Chapter Text
For all that Aziraphale craved books, craved knowledge itself, hoarded it like treasure – he never seemed to listen to the one creature who had given all of humanity that gift. No matter though – Crowley, like the oracle Cassandra, knew he wouldn’t be listened to. Not now. All he had left now were these things: the curdling displeasure of knowing what he spoke was true, and the writhing mass of agony that consumed his mind. And the Bentley, of course.
And when Cassandra was captured and killed at the hands of the enemy knowing she had tried, tried, tried her best, and it had still not been enough – she must have made her peace with what was to come. Either that or she went mad – with knowledge and with grief, for herself and for all those who would suffer in ignorance and die with their regrets on their lips.
Once again, it was too late.
If, in all his vast existence, Aziraphale had learnt one thing, it was this: Crowley was the best of them all; the only one he had met who always did the right thing. Not good, not bad – but the right thing.
If there was another thing that had settled in his heart – perhaps without him knowing, simmering away in his subconscious – it was this: She had been wrong to cast him out. Just as She had been wrong and, frankly, petty with the Job business and the Flood. None of the bureaucratic idiots in hell deserved someone as good as Crowley, of course – but neither did the bureaucratic idiots in heaven. The unmoving, unquestioning morons in heaven didn’t deserve him either – he would rot there, his spark of life drained from him one blinding white suit at a time.
But Crowley didn’t understand. Aziraphale was going to change all of that! He was the one in charge now! And he would do the right thing - rebuild all of heaven, fix their ridiculous and uncaring attitude towards earth and the humans, and show them the light. He just – he just thought Crowley would want to do that with him, that they could rewrite the foundations of the divine together.
Dashed were his hopes – Crowley had chosen his hate for heaven over his, his affection (his love) for Aziraphale, and wasn’t that just the ticket. After all these years, all these millennia, Crowley still couldn’t let go of that tiny speck of a planet they had called home for him, even if it was for the good of the very same place!
The elevator continued its journey up, up, impossibly up. To his right, the Metatron wore a mask of determination, and of what Aziraphale thought was – pride; pride towards him. And in his heart of celestial hearts, he had to believe one thing: that this time, heaven would be different. It would be different, he would make it so, and he would show Crowley he was right. The archangel Gabriel – uh, Jim – may have lost his memory and come to his bookshop for unknown reasons, but he was different. It struck him, then – perhaps it was the whole ordeal with Beelzebub that had gotten Jim into his predicament? Perhaps it was something else? But no matter; he knew one thing sure and true – he would do what Gabriel wouldn’t. He would change the structure of heaven from the inside out, for the better.
It was, after all, the right thing to do.
His head ached, and so did his hands, from where they had almost descended upon Crowley’s back. Yellow was so scarce a colour indeed in heaven.