Chapter Text
It was a rather cruel twist of fate, Aziraphale reflected, that his undoing should be a book. He did so love books, after all. Even the one currently in front of him – the one that spelled his doom in its elegantly gilded letters – even that one was alluring to him. He longed to reach out, to trace his finger down its embossed spine, to turn its yellowing pages, to run his eyes along the endless text. It was no storybook, but it surely had some tales to tell.
He couldn’t reach out for the book, though. His arms were pinned by the two angels who flanked him on each side, as if he had anywhere to run to. It was, instead, Michael who was cradling the book in their arms as they stood before Aziraphale, flipping through the pages and running their finger down the lines.
Maybe, it occurred to Aziraphale, it wasn’t such an unusual thing to be undone by something one loved. Aziraphale had loved Heaven too, and it was that love – his belief that it was the side of truth and light and good – that had gotten him into this mess. He had loved humanity, and it was that love – his belief that it was worth saving – that had gotten him into the mess that immediately preceded the current mess. He had loved the Earth -- and most of all he loved what he had left behind there – and that love had undone him in all sorts of ways he couldn’t even bring himself to regret.
Not to say he didn’t have regrets, though. Closing his eyes, he remembered Crowley turning to leave after Aziraphale had said I forgive you. The last thing Aziraphale would ever say to him. That had certainly undone Crowley. Now, his eyes still closed, Aziraphale couldn’t help but whisper aloud, “Forgive me.”
“Bit late for that now,” Michael said, not even bothering to look up as they flipped another page. “Besides, you know the company policy on forgiveness.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Aziraphale muttered. Everyone ignored him.
Maybe, Aziraphale thought, opening his eyes again, it wasn’t unusual at all to be undone by something one loved. Maybe that was the only thing that could do it.
In any case, Aziraphale urged himself to find some solace in the thought that it would be easier for Crowley this way. He had hurt Crowley. He had been so excited by the Metatron’s offer – not the offer to be the Supreme Archangel of Heaven, but the offer to make Crowley an angel again. Crowley deserved redemption. It wasn’t just that he had some good in him, as Aziraphale had long maintained. Crowley was Good itself. But Aziraphale should have known that Crowley wouldn’t accept an offer like that. He had pushed too hard, trying to make Crowley believe in things he didn’t, be things he wasn’t. And then he had hurt Crowley even more, in the worst possible way, by rejecting him in his most tender moment of vulnerability.
He had hurt Crowley, all right. He couldn’t do anything now to take away the pain. But what was about to be done to him would certainly do the job. Soon, that pain would never have existed in the first place.
It was amazing how little solace that thought actually provided.
“You haven’t found it yet?” the Metatron demanded of Michael. He had generously allowed them the honor, since they had been so keen on the book in the first place, but he sounded as if he was beginning to regret it.
“Not yet,” Michael said, their voice thick with frustration. “This is a really, really long book, and it’s in no apparent order. I don’t know how you’re supposed to find anything in it.”
“Could do with an index, I suppose,” Aziraphale pointed out. He didn’t point it out to be snide or anything. He just truly believed in the importance of indexing systems for reference works. Which was what this book was, in its way.
Michael spared a moment to look up from the book and give him a good glare. The Metatron, who had been glaring at Aziraphale this whole time – except when he turned his glare at Michael to signal his impatience that the entire business was taking far too long – gave an unexpected chuckle.
“It’s the Book of Life, Aziraphale. Life doesn’t have an index.”
“Right, of course.” Aziraphale took the comment directed at him as an opening to ask a question. “May I ask why you’re doing this?”
“Why?” the Metatron echoed in disbelief. “You’ve been nothing but a thorn in Heaven’s side. Did you believe we’d really make you Supreme Archangel, Commander of the Heavenly Host, after everything you’ve done?”
“No, I understand that. I thought it seemed an unlikely offer even while you were making it. What I mean is, why tell me you were going to make me Supreme Archangel, Commander of the Heavenly Host, and bring me back to Heaven just to erase me from existence? You could have erased me from existence just as easily back on Earth, couldn’t you?” Aziraphale wished that they had. That would have at least spared both him and Crowley a lot of heartache. Although, he reminded himself again, the heartache wasn’t going to last much longer, for either of them.
The Metatron shook his head. “No, no. That wouldn’t have worked at all. First it had to be done. No way it can be undone it unless it’s done first, right?”
Aziraphale tried to parse that. “What had to be done?”
“What was needed. I wasn’t lying when I said you had a role to play. The Second Coming is, well, coming. Or will be once Michael manages to find your name and erase it. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
Aziraphale felt a fresh sense of panic at that. In the short but hectic period of time since he had been seized by the angelic guards and brought before the Metatron and informed that he was about to be erased from the Book of Life – all on the first day of his new job, before he’d even had a chance to bungle anything yet – he had assumed that the only bright side to being wiped from existence was that, in the end, it wouldn’t matter to anyone. Certainly not to him, because there would be no him for it to matter to. It wouldn’t even matter to Crowley, who would never have known Aziraphale and therefore couldn’t miss him. But now, it seemed that his existence – or lack thereof – did have some sort of consequence for the wider world. What that could be, Aziraphale had no idea, but he hated the idea that he was complicit, however unwillingly, in bringing about a second try at the Apocalypse. Especially since he and Crowley had worked so hard to avert the first one.
Aziraphale wracked his brains, but he couldn’t think of anything he had done in the forty-five minutes of his reign as Supreme Archangel of Heaven that would make one whit of difference in whether Heaven got their blessed Apocalypse or not. A sudden suspicion crossed his mind. “You don’t even know, do you?”
“Know what?” The Metatron looked decidedly shifty now.
“What my role in bringing about the Second Coming is. Or was. Will be, whatever. This is all part of the great plan, isn’t it?”
The Metatron just shrugged. “Everything is part of the great plan.”
Before Aziraphale could think up a proper retort, Michael gave a triumphant shout. “Found it! Aziraphale, Principality, former Guard of the Eastern Gate. It’s written here, just after that mammoth with the funny crooked tusk and just before the red maple sapling growing in the abandoned lot at the corner of Main and Front in Woonsocket, Rhode Island.” Jubilantly, Michael slapped the Book of Life with their hand.
Aziraphale winced, partly at his impending demise and partly at Michael’s bibliographic abuse. “So this is it, then?”
The Metatron smiled as he handed Michael an eraser. It was a pink rubbery one, like the kind used by schoolchildren. It seemed a rather undignified implement by which to lose one’s existence.
“I’d ask for your last words, Aziraphale,” the Metatron intoned. “But there’s no point. None of us would remember them anyway.”
With that, Michael wielded the eraser as menacingly as it was possible for a small soft pink object to be wielded. They lowered the eraser toward the open page of the Book of Life. Resigned to his fate, Aziraphale watched the eraser slowly approach the page with a sort of ponderous inevitability. He had no one to blame but himself, after all. He never should have come back to Heaven. Crowley had been against it, having made himself quite clear on that point. And then he had made some other things emphatically clear, at least one of which Aziraphale had somehow not seen coming despite six thousand years’ worth of steadily mounting evidence.
Being erased from existence wasn’t the worst way to go. There was no pain, no fear, really nothing unpleasant at all. There was just a moment in which Aziraphale was there, watching the soft edge of the eraser make contact with the aged paper, watching as Michael’s hand moved across the page, rubbing something out.
And in the next moment, Aziraphale was gone.