Chapter Text
In 1969, a woman named Elisabeth Kübler-Ross devised a model to explain the psychological process of grief as experienced by humans. She discovered that humans who grieved commonly went through different emotional states as part of the grieving process. A process which she divvied up into five stages. And, since humans enjoy being rather literal sometimes, she called the resulting model the model of the five stages of grief. Also known as the ‘Kübler-Ross model’, since humans are also rather fond of putting their names on things – a behaviour they learn at a young age and never fully grow out of.
Of course, Kübler-Ross had no idea that, some fifty-odd years later, her model would be a common tool used by many a layperson to describe the human response to all sorts of traumatic happenings in all sorts of traumatic contexts. And sometimes even the responses to non-traumatic happenings in non-traumatic contexts. She also did not consider how her model could have been applied to the non-human responses of non-human entities, like demons, experiencing the loss of other non-human entities, like angels, and vice versa. In fact, Kübler-Ross spent very little time, if any time at all, contemplating such things.
Had she been the type of person to think on such matters, she might have come up with a very different theory altogether.
As it stands, the Kübler-Ross model starts not with a phase per se, but, as so many things in the sciences are wont to do, with a bang.
Shock.
THE BENTLEY
Once, Crowley would have objected to the idea that a demon could be shocked. Demons were meant to be shocking after all. Hardly made sense that something so shocking could then also be shocked. Not to mention that, once you’ve taken a swim in a pool of boiling sulphur, the bar to be properly shocked has been set pretty high. But that had been once. And ‘once’ was not the present.
‘Once’ had been before friendships and bandstands and burning bookshops and definitely before any sort of physical displays of affection that Crowley refused to think about. The present was after all of that. The present put Crowley in a plant-filled Bentley, driving through Soho with nowhere to go and nowhere to be.
In this present, Crowley wasn’t actively considering the validity of his own shock. He wasn’t really considering much of anything, really. He was very busy feeling. Or not feeling. One or the other. Should have been obvious which it was but somehow it wasn’t. There was both, a surplus and a gaping void. It came with the unfortunate side-effect of halting his whole mental process. Made things oddly still. Like something had lodged itself in one part of the mechanism that was Crowley and now the whole system was busted.
Like the minutes had forgotten that they were supposed to be minutes and decided to be hours instead. Maybe that’s why everything on the outside of him appeared so distant and disconnected. The world didn’t fit right. Or maybe he didn’t fit right into the world. He just drove. That didn’t require much thought, anyway. And maybe it was better this way. The blankness of it all. Crowley was aware on some level that if he started to fully think about what had just transpired, he might have made the executive decision to steer the Bentley into the next sturdy-looking lamp post.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t understand what had happened. He understood just fine. Or, rather, he could recall what had happened and deduce the implications. Oh, he understood, alright. He just didn’t quite believe.
Because, well, it was a bit unbelievable, wasn’t it? Six-thousand years down the drain. Longer, really, if you went with the definition that Crowley wasn’t particularly fond of. Six-thousand years. And yet, it had taken all of ten minutes to screw it all up. How was that for ineffable?
Then again, it had only taken a couple of honest and well-meaning questions – and maybe some associating with a bit of a bad crowd - to be cast out of Heaven for all eternity. So perhaps he should have seen this coming. The shock and horror and ‘I forgive you’ of it all. Not his strongest suit, foresight.
‘I forgive you.’
Oh, that rattled something loose in the mental mechanism.
Heat stung Crowley’s eyes and that was simply unacceptable. He couldn’t really put together why, but it was and he wasn’t going to let his eyes win. He blinked rapidly, then found himself closer to a lorry than anticipated and miraculously swerved out of the way in the last second. This was only the first of many similar manoeuvres he’d pull on this particular drive.
Right, then. Driving. Without thinking about the other thing. Couldn’t think properly, anyway. Couldn’t feel properly, either, really. None of that was working.
Driving, though. Driving, however poorly, was something he could still do. So he did that some more. He drove and then drove further as his sense of time became as unreliable as the rest of the muck in his head. Which was a shame, really. His sense of time had been rather impeccable in the past.
After what could have been twenty minutes, could have been a million years, the Bentley came to a stop. For a good reason. It could sensibly go no further. Because, somehow, Crowley had driven to some dead end by the sea. Or maybe the English channel. Which, if you thought about it, was still the sea. It was a big body of water, was the point. Crowley only then realized that the sky had gone dark sometime between driving off and stopping. Somewhat numb, he questioned the ridiculous route he must’ve taken to end up where he was. But he had no recollection of any roads or motorways. He could have been driving laps on the M25 for hours without noticing.
The only thing in the immediate vicinity beside the body of water, the road and some other parked cars was a pub he had never seen before. Which he also had no memory of seeking out. But that at least was a solid choice. Because, yes, the hazy obscuring filter of alcohol was exactly what he needed. So he got out of the Bentley, slammed the door shut and stalked over to the unfamiliar pub in question. If he couldn’t will away the memories, he was reasonably certain the alcohol was going to do wonders to redact them. Noise, warmth and light poured out of the doorway as he entered before he let the door fall shut.
Kübler-Ross, as most people of the psychological and psychiatric professions, was more interested in the processing of emotions by the psyche than the processing of alcohol by the liver. As such, the following hours of Crowley’s rapidly growing inebriation shall not be considered part of the process. They were also, if one was being brutally honest, rather sad to behold.
THE LIFT
There was no alcohol waiting in Heaven. And no plant-filled Bentley.
But there was work that was to be done. Which was what Aziraphale was trying to latch onto as his scrambled thoughts were attempting to regain their coherence.
Angels, as a rule, were beings of composure and grace. Therefore, shock was not a very angelic thing to be experiencing. Instead, an angel might have found themselves mildly surprised or vaguely alarmed.
But Aziraphale had always been something of an exception, even if it had taken him the better part of six millennia to think of it that way. Case in point, he had been very shocked multiple times over the course of the last fifteen minutes or so. In fact, he was pretty shocked, still. Mind reeling, thoughts scattering, the whole affair. Nothing, not a single thing, had gone as he had expected it to that day. He was certain that anyone would have had to agree, that that day had been rather shocking.
But he couldn’t be focusing on that. He was in the lift, after all. Going Up. Any thoughts concerning the day’s shocking events were better off boxed and shoved into the far back of Aziraphale’s mind. To be dealt with at a later date. That later date preferably being ‘never’.
Aziraphale had grown to be something of a professional at boxing up errant thoughts and desires. A valuable skill as angel on Earth - specifically as one that had come to cherish Earth the way he had. Yet, the memories of the most recent events refused to be treated like a denied Earthly indulgence.
Aziraphale failed to catch the phrases rattling around his head – ‘no nightingales’ – ‘don’t bother’; and the sight of saddened serpentine eyes being hidden away was far too large to fit into any of the boxes. And the – oh dear – the feelings. The sensations that lingered, those he refused to even name, he couldn’t begin to think about how he was supposed to store any of them, let alone hide them away.
It didn’t feel real, that was another thing. Not even the news of Armageddon had made Aziraphale feel this way. Perhaps because the end of the world had, deep down, always been a known factor.
The end of this, well-
No. No, he could not afford to dwell.
There were far more important matters to concern himself with.
For instance, the whole reason that he was going Up in the first place. The future was going to bring good things. Or rather, he was going to make the future do that. There was so much to take care of, so many changes to make. Yes, he was going to be quite busy. Far too busy to dwell.
The lift slowed to a halt. A gentle ding and a soft voice announced their arrival and the doors slid open.
Needless to say, the process of being reintroduced to Heaven and the bureaucratic nightmare that was a Principality becoming Supreme Archangel were also not something that Kübler-Ross would have considered to be part of the grieving process. No, much like an alcohol-induced absence of the mind, stress-induced distraction was something that rather hindered the process.
But it was not going to do so for long.