The first time through, Aziraphale thinks he might simply have had a premonition about what might happen if he’s not careful about this plan.
After stumbling out of the meeting, he triple-checks the security on the Book, and much to his chagrin finds an alarm he ought to have disabled. Since he now has administrative privileges, he switches it off about ten minutes before he heads into the Archives.
But as soon as he opens the Book of Life, reality begins to wobble around him in a way that makes his soul seasick. Again there’s that strange grinding sensation, something beyond sound or thought that makes his consciousness seem to be trapped between the gears of some massive thing in a way that prevents it from doing its job. The immensity of time and space catch on him—the nobody who became Supreme Archangel, the wizard who fooled monarchs with close-up magic, the fool who let love drive him to desperation.
Everything stops.
He’s somewhere else now. It’s a somewhere he recognizes, much to his own surprise: when Crowley stopped time for Adam, they ended up here, all three of them. An endless stretch of pale desert, almost without color, under a bright sky.
Except this time Aziraphale has nothing else to distract him from seeing the desert itself.
Distant among the dunes are a number of grey and brown shapes. When he concentrates on them, they grow clearer: they’re smallish walled spaces, many with tiny flashes of green peeking through and above the walls’ edges.
(Hasn’t he been somewhere like this before?)
Curious, Aziraphale lets himself drift towards one—he doesn’t seem to be tethered to his human body here, and can move as lightly as smoke. He rises, straining to catch a glimpse of what this set of walls contains…
Then he’s back in the meeting, listening to Michael and Uriel go over their plan.
The second time through, Aziraphale is actually somewhat frightened. Perhaps he shouldn’t touch the Book at all. Instead, when the meeting is over, he goes straight back to his office and immerses himself in research—sterile, unhappy research without all the physical thingness of books that he loves, but it has to be done. He doesn’t stir from his desk, except to glance at his pocket watch, which is still set to Greenwich Mean Time.
Almost exactly forty-six Earth hours later, the grinding and lurching in reality starts again, and Aziraphale is back in the meeting.
The third time through, Aziraphale leaves immediately after the meeting to head to the Observation Deck.
He has to find Crowley. Crowley will understand what happened. Maybe they can even come to some sort of an understanding.
The first place he checks isn’t on Earth at all; he directs the screen he’s put himself in front of to show him Alpha Centauri. Both relief and pain weigh on his heart when he realizes Crowley isn’t there—only the bright-and-dark presences of another angel and demon canoodling in blissful ignorance.
(Privately, bitterly, Aziraphale wishes he and Crowley could have beaten them to it. Not that he ever wanted to abandon Earth, but something smarts terribly about seeing someone who’s been a frankly awful boss end up effortlessly happy. It’s a petty, human sort of resentment, and Aziraphale feels brief and intense flashes of guilt over harboring it.)
He spends hours surveying Earth. London first, just to be certain he’s left [footnote: And to sneak a look at Whickber Street, just in case.], then on to other major cities. There are hot spots all over the world where a demon might make mischief. Not that he can find much mischief of a nature other than human, wherever he looks—certainly there are individual demonic projects here and there, but he knows Crowley’s handiwork, and he doesn’t see it.
Eventually he zeroes in on Monte Carlo. His first glimpse of a familiar lean figure in a casino makes his heart jump so hard that for a moment he thinks the whole mad loop is starting again—both his human body and his soul react so strongly to the sight that it almost seems like the universe might be preparing to rearrange itself.
Once he’s composed himself—no mean feat, considering the riot his circumstances and his first sight of Crowley have started in his whole being—he slips into an empty lift, heading for Earth.
The doors open into one of the brightly-lit, gilded corridors of the Casino Monte Carlo.
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timeasmymeasure
First time tuxedo, second time speedo? ;)
Date: 2025-06-12 11:28 pm (UTC)The first time through, Aziraphale thinks he might simply have had a premonition about what might happen if he’s not careful about this plan.
After stumbling out of the meeting, he triple-checks the security on the Book, and much to his chagrin finds an alarm he ought to have disabled. Since he now has administrative privileges, he switches it off about ten minutes before he heads into the Archives.
But as soon as he opens the Book of Life, reality begins to wobble around him in a way that makes his soul seasick. Again there’s that strange grinding sensation, something beyond sound or thought that makes his consciousness seem to be trapped between the gears of some massive thing in a way that prevents it from doing its job. The immensity of time and space catch on him—the nobody who became Supreme Archangel, the wizard who fooled monarchs with close-up magic, the fool who let love drive him to desperation.
Everything stops.
He’s somewhere else now. It’s a somewhere he recognizes, much to his own surprise: when Crowley stopped time for Adam, they ended up here, all three of them. An endless stretch of pale desert, almost without color, under a bright sky.
Except this time Aziraphale has nothing else to distract him from seeing the desert itself.
Distant among the dunes are a number of grey and brown shapes. When he concentrates on them, they grow clearer: they’re smallish walled spaces, many with tiny flashes of green peeking through and above the walls’ edges.
(Hasn’t he been somewhere like this before?)
Curious, Aziraphale lets himself drift towards one—he doesn’t seem to be tethered to his human body here, and can move as lightly as smoke. He rises, straining to catch a glimpse of what this set of walls contains…
Then he’s back in the meeting, listening to Michael and Uriel go over their plan.
The second time through, Aziraphale is actually somewhat frightened. Perhaps he shouldn’t touch the Book at all. Instead, when the meeting is over, he goes straight back to his office and immerses himself in research—sterile, unhappy research without all the physical thingness of books that he loves, but it has to be done. He doesn’t stir from his desk, except to glance at his pocket watch, which is still set to Greenwich Mean Time.
Almost exactly forty-six Earth hours later, the grinding and lurching in reality starts again, and Aziraphale is back in the meeting.
The third time through, Aziraphale leaves immediately after the meeting to head to the Observation Deck.
He has to find Crowley. Crowley will understand what happened. Maybe they can even come to some sort of an understanding.
The first place he checks isn’t on Earth at all; he directs the screen he’s put himself in front of to show him Alpha Centauri. Both relief and pain weigh on his heart when he realizes Crowley isn’t there—only the bright-and-dark presences of another angel and demon canoodling in blissful ignorance.
(Privately, bitterly, Aziraphale wishes he and Crowley could have beaten them to it. Not that he ever wanted to abandon Earth, but something smarts terribly about seeing someone who’s been a frankly awful boss end up effortlessly happy. It’s a petty, human sort of resentment, and Aziraphale feels brief and intense flashes of guilt over harboring it.)
He spends hours surveying Earth. London first, just to be certain he’s left [footnote: And to sneak a look at Whickber Street, just in case.], then on to other major cities. There are hot spots all over the world where a demon might make mischief. Not that he can find much mischief of a nature other than human, wherever he looks—certainly there are individual demonic projects here and there, but he knows Crowley’s handiwork, and he doesn’t see it.
Eventually he zeroes in on Monte Carlo. His first glimpse of a familiar lean figure in a casino makes his heart jump so hard that for a moment he thinks the whole mad loop is starting again—both his human body and his soul react so strongly to the sight that it almost seems like the universe might be preparing to rearrange itself.
Once he’s composed himself—no mean feat, considering the riot his circumstances and his first sight of Crowley have started in his whole being—he slips into an empty lift, heading for Earth.
The doors open into one of the brightly-lit, gilded corridors of the Casino Monte Carlo.