Chapter Text
“I know that you miss him.”
Metatron set a takeaway cup from over the road onto the counter in between the two of them. Aziraphale liked to work from the bookshop when he could – it felt familiar and homely and safe, even without Crowl- hmm. He cut off that train of thought abruptly, reminding himself to smile as he accepted the coffee and took a sip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I’m fine,” he said, with forced cheeriness. It was an automatic response at this point. He is the Archangel Aziraphale. Of course he’s fine.
“Aziraphale,” Metatron said patiently, and rounded the counter to stand by him. Metatron had a habit of speaking like he knew everything – which he quite likely did, being so close to the Almighty – but it did give him the constant air of a gentle parent guiding an uncertain toddler. Aziraphale couldn’t decide these days whether he found this reassuring or condescending. “You have done magnificent work towards the Second Coming. Really, quite extraordinary plans. It is heartening to know I picked so well for Gabriel’s replacement. But as hard as you work, I want you to enjoy the future you’re building for us. I don’t want to see you upset.”
“I’m not upset-” Aziraphale put in quickly, but Metatron only put up a hand to stop him.
“You cared for him. I know. I saw the last time he was here.”
Aziraphale felt something close to shame burning in his stomach, and he hoped it didn’t show. He thought he had been quite efficiently tiptoeing around the truth of his and Crowley’s parting. He’d hoped Metatron didn’t know, of course, but he hadn’t been foolish enough to expect it. No, what he’d expected was for Metatron not to bring up that painful, humiliating truth.
“Now, there’s no need to look like that,” Metatron reassured him calmly. Aziraphale forced himself to take a deep breath and rearranged his features into a smile again. “You aren’t in any trouble, quite the opposite. I want to help.”
Metatron pulled up a stool beside Aziraphale’s chair, with Aziraphale watching him in bewilderment. “I don’t want you to be upset, like I said. I don’t like to see my friends suffering. I hope we’re friends, Aziraphale?” Aziraphale nodded mutely, and Metatron continued. “Good! Very good. But it’s about more than just you and me. You have put every effort into this project, and your work is extraordinary. But we both know it could be better if we removed a few distractions.” Metatron laughed lightly. “Or one big distraction, as the case may be.”
“Remove?” Aziraphale repeated, as impassively as he could manage. Up until now, Crowley had been a problem he was able to set aside, to distance himself from. He’d been quite happy to let Crowley simply exist somewhere else, away from him, doing whatever it was he did these days. It wasn’t any of Aziraphale’s business any more, and (so he told himself) it was better that way. He preferred it that way.
He had hurt Crowley once to fulfil his duties to Heaven. He didn’t want to make that decision a second time.
Metatron only smiled again, pushing the coffee across the desk to Aziraphale to make space to lean forwards, closer to him. “You were fond of him, Aziraphale. I understand how troubling you must be finding this. But Crowley has always been insistent on forging his own path. I’m sorry, but he is not coming back. That’s why I want to make this as easy for you as possible.”
Metatron reached just out of Aziraphale’s line of sight, and when his hand returned to the desk, he was holding something. A book. A decent-sized novel, Aziraphale thought at a glance, or perhaps a small reference book. Bound in a dark, chocolate brown cloth, with a single word emblazoned in gold on the front. Metatron put the book down and turned it towards Aziraphale for him to read the title.
LIFE.
Aziraphale stood up abruptly. His chair clattered away from him with the force of it, but he did nothing to catch it. He stared at the Book of Life on the table. He felt suddenly very warm and very cold at the same time, his skin prickly, his chest tight. Everything around him was muffled and slow. He could feel Metatron’s eyes on him, examining every reaction carefully, and he tried his best not to let the emotions churning in his stomach boil over. “Ext… Extreme sanctions?” he heard his own voice say, from what felt like several miles away. “But won’t that… I mean, he’s important!”
All of Aziraphale’s shock and terror switched to embarrassment in a moment of realization. “I mean-” he added quickly, pointedly looking down at the book and not at Metatron. “I just mean that removing him, surely, will affect so much of our work? He had such a hand in the anti-Christ business, you know, and maybe that didn’t work out quite how we wanted but…” Aziraphale wrung his hands together uncomfortably. “But won’t we have to start all over again if that changes?”
“Not as much will change as you might expect,” Metatron said indifferently. “Hell will simply have sent other agents to complete his tasks. A few miracles here and there, where his presence might before have seemed necessary. Time has ways of healing itself when we prune it.”
Aziraphale pulled a face. Pruning. What a horrific, sanitized way of describing the most total destruction anyone could experience. To be erased from everything, to be dead so thoroughly that everything you’d done, every life you’d touch, ever experience you’d had, disappeared along with you. Even Heaven didn’t break that that one out unless it was very, very serious.
“But has he done something wrong?”
“He’s a demon, Aziraphale, there are a great many things he’s done wrong,” Metatron said, his voice as maddeningly even and tolerant as it ever was. “But this is not about those particular transgressions. This is about you, and about the Second Coming. You deserve peace, and a clear mind. You deserve to not miss him any longer. And the rest of Heaven deserves a Supreme Archangel who is focused on the task at hand.”
For the first time there was a hint of accusation in Metatron’s voice as he said this, and Aziraphale winced, quickly taking another sip of coffee to hide his expression. Metatron was right, of course. If it was that obvious that Aziraphale had been preoccupied with thoughts other than his work, then clearly he wasn’t giving his best. And he had so much responsibility now, he was overseeing everything. There wasn’t room for distractions.
But still. To do something like that. To Crowley.
“He won’t suffer,” Metatron said kindly, placing a gentle hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder. “He’ll never have existed to experience any suffering. And you won’t have to keep suffering either – you will be free of all this. Free to be the leader and the Archangel I know you can be, Aziraphale. Let me help you.”
Aziraphale looked down guiltily at the unassuming volume on his bookshop counter. His hand shook as he reached out to leaf through the pages.
He never erased anyone from the book, of course. The book was never even in his bookshop. The whole conversation never happened, because no-one ever existed who might have distracted Aziraphale from the vital task of organizing the Second Coming. And if, one brisk October morning, Aziraphale found himself at his bookshop counter, the remembered texture of thin pages still fresh at his fingertips even though no book lay in front of him, his face wet with tears even though he hadn’t cried them – that would be strange, certainly, but nothing to do with the Book of Life. He simply picked up his chair (why was it knocked over and discarded on the floor? He hadn’t done that), sat back down at his desk, and got to it. He had important work to complete.