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Uriel despises incompetence and finds herself increasingly surrounded by it.
Aziraphale was definitely a joke as a Supreme Archangel, but surprisingly competent as a saboteur. Not the data dump to Earth; the humans are swimming in an ocean of data. It took massive disruptions to the data flow to inject sufficient disinformation to shift those waves in the direction Heaven wanted. Unsubstantiated data from a single source, without the assistance of algorithms and bot farms, had no chance of being heard.
No, his most effective move wasn’t the data dump to the humans. All the scrambling to determine what got dumped, how, and where, and to make sure it couldn’t happen again was obviously a distraction to cover the real goal: exposing the details of their operations to angels who shouldn’t have that information - at least as far as the Metatron was concerned.
Uriel finds herself increasingly in disagreement.
Uriel summons a scrivener. “Get me everything on Aziraphale’s time on Earth, and cross reference with everything we have on Crowley.” Aziraphale had mentioned an Arrangement. The capital letter was obvious.
Some time later, Uriel once again revises her opinion on Aziraphale, and lowers it on the Metatron. It’s no wonder the Great Plan is failing (or proceeding according to a greater plan) - the two of them have been balancing each other out. Intentionally. Uriel is reminded of the upbringing of the intended Antichrist child - another Crowley-Aziraphale double act. A being of angelic origins raised entirely as an ordinary human. It should have raised questions about the rest of them, had questions not been so thoroughly suppressed.
The Metatron saw the two of them working together and did not, apparently, draw any conclusion beyond blackmail materiel.
If there had been no plan at all, the humans would still be at pretty much the same point in their development.
Uriel despises inefficiency.
~~
Wars are wasteful. Humans are easily led. It can’t be the Ineffable plan to let them die.
Can it?
Michael wants power. Sandalphon wants control. The Metatron - wants an end to it all.
How had she not seen it?
Not because of any Plan, Great or Ineffable. For reasons of his own, he wants the human experiment over with. No more humans, no more Earth, no more of Her second children.
Uriel remembers her Fallen sibling, so proud of his star nursery, an engine that would keep creating new stars. When the other starmakers were content to just make them, pre-aged and ready to go.
Just like we were. Angels and humans, stars and nebulae. One set created, perfect, unchanging. The other meant to grow and evolve.
But we aren’t perfect. We aren’t unchanging. Some of us asked questions. Some of us Fell. And the questions didn’t stop, they just got suppressed, ready to spring back to life at any sign of uncertainty.
And - the Metatron can’t be speaking for Her. She was as pleased with Her humans as the lost one was with his baby stars.
But - we’re angels. We have a connection to Her that is not easily broken, and stilled only with great effort.
She prods at the connection. There’s nothing other than Her presence - no approval, no disapproval. Uriel is on her own - and maybe that’s the point. She could go along, or she could choose.
Are your second children meant to die, just because we think we’re the perfect, immutable ones?
Once it’s put like that, the decision is easy.
~~~
Uriel receives a note from Michael: a set of spatiotemporal coordinates, with only the words “Meet me.”
It’s an old church at midnight local time, near the top of a low mountain, far enough from any nearby towns that the stars are unobscured.
Uriel can sense the shield around them, blocking them from any Heavenly observers, and sets up her own to match. She finds Michael in the graveyard, looking up at a statue twice their height. Caught in the moonlight stands an angel, clad in armor, sword raised to strike. Uriel has seen thousands of them. She stops a few paces behind Michael and waits.
“Did you know there are songs about Gabriel?” Michael asks, rhetorically. “The Angel of the Annunciation. And statues. There’s one in Scotland that’s a very good likeness.”
“I’ve seen it. Somebody went a bit overboard with the divine inspiration there.”
“I get songs and statues like this one.” Uriel looks again at the statue and notices the fallen angel at their feet, the inscription Quis ut Deus at the base. “That’s what I’m remembered for, casting out our siblings.” Michael looks at it for a moment longer, then turns her back on it decisively to face Uriel. “I don’t want to do that again.”
There are any number of ways this can go. Uriel waits to see which it is.
“What do you know about the rebellion?” Michael asks, finally.
Uriel cocks an eyebrow and gives a modified version of the report she’d give in their offices Above. “That there isn’t one. There’s civil unrest, but there aren’t any rebels. Not yet. They’re scared, but not the kind of desperate scared that will fight back. If we were to declare it a rebellion, we’d be pushing them to the point where we might actually get one.”
“What do they want?”
Uriel considers her answer carefully. This is a test. If Michael just wanted another report, they would not be here.
Uriel comes to a decision, tips her head toward the falling angel at the statue’s feet. “The same answers our lost siblings wanted.” Her voice is carefully neutral, neither approving nor disapproving, which is a sort of approval in itself.
Michael nods, then stands there pensively, as if she’d wanted that answer but hadn’t expected to get it and is now considering what to do.
Uriel is nothing if not patient. She looks up at the stars, a view that is never seen in Heaven, which seems wrong somehow now that she thinks about it - why is their focus only on one small part of Creation when once they’d assembled infinity?
Michael eventually breaks the silence. “You’re the one we always go to when a problem needs to be solved.”
Uriel says nothing, waiting to see where this goes.
“The Metatron is the problem.”
Uriel’s face shows nothing. Internally, though… “I was not expecting you to say that,” she admits.
“Yes. If you were recording, you’d now have all the evidence against me you’d need. But I’m trusting you.”
Uriel takes her time considering her response. This is throwing off all her calculations, but it would be a poor plan if it was not adaptable.
“’If it prosper, none dare call it treason’” she quotes, finally.
Michael looks at her, a question in her eyes.
“If we win, we control the narrative. If we lose, at least you won’t have to do the casting out.”
“So we’re a ‘we’ now?”
Are they? Uriel looks at Michael, at Michael’s statue. Remembers a time before Michael had ever taken up the sword, when there were more of them, all united in one cause of glorious creation. She smiles, a genuine smile that she’d almost forgotten. “You know, that is the one part of those days I actually miss.”
~~~
They continue to compete with each other, of course. It would look suspicious if they didn’t.
Michael: “If we had a Supreme Archangel…”
“Which we don’t.”
“Which is not our fault, but it is seriously hampering our ability to control the situation.”
“This can still be salvaged, even without the powers of that office.” Uriel says. “Let me lead the investigation. We need to know what information has leaked, so we can come up with a good cover story. ”
Sandalphon snorts. “You? What do you know about investigations? This is why we have enforcers. Let me handle it. We’ll find out soon enough who was poking their nose where it didn’t belong.”
No, we have enforcers because we built up an army and then had no idea what to do with it, Uriel thinks, but says nothing. It’s not to her benefit to prevent him from making mistakes.
~~~
Any angel can take on any appearance they like. It’s a bit harder to hide what you are; even after folding most of her aspect away, Uriel could never be mistaken for anything less than an Archangel. But there are Archangels and Archangels; nobody would suspect that she was one of the Three (formerly Four, formerly Seven).
“Heaven is a hierarchy. Without strong leadership, it will fall apart. It shouldn’t take so long to choose a new Supreme Archangel.”
“Maybe this time they’ll pick an actual Archangel, not a jumped-up little Principality.”
“I know. And one entirely too fond of Earth, as well. What do you think the Metatron was thinking?”
“Careful with questions like that, you never know who’s listening.”
“I reported the problem as soon as I saw it, and now I’m the one being questioned?”
“They’re looking for someone to blame.”
“They know who to blame. They just don’t want to admit the problem is at the top.”
“I heard we were working with Downstairs, that’s what they’re trying to suppress.”
“So what if we were? They’ve got free will. If they fall to temptation, that’s on them.”
“Still, there’s testing, and then there’s testing to destruction.”
“And that kind of talk is exactly what got you-know-who cast out.”
Later, a mid-level angel finds an undisguised Uriel and makes what they think is a subtle comment about how there really ought to be a new Supreme Archangel by now, and that there might be other angels who feel the same way and would choose Uriel, if the choice were up to them.
She arranges for one of Sandalphon’s enforcers to discover the plot. Such incompetence should not be rewarded.
~~~
Heaven is on strike.
It begins with the research teams, the ones with an essential part of the plan but who were not informed about the big picture, the ones who were first to discover their unlimited access because it was their nature to dig deep into whatever caught their interest. Their task was to find humans with the potential to influence the sea of chaos that is social media, and determine whether they were worthy of Heavenly influence or not. They were, naturally, appalled to discover that the names of those who failed were passed on to agents of Hell. At first their protest is mild; they simply stop including the unworthy ones in their reports, and Uriel couldn’t chastise them for it even if she’d wanted to - they’re working precisely to rule.
When a report comes that one of those teams has fled to Earth, Uriel informs her agents that all information concerning them should go directly to her. Sandalphon does not need to know.
(When the data generated by the replacements turns out to be flawed, she defends them, even though it would suit the plan better if she did not.)
It spreads to the agents on Earth. They’d always been a fairly independent group, allowed great latitude in how they chose to carry out their assigned tasks, with a very generous tolerance for failure since, humans being so unpredictable, they often failed despite their best efforts. That was how Aziraphale had gotten away with his Arrangement with the demon for so long.
They choose to protest by interpreting their assignments as precisely as possible, asking for clarification at every step. I just want to make sure I got it right, wouldn’t want to bless the wrong person accidentally or steer them the wrong direction. Their handlers, Uriel’s underlings, are frustrated. Uriel is secretly amused.
(Michael’s back channel contact says similar things are happening Downstairs, so again, everything balances out.)
~~~
“I was told to expect four of you,” Uriel says.
The three rebel leaders - who are not wearing their usual faces, and who have not given their names - share a look that very clearly says they blame Uriel and the others for their fourth being missing.
They are not entirely wrong.
“The other one could not make it, unfortunately.”
The Metatron arrives, and things immediately go downwards. “We are not going to negotiate,” he says. “We have made our position quite clear in this regard. To question Heaven is to side with Hell, and the penalty has not changed. You may surrender now and be forgiven, of course.”
“We should consider their position,” Uriel counters calmly, knowing it will enrage him: the angrier he gets, the easier this will be. “Humans get judged when they die. Which they all do. Why should we go to any effort to speed that up?”
“Are you questioning the Great Plan?”
“If this was truly the Great Plan it would be succeeding, and there would be no need for questions.”
The Metatron looks at her with astonishment. “Are you questioning me?”
“Are you above questions?”
“Take care, Uriel, or I might think you a rebel as well. I am the Voice of God! To defy me is very nearly to defy Her!”
Uriel cocks her head. “Are you speaking for Her now? Or are you speaking for yourself? When was the last time She spoke to you?”
Sudden realization sweeps over his face. “You… You dare! You’ll Fall alongside the rest, then!”
With a wave of his hand, the infinite whiteness of Heaven vanishes, replaced by a vast plain under the stars. On one side, a legion of the army of Heaven, wings unfurled, their armor gleaming in the starlight, Sandalphon at their head. Proof that this response had been planned in advance.
On the other side, a wave of miracles flashes over the rebels as they too gear up for war.
Uriel looks at the Metatron with cool distain, which only enrages him further. “You want a war? You shall have one!” he shouts. The Heavenly Host watches him intently, waiting for the inevitable signal.
“Stand down!” A voice of command rings out, one that every angel present recalls following unwaveringly in the war: Michael, clad in golden armor, bearing the sword that was once used to cast out the Fallen, a nimbus of Holy light surrounding her. “All of you.”
She turns to the Metatron. “Surrender.”
“I’m the Metatron! You can’t do-” He cuts off when she steps forward, raises the tip of her sword to rest at his throat.
“I’m the Archangel Michael. Unless She tells me to stop, I believe I can. You do remember what this sword can do.”
“You wouldn’t dare to strike me down!”
“I heard my own siblings, closer to my heart than you could possibly imagine, say those same words before they died at my hands. I will not have that happen again.”
A long, drawn out pause, and then the Metatron backs down.
Uriel gives a pointed look to Sandalphon - Choose wisely. He looks at the tableau in front of him, then signals to the armed angels behind him. A squad steps forward and surrounds the Metatron. There’s still an air of defiance about him, but he does not resist as they escort him out.
“Good,” Michael says. “At ease,” she says to the army, and with a wave encompassing both groups, “You may remain if you wish. We have kept our operations in the dark for too long.”
One of the rebel leaders speaks up. “First, release our other companion. I assume you have them.”
Uriel steps forward, leans in, and whispers a passphrase only the four of them know. Steps back, pulls a quick miracle to shift to the face they expect, and shifts back again. They are stunned, but recover quickly. Uriel is not surprised; she would not have worked with them had they lacked intelligence.
“Now that we are all here,” she says, “I believe the negotiations can begin.”
A starlit night, not long ago, on Earth…
“Sandalphon controls the armies. That could be a problem.”
“He thinks he does,” Michael says. “He forgets who used to lead them.”
“And the next Supreme Archangel?”
“I don’t want it, I just didn’t want either of you to have it.”
“I admit to feeling the same. Especially not him. Perhaps it is a time for a change. And Hell?”
“They couldn’t assemble enough demons to take out one angel in a bookshop,” Michael scoffs. “They’re not a threat.”
“Ah, yes, and what about our former Supreme Archangel and his demon?”
“If we win, perhaps we can come to an accommodation.”
~~~
Uriel had asked Crowley for a meeting. He’s not sure what to expect; the stories from Heaven are confusing - some say the rebels won, some say Uriel was on the side of the rebellion, and some say it was all a ruse. Whatever happened, she’s still in power, and has asked to meet, given him the choice of place and time.
He chooses the roof of the bookshop at midnight. She arrives precisely on time. He waits for the watchful members of the horde to confirm that this isn’t a trap. Or at least, not an obvious one. This is Uriel; she does not do obvious.
“So what’s it to be, ‘Happy Christmas, war is over, all is forgiven, you can come home now’? Or maybe ‘back to the pits of Hell, foul demon’?”
She turns to face him. “What we did to you was unforgivable. What we took, irreplaceable. We do not have the right to ask for your forgiveness.” It sounds like a well-rehearsed speech. She steps forward, reaches out to touch his shoulder. “We cannot give you back everything you lost, but… may I?”
He nods, although he’s not sure why. Maybe because he knows she’s too smart to try anything when she has to know she’s being watched. Maybe just the novelty of being asked. She closes her eyes and concentrates for a moment, then steps back. “Your bonds to Hell have been broken. Nobody on either side will ever be able to do anything to you again without your consent.”
Not what he was expecting. What could she even mean by it? He looks at his wrists, which feel oddly lighter. He rubs them, feeling the echoes of invisible shackles that he hadn’t even known were there. He pulls up a tiny miracle, a brief flash of light in the darkness.
Still a demon, then.
“And the others? Or is this just a personal reward for not being entirely on their side?”
“Negotiations are under way. Hell does not relinquish control so easily, and some of them…”
He can’t really argue with that. “Yeah, six thousand years of anger and resentment are kind of hard to overcome.”
She tips her head in acknowledgment, and waits.
He risks a question. “You were one of the rebel leaders.”
“I was.”
“Why?”
“I discovered that I had the same questions you had.”
She says it so calmly that he snaps, suddenly furious. “Just like that?” he hisses. “It was that easy? You couldn’t have, I don’t know, maybe have had questions back when it would have mattered? Or any other time over the past six thousand years?”
He takes some bitter satisfaction in making her famously imperturbable composure crack.
“No. It wasn’t that easy. It was terrifying.” Her eyes flicker aside and back, as if she’s having to force herself not to look away, from guilt or fear or some other incomprehensible mix of emotions. “Not just because of what they did to you, although that threat has been very effective in keeping us in line. Six thousand years of fear and repression… But I’d always believed there was a Great Plan, that following it was doing the right thing, and that if I wasn’t, She would tell me. But the plans kept failing, and while I knew She was still there… it became obvious that what She wanted was for me to take responsibility for my own actions.
“It’s not an excuse. There is no excuse. But…if there’s ever anything you want, from Heaven or from me personally, I will do whatever is in my power to give it to you.”
Somewhere in the middle of that speech he realizes what’s been throwing him off: she’s not trying to manipulate him. She’s being honest. She’s letting him lead. It’s not something that comes naturally to her, and yet she thinks he’s worth the effort.
It’s his turn to look away. He has to think. This is all too much, too fast. He paces, trying to work things out. What he really needs is the time and space to come to terms with everything. It’s been so very long since he’s dared to ask for anything only for it to be dangled just out of reach to punish him for the temerity of wanting. He chafes his wrists again, feels the imprint the chains have left in his soul.
He falls back on his old habit of deflection. “And if I’d like to turn the Metatron into a lizard?”
That actually prompts a smile. “You would have to get in line,” she says. “But I’d let you cut in front of me.”
It’s an amusing image, and he very nearly smiles himself.
He decides to risk it. “I just want you to leave me alone. Leave Earth alone. Just… leave.”
She nods, as if that’s what she expected. “We are declaring Earth to be an independent realm, full diplomatic privileges. Angels and demons must request permission to enter or remain.”
Is this the catch? “From who? You lot?”
“No. We plan on asking the Angel of the Eastern Gate to be the guardian, until one is no longer needed. I believe the Earth term is ‘independent contractor’.”
It takes a moment for the full impact to hit: Aziraphale has been granted his freedom as well.
“So. It’s over.”
“Yes. I wish you both well. Oh, and before I go,” Uriel says, and holds out a folder that wasn’t in her hand a second ago. “A gift - the end of the rebellion. I think the two of you might enjoy it.”