive reaction. aziraphale is angry and upset when he says this because, in some way, he understands what his words mean even as he does not understand crowley's actions or rejection at all. he reinforces the binary between them and acts vindictively (to parallel the insistence on the apology dance after the argument in the first episode) in retaliation to crowley denying what he sees as his gracious and miraculous offer of restoration.

the most important part of crowley's character to understand in this moment is that while he wants a happy life with aziraphale more than anything, he has extremely hard limits and heaven is one of them. his boundary here is a fundamental part of him and even his deepest desires cannot overcome them. as a fallen, crowley knows that who he is as a person is not angelic. as a fallen, crowley knows what its like to lose the most important, pivotal pieces of his life and start again. as a fallen, he knows that he survived it once. he tells aziraphale don't bother.

and crowley, who will be (and always has been) a demon if it means not being an angel, who has told aziraphale that demons are unforgivable, does the only thing he can do. he leaves.