Work Text:
Heaven has always been large. It has always been white. It has always been silent.
It's always been too much.
But it’s never been more so than now.
When Aziraphale visited Heaven, he knew he had a place to return to. A small place without space to pass through. A warm place with yellow walls and dim lights. A quiet place where you could hear the London traffic, the turning of pages and the walk of a demon.
But now Aziraphale’s in Heaven and no longer has a bookshop to return to.
Heaven’s large, but Aziraphale feels suffocated. He has searched for the end and the beginning but has never been able to find it. Here there’re no walls or doors to protect yourself, only the immensity. And even if the only limit is the floor, he fears that at any moment gravity will take him deeper.
His legs itch and his feet feel heavy, he fears they’ll fail him if he tries to run away. Aziraphale keeps feeling a pinch at the end of his back, the tension of a prey, the feeling that at any moment someone’ll attack him, and he won't know from where.
Heaven’s white and that is why Aziraphale’s blinded. It’s difficult to discern the horizon, it’s difficult to distinguish the other angels: dressed in their white clothes, they only differentiated for the corporation’s characteristics. It all seems part of the same thing. Everything seems one.
Aziraphale never liked white and perhaps that was why he always liked old books, with their yellowed and spotted pages. But now he’s forced to hide his brown clothes and wear a tight white suit.
He needs to fit in.
He needs to camouflage himself.
He needs to hide.
Heaven is silent. Angels are silent. Aziraphale thinks that's another thing that differentiates him from the rest. He tries to be discreet. He tries to be stealthy. He tries to be cautious. He tries, but he isn’t, and he fails to be.
Aziraphale’s spent six millennium on Earth, perhaps his corporation is more solid, heavier, more real. His steps are clumsy and crude, so different from angelic elegance. His voice’s sometimes too high and other times too low, so different from the emotion-free voice of the other angels.
And his heart...
Aziraphale can hear his own heart beating with the force of a thousand suns. He doesn't understand why his heart beats like that. Maybe it's fear, pining, nostalgia or desire. Or maybe his heart really has broken as humans tell it. If that’s true, then a part of him remained in the bookshop, between the pages of his books, in the varnish of his furniture, in the tea grounds and crumbs, between the fingers of his dear demon.
Crowley.
When Heaven becomes too much, Aziraphale looks out to the Earth. Although in London it seems nothing has changed, everything is different. Aziraphale watches from a distance his demon finally rises and returns to his life. Walks around St. James, lunches at the Ritz and nights at the bookshop. And there’s an angel with him as he always has been. Only now he's no longer Aziraphale and he can't do anything.
Heaven has always been large. It has always been white. It has always been silent.
Heaven has always been static. The Earth progress, the Heaven stays.
Aziraphale doesn’t advance and on Earth Crowley's life passes without him.