#took a wrong and found myself in a really dark messed up but oddly fascinating corner of Tumblr

[misspoetree]

[4/24]

❄❄ kp + text post advent calendar ❄❄

[scintillating-galaxias]

give ‘em hell, darling

Chapter Four—Step 3

The Plan begins to fall apart.

(Read it here on ao3!)

Aziraphale’s cell was empty aside from him for what felt like days. Months, maybe, or just an hour. However much time had passed; all he could think about through it all was Earth. He’d told Crowley—oh, how he missed his one true friend!—to give them Hell, but he was not-so-secretly hoping he wasn’t making too large of a mess of the place. There was only one London, after all. Or perhaps, without Aziraphale to anchor him to one spot, Crowley was roaming about the Earth, causing as much chaos as he desired. If this was the case, then Aziraphale rectified the previous statement to now say, “There was only one Earth, after all.”

He’d taken to pacing around the perimeter to take his mind off of his worries. Occasionally, bouts of frustration and anger, at Uriel, at himself, at all of Heaven, rendered him motionless and stiff with fury and he had to remind himself, Crowley was waiting for him. He had promised to come back; therefore, he would come back. 

Easy, angel, he’d probably say, and a spike of loneliness drove through Aziraphale’s gut, and off he would go worrying all over again, and off he would go pacing all over again.

This cycle went on for a long, long time.

Eventually, Aziraphale had memorized the number of paces it took to circle the room, had recited multiple of his favorite books to himself to stave off his restlessness, even tried his hand at sleeping, which only brought him shadowy, vague dreams of voices calling out to him behind endless curtains, and so he did not attempt it a second time. He tried not to think too much about Earth lest he be consumed by nostalgia and a bone-deep yearning for home.

Finally, he stopped to stare down at his feet. No one was coming for him. And though he was confident he would escape, he did not know when exactly that would be. He looked to the sigils on the walls. He had little personal use for them aside from the communication portal in his shop. Most of what he remembered about them was from the Early Days. No human book on Earth had the correct directions to create a real, working sigil, so he had no way to brush up on something he’d learned eight thousand years ago.

But that was no real concern. Aziraphale, if a somewhat lousy angel, was still devastatingly intelligent. He deemed no part of his life unnecessary and did not discard a single minute. He stored away every single day in a box-shaped memory and placed them in what was essentially a cubbyhole in his mind, waiting to be taken down and reopened again. All that was left was a relatively simple task of walking himself all the way down to the beginning.

He did that, and sure enough, he found the times he had had that knowledge sewn into his being. And then it was clear the sigils had a lot of threatening decorative flair to them, but otherwise were basic holding and repression sigils designed to prevent him from using his powers. One was made to reinforce the walls in case he—what, punched his way out? Either way, their meanings were not shocking in any capacity, but having a basic understanding made the sigils a whole lot less threatening. It was a bit like seeing an unnerving shape in the dark that is vaguely humanoid, but when one gathered the courage to shine a light on it, it ended up being a tree stump or an oddly shaped rock.

Aziraphale had just relaxed when his ears popped rather painfully.

“How’s this place been treating you?”

Aziraphale felt like a switch had been flipped. One moment a current of cautious optimism buoyed him, the next he was desperately struggling to keep himself from screaming.

“Gabriel,” he said coldly, refusing to turn around, “to what do I owe the honor?”

He heard Gabriel grin. “What do you think?” Footsteps came closer to him, dulled and weakened by the nature of the room. “I made it myself.”

Aziraphale tightened his jaw and finally turned to meet Gabriel’s falsely sunny smile. “What do you want, Gabriel. You’re not here for pleasantries.”

The smile slid right off of Gabriel’s face. In its place, an unfriendly scowl soured his handsome visage. “You need to do us a favor,” he said, clipped.

“Do I now?” Aziraphale twiddled his thumbs. “I do apologize, but you caught me at a bad time. I’m quite busy at the moment.”

“No, you aren’t.”

“Oh, but I am. I’m reading, you see.”

“What?”

“These sigils—they’re quite well done, is all,” Aziraphale replied chipperly. “I doubt you have a scrap of artistic prowess, so pass on my appreciation to dear Michael, but they’re fascinating to look at. Really.”

Gabriel’s violet eyes darkened to a nasty bruise-purple. “Enough with the chit chat. Either you can listen to me, or you can be left here to die.” He spread his hands. “It’s an obvious choice to me, but”—he sucked in a breath his teeth—“between you and me, you make a lot of stupid decisions.”

The dangerously powerful temptation to tell Gabriel to stuff it up his arse was mighty, but through the sort of class maintained through diligence forged in himself over the centuries, Aziraphale resisted. Crowley would be disappointed. Perhaps another time.

He warily side-eyed Gabriel, then carefully asked, “What do you want from me?”

“Advice.”

Aziraphale had opened his mouth furiously, and now it snapped shut with a clack of his teeth. “Come again?”

“The new agents we have been sending to Earth in your place are, hm. Struggling,” he said tersely, as though each word physically pained him to say. “The Council would appreciate some insight.”

Inwardly, Aziraphale sighed in relief. At least his foresight had been correct up to this point. Another angel had indeed been sent down to replace him. Multiple angels, if he’d heard correctly.

“If you don’t mind me ask—what sort of struggles are you encountering?”

“Earth has not been—how should I say this—welcoming.”

“I understand that. What exactly is happening that has forced you to come to me?”

“It’s just not working out.”

Good Lord. Aziraphale closed his eyes for a few seconds, inhaled deeply, and then reopened them.

“I’m afraid I’m not following.” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows conspiratively. “Perhaps you could show me?”

Aziraphale had precisely zero hope of that working. However, Gabriel appeared to be at his (very short) wit’s end and sharply jerked his wrist. Aziraphale felt a swooping sensation one would feel when driving down a sharp downgrade in the road, only throughout his whole body. It took him a few seconds to reorient himself and straighten out his coat; his wrists had not yet been freed from their cuffs. When he finished, he looked up.

Before him were the three other Archangels, Uriel, Michael, and Sandalphon, and one angel Aziraphale did not recognize. They were all standing in front of the massive globe of the Earth, muttering furtively. The tension weighing down the air was almost palpable. 

Michael caught sight of him, and briskly made her way towards him. “Why is this happening,” she demanded. Aziraphale blinked impassively.

“Gabriel did not inform me of details,” he said honestly. “What appears to be the problem?”

He studied the other angel, who was studiously not looking at him. They’d probably been in the crowd that day, and it showed: their posture was impossibly stiff, as though someone had fused his spine with a metal pole, and their breast was puffed out like it was the bow of a foolhardy ship ready to crash its way through any storm-tossed sea, yet their flinty gray eyes practically frothed with apprehension.

“Let us play a small game,” said Sandalphon. His head was gleaming with sweat, which worried Aziraphale because if an Archangel was sweating when they typically do not even have sweat glands, something was tremendously wrong. “Principality Aziraphale, I would like you to guess how many angels we have sent down to Earth since you were sentenced to imprisonment.”

Aziraphale hesitated. “That depends. How long was I imprisoned?”

They told him.

“A year?” Aziraphale felt his heart drop right down to his shoes. But that—He’d meant to come back much sooner! How could he have spent a year pacing around in that jail cell! 

“One Earth year,” confirmed Sandalphon. “Now. Do you have a guess?”

Aziraphale tried to run some numbers through his scrambled mind. 

Obviously, they’d picked out one angel already. He could only assume something had happened to that one, but when exactly, he could only speculate. He recalled one other time when another angel who was not, surprisingly, any of the Archangels, had come to deliver a message to him. They had been crushed flat by a horse carriage. If that was the sort of “unwelcome” receival Gabriel mentioned—no, that time must have been a fluke—

“Erm? I-I’m not sure. Forty? Thirty. It must be less, yes? No?” Aziraphale caught Sandalphon’s positively murderous expression. “Oh, dear.”

“One hundred and forty-five,” he said flatly. “One hundred and forty-five angels in the past year either were discorporated or turned in their resignation within two weeks. The singular outlier made it two months before provoking the demon Crowley and ultimately discorporated after a short skirmish.”

Aziraphale frowned. That didn’t sound right, either. Although Crowley boasted of blending his plants in his garbage disposal when the misbehaved to invoke fear, Crowley also happened to be an extraordinarily shoddy liar when it came to Aziraphale. Crowley did not kill unless absolutely necessary. He didn’t want the children to die at the Ark, and he didn’t want to kill the Antichrist. If one were to ask, ‘What about the holy water? And the Nazi’s?’ that whole debacle with Ligur and the holy water had left Crowley shaken and extremely skittish around clear liquids for months. And the Nazis were Nazis. That should be explanation enough.

“May I ask what happened?” Aziraphale asked doubtfully. 

Sandalphon sighed and miracled a clipboard overstuffed with papers into existence. With another tedious sigh, he flicked back to about halfway through the stack and read, “The angel Asteroth was deployed to London on the twelfth of August, 2018. One month and eight days into her deployment, she attempted to enter a bookshop—your bookshop,” he amended, sneering, “where the demon Crowley was found to be lying in wait. She drew her holy blade to dispose of him, but, according to her, as she was doing so, it struck an old bookshelf and, quote, ‘seriously up the books.’ The demon appeared upset and told her, ‘He’s going to eviscerate you for that. Best if I do it,’ before dropping a modified paperweight on her head and breaking her neck.”

Aziraphale, who had a brilliant surge of fondness for Crowley rush through him like a tidal wave—had he been staying at the bookshop all this time?—coughed to avoid a sharp burst of laughter.

“That is… unfortunate,” he said as sincerely as he could. And absolutely bloody hysterical. Not that Aziraphale found the discorporation of any angel funny, but for all the fuss Heaven made and torment they put him through by making him the unholy beacon of Heaven, they had no clue how to properly go about Earth (and Crowley) without the one angel who knew better. It was like building a railroad that ended directly off a cliff.

“Indeed,” Michael said gravely. “Our corporeal form department has not seen this much work since the Heavenly War.”

The new angel now appeared to be regretting accepting whatever exactly it was that Michael told them.

Aziraphale regained control of himself. “So, erm… what exactly do you want me to do about it?”

“We want you to oversee our performances and tell us exactly what we are doing wrong,” said Gabriel. “There’s absolutely no reason this should be happening.”

“I see.”

“Observe,” said Sandalphon, gesturing to where Uriel and Michael were speaking to the new angel.

“You’ve made the necessary preparations, Arael?” Uriel was saying.

“Yes,” firmly replied the angel. “I’ve insured my etiquette is inoffensive, my human body as neutral as possible, and I read the brochure on London’s Do’s and Don’ts.” They furrowed their brow. “It was… interesting.”

“Excellent,” said Michael. “I’m sure your arrival will be… better received.”

Aziraphale bit back a scathing exclamation. If their Earth 101 course was one long, convoluted lesson that could be summarized as “be nice”, it was no wonder why everything was going so poorly!

“Is that all?” he asked against his better judgment. “Are those the ‘preparations’ you’ve given to every single one of those angels?”

Uriel and Michael turned to him. Michael raised her eyebrows. “Is it incorrect?” she said. 

He gestured distraughtly the best he could with the way his wrists are bound together. “Humans are much more than just saying nice things to them! They are complicated creatures—”

“It won’t present any issues,” said Arael such overblown confidence, Aziraphale could not stop the roll of his eyes. “I will guide them back to the right path if they choose to display ignorance and hate.”

“No! They don’t like that either!” Aziraphale exclaimed. “You won’t find a single Londoner who’ll take a minute out of his day to listen for someone to lecture—”

“I’m the one being dispatched,” snapped Arael. “You were the one strayed too far from Her path. I know what I’m doing.”

Aziraphale scoffed. “You are the one hundred and forty-sixth angel. Please enlighten me; what makes you think you’re so different from the other one hundred and forty-five?”

“You’re both being childish,” interrupted Michael. “We’re wasting time. Who knows what waste that demon lays while we stand around here and argue? We must get on with it.”

Gabriel placed an unfriendly hand on Arael’s padded shoulder. “Well? Off you go, then.”

“Of course.” Arael nodded stiffly, touched the globe, and was whisked away in a cloud of gray.

“And now we wait,” said Gabriel with a strained grin.

“For what—”

A bolt of lightning silenced him, and Arael reappeared on the ground in a bleeding heap.

“That,” said Uriel.

“Erm,” said Aziraphale.

“Arael.” Michael somehow encapsulated the tone of motherly patience that was barely holding its ground in its losing battle against the fury of a thousand suns in that one word. “It has been exactly nine Earth seconds since your deployment to Earth.”

“It’s so much worse than we thought,” mumbled poor Arael, shivering. 

Aziraphale knelt down and helped their shaking heavenly form to their feet, murmuring, “Up you go, excellent, just like that…” The other Archangels did not move an inch, choosing instead to click their tongues and look disappointed.

“They’re everywhere,” continued Arael in a haunted tone. They listed dangerously, and Aziraphale hastily righted them while attempting to repress the bleeding. The Archangels shared a look betwixt themselves. “I can’t—I can’t do it. I was discorporated within ten steps.”

“Would you mind telling us what happened?” asked Gabriel with a very plasticky look of concern. “For future references, I’m sure you’d understand.”

“You can’t send another down there!” gasped Arael, and alright, maybe they were being a tad overdramatic. Discorporation was uncomfortable at best, and certainly not permanent. Arael merely had an unfortunate first-time.

“We must. Evil will not rest on its own unless Good is there to stop it,” said Michael. Aziraphale chose not to mention the time Crowley was asleep for a whole century.

Arael bled and swayed for a few more seconds before speaking. “Everywhere I looked, there were great metal beasts with two glowing eyes on the front.” They shuddered. “And they all had four black, round legs that don’t move like any of God’s creature’s should. They spun. They weren’t mentioned in the briefing I was given. I stepped off of the sidewalk, and one immediately charged me. It must have been a new breed of demon,” they concluded.

Ah. Aziraphale immediately understood what had happened and had to stifle a chuckle as the bewilderment growing between the Archangels sky-rocketed. He wasn’t quiet enough and was awarded a particularly nasty look from Michael.

“Poor thing,” she said, pulling Arael none too gently away from Aziraphale. She waved her fingers, and the swaying and stumbling stopped. Another wave and the wounds vanished, as well as the blood. Arael straightened themselves, dazed. Then their face turned glowed—literally—pink in humiliation.

“I—I need to file a report for a new body,” they stammered, rapidly backing away. “If, if you’ll excuse me, of course.”

“Before you go,” cut in Michael. “Tell us, what did this particular demon look like?”

“A 2016 Ford Fiesta,” said Arael, and they hurried away. 

The remaining angels stared at Arael’s retreating back until Uriel coughed awkwardly. “That was a new record for shortest visit to Earth.”

“What in Heaven is a ‘Ford Fiesta?’” asked Sandalphon. 

“I will pick a few more angels from our queue,” Michael said hurriedly, and she vanished in a flash.

Gabriel turned and caught Aziraphale’s shoulder in a vice grip. “That,” he said, squeezing painfully, “has been happening every. Single. Time. What are we doing wrong? Tell us.”

“What do I know?” said Aziraphale pleasantly, ignoring the growing pressure. “Arael was correct, after all. I’m not fit for the job.”

Gabriel glowered at him, his eyes blazing with a fury that begged to be released and only reined in after Aziraphale was laid to rest. Aziraphale smiled amicably, then squeaked as a knife jabbed into his chin.

“You’re going to do it,” growled Uriel. “Or you’re never going to see your boyfriend again.”

“Ooh, very good Uriel!” said Gabriel, clapping his hands delightedly. “That was—very nice. Now then. Aziraphale.” He smiled thinly. “You will be delivering the briefings. Tell them everything they need to know before they go and get themselves killed again. If we don’t see results, we’ll have to intervene.”

Aziraphale tilted his chin up to spare some distance between his flesh and the tip of the blade. “And if I refuse? You don’t have anyone else like me.”

“You get to go back to your cell for the rest of time. We’ll figure the rest out eventually.”

Incredible. He was being offered quite the variety of choices, wasn’t he. “Fine. I suppose I am forced to accept. Under the conditions”—he caught Gabriel’s glare and hardened his own gaze—“that I am not kept in that cell. I will not attempt to escape to Earth—”

“You can’t, anyway. You’re bound here by the First Laws.”

Ah. That somewhat dampened Aziraphale’s spirits, but at least it was information. He carefully stored it away and made a note to review those laws later. “I see. And the other condition is to have my cuffs removed. I can’t go anywhere anyhow, and they’re serving to be demeaning at this point.”

Uriel and Gabriel shared a dubious look, but it was Sandalphon who cut in. “We accept your current conditions. Is there anything else?”

Aziraphale kept fluttering bubbles of joy tamped down. He knew he could not push it any further, but it felt like a step in the right direction, a step closer to home; a step closer to Crowley.

“No,” he said primly. “That will be all.”

With a reluctant snap of their fingers, Uriel vanished the cuffs. A deep ache of relief spread down as Aziraphale’s spine as his wings were finally allowed to unwind after a year. He flapped them in their plane of existence, wincing as he felt the bones click and pop in complaint. “Thank you.” He cleared his throat. “I accept your offer. I will try to assist to the best of my ability, but I must note that there are no guarantees.”

“Results,” Gabriel insisted. “Something better than nine seconds.”

“I believe I can manage that,” Aziraphale said lightly. “I cannot tell them everything about human cultures from the past six-thousand some years. Humans are complex and wonderfully diverse creatures, and you cannot expect the same things from every single one—”

“It’s not us you should be talking to.” Tremors began to rumble from Aziraphale’s shoes to up his legs. “It’s them.”

He turned just as Michael rounded the corner with at least fifty other angels in tow of all ages and ranks. Some angels who didn’t look a day over twenty walked with one massive, willowy seraph who was bringing up the rear, which Aziraphale could not help but be extremely confused about. They were all chattering excitedly, but upon seeing Aziraphale, they unanimously silenced themselves and stared blankly.

“Erm,” said Aziraphale. “Hello.”

A few of them murmured back, “Good day,” and one even managed a, “Hi.”

Aziraphale smiled encouragingly at the unsure shuffling and side-eyes. “I suppose we’ll make this our first lesson, hm? Does that sound okay? Lovely. Most humans would appreciate a response, a ‘hi,’ ‘hello,’ ‘how do you do,’ even if you”—he bobbed his head once—“simply nod. Now. Let us try that again. Hello!”

All at once, fifty angels cried, “Hello!” so loudly, the glass window nearby developed a crack. It was shocked by this development, and, believing itself to be fatally wounded, fell apart.

Aziraphale blinked once, and then very quietly sighed, “Oh, dear.”

It looked like he had his work cut out for him.