#i'm too aziraphale to survive this show

[ineffableigh]

Was looking for a particular screen of Crowley and just

LOOK HOW CUTE THIS FUCKER IS LOOKIT THEM EYES

And now for the screen I was actually looking for:

JESUS CHRIST i need to lie down

#help #i'm too aziraphale to survive this show #good omens #good omens 2 #aziraphale #crowley #ineffable husbands #he cute #then he ANGY

[krakensdottir]

Something else I've noticed about Crowley's compassion is that it also extends to his enemies.

To a point, mind. What he did to Ligur makes clear that he has limits. And those two pushed them like no one else. If it's compassion or survival, he will pick survival every time, even if it means melting your ass.

But outside of that? Look at him with Shax. He knows she's a threat, he keeps her at arm's length. When she asks about the boiler, though, he's instantly helpful. He could have grinned at her and said 'figure it out' and shut the door. But he didn't. He answered her question, because hey, this Earth shit is hard and she needs all the help she can get. And that's remarkable. Because I doubt most demons would do that - even though helping your replacement settle in could be seen as practical, they generally don't seem to go out of the way for each other at all, certainly aren't obligated to. This was Crowley's decision.

Then there's Gabriel. Crowley doesn't trust him, he initially argues that they shouldn't help him because it's dangerous for them both to be anywhere near him. But once he has agreed to help... he is remarkably gentle with Jim. Answers questions about gravity even when he doesn't have to - when he could easily just not talk to him at all. Even when he tests him, almost gets him to jump out a window, he ends up calling him back (once he's satisfied Jim isn't faking, I have no doubt). He ends up offering him hot chocolate. Even when Crowley wants to be mean, even when he tries, his nature ends up winning.

And finally, Beelzebub. I've seen a lot of talk about how jealous Crowley must be, how bitter... but he doesn't seem like it, does he? He's very soft in that scene. He's the one who recommends them a nice date spot to retreat to - one that he himself was considering at one point. He sounds a little wistful to me, like yeah, he wishes he and Aziraphale could have that happiness too. But he doesn't show any sign of begrudging it, either. It seems like he is, in his Crowley way, happy for them. (Of course I'm sure it doesn't hurt that this means they won't be his or Aziraphale's problem anymore. If it were just that, though, I don't think his voice would've sounded like that.)

So all of this is remarkable, but of course, with a little consideration, it's not surprising coming from Crowley. This is who he is underneath. This is who he wants to be. (Even if he hates that he wants it, lol.)

#good omens #crowley

[hikarry]

So, I was rewatching season 1 and got stuck in that scene between Shadwell and Aziraphale in the bookshop.

What if Aziraphale never stepped into the circle? What if the fire never really happened?

Imagine:

Shadwell is lost in his shenanigans, ready to banish Aziraphale to whatever place witchfinders banish witches, and Aziraphale is slowly walking backward.

"Oh, but this is utterly ridiculous." He stops on his tracks, looking Shadwell in the eye. "I'm sorry, good man, but I have no time for whatever silliness is happening right now. If you don't mind, I have an Armageddon to stop." Aziraphale snaps his fingers, and Shadwell disappears, reapearing a few streets over at the other side of Soho. There surely he wouldn't get in the way.

Careful not to step on the active circle, Aziraphale leaves the bookshop and flags down the first cab he sees. The driver stops right in front of the bookshop, and he gets in, giving him Crowley's address in Mayfair.

The last time he called, the demon was home, so that's exactly where Aziraphale hoped he remained. With a bit of luck, he hadn't left for Alpha Centauri... Now that he thought about it, he mentioned having an old friend over? As far as he knew, he himself was the only friend Crowley had, so that statmebt now sounded like a load of nonsense. But whatever. He just needed to speak with Crowley, old friend present or not. Heaven clearly wanted the war to happen, and he had been naive to think they would see reason. The only chance the Earth had of surviving now was the angel and Crowley. He could only pray it wasn't too late and Crowley wasn't gone. He knew where the Anti-Christ was, after all. They could stop this!

When the cab stopped on the street of Crowley's building, Aziraphale paid his fare and threw a quick blessing in the driver's direction for his speed and efficiency before crossing the street and entering the complex.

He had been to Crowley's flat once or twice in the last 20 years. All he had to do was go through the entrance, get on the lift to the last floor, and walk down the corridor towards the last door. And that's exactly what he did, always fiddling with his fingers in a show of the nervous energy that seemed to take over him. They were running out of time. The end of the world would occur any minute now, and Crowley needed to be home. They still had to drive all the way to Tadfield's airbase, and the clock was tickling rather ominously inside his head.

Finally in front of the door to Crowley's flat, he knocked. A few seconds passed with no response, and he decided to knock again, stronger now, but he got exactly the same result.

Aziraphale looked around the hallway, taking a deep breath and smoothing his waistcoat, considering his options.

"Crowley?" He ended up knocking again. "Crowley, we need to talk!" Silence. "I know you're cross with me after our last conversation, but you were right. I talked to the Metatron. And they want the war. As I told you on the phone, I know where the antichrist is, and it would be very nice of you if you opened the door so we could get a wiggle on and stop the Apocalypse." Once again, he was met with silence.

Was it possible? Did Crowley actually leave for Alpha Centauri? He was here minutes ago! He couldn't have left already, right?

Oh, bless it all. He wasn't going to waste any more time.

With a final deep breath, Aziraphale snapped his fingers, and the door unlocked. He opened it slightly, peering inside.

"Crowley? I'm sorry If I'm intruding but this matter is rather urgent." All he got in return was silence. Not a single noise from the demon himself or the so called old friend.

He pushed the remainder of the door open and stepped inside, silently closing it behind him. He looked at the living room, but it was empty of any living soul, apart from the plants on the far wall.

"Crowley?"

Aziraphale called again, now walking towards the office to the left. The door was slightly ajar already, so he spied inside. It looked empty, but he walked in regardless, almost stepping on a pile of goo right there in front of the floor.

"What the...?" He looked down, stepping over the weird substance.

It smelled weirdly of sulfur and...was that Holy Water?

His head snapped to the desk, where he found the thermos he had given Crowley back in the 60s, the cap unscrewed by its side.

Suddenly, he felt his heart stop, and his veins turn into ice. His body gave an involuntary step back away from the smudge, his back hitting the throne as he lifted a now trembling hand to cover his mouth.

No. This couldn't be happening. He would-! Crowley certainly wouldnt-!

A sob escaped his throat as his whole body started shaking.

Oh lord. This was a nightmare. It could only be a nightmare. This wasn't real. Couldn't possibly be real.

Oh Crowley...

Aziraphale's legs failed him, and he ended up on the floor, back leaning against the side of the ridiculous throne Crowley liked so much. Not that he would like anything ever again because he was gone. Crowley was gone. And it was Aziraphale's fault. He was the one who gave him the cursed thermos against his better judgment. And now all his fears were laid bare right in front of his eyes.

Another sob escaped him and he let the heartache take charge, spilling warm tears down his cheeks.

Crowley was gone. The Apocalypse was coming and Crowley was gone. Not to Alpha Centauri but actually gone. Utterly destroyed. And all that remained of his best friend was an unidentifiable goo. Not a trace of Crowley remained.

He hugged himself, hanging his head low, letting the tears fall on his crossed arms and allowing the wretched sobs to take over. He couldn't bear to look at it a second longer. The smell of sulfur and Holy Water was starting to get nauseating.

Well, contrary to popular belief, Crowley was actually very much alive, speeding through the streets on London in the direction of the bookshop. He parked in his usual place and snapped his finger to open the doors of the building.

"Aziraphale?" He looked around, quickly spotting the active circle. Lifting an eyebrow above his sunglasses, he carefully walked towards it, still searching for any trace of the angel. "Aziraphale, are you here?"

The circle was still active with holy energy, so no one had actually stepped through it, and Aziraphale was clearly not in the bookshop, so where could he possibly be?

With a sigh, Crowley turned around and went back to the Bentley. He drove around Soho for a bit, trying to spot some blond curls in the crowd but falling short of success.

"Aziraphale, where the bloody hell are you?" He muttered to himself, carefully scanning the streets, until he gave up, changing his course back to Mayfair.

He needed to regroup. Without knowing where Aziraphale was and without the information on the antichrist he apparently had, Crowley needed to think.

He made his way back to his flat without paying much attention. When he noticed, he was already unlocking the door with his key and stepping inside. And, as soon as he did so, he heard it. Sobs coming from the office. That was...bizarre. Could it be Hastur? Had he figured out a way to leave the answering machine, and now he was crying over Ligur? Crowley almost laughed at himself with such a thought. Hastur? Crying? Now, that would be a sight he would pay to see.

Still, in the name of caution, he slowly made his way to the office, trying to be as silent as possible, when he quickly spotted the angel he had been looking for throught the wide open door, sitting on the floor besides the throne, arms around himself and face hidden while his whole body shook and heartbreaking sobs escaped his vocal chords.

Carefully and confused, he approached, stopping short of the door.

"...Angel?"

Aziraphale's head snapped up, staring at him with wide eyes, his face marked by tears.

"...Crowley?"

"Yeah." He slowly walked his way to the angel, careful not to step on Ligur, squatting in front of him. "Are you alright? What happened?"

He was still staring at him with clear confusing in his eyes, opening and closing his mouth repeatedly until he finally appeared to have found his voice again:

"You-! The-!" Aziraphale's body trembled, looking over Crowley's shoulder and then back at the demon. "You...you're gone!"

Crowley raised an eyebrow, clearly confused.

"I just went to the bookshop searching for you, but when I arrived you weren't there already." Aziraphale shook his head, some more tears escaping his eyes along with a single sob. "Hey, hey." Crowley placed his hands on his shoulders, squeezing them. "What's-?" And then that's when it suddenly clicked inside his head. He looked up at the empty thermos on his desk and back over his shoulder to what remained of Ligur. "Oh, Aziraphale. No, no, no." His hands moved up to Aziraphale's face, forcing him to look up at him, his thumb brushing away some of the new tears running down his face. It burned considerably; angel tears were holy water after all, but right now, that wasn't his focus. "That's Ligur. I used the holy water to make a trap for him and Hastur when they came to take me." He brushes his thumb through Aziraphale's trembling lips, leaning in closer. "That's not me, angel. I'm alright."

Aziraphale sniffed, trying to regain control of himself, but failing miserably.

"I-I thought you were dead. I thought you had used the Holy Water. I thought-"

"Shhh." Crowley wrapped his arms around the angel, leaning his face against his, pulling him into an embrace. They had never hugged before, so it felt a bit strange. Awkward even. "I'm right here. That's not me." The angel grabbed handfuls of his shirt and pulled him closer, burying his face on the crook of his neck, taking deep breaths. "Yeah, that's it. Breathe." He ran his hand through his curls, trying to soothe him. "Everything is alright. I'm right here."

After a while, Aziraphale finally calmed down and moved away, just enough to be able to look at Crowley's face. For a moment or two, they just stared at each other. Aziraphale's red rimmed blue eyes looking right at Crowley's yellow ones; his sunglasses had ended up on his head at some point. The angel's eyes slipped down to the demon's lips for a second and Crowley's licked them involuntarily, before his gaze went back to his eyes.

"You were right." Crowley tilted his head in confusion. "I talked to the Metraton. They want the war to happen...The Anti-Christ..." Aziraphale mumbled those last words.

"Right." Crowley stared down at Aziraphale for a couple more seconds before getting up, offering his hand to the angel to help him do the same. "You said you knew where he was?"

#alas Aziraphale and crowley got away from me once again #this was supposed to be a short lil thing but instead i created a monster #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #ineffable husbands #aziracrow #anthony j crowley

[vidavalor]

The *Original* Original Sin Theory or... why Aziraphale's "I forgive you"s really mean "forgive me" and just why he wants Crowley's absolution...

Will this break your heart in a good way and make the end of S2 hurt less? more? both? idk let's find out...

I want to talk about what the Before the Beginning scene does to the Eden scene and what all that suggests about Aziraphale and Crowley's relationship... because it might be enough to upend what we think this relationship is quite a bit, at least from Aziraphale's POV, if it goes in the direction that I think they are hinting at in S3, which I'm basing off of where they took it in S2 in these scenes.

This also contains an analysis of That Scene from 2.06 that ties into lots of other scenes and some other meta related to the show and it's a bit long-- like, the mother of all metas-- but there are pretty gifs and I brought snacks? Just letting you know it's a long post but tuck in with some tea if you're in the mood and thanks for reading. :)

Under the big cutty thing...

Before we get started, a couple of quick warnings: I curse a bit in here. It's in the show itself but just letting you know it's here a bit, too. I also mention *very* briefly suicide ideation in the characters and also very briefly (one sentence) Satan's mind-control of Crowley in S1 in a way that might be sensitive for a sexual assault survivor. There is general mention of religious trauma and abusive relationships (not Crowley & Aziraphale's relationship) all over this. If you are okay with the show, you should be more than fine reading this but just wanted to let you know up front. If you're okay with that, read on...

So, the Before the Beginning scene contains a twist, in that we learn that pre-Fall Crowley is naive to Heaven while Aziraphale is the one who is wary of it. This is especially interesting because, best we can tell, no angel has Fallen yet. There aren't *explicit* consequences for asking questions yet, as Crowley doesn't think it could get him into trouble to do so... but *Aziraphale* does. Heaven in S1 and S2 is shown to be basically a fascist state full of bullies jockeying for power where the ones on top dole out all sorts of abuses to maintain a sense of order among the rank and file. We see the emotional and even physical abuse they dole out to Aziraphale and how little they tolerate any sort of dissent, even from an archangel, based on what they ultimately do when Gabriel doesn't want to do arma-bloody-geddon anymore. Heaven is basically The Kremlin. Toe out of line and they'll toss you off a high-rise while telling everyone how sad it is that you recently had a spell of depression and heart troubles as a way of scaring everyone else into submission, right? What's surprising to us is that Aziraphale knows this *absolutely* Before the Beginning and he's terrified on Crowley's behalf, since this place functions as a kind of mafia state.

This implies something really kind of dark which is that Aziraphale knows enough to know how to toe a party line and keep quiet about any doubts he has. He knows how to survive in a way that then-innocent Crowley did not. He tries to tell Crowley that questioning things is going to get him angel-killed but Crowley has a faith in God that's different than Aziraphale's was even before the Earth was fully created. Crowley believed in Her more than Aziraphale does. He doesn't think anything will happen to him. Aziraphale knows what will and this implies knowledge of the abuse of the system and it completely changes our perspective of Aziraphale throughout the rest of the series. We often think of him as either willfully naive or just desperately optimistic regarding Heaven's goodness but, in reality, he's neither of those things. He's something else, entirely. His actions are not expressing naivete or desperate optimism or anything else.

They are expressions of guilt.

And the Eden scene tells us why he has that guilt.

The Eden scene introduces us to Crowley and Aziraphale and the series itself and it has Crowley posit the central question of the show regarding the nature of angels and demons:

Objectively, when you watch this scene, you think this is about the tempting of Eve and the flaming sword. It is... but it's also not *just* about that. Because Crowley and Aziraphale are watching Adam & Eve venture off beyond the Garden of Eden in this scene. They're still within view so the flaming sword situation happened a matter of minutes earlier. Yet, when Crowley posits that central question of which one of them actually did the good thing and which did the bad thing, Aziraphale reveals that it wouldn't be funny at all if what Crowley is saying (that Aziraphale actually did the bad thing) is true. He's distressed about it and so Crowley, somewhat dryly, reassures him that he's an angel so he couldn't have done the wrong thing. (Crowley, of course, being a literal former angel punished for doing the wrong thing lol and that being the joke but also in there is also the layer of Crowley genuinely liking Aziraphale and trying to tell him that it's all okay and meaning it.) Aziraphale is relieved and this is the key bit here-- he says oh good "because it's been bothering me."

The tone of this is that this central question of whether or not he did wrong or right by Crowley and whether or not Crowley was wrong or right in his actions *has been bothering* Aziraphale and he phrases it in a way that implies he's been losing angelic sleep (so to speak) about it for a little while now. If this was *just about Adam and Eve* then Aziraphale's reaction here makes absolutely no sense because the camera also then cuts in their conversation to in front of Crowley and Aziraphale *to show us Adam and Eve still visible in the near-distance* fighting off the lion with the flaming sword. They literally *just left* so how could Aziraphale be all in knots for awhile now over whether or not he made the wrong call? He's not. You can argue that his decision here in Eden to help Adam and Eve by giving them his flaming sword-- by standing up and doing something in the face of God to help out other beings he secretly thinks might have been treated unfairly-- *is a direct response to what he failed to do back in Before the Beginning*...

... which was to stand up for Crowley.

Meaning: Aziraphale doesn't need to see Heaven's files to find out what happened to Crowley when Crowley fell because he was there. S3 is going to be about preventing the Second Coming and so plot allusions to the crucification (which had its own Crowley & Aziraphale scene in S1) will likely abound. Aziraphale was there when Lucifer and The Gang were tossed out of Heaven. To be fair to Aziraphale, there is basically nothing he could have done to prevent this and the best possible situation is that he didn't even have the chance to. The worst possible situation is that he's literally Judas and sold Crowley out, out of fear of being tossed out of Heaven himself. I tend to think it's more that he just didn't stand up and say anything in support of Crowley to prevent himself from being seen as on the side of the eventual demons. Still, just as Crowley thinks the punishment for Adam and Eve was harsh, Aziraphale thought that asking questions and being curious wasn't enough to send Lucifer and everyone around him to Hell to be damned for all of eternity but it caused an obvious existential crisis in him that he still struggles to totally resolve.

If he disagreed with the decision to cast out the suggestion box-happy angels, he was as "bad" as they were. If he agreed with the decision, he was condemning them and that didn't seem angelic, either. How to be a good angel, which is the only thing he had ever tried to be or knew how to be? He did what he thought must be right-- to follow what the other, more powerful angels said the word of God was-- and if it was Her will, then it must be what was right, even if it was *extremely difficult* to see how this lovebug here was really an evil, demonic creature of Hell...

Not to mention that Aziraphale was in love with WhateverHeWasCalledPre-Crawly!Crowley. (We will just call him "Crowley" for this whole meta, because that is the name he chose for himself.) And maybe Angel!Crowley went after the more glamorous, daring guys. Heaven honestly seems like both a fascist state and high school at once (is there really a difference? lol). Crowley describes how he wound up falling in S1 as that he "hung out with the wrong crowd" and Aziraphale in Before the Beginning honestly seems like he's been flying around watching Crowley make stars for ages, trying to work up the nerve to or find an opportunity to introduce himself to the beautiful hot cool arty science-y guy who barely looks at him when his other option for a view are nebulas... or Benedict Cumberbatch's Lucifer/Satan, whose "stroke of demonic genius, dahling" bit in S1 and dark assault on his fave Crowley while Crowley was driving had a real "Angel!Crowley went for the bad boy who were so bad pre-Fall that they wound up fucking Satan afterwards and friend-zoned angels like Aziraphale" vibes. Alternatively, maybe he didn't totally? Before the Beginning seems to be the first time they met and maybe after that, Crowley and Aziraphale became close. It's just that Crowley canonically also wound up sitting at the cool kids' table because they were the only ones questioning things and he wound up damned for eternity for it and Aziraphale?

Aziraphale blames himself for it.

He has blamed himself for Crowley's Fall for six thousand years.

When they speak in Eden, Aziraphale is being confronted for the first time with what has come of his nebula-joyous, freshly baked blueberry muffin of an angel. He calls himself "Crawly" now-- or that's the name he's been given-- because who he was is dead. His eyes are yellow. He's now a snake. He's maybe a bit sarcastic, a bit dry, and a lot more guarded and aloof but Aziraphale sees flickers of Angel!Crowley in there. He's *kind* to Aziraphale. He's still inquisitive, in spite of it being what damned him to Hell. Aziraphale, God help him, is still wildly into him and, ugh, maybe even *more* so, in spite of everything.

And 'everything', for Aziraphale, includes Crowley being a demon being Aziraphale's fault.

They don't talk about it. Ever.

They don't talk about it because Aziraphale thinks that Crowley doesn't remember. Crowley's memory loss of a lot of his time pre-Fall is canon in S2-- something we, the audience, will need to understand the whole picture when/if we end up getting this revelation in S3 of Crowley's Fall and that Aziraphale feels he's at least partially responsible. What's even harder for Aziraphale is that because Crowley doesn't remember his time as an angel, he doesn't remember their full history together. He doesn't remember how they met and protecting Aziraphale from the first celestial shower and all the times they chatted after that and if they were in love back then, Crowley doesn't remember it. Eden then becomes, to Crowley, the first time they meet... but then look at how while Aziraphale seems to think that Crowley doesn't know him while Aziraphale knows Crowley-- the moment that he pauses so Crowley can introduce himself-- *Crowley* seems a little bemused. Why?

Because what Aziraphale has failed to consider is that the one memory that the demons are allowed to keep, most likely, is their Fall, which means that if Aziraphale was there when Crowley fell, Crowley actually *does* remember him. At minimum, he remembers Aziraphale being there and looking stricken by what was happening so even if he can't remember more than that, he knows he's safe with Aziraphale and that Aziraphale cared about him, which would explain why he risked going to talk to with him on the wall in Eden. He knows they were friends and that Aziraphale is good and he can trust him. It's also theoretically possible that if Crowley remembers his Fall and if Aziraphale was there, it's a trigger to him being able to remember all of his and Aziraphale's time before Crowley fell. Aziraphale might not know this and because these two idiots do not know how to talk-- and especially don't talk about this-- Crowley hasn't told him. In part because Crowley can't go back and he doesn't want them to dwell on Angel!Crowley when Crowley is who he is and if that's a demon, it's a demon, and the whole system can go fuck itself anyway, as far as Crowley's concerned.

Aziraphale, though, is still back on "it's my fault". He thinks he literally took goodness from the world; that he participated in the murder of his friend and the love of his life. He has never. In six. thousand. years. lol. told Crowley that he feels like this because he still thinks that Crowley doesn't remember Aziraphale betraying him and he is terrified that if he told Crowley he did-- if he told him that he was responsible, in part, for his Fall-- that Crowley would hate him and Crowley is Aziraphale's only friend in the universe and Aziraphale is madly in love with him. He couldn't bear the loss of him. He can handle their occasional spats and disagreements, knowing that Crowley always comes back, but this? If Crowley knew that his Fall was Aziraphale's fault? Aziraphale thinks Crowley wouldn't come back from that and he'd never see him again.

In reality? Crowley either already knows this and has the whole time or suspects it or if he found it out, would forgive Aziraphale for it. If he knows, he already has. His counter-argument is, like, what were you supposed to do to save me, exactly, angel? You alone versus all the hierarchy of Heaven and God Herself? I'm *glad* you didn't do something stupid and get yourself tossed into a pit of boiling sulphur. You don't deserve that.

Thing is, though, because they've never had this conversation because they DO NOT TALK lol, Aziraphale thinks he *does* deserve that. But look at what's happened since he made the decision not to save Crowley from falling...

...nothing.

Nothing has happened to Aziraphale. He didn't fall for it himself. He didn't fall for betraying the angel he loved and he wonders every. single. day. why he didn't and the only thing he can come up with is that he must have done the right thing. *It must be* that Crowley did the bad thing and Aziraphale did the good one because Crowley was damned to Hell for all of eternity and Aziraphale is still an angel of Heaven, six thousand years later. It's not for Aziraphale to question God. Her will is ineffable. It's ineffable because he cannot begin to understand how any of this can possibly be just and that just keeps happening over and over and over and over throughout the years to come in every situation he and Crowley find themselves in, from Job to The Flood to Wee Morag and Elspeth to Arma-bloody-geddon, right?

Aziraphale begins to lose count of how many times he's gone up against God at this point. Gives away his flaming sword to Adam and Eve. Saves as many as he could during The Flood-- *with* Crowley. (You know they did.) Lies to Gabriel's face in the eyes of God to save Job and Sitis' children... and learning that Falling was political, really, in the process. Nothing happened to Aziraphale for Job's kids. He suffered no consequence for lying to Heaven and God because Crowley was willing to lie for him-- to protect him from Falling, where Aziraphale couldn't protect Crowley himself ages before-- and nothing happened. Falling, suddenly, didn't seem totally God-ordained it it could be tossed aside by something as simple as having a demon just choose not to toss you to Satan. Crowley didn't take him to Hell because he didn't feel like Aziraphale belonged there. It wound up all entirely within Crowley's control, which then made Aziraphale begin to question if God was even really behind the Fall of Lucifer and the Gang or if it wasn't just the thugs in charge of Heaven who decided to toss them out... thoughts he was terrified to think and didn't dare voice aloud, at least not then.

In another era, Aziraphale and Crowley stood there together to witness the torture and murder of Jesus Christ in the name of God, in a parallel to the Fall. What happened to Jesus? He was betrayed by his closest friend, then tortured and murdered by those in the government who thought he posed a threat to social order. Heaven as Pontius Pilate. Aziraphale as a kind of Judas, in Aziraphale's mind, anyway.

Jesus as Crowley.

Time goes on and he and The Demon Crowley form friendship in their own right, regardless of what Crowley might remember from before his Fall. They form their Arrangement off of that and Aziraphale learns even more that, often, no one is really paying attention to what they do. That no one seems to notice if Crowley performs an angelic miracle or if Aziraphale performs what has become termed a 'demonic miracle'... because, really, *they're the same*, though that's not something Aziraphale can fully admit. He cannot allow himself to believe that demons *are angels* because if there's nothing different between demons and angels than Aziraphale doesn't know anything at all.

Anything at all... He doesn't know what being an angel *is* and it's what he supposedly is so it means he doesn't know who or what he is, really.

He doesn't know what God wants or if he truly believes in Her.

He doesn't know what the purpose of all of this is-- why Crowley had to suffer, why demons in general have to, why the *humans* do. Why it all has to be destroyed eventually. To what end?

Aziraphale has the same questions Crowley does and sometimes, late at night, often a little drunk, he'll dare to ask them with Crowley, and every morning that he still wakes up and sobers up and finds himself still an angel when Crowley Fell for so much less than Aziraphale has ever thought or done, he wonders just *why?*

Why is he still an angel when he, really, is no different from Crowley? Why Crowley is damned? Punished for all of eternity for curiosity and innovation and imagination, while Aziraphale is still an angel, doomed to only have until the clock runs out on Armageddon before losing him for the rest of fucking *eternity* but, until then, stuck suffering watching him suffer while remaining an angel? Is being an angel at this point, really, his punishment for failing the apparently foul fiend he adores?

Does Aziraphale ever have any answers to these questions? Good God, no lol. He's six thousand years into this and he's in the same spot as Amnesiac!ArchangelFuckingGabriel in 2.01:

...would be okay if you could just be one near particular person?

Of course Aziraphale knows what this feels like. Of course. We know he does. And that's why he hasn't been able to make a real move in six thousand years-- because it's his fault, as far as he's concerned.

Crowley's damnation is his fault. Crowley cannot really love him, or couldn't if he knew. Not because he's a demon, though Aziraphale might have thought that at one point but he definitely was cured of it by events in 1941. The more time that goes by, the more Aziraphale knows that Crowley loves him-- that he's *in* love with him-- and the worse it all gets for Aziraphale because every day that he hasn't told Crowley that he didn't prevent him from Falling is another day within the last *six thousand years* of them falling in love and the betrayal seems to get worse and worse to Aziraphale. The time to have this conversation was on the wall in Eden and it still hasn't happened. Still, over time, he starts to realize that Crowley, if ever knew, would forgive him.

Because his Crowley has the kindest of hearts. He really does, and that wasn't taken from him when he Fell and Aziraphale finds every opportunity he can to delight in seeing that and making Crowley reveal it.

It goes against everything Aziraphale is supposed to believe.

Demons are not supposed to be good-- if they were, they wouldn't have Fallen. Yet, Aziraphale knows Crowley is. He never has truly believed that Crowley isn't-- even when he could have, at least at the start. He worried, maybe, that he had helped create a monster out of the most lovely being he'd ever known but Crowley just kept proving him wrong about that, time and time again. *Crowley* doesn't believe it about himself, really, because that's his own trauma from his Fall but Aziraphale believes it about him and that's often good enough for Crowley.

But, really, this is why they still haven't gotten together in six thousand years. This is why Aziraphale seems like he can never get beyond "I'm an angel and you're a demon", no matter what Crowley does or how he proves that there are shades of gray and also, that the entire system is bullshit. It is not that Aziraphale doesn't *know* that it's bullshit-- it's that if he admits that it is, if he stops believing in Heaven (even if he doesn't stop believing in God), then he's left with nothing but the crushing weight of guilt that he has for all the pain that Crowley has been through.

If he tells himself that Crowley Fell *for a reason* and that he (Aziraphale) was *right* to not interfere, to not try to thwart God, even if it would have likely failed, just on principle, to stand up for his friend... then Aziraphale doesn't have to deal with the fact that he made what he really considers to be a colossal mistake and that it has caused the continued pain and torture and eternal damnation of the being he considers his soulmate...

...which is why everytime that pain comes to the surface in something Crowley says or does, Aziraphale *cannot handle it at all whatsoever* and reverts to You'reADemonI'mAnAngel!Mode.

Example: Crowley's religious trauma on display in their bandstand argument:

Crowley owns this, even if he's still traumatized by it. He's saying it sarcastically, making a joke on a song Aziraphale probably barely knows, if he knows at all ("Unforgettable"-- Nat King Cole). Aziraphale *aches* at Crowley saying this-- because it reminds him that it's partially his own fault. And he can't. Do. Anything. About. It.

He's an all-powerful *angel* here but he can't change this for Crowley. He can't stop his suffering some six thousand years after his Fall. He's looking at sexy goth Crowley here and he's thinking about curly-haired, beaming, ball of light! Crowley and that they are *the same person* and Aziraphale *does* know that. He knows it and he loves him passionately and desperately and he is one of the most powerful beings ever in existence and he's standing there looking at the man-shaped-being he adores talking about how he still aches from the betrayal of his fellow angels and his mother God and *there is no way for Aziraphale to fix it* when he can mend broken bones and heal the sick and let their be light! all over the place. He can do proper magic and still, he cannot take away Crowley's pain.

This is Aziraphale's Hell. He didn't Fall but he's been in Hell anyway.

So when Crowley's religious trauma and pain comes out, usually in an argument like in the bandstand scene, Aziraphale does the only thing he thinks he *can* do, right? He's an angel. Still. Somehow. He's an angel and there must be some reason for that and an angel is not a demon-- an angel is a purer being, a healer-- and so he says "I forgive you". He doesn't mean it to be patronizing, even if it is. ("I am a *great deal* holier than thou," as he told Crowley at one point and that was the point, right?) He is trying to say "I am still of Heaven and if it's absolution you need, I can give it to you."

He is trying to say: You are not unforgivable to me.

The real lyric of the song Crowley parodies in the bandstand is what Aziraphale means, whether he knows that song or not...

Unforgettable/That's what you are...

*Crowley*, though, doesn't know about Aziraphale's inner turmoil because *heavy sigh* FFS TALK, YOU IDIOTS *breathes* lol, so *he* hears:

I still think I am better than you and you are Fallen, so you're not worthy of me. I can't love you, not the way you want. I love all beings because I'm an angel and I you know I'm in love with you but I can't *allow* myself to be because it goes against the nature of an angel and I've only done eleven thousand things that should have made me Fall over the years but letting myself be in love with you is the rubicon I won't cross, apparently...

Crowley knows by the time they're having the bandstand argument enough about Aziraphale's general religious trauma (not necessarily about how it pertains to Crowley's Fall but about it in general) to know that he spits out hateful garbage when he feels cornered and how to just call it bullshit and move on. ("I don't even like you."/"You doooo.") But he understandably walks away when Aziraphale pushes him away past a point he can handle-- and Aziraphale knows how to do that. He does it *intentionally.* The "I forgive you" is sadness because it's all he has to offer Crowley but he also knows it'll piss Crowley off enough to end the argument, so he says it intentionally to get Crowley to go away. In this scene (which parallels the end of S2 quite a bit, as many have noticed), Aziraphale is trying to deal with it all on his own, right?

He knows where the antichrist is. He's just not telling Crowley yet. He's trying to deal with it to keep him safe. He's doing it because he thinks he should-- that maybe, when it's something of this level of importance, that his job should be as an angel first, above his side with Crowley. (It's also worth mentioning here that Aziraphale is straight up terrified of Falling, not even just for being damned to Hell but because then, if he's no longer in Heaven, he has exactly zero power to even *try* to protect Crowley.) At the end of S2? With The Metatron?

Aziraphale does the same thing as with the antichrist for a time in S1, really.

The beginning of S2 shows us that Aziraphale has known that Heaven is North Korea since Before the Beginning so now marry that with its last scenes and see the arc that connects them-- Aziraphale does what he does out of guilt over what happened to Crowley to *protect* Crowley. He didn't want to do any of it without Crowley and when The Metatron finally offers that carrot, Aziraphale is suspicious as all hell (pardon the pun) and here we have this moment where part of him *wants* this to all be real, right?

Times change and sometimes, your parents who traumatized the living fuck out of you and didn't approve of your boyfriend, grow the hell up a bit and try to repent and mend fences. Maybe the trust is broken but maybe it can be healed and *as an angel*, Aziraphale is a being of goodness and hope and optimism. He's pure of heart, as Crowley put it to Nina. He *wants* that to be the case... but he also knows it likely is not.

Still... they can't run. There's nowhere that Heaven won't find them. It's no life for them-- no life for Crowley, in Aziraphale's mind, no matter how many times Crowley tries to get him to run away with him. "We can go off together!" begs Crowley, over and over, and Aziraphale's only really ever found that Crowley will only slither off if he's ticked off enough and only "I forgive you" ever really does that enough to work lol. He *means* I love you endlessly but you know this is impossible, you bloody maddening, gorgeous serpent! Will you stop reminding me of what we could have when it can never happen?! but that's not exactly how Crowley's taking it.

In the end, to Aziraphale, Aziraphale is an angel and Crowley is a demon and they are doomed to spend eternity apart and Aziraphale thinks he has no one to blame, really, but himself. If he had somehow saved Crowley six thousand years ago-- or had somehow been brave enough to stand up for him and Fallen alongside him-- they could have been together forever.

But he wasn't then and now The Metatron is here and it's time for Aziraphale to go back to Heaven and he knows, as he sits there drinking coffee with the being whose posse sent Crowley in a free fall into a pit of boiling sulphur, that Crowley will never, ever, ever, EVER go back to Heaven.

But he also knows that Heaven is here to collect Aziraphale and they are making it clear that there is no escape. There's nowhere to run. Everyday, it's been getting closer for six thousand years and going faster than a roller coaster for the last handful but a love like Beez and Gabe's will surely never come his and Crowley's way now.

It was always going to end like this. Nothing lasts forever. He told Crowley that, Before the Beginning. Six thousand years. That was all the time they had before the end of Earth, the place they'd come to call home. They found a way to borrow a few more years at the end of it since S1 and he got to dance with Crowley, their fingers brushing, and that is going to have to be enough because they're out of time.

The Metatron never needed say it directly but it was evident: they wanted Aziraphale to go to Heaven and they would say or do anything to get him up there and Aziraphale may have bought it for a moment but he's definitely figured out by the end of S2 that they need him up there not to become the Supreme Archangel but because his time as an angel is now over. The threat to Crowley is unspoken but omnipresent.

The Metatron makes it sound like he doesn't care if Crowley comes back up to Heaven with Aziraphale or not and he really doesn't and why would that be? Why would he be eager to have the two most troublesome beings in all of Heaven and Hell teaming up and getting in the way of his Second Coming plans, which he absolutely *knows* they won't support? Because they won't have jobs waiting for them up there. Crowley will not be restored to full angelic status.

They're going to kill them. Aziraphale knows it. He's known what Heaven is since Before the Beginning, even if he's been in denial about it for almost as long to try to assuage his own guilt over participating in it.

And it's a lot easier a goal for Heaven to accomplish if they separate them and just Aziraphale goes up to Heaven. If Aziraphale goes alone-- if he keeps Crowley from following-- then Crowley is not a threat to them if Aziraphale is gone.

They aren't as powerful apart.

Aziraphale knows that if Crowley comes to Heaven with him that they will kill him and Aziraphale thinks okay, this is it... this is my moment of redemption.

Six thousand years since Crowley Fell and I can finally make up for not saving him by saving him now.

I can go with The Metatron and let Heaven kill me and know that they will not threaten Crowley if they do because what they are threatened by is both of us together. One of us, alone, is less of a threat and the only problem here is that if I go... Crowley will follow me.

If I just go without telling him what The Metatron said and I don't come back right away, he'll go to Heaven, worried that something happened to me, and they'll kill him when he comes looking for me. He'll find out they've Book of Life'd me and do something stupid and my sacrifice to keep him safe will all be for nothing.

So what's our tortured angel to do?

Bandstand 2.0, right?

He's got to piss Crowley off enough that Crowley won't follow him.

He's got to piss Crowley off so much that Crowley *will never come back* and the worst part is that Aziraphale knows *exactly* how to do it.

He makes his own plans and if things get drastic enough, he'll blow up that damn halo, metaphorically-speaking this time. To save Crowley, he will break Crowley.

It's darkly romantic, really. He'll sacrifice himself for Crowley but to be sure that Crowley will be safe and not follow, he'll have to break his heart a bit first-- to further their misunderstandings in a season based on "I don't think your exactly is my exactly exactly"-level miscommunications.

So Aziraphale accepts The Metatron's offer and lets The Metatron think he completely believes that the offer is legit and maybe a part of him is still hoping that it is but he knows it's really not and that this is a suicide run. This is Aziraphale's Holy Water arc...

...and speaking of Holy Water... that arc from the perspective of this being Aziraphale's mentality... Crowley, tortured by Hell for what he did while with Aziraphale in 1827, then refusing to talk about it, showing up with a cane, sullen and depressed, asking Aziraphale for the one thing that would kill him and Aziraphale's unwillingness to understand that it wasn't completely suicide ideation on Crowley's part but as a way to *protect Aziraphale* and keep him safe. Crowley wanted what could kill a demon not to kill himself but to kill one that might come after Aziraphale. All Aziraphale could see, though, was Crowley's physical and emotional pain, that he could barely keep hidden in that era, and how Aziraphale couldn't make it better. All he could see was how he failed him and led him to this suffering. All he could see in a note begging for "holy water" was Crowley wanting a suicide pill, wanting to destroy himself, unable to take any more, in so much pain that he'd leave Aziraphale forever to make it stop. Aziraphale is blinded entirely by guilt and fails to see what Crowley is really saying, which was, ironically, the last time Crowley began to try to tell Aziraphale how he felt, which was:

I've been thinking-- what if it all goes wrong? (What if I lose you? I'm terrified of losing you. I love you. I wake up from nightmares of you being destroyed by the demons who just spent a couple of decades after 1827 not that long ago torturing me. I didn't know for sure if you were still alive during any of it.) We have a lot in common, you and me. (We're a team. A... group of the two of us.) What if it all goes pear-shaped? I need you to get me the magical demon-killing stuff so I have a weapon against *my own fellow fallen angels* that I can use in case they come after us. I would kill another demon and send every legion of Hell after me to protect you.

Aziraphale: I like pears.

(My God, they are so stupid. Please. I can't take any more lol.)

So, yeah... it's Aziraphale's turn for the holy water suicide run here only with an actual suicide run...

It takes the books in The Blitz for Aziraphale to really understand what Crowley was asking for and what he meant by asking for holy water and by 1967, he gives Crowley the holy water, in the one moment when *they actually talk*, as much as they can, about how much they love one another, that exists prior to the end of its parallel-- the end of S2.

So, yeah, Aziraphale "goes to tell his friend the good news" with a look on his face like he's marching to his death *because he is* and he knows it. His last moments with Crowley, in some of his last moments in existence, he already knows will be spent upsetting the man-shaped being he loves. He's got it all planned out. Not exactly the picnic of his dreams but it'll redeem him and save Crowley and that's all that matters to Aziraphale in this moment.

He will sound naive to the threat of Heaven and because Crowley doesn't remember pre-Fall, he won't remember how Aziraphale warned him against taking on the brass in Heaven so Crowley won't be suspicious, he'll be *frustrated*, like he was in the bandstand. He'll get angry. Aziraphale's goal is to get him to storm out-- but it has to be a really, really, bad relationship-ending storming out.

He can't come back after he drives The Bentley around the block like he did back in 2.01 and say "okay, fine, I'll help you" and Aziraphale knows that if he plays this right, he can make it so Crowley won't because helping Gabriel was one thing but asking Crowley to become an angel with him and pretending like they can go fix the broken system of Heaven is going to be Crowley's bridge too far. It's *the only thing* that Aziraphale believes is Crowley's bridge too far where Aziraphale is concerned and isn't that heartbreaking as hell? That Crowley loves him this much? And they never got to be together the way they wanted? That they were just beginning to get close to trying to figure that out?

That, hours ago, Aziraphale was asking him to dance and trying to ignore the signs of trouble around the corner, desperately wanting more time with him? That they are semi-immortal beings that always somehow seem to be out of time?

Truer words have never been spoken, Crowley. Little did you know, poor demon...

So Aziraphale goes into the bookshop and Crowley looks all worked up and wants to say something and some part of Aziraphale begins to hear warning alarms going off in his head because Crowley *never* looks like this-- is never this flustered, never this uncomfortable, never this nervous, never in a rush to say something-- and Aziraphale thinks no, can't be, we don't talk about this... even if, ironically, all of S2 shows that Aziraphale has been trying *for just that*. It was just a few hours ago that he was trying to Jane Austen a ball for them to use as a pretense to discuss their feelings because, in the height of ironies here, right?

Aziraphale was ready.

They'd had some time without Heaven and Hell breathing so much down their necks, even if the threat still loomed, and spent every day together and it was perfect and it was lovely and he knew Crowley would forgive him and Aziraphale was almost there, right, he was *almost* ready to tell him. He was almost ready to tell him he loved him and that it was him, all those millennia ago, who could have done something and didn't and he's so, so, so sorry and can Crowley ever forgive him? Is there any way that Crowley could ever forgive him after what he didn't say and didn't do when he should have? For all the times since that he's said things in anger when, really, he was madly in love and just full of his own issues to sort out? (Damn, Aziraphale, we're beginning to see your affinity for Austen heroes here...)

But he's out of time so there will be none of that now. Now is his karmic payback. Six thousand beautiful years with the being he loves and feels he doesn't deserve have led to Aziraphale's redemption being that he can sacrifice himself to save him. He can leave the world they love with Crowley and Crowley's *goodness* in it, as it should be. So when Crowley says he needs to say something, Aziraphale cannot-- CANNOT-- let him speak because he cannot bear it.

He suddenly fears that of course-- OF COURSE-- the one moment in all of these trillions of moments they've lived through where Crowley is about to directly say he loves him for the first time is the also the same fucking moment when Aziraphale has to destroy their relationship to save Crowley's life and Aziraphale will be dead after this and he cannot bear hearing what his life could have been. He can't hear Crowley say this right now or else he worries he might lose his nerve. He *wants* to hear it but if Crowley speaks first, Aziraphale might cave, he might be weak again like he was when Crowley Fell, he might fail him again, and he can't. Not after all this time. Not when he loves Crowley so much.

"What's that lovely human expression?! 'Hold that thought!'" he blurts out, in a callback to, of course, the moment Crowley saved him in 1941-- to that night where Aziraphale really realized for the first time that Crowley wasn't just capable of good or capable of being friendly towards him but that Crowley *loved* him and that he loved the Demon Crowley, whether or not he should. ("But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past," sings Frances McDormand as the Voice of God, from her apparent favorite film lol, "I must have done something good.")

Ah, yes. Played for suckers. Here is where it's important to note that in 1941, Aziraphale had no idea that Rose was really Greta and that he, in fact, was the one being played for a sucker. By the end of S2, though, it could be argued that he very much knows that The Metatron is Fraulein Greta Klauschmidt-- someone who presented herself as Captain Rose Montgomery, an agent of anti-fascist good, who approached Aziraphale in his bookshop and told him that he could be an agent of change, too. He could help save the world and stop the global rising tide of fascism represented by the Third Reich. He could even do so using his books. They plotted a sting together, in which he'd bring his books to a church and seem to give them to Nazis to give to the Fuhrer, only for agents to surround them and arrest the Nazis. Aziraphale, desperate to *do* good and to *be* good, falls for this-- he fails to see that Rose is really Greta, a Nazi agent who fools him into working for the enemy and getting him to help destroy the world in the process. Pretty obvious to see here that Greta is The Metatron in S2... but it's likely that Aziraphale knows it and is playing along because it's his turn to save Crowley, unlike what happened in 1941, when Crowley saves him and his books.

Crowley, in the bookshop back at the end of S2 in our present time, stops speaking at the "hold that thought", looking like he's about to be ill, and has to also be thinking of 1941 and the church now that Aziraphale has referenced it. Maybe, in some way, it's an unconscious effort on Aziraphale's part to convey to Crowley that this is a charade-- that he doesn't mean this, that it's an act-- but he really doesn't want Crowley to figure that out. It would defeat his goal. But he also doesn't want to hurt him because he loves him but this is the only way that Aziraphale can see to save him. So he starts gushing about his coffee with The Metatron, right? We all remember this pain lol.

Maybe I've misjudged him. (Aziraphale, we suspect you know that he tossed Crowley into hellfire and stole Gabriel's memories so honestly, the worst part of all of this is that you're so traumatized that Crowley is *buying* what you're saying here...) And guess what?! He wants me to be the new Supreme Archangel! And he said you can come! And you can be an angel again! It will be so fun! We can have a slumber party, Crowley, after days of doing good, and braid each other's hair!

Crowley is like jfc fml are you even serious right now? Which, of course, is what Aziraphale *was going for.* It's the "I don't even like you" and the "we're hereditary enemies" and the "I'm an angel, you're a demon" way of trying to intentionally push Crowley away but the new version of it because none of that flies with S2 Crowley-- most of it barely flew with him in S1-- because Crowley *knows.*

He knows that Aziraphale loves him. And he knows that Aziraphale knows him, which is to say he knows how to hurt him, and that's what this is but also Crowley just sees it as how much Heaven has hurt them both. How much they've hurt Aziraphale. Because just as Aziraphale looks at Crowley in the throes of his religious trauma-- "Unforgivable. It's what I am", etc.-- and wants to help and save and protect him, Crowley feels the same way in return when Aziraphale is like this. Frustrated, sure, but in just as much pain at how much pain Aziraphale is in and feels powerless to stop it but will do whatever he can to try to, yeah?

For Aziraphale, this is all going fairly well (it's miserable but in terms of goal, it's working) through "tell me you said no" but the problem is that Crowley is still pleading. He's still trying to work through it because they're an *us* now and also ironically of course this is when Crowley's been trying to do better with storming out lol so he's trying to couple-solve this. He's not just *leaving* like how Aziraphale had hoped. He had been trying to sell to Crowley that he could pick Heaven over Crowley and Crowley is just kinda... not believing it so much at first and, instead, is trying to approach it like a problem for the two of them to solve together, instead of as a decision that Aziraphale has made for his life that he's stating that Crowley can take or leave.

Which calls back to this scene in 2.01 at the start of this arc, when Crowley calls their life *his* life and Aziraphale counters with that he thought *they* had carved out a life for themselves *together* and Crowley answers: "so did I!" Because they haven't had a discussion about what they are, exactly, at that point, Crowley still cautiously calls *their* life *his* life, retaining a sense of autonomy, as if he's only making decisions for himself when, in reality, they are a couple who are trying to make a life together and have been doing so consciously since S1. Crowley calls that life "precious" and "peaceful" to Aziraphale-- beautiful, lovely things that they both treasure and want and find with one another-- but also "fragile". The threats to them still loom large in the background and they are still so afraid to go much further in their relationship because, in part, of those threats and how terrified they are of losing one another... which just makes the end of S2 even more brutal, really.

(*mantras* cottage in the south downs cottage in the south downs...)

So back in That Scene later in S2, Aziraphale is then just kind of stuck trying to figure out how to get Crowley to be so angry with him that he storms out and never comes back in the face of Crowley trying to very much not do that and then Crowley starts saying that he needs to say what he was going to say or he never will and Aziraphale *knows*, ok? He knows what Crowley needs to say. He just literally cannot believe this is going to happen right now. He honestly can't believe it's happening at all but right now?!

He knows before Crowley begins speaking. He probably knew when he told him to "hold that thought" a few moments before but he *really* knows now. Crowley has no idea that Aziraphale has planned for this to be the last time they ever see one another and to go sacrifice himself to Heaven for whatever they want to do with him to keep them away from Crowley. Crowley looks like he's about to pass out from nerves and can barely speak and just...

...six. thousand. years...

...I know we have all looked at the heartbreak of this scene from Crowley's POV here every which way to Sunday, okay, but just imagine you are Aziraphale, who has loved this being since before the literal beginning of time, and you blame yourself for his pain and suffering, and he's standing here, braver than you've ever been with him, looking into your eyes and telling you that he knows that you love him and that he loves you and he knows you both have known this for basically the entirety of your existence together and he can't pretend anymore. He doesn't want to pretend anymore. He knows things have changed over the last few years between you and he wants more of that. He wants to be with you.

The two of you are not even human, just human-adjacent beings who have gone native from the stars and clouds here, who live and love like humans, who know that maybe the angels and demons have it backwards and God's great creatures are the humans-- that it should be the good in them that you should be trying to emulate-- and Crowley had never been more beautifully, impossibly human than while he's standing there looking ready to pass out while asking you if, after six millennia, it might be alright for him to not hide how much he loves you.

How many times has Aziraphale imagined this by this point? A million? How many different ways? There's at least half of them when he imagines that he's the one who gets up the courage first but there are so. many. Crowley. fantasies. Ones in every time period. But always *a fantasy*, at least up until maybe very recently. Why?

Not even just Heaven and Hell and the threat of being caught but the fact that Aziraphale believes that Crowley doesn't know Aziraphale didn't save him during The Fall and how could he ever really love him if he knew? How could Aziraphale ever go to him like this and give Crowley everything he knows Crowley has desired for so long without telling him the truth about Aziraphale's role in Crowley's Fall-- but then, Aziraphale assumes, he'd lose Crowley forever? So this has always been a pipe dream for Aziraphale-- fantasies from a world where they ever stood a chance of being together-- never really something that could be reality and here it is, starting, happening *now*...

...after six. thousand. years. of living with this guilt and in the last moments in which he will ever see Crowley before he heads to his likely death, with no time to tell him the truth and beg for his forgiveness, no time to ever know what their lives might be like if they could be together.

As Crowley, unbeknownst to Aziraphale, mused dramatically, if not inaccurately, earlier in the season... it's always too late.

It's punishment, in Aziraphale's mind. That's what Crowley's proposal, his confession, is now. It's his Fall, whether he falls or not when he leaves the bookshop for Heaven. It's karmic retribution-- it's God, finally saying something, and what she's saying is:

Look at what you've done, Aziraphale...

Look at how he loves you.

He was never unforgivable.

You are.

Aziraphale might be erased from existence once he gets to Heaven and he knows that's a possibility but he basically is dying here. Crowley is killing him. Crowley has pointed that silver bullet gun straight at his head and fired but he's missed and the bullet isn't in Aziraphale's teeth, it's gone through him.

Crowley, here, tears in his eyes, asking for whatever time they have. An eternity? Impossible, unlikely. Angel and demon. One day, the war will begin again-- another war to end all wars, like all the ones they've fell more and more in love during throughout history-- but it might be the one where Heaven or Hell wins and they're doomed to spend eternity apart. Crowley has said before he thinks the real war is humanity versus Heaven and Hell and that sounds like he thinks there's a chance they could survive it but who knows? They don't know. They're immortal beings who live like humans and that's, of late, included a sense of mortality. They don't know how much time they have left and Crowley is asking for all of it. He is asking for whatever time they have left to be spent together, openly loving one another, and what he doesn't know is what Aziraphale knows:

That they're already out of time.

Crowley is proposing marriage unaware that Aziraphale is dying. It's always too late, Crowley had stated earlier but had hope that maybe it wasn't but it is. And Aziraphale?

Gah. Aziraphale...

He's never loved him more. He's never wanted him more. He wants to tell him that he wants that, too, that they can have it, that Crowley can have anything he wants, but it's not true. It's not true because they could run out the back door of the bookshop now and hop in the Bentley and end-of-Grease it up to Alpha Centauri and Heaven will still find them. Heaven and Hell will still be after them. Running away solves nothing and Crowley always, ultimately, anyway, comes back and this time-- this time-- for Crowley's own good, to save his life, Aziraphale needs him to leave the bookshop and never come back.

And the moment that Crowley confesses that he loves him and that he knows Aziraphale loves him in return and that they've both known this, forever, and asks him if he can be allowed to just love him, Aziraphale loves him so much in return that he'll break his heart to save him from dying.

Dying is... not on, as High!Crowley put it in 1827 lol, but suicide-ish attempts are, if it's Aziraphale's turn this time.

So he twists the knife. He hides the goats as pigeons and he looks at Crowley and does a bit of this:

...only with the exact opposite intent. In the Job minisode, Crowley cannot speak aloud his true intentions. (Something he can finally do in the S2 finale, when he declares his love for Aziraphale.) He cannot tell Aziraphale outrightly that he had zero desire whatosever to kill Job's kids and animals and doesn't plan on actually doing it and, in fact, is actively engaged in a bit of bait-and-switch to make it look like he's doing what he's supposed to be doing as mandated by Heaven! this time as well as Hell (a nice little extra bit of paralleling to the end of S2 and Aziraphale, there.) He wants Aziraphale to believe him enough to allow him to pull it off because saving the kids and the pets (and protecting Aziraphale from any harm that might come to him if he gets in the way of what Crowley's been asked to do) matters more to Crowley than Aziraphale believing him...

...and believing him here means believing *in* him. Believing that they are on the same side and it's their own side and they're in it together. Crowley has to lie to him here *and it works for a moment*. It's really important to note that *it works*. Aziraphale believes that Crowley can do this and that he wants to-- that he not only can but he *longs* (lol) to "kill the blameless kids of Job"-- but it's all in Crowley's wording. He isn't *actually* lying. He *does* long to kill the blameless kids of Job like how he killed the blameless goats of Job-- because he "killed the blameless goats of Job" by turning them into pigeons. So he's really saying to Aziraphale that he longs to *fake the deaths* of the blameless kids of Job and plans to in the same way that he did the goats. In that moment, though? It didn't matter if Crowley was lying or telling the truth. There was only one goal--

--to get Aziraphale to walk away.

To get Aziraphale to leave, for his own safety, and let Crowley handle this. Better that he misunderstand Crowley and be disappointed in him and think him a lost cause than to get himself into trouble. Crowley out here loving Aziraphale that much in the days of Bildad the Shuite. (This poor mfer. Six. Thousand. Years lol.)

So what caused Crowley's plan to save Aziraphale in the Job era to not work?

One of the pigeons bleated, right?

Aziraphale heard it and realized that Crowley hadn't been lying so much as he had been trying to protect Aziraphale from his plan of subterfuge against the Almighty and Satan. The difference is that there are no bleating pigeons in the S2 finale... there's just *a whole certain famous other kind of damn bird instead* and its *absence* from the scene is the big emotional gut punch moment. And we all know it but I'll gif it anyway since this is already a depressing meta (cottage in the south downs cottage in the south downs...)...

...and that *is* the point. Because unlike back in the Bildad the Shuite days, there is no bleating pigeon (at least, not yet) to make Crowley realize that all is not what it seems and that Aziraphale is trying to lie to him and get him to leave to protect him from Heaven.

As Aziraphale is like mortally wounded here by Crowley's confession of love and is so not going to recover from this, he's now got to not only get Crowley to leave feeling like Aziraphale rejected being their own team for Heaven, he has to now do it with all of it out in the open-- with Crowley having openly confessed love for him, with him having asked for them to be together. He's not just going to have to frustrate Crowley more than he ever has before and get him to leave more angry than he was before, he has to, instead, smash into little tiny bits the very beautiful, very passionate, beating heart of the being he has loved since he met him *making the stars* in the bloody sky here...

The only way to get Crowley to go now is to make Crowley think he's rejecting the idea of loving him. Aziraphale honestly can't even sell the idea that he *doesn't* love Crowley because Crowley won't believe it-- he knows Aziraphale does and he's said as much in his whole marriage proposal here. So it has to be that Crowley thinks Aziraphale chose Heaven over loving him. Chose being an angel. That he really meant all of those 'hereditary enemies' and 'you're a demon' moments and to sell that, he sells it.

(You're a dark horse, Mr. Fell, Nina said of him in 2.01... the same turn of phrase Crowley uses when surprised by the secret skills and narrative power of Jane Austen later on in the pub.)

Aziraphale does love himself a bit of theatre. A bit of a disappearing act. The West End, The West End...

...our Nefertiti-fooling fellow...

He sells it with:

Well, of course you said no, *you're* the bad guys...

Come with me... I'll run, it you can be *my second-in-command*...

We can be together. *Angels*. Doing *good*...

...oh, Crowley... nothing lasts forever...

For his final act, The Marvelous Mr. Fell will saw his ineffable husband's heart in half by spewing a litany of everything he can think of to say that will piss him off enough to make him leave the bookshop broken-hearted enough to never come back.

Only someone put a miracle blocker on here because, try as he might and good heavens (pardon the pun), Aziraphale is *trying* here...

...this turnip is not turning into a damn inkwell.

Crowley finally starts to go-- it's looking promising. Finally, Aziraphale thinks, this misery might end. Six thousand years of wanting to speak of all of this between them and hoping for some happiness when-- if-- it could maybe someday arrive, if it even could-- and it's the worst moment of Aziraphale's existence and he knows it is the same for Crowley.

Crowley stops and the "do you hear that?" And no, Aziraphale doesn't hear anything, he just has never been more upset and Crowley needs to just go because Aziraphale can't handle another moment of this, how could it possibly get worse?

Nightingales. Of course.

A call back to S1's "no more world-class composers/little restaurants where they know you/gravalax and dill sauce/old bookshops" but this time, it's "no nightingales". There's Armageddon coming that neither of them know about in this moment. It's still a 'someday, they'll try again' concept to them in this scene, not an extremely immediate threat, as Aziraphale doesn't learn about The Second Coming until after this. So the end of the world that Crowley references here is the end of *their* world and that means no nightingales. No romance. No *them*, together. Worth remembering that Crowley thought, up until maybe what? Five minutes ago? That they were headed to breakfast at the Ritz together. They should have been sitting there together *in this moment*, is what he's saying. Miracling the pianist to play "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" and gazing at one another over teapots and mimosas and croissants.

That's gone, since you chose Heaven instead, is what Crowley states and Aziraphale knows it because, God help him (no, literally, GOD HELP HIM! WHERE THE HELL DID YOU GO OFF TO THIS SEASON, FRANCES?!), it's what he's *trying* to make happen.

You idiot, says the once-Bildad the Shuite, who thought he was taking his beloved to the ox rib special this morning and not getting dumped for an old floating head and the cinematic world's most contentious to-go cup of coffee, we could have been... us.

Not really a part of the theory here, just the observation that Crowley's confession/proposal begins with him unable to say "a couple", in case this all goes pear-shaped and he needs to have never said something that romantic, so he says instead "a team", "a group-- of the two of us". He says it without saying it. But, by the end? He just says "us." He *present*-tenses it. He's like forget everything else, angel, we could have just kept on being us because we both know what we are. We don't need to find the right turn of phrase or even the most specific human word for it. We are just *us* and we could have kept on with that but you chose the mentality of your abusive family and asked me to be what I'm not and I still love you because I *know* you but I can't be with you like that and *you* know that.

And he kisses him. Because Franny McD says you ain't suffered enough yet, Aziraphale lol. Should I just gif it while we're miserable? If you've read this far, a month has passed and hopefully, you've taken breaks and I do apologize but I'm gonna gif it because yeah. Here we go, folks...

God, make it stop, pleads Aziraphale to literal God and here comes Crowley with the S1 wall slam parallel, all dammit, angel, I know you've wanted us to snog for centuries and this is our last chance.

I know people have opinions about this kiss and I know we're all posting them here, obviously myself included, but while I've seen a lot of like... 'Crowley knows it's the only time they ever will be able to because Aziraphale is leaving him for Heaven' and 'Crowley wants to remind Aziraphale what he's giving up and could have had' and 'Crowley tries the kiss to see if it'll change Aziraphale's mind' takes-- and I agree with all of those things and think they're all right-- I've not seen a lot of 'Crowley kisses Aziraphale *for Aziraphale*' and I think that's a big part of it, too.

Crowley really isn't stupid. Not when it comes to Aziraphale wanting him. It would be honestly hard to spend a zillion lifetimes on Earth and not get it after like...

And Crowley understands Aziraphale's particular brand of religious trauma more than most, since he has a variant version of it himself. He understands that where his whole thing is that he's very much *not* an angel anymore, that Aziraphale's identity is wrapped up in being one and the conflicts he has with Heaven and while Crowley is not yet quite hearing what Nina said-- that she just got out of an abusive relationship and that she's not yet ready to be with Maggie and needs time-- and marrying that to Aziraphale and Heaven (especially because Aziraphale is showing exactly zero signs of trying to get out of his relationship with Heaven lol), Crowley wants Aziraphale to have had what he (Aziraphale) wanted, even if it was for only a moment. He can't go with him. This is the *one* scenario where Crowley cannot follow where Aziraphale goes, where he can't come to him and rescue him, because Aziraphale has said he doesn't want him to. Aziraphale wants to go and do this and the only way he'll take Crowley is if Crowley wants to become an angel again, which Crowley will not do.

And damned if there isn't a part of Aziraphale that thinks that if The Metatron can really be trusted, wouldn't that be something? That if he gets up there to Heaven and he really is made Supreme Archangel and if Crowley changes his mind, if he comes back, like he always does... if he storms out and leaves but then misses him too much and takes the elevator up... then maybe Aziraphale could make him an angel again and while Crowley hears in Aziraphale offering that you aren't good enough as a demon-- you're not good, period and even if he doesn't totally believe that Aziraphale really thinks that but knows Aziraphale has enough religious conflict that it's a problem for their relationship, what Aziraphale *really* means is... I could fix it.

I could go back and un-Fall you. I could take away your pain. I could stop your suffering. I'd have the *power* to do it when I don't right now and it kills me, every day. I could right the wrong I did, the sin I committed-- the real Original Sin-- six thousand years ago when I betrayed you, when Heaven betrayed you.

I could do right by you, the way She never did.

I am going to Heaven to either have the power to do that or to be obliterated into non-existence and I don't totally know which, though surviving is not looking promising, but all I know is that it's too dangerous for you to follow me right now until I do know so I'd rather hurt you than see you dead.

You want to be with me and I am afraid it will lead to your destruction so I need to say anything to put the breaks on your attempt and make you back off. To a lesser extent, I've done it before. Can do again.

Only this time, no hope of the possible, future picnic, I'm afraid...

It really is the worst possible Aziraphale nightmare here like... everything he's ever wanted. Six millennia of wanting to pull Crowley close and he has to reject him or Crowley could die. Fanfic season here said Coffee Shop AU and also a reverse-Fuck or Die for the ages. People complaining that it's awkward? YES. It's supposed to be. Crowley has no idea that Aziraphale is facing a round of sudden death here and was just hoping for his one fabulous kiss and vavoom. Even if it didn't change anything-- he wanted *Aziraphale* to feel that. To know how much he's wanted this for so long and to have it, even if they can't again. The intent is terribly romantic, as is Aziraphale flailing in the middle of it and giving in because he is made of strong, halo-exploding stuff here but he's wanted this forever. He goes up on his toes, he leans in, his hands flail around and he touches Crowley's back. He *shouldn't* do any of this if he's trying to meet his goal of getting Crowley to leave because it gave Crowley hope. It might have even been what motivated Crowley to stay outside and not go right away, or at least a part of it. But Aziraphale had to because he loves him and he couldn't help it.

Then, *sob*, The Michael Sheen eviscerating all of us here...

For anyone who might still be saying that is an "I didn't want his kiss" face... hard, HARD, VERY HARD disagree. That is "I didn't want *this* kiss, like this, right now." That is a man-shaped being who was just kissed by the love of his life for what may have been the first time but, at minimum, is for what he believes will be the *last* time. (I'm still out here holding out some hope for Blitz, Part 3-- a nice first kiss after they kill some Zombie Nazis with Chekhov's derringer in the bookshop but I digress...somehow, even if this entire long meta is one long digression, I digress lol...)

It's the face of a man gutted by the fact that this, in his wildest dreams, was not supposed to happen like this and he's been alive for damn ever at this point so he's had *all* the wildest dreams. And a lot of them, let's be real, have centered around Crowley doing just this. Exactly this. Crowley ain't wrong with the 'grabbing him by the collar and kissing him senseless in the middle of the bookshop' thing. He's wanted to do it for centuries. And the middle of the bookshop bit? That's important, too. This is their home. It's *their* home, even if Crowley is technically homeless. It's safe for him in here and Aziraphale has made it so. It's where they've spent thousands of hours together, happy and safe in each other's company, and here they are, bouille-bouile-bouile-baby-ing finally and it's a complete and utter, unmitigated trash truck dumpster fire.

Honestly, this was a better kiss than in S2 lol. S1 laying down though how long they've been dreaming about it (and having Crowley start listing animals that are in Aziraphale's nonsense magic spell, like he flashes back to 1941 when thinking about the end of the world and kissing Aziraphale in the bookshop... so you can see why I'm moderately hopeful that maybe they did kiss then, once, before then trying to never again until Crowley kisses Aziraphale in 2.06.)

I'm going to bring this back around now to the comparison I made above with Crowley and Jesus and talk about how 2.06's end scenes are also like the last temptation of Christ. Good Omens makes it pretty clear that Aziraphale is the tempter, really, of the two of them, in their relationship. Crowley can't say no to him and Aziraphale has learned it and loves to puppy eyes Crowley into anything he wants.

Crowley knows it and is fine with it. He's smitten and happy to be wrapped around Aziraphale's finger. Crowley has tempted Aziraphale and we see that in S2 with the ox rib. He is, himself, just by existing, tempting to Aziraphale. But in terms of temptation carrying with it a bit of manipulation and *that* kind of tempting being what's demonic in nature? Then Aziraphale is, and always has been, the demon of the two of them. This is true into the end of S2, as while there is almost nothing that Crowley would deny Aziraphale, there is really only one thing and that's to change who he is for him. To become an angel again, to work for Heaven again, after what they've done to him and Aziraphale. So the end of S2 is then Aziraphale's temptation-- it's a test, of sorts, for Crowley, even if Aziraphale doesn't intend for it to be. Crowley resists the temptation. Even for Aziraphale, he won't follow the path of darkness for himself and become something he's not. Crowley-Jesus. (Aziraphale-Satan S3 incoming lol.)

And if you've been reading all of this right then you know what happens next and what it means from the POV of this guilt-ridden Aziraphale...

I honestly don't think Aziraphale is really that angry *with Crowley* at this point-- I think he's just angry. He's reached his limit and then some. He has a lot of simmering, under the surface rage on a good day that only bubbles over when he's stressed by a situation he can't control and here is the ultimate one, really. He's a little mad at Crowley because they've waited countless years for that and in an argument, while ironically probably kind of perfect for them, is not really how *either* of them wanted it to be... but, mostly, Aziraphale is just angry that he can't have any of those moments at all. That they're out of time. That they had all this time and they never really could be safely together and that he's been haunted for six thousand years of the image of his fluffy cloud of redheaded sunshine, bloodied and stricken, and then tossed to Hell while Aziraphale was powerless to stop it. He's never seen those eyes since and he loves the snake ones. He loves all of Crowley with all he has but he's never been allowed to *have* him and never felt safe enough to try and now it's all over. And he still has to make Crowley fucking leave this bookshop for his plan of self-sacrifice to fucking work here so...

...I forgive you. It's the worst thing he can think of. The thing Crowley always hates. The thing that he knows makes Crowley feel lesser and demonic, even if Aziraphale has always, always meant it as an I love you. He even spits it out to Crowley with an almost self-deprecating, referential tone to it-- like "here we go again-- you say you love me and I say 'I forgive you' because I can't say anything else, can I?" The anger is laced underneath it and all the pain but he's intentionally referencing how this this the thing he says whenever Crowley says they can be their own side. He's trying to claim that nothing has changed in all of these years, when they both know that everything has changed since S1 and the bandstand. That's what makes it hurt both of them even more. Aziraphale chooses to say "I forgive you" because he knows that Crowley has never heard it for how Aziraphale means it and Aziraphale is a little bitter about it and lets it show in the moment, since Aziraphale's I forgive you always really means...

I can't stand to see you in pain and if there's any power in me as an angel to stop it, then I will do that so I forgive you and may that make it easier, may that make it all okay, even though I know it won't.

And just before saying I forgive you, Aziraphale's mouth works and he almost-- almost-- says I love you instead... what Crowley would really give anything to hear.

You can see the 'l' forming there, the beginning of "love", what he *really* wanted to say... what Crowley himself didn't even actually explicitly say. Crowley said it without saying it. He called them a couple without saying that word, asked for eternity without fully asking for it, said he loved him by acknowledging that they had both been pretending, but Crowley was terrified and so he said the things in a way that made it obvious what he was saying and asking for but, so unused to not speaking in code are they, that Crowley didn't say he loved Aziraphale, not directly. He did say it. He just didn't say it in those words.

And for a second, Aziraphale almost does.

He can't stand that he's breaking Crowley's heart. He can't stand that Crowley has kissed him and Aziraphale only briefly kissed him back, only barely touched him, when he really wanted to go at him like an ox rib and never let him go, and he starts to say the truth because no part of him really *wants* to be lying like this to Crowley. But he stops. And not even just because he needs Crowley to leave the shop to save his life but because, in the last four minutes, Crowley has confessed love and proposed and they've kissed and Aziraphale, pretty sure he actually died somewhere in the middle there and he's now stuck somewhere in one of Dante's worst circles of Hell lol, just cannot *also* have this be the moment where he says "I love you" to Crowley.

It's not even false hope that maybe they'll somehow have more time. With Heaven breathing down his neck in the form of The Metatron, Aziraphale has no real hope of that. He just always dreamed of telling him and not like this. He doesn't want Crowley to hear it like this, either, not as a part of a rejection. The anger, instead, surfaces, because why can't he and Crowley just *have* this?! How the hell did Gabriel and Beezlebub get to fuck off to Alpha Centauri after dating for ten minutes when he and Crowley have spent bloody eons in queer pining hell over here? What did they ever do that was so wrong to deserve this? Why was Crowley asking questions so terrible? Why have they had to spend thousands of years pretending not to love each other as if love-- the epitome of the angelic-- was unholy? Why, Aziraphale is wondering, now that they are out of time, did he ever spend so many years terrified when, in the end, it all ended tragically anyway?

How many of those years could Aziraphale have spent loving Crowley the way they ought to have been able to have and denied themselves of for so long?

And then Crowley finally does it. Tells him "don't bother" about the forgiveness-- about the love, as Aziraphale has always meant it-- and he leaves. It worked. The anger and pain and saying "I forgive you" after that kiss... it worked. And Crowley leaves and Aziraphale, alone, is a complete mess of broken and furious and broken some more.

Crowley, as we know, doesn't get to see this moment. Muriel does! Great for fic! Hilarious by show standards that the new angel who is literally being ordered to take over Aziraphale's home against his will is who witnesses the aftermath of the intimate moment our angel has been craving, oh, just since before the dawn of humanity over here.

He touches his lips, his hand trembles... have you all noticed that Aziraphale is literally fucking *tasting and eating* what of himself Crowley left in his mouth here? He's pulling every bit of Crowley to his tongue from his teeth and *swallowing*, like he knows it's all of him he'll ever again be able to consume, like he's committing how he tastes to memory for the last like, who knows, ten? fifteen? twenty minutes? of his own existence that he knows he probably has left...

Jesus fucking Christ, Michael Sheen...

This is all without yet mentioning the single most under-analyzed line in S2 that calls into question a ton of stuff, which is this beauty from Shax, right off the top of 2.01:

"Beezlebub's put some of the lesser demons on half-rations."

What does this have to do with Aziraphale consuming Crowley's kiss like it's the most scrumptious thing he's ever tasted (because it is) and being furious that it'll be their last?

Because that Shax line casually confirms that demons eat. Do they eat human food or some sort of demon food or both? Who knows, really, but they're *supposed* to eat. Ok, but is it just a demon thing? No, because it ties to Crowley's comments in S1 about how he complained that the food wasn't really that good lately when hanging out with Lucifer and The Gang, which then implies that, at least back then, *angels* ate, too. Eating was a normal thing. Over time, though, we know that the higher angels have come to see eating as human and pedestrian and not something befitting of an angel. Some demons eat-- even Crowley eats, if less than and differently than Aziraphale-- but the angels think it's beneath them and if we have confirmation via Shax in S2 that they are supposed to be eating and basically only don't die because they're immortal beings and not human, even if they have human corporations, then the show is saying that all of these angels are fucking starving themselves.

They're doing what they're told and denying their own nature and their own needs in the process.

S2 also shows that with the ox rib, right?

Aziraphale went *at* that thing. He'd never eaten at all in a couple thousand years after being told it was un-angelic and so when he tasted food for the first time, he went so overboard that he's been Mr. Prim and Proper with his napkins and table etiquette ever since out of embarrassment over Crowley watching him food orgasm once-- and that's the metaphor there, as we've all figured out. Our show that has a sex worker named Mrs. Sandwich is all about its ongoing food-as-sex metaphor. S2 even opens with the hilarious turnabout from S1 as a "thank you for my pornography", "why do you consume *that*?" Gabriel shows up at the bookshop-- naked-- and has a food orgasm trying hot chocolate for the first time.

Gabe, babe, Aziraphale does not need the play-by-play here....

Mah point is... mah point is that Tumblr is maxing me at 30 images per post and so you'll just have to picture Crowley slurring "dolphins" while I get to my actual point here...

Mah point is while this is a whole separate analysis almost and one that many of you have already done in different ways re: food & sex on the show, my point here is that starving yourself of food in Good Omens is analogous to being touch-starved or love-deprived and before someone yells at me about how angelic beings don't necessarily need sex or are by nature not into sex unless they make an Effort, I agree with you and Neil Gaiman. I'm just also saying the show is suggesting that they all have human corporations and that many of those human corporations are not sex-averse so for those of them that are not, they're literally out here touch-starved and/or sex-starved here in different ways. But, you say, maybe Crowley is hungry (goodness knows, Crowley *is hungry* lol) but Aziraphale eats all the time!

Yeah. Aziraphale eats *food*, all the time. But he isn't touched all the time. He doesn't have sex all the time. He isn't kissed all the time. The 2.06 scene shows him *physically* making that metaphor of food and sex real for us-- we watch him *consume* what remains of Crowley's kiss--showing that he's desperate for it and deprived of it. He's starved for it, to a point of trembling hands and rolling every bit of Crowley's lingering taste around his mouth like he's taking on every last bite of the best crepe he could ever imagine in all his days...

...and then being, understandably, full of rage that this is the only time he's going to ever have Crowley-- and all he's ever going to have of him, when Crowley just offered all of himself-- forever.

And then The Metatron comes back and is Aziraphale ready to go to his death now? And, Friends, Aziraphale...

...is absolutely not.

He's turned away from the door, barely containing tears. When the door opened and he turned, he half-hoped it'd be Crowley but it was grr That Bastard instead. He looks out the window and Crowley is still out there...

...he left but he didn't really *leave*... and it somehow then still isn't over and will someone please just take Aziraphale out back and angel-shoot him? He can't take any more of this.

What about the shop? he asks, in a moment of desperation and terror over what's to come and some blind, stupid hope that he can somehow get out of all of this with him and Crowley still alive and The Metatron, who anticipated this, tells him Muriel lives here now. Aziraphale looks around the home he's made for him and Crowley for the last 223 years and his favorite books and possessions. Crowley's hat from 1941 is on the hat stand, the horse statue is where Crowley put his glasses back when he trusted him, back when he let Aziraphale see his pretty yellow eyes whenever Aziraphale wanted in recent years... before he just put his glasses back on now and closed himself off again.

Aziraphale is never going to see those eyes he loves again. He didn't even get to kiss Crowley without the sunglasses on before it was all over.

Even Gabriel had something to take up to Heaven with him to remind him of the demon he loved but Aziraphale goes to Heaven and to his death empty-handed because he pushed Crowley away to save him from all of this and, in the final push, he looks at Crowley standing there by The Bentley, all that secretly optimistic, beautiful, romantic hope about him still in him from the angel Aziraphale first met, all the awareness there of Aziraphale-- the only being who really knows him-- and so he's still waiting, still hoping. It goes back a few hours to the ball.

I'll be back. I won't leave you on your own.

But it's Aziraphale's call now and he gets into the elevator. The Metatron wins because Aziraphale's love for Crowley wins. He'll die before he lets anything happen to him, even if he wants to run to that car and to him but where would they run *to*? There's no place to go. Crowley has always been wrong about that. They can't go off together. There's no place safe from Heaven for them.

So Aziraphale gets into the elevator at The Dirty Donkey, leaving Crowley alone in the street once again, just with less hope this time than in 1967.

So Aziraphale leaves the bookshop this time, instead of going into it like he did in S1, when he left Crowley in the street, standing beside The Bentley, while clutching a different book this time-- Agnes Nutter's prophecies in his hand versus The Book of Life and its threatened erasure hanging over Aziraphale like the specter that it is. What was predicted about the future versus erasure from the past and all time. Nothing to see here, Crowley! Everything is as it's seems.

Everything is tickety-boo!

Tickety-boo?

Yes, which is also what Aziraphale-as-Crowley said... when he was kidnapped by Heaven and Hell in S1, remember? When he was taken from Earth to be sentenced to death... along *with* Crowley.

This time, Aziraphale is shutting Crowley out again. Telling him 'mind how you go' again, this time a bit more, uh, emphatically lol. And on their heels, again, the end of the world. Arma-bloody-geddon 2.0: The Second Coming.

Aziraphale heard The Metatron saying that was the plan-- as, of course, our villain walked away and meant for it not to be totally heard, further implying that they have no plans to really make Aziraphale the Supreme Archangel and that this is all a remix of Fraulein Greta Klauschmidt. That then makes this all somehow *even worse*... because now Aziraphale gets in the elevator to ride up to his death to save Crowley but now he knows that it was all for nothing.

War is coming. The planet they love will be destroyed. Crowley, if he knows him well enough, will likely die trying to save it. When he does, he'll still be damned to Hell for all of eternity while Aziraphale thinks he likely won't exist at all once he makes it upstairs and Michael finally gets to Book of Life him. Let the other angels think he's been played for a sucker. Better they think him a fool than that they come for Crowley.

He doesn't want to Fall and doesn't wish for it. If they take his memories as punishment, and they almost certainly will, he won't remember any of the moments he spent with Crowley and even if they could have eternity together in Hell if the world is destroyed, he wouldn't wish Crowley the pain of being around him when he didn't remember anything.

Aziraphale only finding out about The Second Coming in the moment before he gets on the elevator-- *after* everything happens with Crowley-- is a million times worse because now Aziraphale is riding to his death knowing that everything they've done in six thousand years doesn't matter and that the events of S1 didn't matter because all it did was delay the inevitable end of the world and everything Aziraphale loves is about to be destroyed.

That, apparently, was God's ineffable, Great Plan.

All of that is what is on Aziraphale's face on the ride up to Heaven in the final splitscreen.

In that splitscreen, Crowley, for what it's worth, is visually echoing the driving back from Tadfield bit that leads to the "tickety-boo" moment of Aziraphale lying to him by omission. He looks close to a parallel to the S1 moment where he suddenly yelled:

"DUCKS!"

They're what water slides off of. In this context? They were also the thing itching at the back of Crowley's mind-- the not quite right thing, the puzzle he couldn't quite figure out, the question he coudln't yet quite answer... until he could. That's positive, actually. It means there might be something for him to realize, even if that realization might come too late in the short term. (They will solve everything and be fine, memory-intact, immortal beings in love who go off together by the end of it. This is all just until then.)

Ducks are also, sort of, the be all and end all of Good Omens. Crowley knows how to take care of them, after all, when others do not. You feed them frozen peas-- they are good for them and they love them, too. (Don't feed him coffee, you Metatron idiot! He only ever drank one mug of it in S1 and it led to the *points above* see: tickety-boo Aziraphale lying to Crowley paralleling sequence of scenes.) [The "do you have one, single, better idea?" scene is Aziraphale drinking coffee, for reference.]

So, yeah, by comparison here... Aziraphale, you are a duck lol. You have been fed bread by idiots for far too long when, really, you need to be eating frozen peas. Crowley knows this and he knows how to take care of you. With any luck, he's about to have his duck-moment-paralleling epiphany any moment now, though I fear you're already going to be memory-wiped and fallen to Hell when he does. That's okay, though, because this is the main scene that still needs a go-around in paralleling and we know Crowley knows where the dungeons are down there from unfortunate, personal experience.

Cottage in the south downs, cottage in the south downs, cottage in the south downs, cottage....

Notes: Hi! If you have made it all the way here, thank you for reading. I hope it was worth the read for you. You all write such great stuff that I felt inspired to put my lit and film studies and psych background to use and jump in a bit. Thanks for indulging me. I also wish to note that there is a gif above that is by @fuckyeahgoodomens but for some reason, the credit was not working properly so I just wanted to make sure you knew who was providing us the visual joy.

#ineffable husbands #good omens #crowley x aziraphale #good omens meta #long post #good omens theory #i am not kidding you this is kinda long but there are gifs and jokes and i brought snacks? #aziraphale #crowley #good omens 2 #good omens 2 spoilers #gabriel

[queerfables]

The Rules of the Twist

Given the themes of deception and sleight of hand in Good Omens season 2, I think most of us agree it's at least possible there's some kind of twist waiting to be revealed in season 3. We're bouncing around a lot of theories, but I wanted to take a step back and look at the general shape of what we might expect.

The big twist we've seen before in Good Omens is Crowley and Aziraphale's body swap. (Okay, technically it was an appearance swap. But that just doesn't sound as pithy.) Rather than anticipate an exact repeat of this trick, I'm considering the swap as a sort of model. What does it tell us about the rules Neil plays by when he pulls a twist in this story? What clues can we expect, and what can we not count on? Sure, there's no guarantee that a season 2 twist is going to map exactly onto what we've seen in the past, but I think it's a reasonable place to start. Take these as guidelines and take them with a grain of salt, but if you're sorting through all our fascinating Good Omens theories and trying to decide what you think, you might find them helpful.

So then, what are the rules?

Broadly speaking, Neil plays fair with twists. He foreshadows and includes enough hints for the audience to make a reasonable guess at what's going on, or at least to look back after the reveal and go, "oh, of course". But he still keeps some cards close to the chest.

During the body swap, there are two big gaps in the information we're given:

Key events happen off screen The swap happened between scenes, during a time that it was only suggested, not confirmed, that Crowley and Aziraphale would be together. The transition between these scenes also used film and tv conventions to make that passage of time "invisible" - we see Crowley and Aziraphale get on the bus, and then we see them in the morning going about their days separately, and we're conditioned to think nothing important could have happened in between.

Key tools (eg abilities, items, information) haven't been shown before The swap was not something we'd ever seen Crowley and Aziraphale do, and it wasn't something they'd ever talked about either. It fit comfortably into the established world building but it hadn't been specifically signposted as a possibility.

The other big twist that Good Omens pulled was the romance between Gabriel and Beelzebub as the explanation for Gabriel's disappearance from heaven. Both of these information gaps are involved here too. The offscreen event is obviously the meetings between Gabriel and Beelzebub that lead to them falling in love - up until Gabriel's flashback sequence, the only indication they'd ever met each other was a brief conversation at the airbase during Armageddon. The tool that we haven't seen before is Beelzebub's ability to create a fly vessel for Gabriel's memories (protecting him in much the same way that Crowley and Aziraphale protected each other with their body swap, in fact).

These are pretty big gaps, really. And given that Neil knew there'd be years between seasons 2 and 3, I expect he would have leaned pretty heavily into them if he wanted to hide something. So how do we predict a twist if we can't know where it is and haven't seen what it might involve?

Unanswered questions

This is the big one. Looking at where the furniture isn't, you might say.

What's interesting is that the questions that point to a twist aren't usually subtle or ambiguous. For the body swap, the two converging questions were: what did Agnes' last prophecy mean, and how could Crowley and Aziraphale survive their executions? In season two, some of the unanswered questions signposting Gabriel/Beelzebub were: how did Gabriel lose his memory, why was he carrying a box, what was the significance of the song he kept singing, who was he at the Resurrectionist with...

I think guesses about upcoming twists are most convincing when they seek to tie up loose threads from the show. For this reason, I'm a little skeptical of theories proposing the kiss between Crowley and Aziraphale involved some kind of twist. It isn't impossible, I just don't see any unanswered questions there. (Savvy readers may note that I too have speculated about a twist hidden in the kiss. I do find the possibility fun, but it's not a theory I'm seriously committed to). If I was going to really buy into one of these theories, I'd want it to explain one of my big unanswered questions other than "but how could they get into a fight that hurts me so deep in my soul?" That's definitely a question I have, but not technically a mystery.

It's worth noting that in the case of the body swap, we were initially given a false answer to the question "how did they survive their executions?" The angels and demons watching attribute it to Crowley and Aziraphale having "gone native", believing that their natures had fundamentally changed, making them immune to holy water and hellfire. It might be the case, then, that some of the apparently resolved questions this season warrant further investigation. Is there more to the story of Gabriel's disappearance than we know, for example?

2. Unexplained details

If examining an unanswered question is looking at where the furniture isn't, then this is where we take all the pieces of furniture piled up in storage and see if we've got anything that fits. Everything is fair game here: script, acting, music, props, sets, costumes, editing, camera angles, audio effects, visual effects, everything. If it's on the screen or coming through the speakers, it was put there on purpose by multiple teams of highly skilled and attentive creators all working together to create the final product.

I think you could probably do an entire meta on all the little details pointing towards the season 1 body swap, but here are some of the big ones:

"Crowley" sees the restored Bentley, but takes a taxi instead of driving it

"Aziraphale" circles "Crowley" when they order their ice creams, the way Crowley more typically moves around Aziraphale

"Crowley" says "tickety boo", an extraordinarily Aziraphalean phrase

The collar on "Crowley's" jacket is a beige tartan rather than its usual red

There are general differences in the ways David Tennant and Michael Sheen embody the characters throughout the swap

Similarly, Gabriel and Beelzebub's romance has lots of small details pointing to it. The big one that keeps showing up is the connection between Gabriel and flies. He mentions them and interacts with them repeatedly, and although it isn't obvious at first glance, there's a fly in the box that he carries to the bookshop. This all culminates in the reveal that it's the same fly, Beelzebub's gift to him.

Here's the problem, of course: if everything in the show is intentional and crafted with meticulous attention to detail, how do we know what actually matters? This is why I think it's so important to look at the unanswered questions first. There's a joy in seeking out Easter eggs and connecting all the dots, and sometimes you might strike gold this way, but there's also a lot of noise in the signal. It's helpful to know the general shape of what you're looking for, so you'll know when you've found it.

You can reverse engineer this. Start with details that jump out at you and then look for a puzzle they might explain. This works, but it's a little easier to get lost in the weeds, struggling to sort out what's significant and what's a fun reference to another piece of media or a hint to a question that's already been resolved. Going back to the twists we've already seen on this show, the unanswered questions around them were really big and obvious, so I think it's a good idea to ask: if I hadn't noticed this detail, would I have thought this was a mystery that needed solving?

Okay, but what do we do with this?

Well, maybe nothing. These criteria can't confirm or rule out any theories, after all. I'm laying it out like a rubric but it isn't really, I'm just describing a few storytelling patterns we've seen before and making some rough guesses about how they might show up again. If I were really serious about this I'd probably take a look at other examples of Neil's work and see how well my model holds up there, but the truth is I'm not really familiar with enough of his other works to do this. (Confession time: I was always more of a Pratchett fan).

The main reason that I've laid everything out like this is it informs my thinking when I stress test my own theories, and I figured other people might be interested in it. I'm also hoping it will help me to be able to refer back to this when I write meta in the future. For my own purposes, I find a breakdown like this helpful because it gives me a sense of how a writer approaches their story, where they'll tip their hand and where they'll hold things close. It's no guarantee and it wouldn't be any fun if it was, but in a lot of cases we're not aware of our own patterns, so it can be surprisingly illuminating.

#good omens #good omens meta #fable talks good omens

[weirdly-specific-but-ok]

T-48 hours to Armageddon (when we watch me finish GO Season 2), I want to make a statement. and a will.

I've been getting a lot of ominous statements from the fandom. They've become increasingly concerned for my mental stability and even survival post the season two finale (thanks guys). I feel like as mascot I need to make some kind of statement, in case I do not survive the Final Fifteen. Maybe a will. Don't worry, this contains no spoilers (?) and no speculations or fanfiction about season 3. It is simply My Dramatic Outpouring of Poetic Emotion.

Firstly, @neil-gaiman, good day to you, Neil, this is the first interview (?) I have watched of yours. And I see you said "quiet, gentle and romantic" which until now I was kind of assuming was a fandom inside joke. I'm glad I know what to expect going into the second half of season two. In case I do not survive, thank you very much for this journey, you have created a masterpiece. I think I will watch Coraline in the next 48 hours since I am living on borrowed time and I do very much want to watch that before it all ends.

Secondly, to all the maggots, thank you very much for kidnapping me and dragging me into this beautiful pain with you. I do not think I will survive the Final Fifteen. I fell for Crowley and Aziraphale too deeply. But all my love to you, and I hope you will ensure my memory lives on. Take my posts and my meagre contributions, for they are yours. Maybe @1800ineedshelp, Lina, you can ask the maggot choir to sing Eleimon Aegovoskos (for those unaware, that is a hymn I wrote for Crowley) at my funeral, if my body is found and not discorporated. @queermarzipan I need you to mention my love for Drarry.

I have already put a POTC post in queue, maybe I'll add a few more so I linger painfully on this site even after my mortal remains are resigned to the stardust that Crowley once created.

Thirdly, @howmanyholesinswisscheese, please make the funeral arrangements and pay for them, thank you. You can play Someone to Stay if you like as you cry over your beloved late son (me). I hope I was your favourite (only) problem child and family disappointment.

Those who made art for me, @ivory--raven, @1800ineedshelp, @madfangirlontheloose, @arkytiorlecter, my deep thanks, let it be displayed in lieu of a photo.

Lastly, OFMD fandom, I'm sorry I entered so late. Make sure the show is renewed. Fly your gay flag high for me.

I still have two days, but I'm taking precautions because I'm very organised like that. Take my love, maggots, all of you, I couldn't tag everyone though I want to. May the nightingales sing again.

Your mascot and prophet, very, very dramatically yours,

Asmi

#IM SORRY GUYS I'M A DRAMATIC LITTLE SHIT #good omens mascot #good omens #good omens fandom #weirdly specific but ok #asmi #crowley #maggots #lgbtqia #aziraphale #neil gaiman #aziracrow #azirowley #ineffable fandom #ineffable husbands #ineffable spouses #ineffable idiots #good ineffable omens #shit post #but make it #emOtiONAl #good omens funny #if my pain is fuNNY TO YOU ALL #which it apparently is #david tennant #michael sheen #ineffable divorce #final fifteen #good omens 2

[actual-changeling]

The hypocrisy of completely dismissing Crowley's trauma from the Fall, indeed denying that he was traumatized in the first place, and at the same time infantilizing Aziraphale claiming he’s suffering so much because he likes tragedies and sad books and even believing that it was “an act of kindness” to say I forgive you to Crowley

The actual tragedy here is that it's not even a unique point of view to hold. Ableism is ingrained so fucking deeply in society, and that extends to trauma survivors.

There is the idea of a "good" survivor, the one that is soft and over apologetic, the one that people pleases and is easy to see as a victim, the kind that allows you to feel better about yourself by pitying them or being their friend. That's what people want—and Aziraphale largely fits that bill.

They look at him and see someone who is fawning and anxious, someone who does not outright goes against their abusers but plays along, someone you can look at and go "oh, but the way he is behaving is not his fault, he has trauma :(". I'm not exaggerating, I have seen this exact line of thinking over and over again, whether people are consciously doing it or not,

Meanwhile you have Crowley—who doesn't fit into that ideal. He is the "bad" survivor. The one that got angry, harsh, and built spiky walls to keep himself save. The one that never stopped surviving and keeps disobeying, keeps pushing, keeps questioning and doing things that make others look at him and go "oh but he is 'provoking' it, so it is his fault".

Once again, something I see in this fandom way too fucking often.

Both takes are incredibly ableist, one is infantilizing and robs Aziraphale of autonomy, the other is mean-spirited and fucked up. Crowley isn't a palpable survivor. Trauma did not make him soft, it made him angry, and society hates that.

Society wants us to forgive and forget—which is EXACTLY why people think Aziraphale and his forgiveness shtick is him being "kind".

People in this fandom refuse to examine their own bias and it fucking shows.

Trauma made me angry, it made me rough, it made me lonely and protective of myself, it made me untrusting and unforgiving and unapologetic for how I am keeping myself alive and safe. I cannot count how many times throughout my life I was blamed for the abuse I was tortured with. How many times people told me to forgive because it was my "family". That forgiveness is good and every survivor must forgive or they're doing it wrong.

Fuck that and fuck every single person that treats Crowley the way too many of us are treated ourselves.

#alex answers asks #alex talks good omens #good omens #crowley #aziraphale #good omens season 2 #go2 #aziracrow #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands #ineffable wives #ineffable spouses #good omens meta

[takeme-totheworld]

Aziraphale and Forgiveness, Pt. 3: You Think Too Much

This series is now complete! Here's where you can find the other parts.

Part 1 here. Part 2 here. Part 4 here.

I have been so gratified by the response to these so far! Thank you so much to everyone who has been reading and commenting and reblogging, I'm really happy that my thoughts about this are speaking to people.

Same disclaimers from before apply: this is all based on parallels to my personal experience with religion, my biblical and theological takes (when I have them) are probably sloppy, and I haven't read the GO book so this is all based solely on the show.

Aziraphale shows a level of emotional distress about Heaven's bullshit that we don't really see from the other angels. I wouldn't be surprised if some of this is because he is one of the main POV characters, and we eventually discover that he's not the only angel grappling with this stuff. But I do think he's fairly atypical. He's a demonstration of something often observed by people who leave super dogmatic religions: A system designed to keep people ignorant is extra hard on the ones who think too much.

It's a big part of what makes Aziraphale a misfit in Heaven. The archangels regularly respond to his ideas and concerns with annoyance, dismissiveness, and patronizing non-answers. When they come to Earth to confront him in season one, Uriel flat-out tells him, "You think too much." They are constantly communicating that they don't like this about him.

This aspect of Aziraphale isn't just because he's spent so much time on Earth, or with Crowley. It's clearly innate. We see it before the fall, when he tried to warn Crowley about asking questions. A different angel might have shrugged the whole conversation off and flown away, or unthinkingly blabbed about it to the wrong person later, or even deliberately snitched. But Aziraphale was already thinking independently enough of what he'd been taught to conclude (1) that this could get Crowley in trouble, and (2) that he didn't want that to happen because it wouldn't be deserved.

We also see it when he gives the sword away. Would it have occurred to most other angels to worry about Adam and Eve's survival? As they’ve been depicted so far, it seems like most of the angels—if they thought about it at all—would think, "That's not my business. It's up to God's whether they live or die." Not because they're necessarily all callous jerks, but because that's how they've been trained to (not) think about things. But Aziraphale thinks too much. That's always been who he is, he can't help it.

So what happens to a person who can't help thinking too much, who is caught up in a system that punishes that tendency? Often, you get someone who twists themself into mental and emotional knots to try to make sense of what they're experiencing.

Here’s are some things Aziraphale knows, or at least thinks he knows, in no particular order:

God created everything, is in charge of everything, and knows everything.

Aziraphale is an angel, and he works for Heaven, and Heaven’s sole purpose is to carry out God’s will.

God is good and Heaven are the good guys, so in addition to carrying out God's will his purpose is to be a force for good.

Sometimes angels who go against God’s will are kicked out and declared enemies. No one to whom this has happened to has ever come back. On the other hand, sometimes angels who go against God’s will get to go on being angels.

Sometimes humans behave wickedly and God harms or kills them as punishment. Other times, humans behave wickedly and God doesn’t do anything.

Sometimes humans behave righteously and God harms or kills them anyway (or lets Satan do it). This is apparently a test, but not all righteous people get tested like this.

Sometimes humans are sent to hell to be punished forever after their deaths. Sometimes they aren’t. This has something to do with how wicked they were during their lives, but Aziraphale isn't actually clear on how it works (see the Edinburgh minisode).

And while Good Omens hasn't delved deeply into this topic (yet), we know that both Jesus and the Second Coming are canonically real in this universe, which means the whole “Jesus died so that God could forgive people’s sins” thing is as well.* So, a few thousand years into Aziraphale's time living on Earth, God's son became a human, lived a life among humans, and then died, all for the express purpose of doing some kind of ineffable forgiveness miracle that would save more of the humans from Hell.

* I have no definite proof of this, Neil might decide to go totally off-script with the theology, but that wouldn't be in line with what he's done so far. This show has an established MO of examining existing religious stories and doctrines in order to deconstruct them. So, knowing season three is going to be about the Second Coming, I would honestly be very surprised if we didn't get some Gaiman and Pratchett style deconstruction of the crucifixion and all the forgiveness of sins stuff.

It's a complete mindfuck. He's serving a totally capricious system in which punishment vs. forgiveness is what everything hinges on, but only God knows how they are being applied, whether there's any rhyme or reason to it at all. The other angels seem content not to think about it, but Aziraphale is not most angels.

He's supposed to be protecting and guiding humanity, securing souls for Heaven, but he doesn't know exactly how the souls are judged. His best friend is a demon who is serving an eternal punishment for—something (asking questions? rebelling?)—and he has no idea if he will ever be pardoned, if such a thing even could happen or what it would take. He's committed numerous transgressions himself without ever falling, but that doesn't mean the next one won't be the thing that finally gets him cast out.

There are surely a lot of ways one could react to a situation like this. But for someone who is deeply inside the system and committed to it and whose overactive mind is working extremely hard to square all the confusion and fear of his situation with the idea that he's working for The Good Guys?

I think Aziraphale has come to live in constant fear of being Unforgiven, of one day transgressing so horribly that there's no possibility of redemption. And I think he is constantly projecting that fear onto everyone around him. It's why he lies his ass off to Heaven to cover his mistakes and broken rules. It's why he openly wishes, on multiple occasions, for Crowley to be granted forgiveness from God even though Crowley himself is visibly antagonistic to the idea. And it's why he feels compelled to forgive others even when it hurts to do so. (Like when he's just had a horrible fight with his best friend/the love of his life and he's overwrought and angry and not actually feeling forgiving at all, for example. Or when his memory-wiped ex-boss who once tried to have him executed suddenly shows up on his doorstop needing help.) Because forgiveness is such a powerful force in his world that withholding it feels like an unspeakably cruel thing to do, and he's supposed to be one of the good guys.

Once again I have written so many more words than I intended to, but I'm finally coming up on the end of this series! Part four will be the last part of this, where I look at specific instances of Aziraphale and forgiveness in more detail.

#good omens #good omens meta #good omens 2 spoilers #character analysis #aziraphale #religious indoctrination #religious trauma #forgiveness #i forgive you

[allysdelta]

A while ago, while the Good Omens graphic novel was running its Kickstarter campaign, I saw the character designs for the Ineffable Duo and got inspired to create my own. Some of the details are still in flux, but I'm really quite pleased with how their basic looks have turned out and I'd like to draw them in comic form someday.

Notes on design and color choices under the readmore.

Though originally I'd intended for Aziraphale to be the shorter of the two, I like the implications that he still retains some vestiges of the angelic soldier he once was -- that hint in the way he carries himself that he could become very dangerous indeed if he has to. As a bonus, when Crowley became the smaller one, it emphasizes his personality, both as someone who must seek hiding places to avoid harm and as the guile hero who relies on his wits to survive and even thrive. So now we have a soft angel with a steel core and a pointy little garter snake of a demon.

They're not tied to any specific ethnicities, being celestial entities, but they both appear brown, partially because I like the nod to the Fertile Crescent housing the first known examples of human civilization, but largely because no one can stop me. Crowley ended up with a vaguely East Asian complexion and eyes, while Aziraphale has features that faintly echo the Middle East. Don't ask me about the halo of chestnut curls -- I don't know where that came from, but Aziraphale insisted.

Like his show counterpart's, Crowley's eyes get more snakelike when he's stressed, upset, angry, or exhausted. I gave him the presence of a sclera for the sake of facial expression, but because I didn't want to entirely lose the reptilian look, it now has a yellow tint. (I haven't designed his snake form yet, but it's based on a bush viper for their pretty scale textures and their cute little snub noses)

Aziraphale's eyes have a burst of sunlight yellow around the pupils, a feature I saw once on a real-life acquaintance and thought beautiful. The green-hazel irises are just 'cause I like them.

Surprising absolutely no one, Crowley's clothing scheme is blacks, grays, and reds, with flashes of silver. I haven't done any research on whether leather blazers were a thing in the late 80s, but it seemed very appropriate for him to wear, and it's a little nod to Neil Gaiman's liking for leather jackets as well.

Aziraphale wears heavenly colors (white, blue, gold) close to his chest, while the rest of his clothing grounds him with earth tones. He's just a little more up to date on fashion than the show's Aziraphale (whose clothes skew Victorian), but he still wears clothing that wouldn't look out of place in the 1950s.

I probably make Aziraphale a little too handsome compared to his descriptions in the book, but I like how it makes him all the more infuriating when he's being condescending. Like, you bastard, how dare you look that hot while you're lecturing me. Poor Crowley.

#Aly tries to art #Good Omens #Book Omens #Aziraphale #Crowley #Ineffable Husbands #good omens fanart #book husbands #was going to paint this but then I decided nah #it works better as a color key anyway

[sebthesmoll]

A Good Omens s2 Theory by SebTheSmoll

I already posted this on twitter, but I might as well post it here!

So keep reading to hear me out!

Ok, when you think about it, Crowley is ALWAYS the one freezing humans and stopping time, with no problem, and Aziraphale is always the one asking him to do it, because he's not powerful enough to do it himself. Crowley IS powerful enough to do it!

Take the instance with the nun in s1. Crowley was the one to freeze her. At the end of s1 he froze time. In s2, he does it to the doctor/teacher! You can't convince me that Crowley isn't powerful, he just doesn't WANT to use his big powers. Unless Aziraphale asks.

He does it in Bastille too! And warps a man over there to take Aziraphale's place! He makes a man come back from being eaten/killed by demons in episode 6 of season 2! He imagines himself not bruning driving through the fire ring around London in s1 and he survives, because he’s just THAT powerful. 

I wouldn't be surprised if the Metatron can do something similar! And he did that to Aziraphale! But because we, the audience, are on Crowley's side, we don't see the Metatron's side of the mind control/freezing! 

Angels ARE susceptible to being under the influnce of miracles, we know that now from the huge miracle Crowley and Aziraphale made together in s2! I'm more convinced now that Metatron DID do some kind of miracle, or freeze time/person, on Aziraphale!

What if Crowley WAS the Prince of Heaven, and only archangels or ranks above, can do what Crowley does, stopping time and freezing people. We haven't seen any demon nor angel do it, ONLY CROWLEY! I bet Metatron can do it too!

Crowley's memories before he fell were most likely erased, or stored in something, or SOMEONE. Who is Crowley always drawn to? Aziraphale of course!!! They're drawn to each other like a moth to a flame. Like the fly that holds Jim's memories buzz around him! 

Let me point out that Crowley said "Seemed like a good idea when we talking about it" when he talked with Gabriel about Gravity, but he DOESN'T remember why it was invented! HE WAS THERE DURING THE PLANNING OF IT ALL!!! It only shows that he was VERY high rank! 

This theory will be edited and updated the more I piece together!

#long post #so sorry for that #good omens 2 #go2 #gos2 #gos2 spoilers #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens season 2 spoilers #good omens #good omens theory #good omens season 2 theory #gos2 theory #go2 theory #what do i tag this??? aaaaa!

[voids-ideas]

This began as an answer to: Are you Crowley? And then it goes on to end as an essay on why the final conversation between them.

Crowley said "I think I understand a whole lot better than you do"

Have you ever wondered what that means? Here's my interpretation

Yes, maybe you will cry, i did

I understand why Aziraphale chose heaven. He is an angel, he is still the person who has been living everything. He has no before and after. There is no breaking point. He's still someone who considers himself part of the system... And if I had the same conditions, I would do it

I understand every part of him that chooses to try to fix the world with them, because after every single thing they did, he is still one of them. Yes, sometimes he chooses to believe that Crowley and he were something different, but in the end, everything about him is still an angel. He still feels a part of heaven

But Crowley is not him, he has that before and after. And I feel like I have it too, so I'm going to explain it with me. Because I feel that the similarities between what I feel and what Crowley feels are quite a few.

The person who thought everything in the world is nice was me, and sometimes I still feel like them. But in the end I'm not them, I don't feel real when I think I could change the world, I don't feel real when I think I might have something to belong to.

When I act like the person I was before, it feels like just that, an act. I've changed so much, I've learned so much, that the idea of being them again, feels like a betrayal of everything that happened to make me who I am now

And I'm so proud of everything I've learned since then, I'm so proud that I no longer believe that everything can be good if you try hard enough, I'm so proud to understand that not everyone has the resources to make the right choice, because sometimes, there is no right choice. Sometimes the right choice is an illusion, sometimes you're so down in the dumps that the only way to survive is to do something that doesn't align with the idea of good. Because the idea that everyone can be good is based on the idea that everyone has the same options. And they don't

So when they ask to go to heaven, I want to believe that I would say no too. And it would destroy me, almost as intensely as if I said yes. I really love the fact that Crowley said no, because that's the right answer every time I think about it.

Going back to heaven comes at a price, and that price is being an angel. An angel is the equivalent of the person from before, the person who is no more.

Going back to heaven is that everyone expects you to be that person from the past. Nobody wants the demon in heaven, they want an angel. And accepting that you can't be that, even when you, deep down, also want to change everything, is an act of self-preservation that I love. Because it's choosing you. It is choosing not to fight.

Heaven is a struggle, because everyone there doesn't have the same experience, everyone there doesn't understand the things that I said I love so much to know. And when that happens, you have two choices. Try to explain them, try every day to show them something they are not ready to hear, and fight them on every decision... or act like the angel, like the one before. Adapt to what they believe and lose yourself every time. And this is not really the option.

So the real choices are to fight every day, or to say no. And to say no is to silence that little part of you that still wants to make a difference. It's destroying you a little more in exchange for giving up the fight

And that's all I like, because to be the now, the demon, is to fight every day to feel like you should exist, like you still have something to be. And yes, it's horrible, it's hard. But you can be you, you can say fuck it and act however you want. You don't have all the benefits of heaven, but you also don't have the pressure to be something you're not. You can do what you think is good, and not what they think is good

So what I think I'm going for, is the fact that Crowley chose the best option for himself, and I'm so fucking proud of that. He chose not to suffer more, he chose himself, the person that he fought so hard to be

And Aziraphale decided to try one more time, because he needs to know that he did everything in his power to change the world. He needs to know that he gave his all to try to give the world he loves so much a second chance. Because he believes that if he could realize the mistakes, others can too. He needs to give that system one last chance, because he is part of that system, they still consider him one of them, and he still considers himself one of them. He's a little bit marginalized, but he's still in.

And that's the right answer for him. It couldn't be any other way, because if he didn't choose to try, he would hate himself every time he saw the system fail in a way that he knows he could have realized is not the right way to do it

And Crowley knows it, Crowley probably understands perfectly well why Aziraphale is doing this, because he probably knows that if he was still an angel, he would do the same thing

The fact that there is such an obvious difference between heaven and the outside is the reason why Crowley cannot choose to go back. He has probably thought many times what would become of him if he hadn't fallen, but he doesn't really want to go back, he wants to change the past. He wants to be able to see if he could have learned the things he knows now by being one of them. Because if he had never fallen, he would be happier.

And he doesn't want to be an angel, he wants to be happy. Because if he didn't have so much pain, trying to change the world would be so much easier. If he were one of them, he'd still choose to try one more time

So I'm pretty sure he understands Aziraphale very much, and he wish he would stay, because in the end, everything would be better if he stayed. But he knows that the best thing for Aziraphale is to go there

And that probably destroyed him too, because he tried so many times to show Aziraphale the flaws in the system, he tried so hard to teach Aziraphale the things he learned, and he tried to do it in a much nicer way than the way he learned. And he thought maybe he could show Aziraphale everything and he wouldn't have to suffer.

But then Aziraphale decided to go to the one place he can't follow, the one place he needs to say no to, for his own good. And he understands why, and he understands the struggle it would be, so he needs to try to make him stay. Because he still wants to save him from as much pain as possible.

So he waits until the last moment, and when Aziraphale is finally gone.... Crowley looks as if everything that's going to happen is his fault. Because if he was a little stronger, he could have gone with Aziraphale

The choices are to go with him, and decide between betraying himself, or fight every day against all heaven. Or staying. And by staying he could have Aziraphale, if Aziraphale wanted to. And that would be the best option. Or could be without Aziraphale. And without Aziraphale it destroyed you, but you are still you.

Aziraphale says he'll go, and Crowley knows it was the only option in Aziraphale's eyes, it still destroyed him, because he knows what's going to happen, he knows everything that's coming...

And now there are only three choices, three options and they all have pain. So what do you do? You choose the one with the pain you're most used to. You choose to let go, so he can be him, and you can be you...

Because to go to heaven is to be Aziraphale. Aziraphale couldn't be any other way. He needs it

And you can be the one left behind. One more time. You can be the one who got left behind, wondering each time what would happen if you tried a little harder.

And you're never going to blame Aziraphale, because deep down you know that, if you were him, you'd do the same thing. If you were still an angel, you'd be trying to change the system. If you weren't left out, you'd be there, with him.

So Crowley is going to hate himself for not being the person who could go with Aziraphale, he's going to blame himself for falling so deep that he can no longer reach the person he was before

He could have been there to protect him, destroying himself every second there, but protecting him

So I want to make it clear, from my point of view, Crowley doesn't hate Aziraphale for the decision, he doesn't blame him either.

Everything he has is for himself, for the world. For everything except Aziraphale, because Aziraphale is the only person he understands in that situation

If I were you, I would do the same. And if I were a little stronger, I would go, so I could protect you there. But I'm me, and I'm not strong

#If you don't understand Aziraphale you don't understand Crowley either #Writing this was horrible #so sorry if you read the whole thing. #good omens 2 spoilers #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens spoilers #aziraphale x crowley #archangel aziraphale #aziraphale #Crowley #anthony j crowley #aziraphale and crowley #crowley x aziraphale #ineffable husbands #ineffable divorce

[unforgivablego]

I hate it when people discount Aziraphale without understanding him as a character. Partly, it's more because people like to see bad guys doing good things. And if a demon saves children from death, it means more to them than if an angel did it, even if he lied to heaven and put himself in danger. Essentially: “he’s an angel, it’s in his nature to be kind, so what’s surprising?”

I'm not against Crowley. I like both characters, but I don't like how there are too many defenders of Crowley, while Aziraphale is constantly made into a villain. After the second season, they were generally credited with clear, disgusting images - a poor puppy suffering from unrequited love and a stupid angel who broke his heart. This superficiality is so annoying. As if only Crowley is feeling bad and only he is suffering, which means only he should be pitied.

My friend and I are currently watching a show where the bad guy who starts out doing terrible things becomes a sweetheart in the middle of the season 2. And I watch how she sheds tears from every good deed he does, as if she had completely forgotten what he did a couple of episodes ago. And I have to endure this with a mixture of misunderstanding and rejection: “Are you really serious?” There was literally a scene where a character consciously kills the main character's brother on purpose and then a couple minutes later says he's sorry. “See? He repents,” says a friend. As if that would change the fact that he killed a person (don't worry, the brother survived thanks to a lucky accident (killer doesn’t know it) but imagine if he actually killed him and then came to apologize). One good deed by a bad person always overshadows all other bad deeds, making him appear good.

Also, I think it's all about Tennant's popularity and his image as a demon. I have nothing against both, but often, if a bad character is played by a handsome sexy actor, the idol of millions and the owner of hearts, then he is loved more according to the standard. Just like in the series that my friend and I are watching now.

It’s annoying too how many people sometimes turn a blind eye to how “unkind” Crowley can be. Like, “you can forgive him everything because he once did a good deed.” I'm not saying Crowley is bad. No need to attack me with slippers. I'm talking about the tearful art that makes Crowley look broken and Aziraphale cold and cruel. I'm talking about hurt fanfiction, in which Crowley suffers more than me in the deepest depression (calm down already, seriously, I have enough suffering, give me a rainbow, fluff, romance and love). All these jokes about Aziraphale having to do an apology dance in the third season (despite this, I’m also looking forward to such a scene). Analysis on TikTok, where the angel is often called stupid and naive (the coffee theory just kills me, I fucking hate it).

Yes, I love memes. That's funny. Keep making jokes about the ineffable bureaucracy speed running their relationship in a year, while these idiots have gotten nowhere in 6,000 years. And about Nina and Maggie, the heads of the “Geordie Shore” program. About Metatwat, who got into the hands the Book of Life and he decided to shit us a disgusting fanfic. Carry on, I like it. But as long as these are jokes and not a hostile imposition.

There have already been so many quarrels about this. And all because people like one character more than another. And here we again return to the fact that we ourselves constantly separate them. We devalue one thing or another, and then hope for a happy ending.

This established clichéd system in the fandom is simply killing me. Therefore, I am grateful to every person who digs deeper than the sand sprinkled on top.

#Aziraphale #Crowley #fuck coffee theory #metatwat #ineffable bureaucracy #ineffable idiots #ineffable lovers #crowley and aziraphale #maggie and nina #metatron #Aziraphale did nothing wrong #Crowley is not disaster puppy #stop being stupid #good omens #good omens 2 #good omens season two #good omens season 2 #good omens series #michael sheen #david tennant #neil gaiman #neil gaiman meme #coffee theory #aziraphale defense squad #aziraphale defender #fuck the metatron #good omens tv #good omens show #good omens fandom

[inconveniently-discorporated]

"Why not put it on the top of a tall mountain -- or even the moon?"

Oh Crowley, maybe God was never testing the humans. Maybe God was testing you.

I've developed a headcanon theory that maybe angels never really knew what evil was until the Fall. Perhaps they were never told, never warned, and perhaps many angels didn't mean to fall at all. Maybe if they had known, maybe if they were given the context, they would've made a different choice.

In that way, humans would represent a parallel to the angels. Innocent beings, living in paradise. A demon lurking amongst them (Lucifer in Heaven/Crowley in Eden). The fall from grace, by creatures who never really understood the consequences to begin with.

More specifically, they would mirror Crowley, for whom Lucifer was the serpent. No wonder he finds them so endearing. No wonder he finds it so miserable when they choose to do evil.

Maybe the question wasn't, "Will humans give in and eat the apple?"

Maybe they would never have eaten it if Crowley didn't tempt them. Maybe there was never a doubt they would, if Crowley went through with it.

Maybe the question was to Crowley. Maybe the question was, "Now that you know, will you make the same decision?"

Maybe the question was, "Was it worth it? Will you put them through this as well?"

Maybe every challenge thereafter was asking, "Will you show them the strength to keep carrying on?"

Feels sort of like bringing children into this world. We know there is pain and suffering in life, all species are molded by it by definition of there being species at all. We are who we are because we are who survived. The question is -- is it worth it?

Is the pain and suffering worth the beauty of nature, and all of the stars above us and all of the seas below? Is it worth the spark of a human connection, the joy of art, the thrill of being? Is it worth experiencing the depth of what a brain can do, the fact that we can imagine worlds bigger than our universe inside a circumference of around 20 inches of bone and meat?

Once you know, you can never go back to that paradise of innocence. And of course we all want to protect our children, but here's the thing: evil may likely find you anyway. And if it found the angels in Heaven and if it was so tempting that it pulled half of the entire host, it can find the humans on Earth.

And perhaps there was a question for Aziraphale, too: "Will you protect them? Will you show them what it means to have love, even in their darkest hour, even when we tell you they are not worthy of it?"

She plays an ineffable game of her own devising. Who knows what She was really planning?

(These questions thanks to I Only Ever Asked Questions - about an angel who got caught up in unionizing the host in the name of good intentions. I'm down to wrapping up editing on the final few chapters now, which ends where we begin: in a garden. Posting just about every day because I'm impatient to get it all out there.)

#good omens #good omens meta #Crowley's fall #i only ever asked questions #garden of Eden #humanity #the character of God

[shieldmaiden-tabris]

You wanna know what really kills me?

Heaven was never going to leave Aziraphale and Crowley alone. After what they did, there's no way they could. Crowley and Aziraphale didn't just go rogue. They openly defied Heaven and Hell, gave middle fingers to the Great Plan, and walked away with no consequences. They showed that Heaven doesn't have as much control as they claim. Their continued existence threatens the fragile status quo that Heaven has painstakingly worked to maintain over 6,000 years. If Heaven is to salvage what remains of the Great Plan as they see it, their next plan cannot have any uncontrolled variables, and Crowley and Aziraphale are as uncontrollable as it gets.

Heaven needed to find a way to eliminate Crowley and Aziraphale to prevent them from ever interfering with their plans again. However, it can't be as simple as just killing them.

When Aziraphale and Crowley survived their attempted executions, they became an even bigger problem. Hell made a huge mistake in choosing to make Crowley's trial a spectacle. While "Crowley" splashed around in Holy Water in front of a demonic audience, Beelzebub immediately went into damage control mode so riots wouldn't break out, but by then, it was too late. Too many demons saw that Hell had lost control of one of their own and any remaining power Hell had over Crowley vanished. Crowley absolutely knows this. Look at the way he responds when directly threatened in season 2. When Beelzebub threatens Crowley in episode 1, he doesn't react at all, it's like he doesn't even hear it. When Shax says that he'll be, "hunted and eliminated by Hell," in episode 2, Crowley gives such a nonreaction that Shax even says, "So you understand that I'm threatening you?" Even then, he just revs the engine until she leaves. The threats are empty.

Heaven's saving grace was that only the Archangels were present during Aziraphale's attempted execution. Only they, the angels in power, know that the Hellfire didn't work and they aim to keep it that way. If on the off chance anyone asks why Aziraphale went unpunished for his role in stopping Armageddon, all they need to say is that, "oh, he's been forgiven by God, who has decided to be merciful and x, y, z, so on and soforth," or something along those lines that supports the idea that Heaven is still Good and nothing is wrong and do not look at the man behind the curtain, so to speak.

Neither Heaven nor Hell have reason to suspect Crowley and Aziraphale switched bodies, so I highly doubt they would risk trying the same methods again unless they're entirely certain it would succeed. (Yes, Crowley spilled the secret to Gabriel while drunk, which I do think is going to come into play in season 3, but given that Gabriel never had the chance to tell Heaven and is now off somewhere with Beelzebub, as of the season 2 finale, the other angels and demons still don't know.)

If Crowley and Aziraphale can't be destroyed, then Heaven's only alternative is to separate them somehow. Physically forcing them apart would have been out of the question from the start. Crowley and Aziraphale displayed pretty impressive power performing that miracle on Gabriel, and when you couple that with the idea that they can't be destroyed by Holy Water or Hellfire, that's more than a little threatening. If they were forced apart, I can guarantee there is nothing in Heaven or Hell that could keep them separate.

So mutual separation it is. But how?

Enter, the Metatron.

I've seen a few posts pointing out that Crowley was the only one who recognized the Metatron in the bookshop and how such familiarity is possibly a hint to his former rank in Heaven. But what if Crowley knows the Metatron for another reason? I keep thinking back to the scene with Crowley and Aziraphale on the mountain, watching as Job talks directly to God. While Aziraphale looks on in awe, Crowley looks confused, maybe even envious and a little hurt. Consider the next few lines of dialogue:

Crowley: "Is God actually..." Aziraphale: "I think so." Crowley: "...talking to him?" Aziraphale: "I don't suppose he's getting any answers." Crowley: "No. But just to be able to ask the question..."

We know Crowley Fell for asking questions, but what if he never talked directly to God? What if he asked those questions to the voice of God, the Metatron? And what if the Metatron was one of the last faces he saw before he Fell? That would certainly leave an impression, no doubt.

I think the Metatron already knew Crowley wouldn't accept Heaven's offer because he knows what questions Crowley asked. He knows Crowley has never been one to blindly follow orders like Heaven demands. Crowley doesn't want to be a pawn anymore, he's never wanted to be a pawn in the first place. He's left Heaven and Hell behind to stand firmly on his own side and make his own decisions. Aziraphale on the other hand, still believes in Heaven's goodness. He thinks the rest of the Heavenly Host has just lost their way and longs to change the system from the inside. The Metatron is now using that faith to get him away from Crowley and back under Heaven's thumb by offering him a chance to change things in Heaven.

First, he defended Aziraphale when the Archangels were being bullies in the bookshop. Then, he offered Aziraphale coffee.

Oh, my god, the coffee... As soon as I saw it, I knew exactly what he was doing.

The coffee was a manipulation tactic to establish a commonality between himself and Aziraphale and distinguish the Metatron from the other angels by saying, "see? I'm like you." The use of drinks this season has been SUPER interesting to observe. When Gabriel appears at the bookshop, Aziraphale offers him hot chocolate. Before losing his memory, Gabriel wouldn't have touched the stuff. Later, Aziraphale offers Muriel a cup of tea and Muriel has no idea what to do with it. The Metatron's offering of coffee is the first time another angel has offered Aziraphale a drink. An offering of sorts.

The next thing the Metatron did was to physically separate Aziraphale from Crowley. And the look, the LOOK the Metatron gave Crowley when Aziraphale walked ahead... The moment the Metatron was able to get Aziraphale alone, he knew he'd got him. He took Aziraphale away from his support and then offered him a chance to make a difference.

"So predictable," the Metatron says to Nina in the coffee shop.

And he was right. He knew Aziraphale would accept his offer, just like he knew Crowley would refuse.

Heaven got their wish. Crowley and Aziraphale are separated. It took the Voice of God coming down from Heaven to do it, but it happened.

I don't know what Heaven has planned for Aziraphale. Maybe they plan to attempt to indoctrinate him again, or maybe they plan to keep him so busy with tedious tasks so he's out of the way of the real work they're doing. We'll just have to wait and see.

I do know one thing. Aziraphale will come back to Crowley. They won't be apart for too long. They will be on their own side, together at last, the two of them against Heaven and Hell at the end of all things and after. Of that, I'm certain.

#Good Omens #Good Omens 2 #Good Omens spoilers #spoilers #Ineffable Husbands #Aziraphale #Anthony J Crowley #ugh i hate and love my rambles

[gfbillpotts]

Let's talk about Angel Crowley's rank and how it affected his personality (and how it relates to Aziraphale's decision):

There are plenty of evidences in S2 of Crowley having been a High Rank Angel before the Fall. He is able to open classified documents, can conjure extremely powerful miracles and is generally recognized by a number of people while not remembering them back.

Now, from what we see in their first meeting, Crowley seems to have the freedom to create entire universes without much supervision. In fact, he seems to be so enthralled with doing his own thing he doesn't even know of God's plan of creating Earth. It doesn't seem like something that was withheld from him, just some meeting he clearly didn't bother showing up.

Crowley seems to have been high rank enough that he was barely worried about questioning too much, while Aziraphale was terrified.

What I'm saying with all of this is: Crowley had priviledge in Heaven to create as he pleased, to interact with others as he pleased and to care or not about issues as he pleased.

That shapes someone's personality. Even if Falling was surely a massive, traumatizing, humbling experience, Crowley still caried that devil-may-care (pun intended) attitude with him.

Which is why it has always been so much easier for him to place himself as a free agent and not care so much about sides. He had the priveledge to be individualistic before and it carried out with him as a way of survival when he fell.

But Aziraphale never had that.

Aziraphale was a relatively low rank angel. He never created anything. He never decided on anything. He was only supposed to shut up and follow orders. His most remarkable duty that we know of was protecting the Eastern Gate and he even failed at that.

Aziraphale always needed to look over his shoulder. He didn't have the luxury of skipping meetings to create stars like Crowley seemed to have. He had to always be ready and do what he was told.

So not only is defiance not something that comes easy for him, as we very well know, but the Metatron finally gave him a chance to CREATE something. To do more than follow orders. To have worth.

Crowley already had that and he didn't care for it, he knows it's all bullshit. He's seen the files and he's been to the meetings. But Aziraphale hasn't. He doesn't know it's all pointless. He genuinely thinks that maybe now that he gets a chance to speak, he will be heard.

So, I think Crowley still hasn't realized that Aziraphale, as a low rank angel, doesn't see all the behind-the-scenes things that he's seen. And Aziraphale still needs to proof to himself and Crowley, this Once All Powerful Angel that he loves and admires so much, that he can do more.

Crowley never even told him all the things he saw about what they were planning when he went to Heaven, so how's Aziraphale to know his intentions of breaking the system are pointless?

#good omens #good omens spoilers #crowley #aziraphale #aziracrow

[ofpineapplesanddawns]

Ooh hold on could you write Aziraphale's reaction, waking up in his new android bod?

Hoo boy, we're in for a ride with this one.

Warning: panic attack, a bit of a mental breakdown, discussion of an android in repair, implied temporary death

(I seriously need a name for this au, I need to tag all of this stuff together haha)

On with the fic!

--

PROCESSING...|

PROCESSING...|

DEEP REST MODE DEACTIVATED...|

PROCESSING...|

UNIT PNCPLT1793 ACTIVATED...|

There was a clicking, whirring sound before a soft hum followed it. When Aziraphale opened his eyes, he found himself staring at a ceiling, one he didn't recognize. He blinked twice, hearing a faint clicking each time, and tried to remember what exactly happened.

He had been... there had been so much happening. It had been hot, right? He remembered heat. A fire? Had there been a fire?

He couldn't remember.

His mind was fuzzy, his head felt like it was full of cotton that weighed thousands of pounds. He reached up, rubbing at his head, stopping when he noticed something off. His hair felt weird, it wasn't the long mass of curls he was used to, this was shorter, a bit straighter.

Aziraphale frowned, touched more of his head, at his face. Things didn't feel right, this wasn't his nose, his ears. Hell, even his sense of touch seemed off, like it was a bit too much.

He felt too aware of everything.

What had happened? Where was he? How long was he out for?

There was some sort of odd shifting in his back, above his right shoulder. It didn't help his awareness that something was off. His breathing increased, there was a loud whirring sound somewhere near him, or under him, he wasn't sure.

He could hear beeping, seeing a monitor, but it didn't quite look like the heart monitors he'd seen in hospitals. He tried to sit up, but found that it felt weird to move, like his body wasn't used to the function.

"What... what is going on...?" He croaked out just as he heard a door open.

He could see a familiar face approaching, looking both relieved and worried. "You're awake..." Arthur said, his voice quiet.

"Clearly..." Aziraphale swallowed. "What happened?"

"There was... an accident? I'm not sure, it's still under investigation."

"Investigation..?"

Arthur was wringing his hands, why was his bartender friend here? Was any of his family coming to see him... wherever he currently was? "Arthur? Where am I?"

"You are... in an underground repair shop."

Aziraphale didn't quite seem to register that. "What do you mean by that?"

The android looked like he didn't want to say more, but he grabbed for the sheet that was covering Aziraphale, how had he not noticed that before? Using his arms to push himself up, which seemed more difficult than it needed to be, Aziraphale nearly dropped back down onto what was a cold, hard table.

What had been under the sheet was more of a shock than anything he had expected. There was a body under it, his, apparently, but the stomach was open, showing all sorts of mechanical parts. The lower half wasn't completely attached yet, as there was no lower half, it appeared to be a work in progressing.

He could see the machine parts in the stomach moving, clicking, blinking and doing whatever it was they did. His mind didn't seem to register what it was he was looking at, but he knew for certain that this had to be his body.

"Arthur... what the hell is this...?"

Arthur let out a sigh, covering him up again. "You were so badly injured, a-and I was able to pull you out, but there was no chance of you surviving without a full body exchange, a-a transfer..."

"Transfer...?"

"You... it's an experimental project among androids, cyborgs, and humans, to upload a human's mind into the body of an android, to give them a second chance at life." Arthur's voice was tight. "I didn't have any other choice! You were going to die! You were so badly damaged, you wouldn't have survived the night! So, I took you down here, where I know androids who are decommissioned or too poor to get the best repairs come to get fixed!"

Aziraphale was sitting up right completely now, ignoring the hissing and wheezing of his (his?!) exposed insides. He had a hand over his mouth, the natural instinct to vomit was strong, but that was for... that was a hu-

His breathing increased, did he even need to breathe? He could hear his insides running faster, he could... he could hear his insides! Whatever was his heart was beating faster and faster, the monitor was going crazy with beeps.

He was an android.

He had been so badly injured that Arthur had him uploaded into the body of an android.

A clearly unfinished one.

He didn't want this.

He didn't want to be a machine. He didn't want to be someone else. He didn't want to be PNCPLT1793- God, why would he know this unit's number!?

Something moved out of the corner of his eye, shifting about, trashing at times, knocking over a tray of tools. He and Arthur looked at the strange thing, a long, metal appendage, covered in a rubbery substance, tipped with long, thin claws.

It took a moment for Aziraphale to realize it was attached to him, to his right shoulder.

What the hell was he?

"I..." Arthur's voice caught his attention. "I know it's a lot, you weren't supposed to activate this early, we needed to finish your body, but you have to understand that I did this for you, to save-!"

He was suddenly slammed back into a wall, the claws from the appendage were wrapped tightly around his throat.

Aziraphale, if he was more stable, would be worried and scared of his current action, he would be apologizing over and over. But was he even Aziraphale anymore?

He didn't know, he didn't know anything anymore. Except for two things.

He knew he was angry.

And he was terrified.

"Oh... I'm sure you were doing this all in my best interest, Arthur." He said, his voice so cold and icy. Something was glowing bright and white around his eyes, but he didn't care. "I think... you can continue to help me to... finish being repaired..."

There was movement from his left shoulder, a second appendage. It moved towards Arthur, gently dragging a claw along one of his legs.

"Let's continue, shall we?"

--

Well, this was dark.

He'll regret this later, much later, but right now, Aziraphale is sort of... gone. (And yes, he is using Arthur's legs, which is scary, but they are of the same kind of android, his body was just meant for a different purpose than a bartender, hence the tentacles)

#john's drabbles