Chapter Text
A world in which my arms are not full of the love of my life when the moon rises is a sharp sting in my stomach, and a world in which there is neither a moon to rise nor my love to hold is insurmountable.
So full of a love I can not give, I sit curled in the misery I chose to turn to. My chest is filled to the brim with shards of what once was an unbreakable feeling and now pokes through my skin every time I dare move. Memories and mere imprints of touch torture my skin because they’ve turned blood red in the moment I turned my back on my love.
And people say this longing will pass, but people are people whereas I have eternity and therefore no excuse to move on. How could I, when these shards chink in my ribcage with every single step I take? The glass, to me, collides as loudly as the inside of a teenager’s backpack who’s ‘just going to a sleepover’, and the same kind of rebellion haunts me with reminders of who I lied to. My love.
My love, I didn’t choose Heaven over an eternity with you by my side. But where I want to save the world you only care about saving me. How contradictory it is that in this exact duty, I am constantly reminded of just how happy I was with you and that it suffocates me to the point where I think of this with tears on my cheeks. In the darkness behind my eyes you wait for me and since you are an ache I can not bear I don’t dare to blink, to sleep, to say your name even though it lingers in the back of my head every second of the day.
The letters of your name are sharp and very willing to declare war on me. I’d let them win if it would get me back to you. If I could only have 6 more minutes with you. If I could explain. Am I a monster to you? Have you had enough of my sharp teeth in your flesh, of the pain I cause?
Alarm bells rang in Heaven, and Aziraphale yanked out of his thoughts, eyes opened wide. The call of the sirens was urgent and most unusual. So immediately, the angel got up, wiped his tears and ran to the source of the noise so piercing. It was sad how fast he put on that mask of neutrality. A few angels had already gathered around a certain spot, all staring blankly to what seemed to be the origin of chaos. Someone , how Aziraphale despised that place. How could they all stand so careless when there was a siren sonicating his brain silent?
“Could-”, he started, then realised his tone of voice was far too little in this environment. “Could someone -”, he reached out with his hands, “-turn off this madness ?!”. It stopped ringing immediately. He gathered himself, folded his hands before him and cleared his throat, to which all angels turned around in tame unison and corrected their posture. After all, there stood the Supreme Archangel, looking quite puzzled.
“Now.”, said Aziraphale. “What appears to be the problem?”. He didn’t need the quiet treatment, but he got it still. It was probably the way angels had learned to communicate with their Supreme Archangel in the time the rather moody Gabriel had reigned. Well, the un-in-love one.
A path to the centre of the gathering before Aziraphale was cleared by some angels that stepped to the side. This way, he could already see what hovered in the midst of Heaven, and it made him sigh very deeply. He had hoped for that to stay out of the picture for at least a few more years and now it rang deafening alarm bells only a couple of days after he’d left it. Earth.
There was a huge, red lightning bolt striking the surface of the globe again and again and the closer Aziraphale got to it, the more obvious the location of attention became. An unpleasant feeling thrived in his gut, carved itself up and up and up until it left with what he said when he stood in front of the angry lightning bolt.
“London.”, he stated, “London’s calling.” In that moment, a wave of tiredness drowned him, and his expression dropped. It was the exhausted kind of tiredness, the kind where one wants to sleep even though the very thing declares staying awake for days on end.
“Supre-”, an angel began, interrupted by Aziraphale’s hand. They already knew his preferences, so that particular angel continued otherwise. “ Can’t you hear the screaming?”, they asked in a terrifyingly neutral tone.
“Screaming?”, Aziraphale whispered to himself, then leaned into the globe. Upon it, the lightning crackled, but as he listened closely, it became true. There was screaming. Even though he had to realise it was just a single, an agonising scream. Knowing that, Aziraphale suddenly straightened up from his bending position and inhaled deeply, eyes closed, to feel . And so his heart beat once, very harshly, and in the next moment he tapped against the surface of the Earth.
The cry had been familiar, and for all he knew, Crowley was in great pain.