Chapter Text
In the grand scheme of things, Aziraphale wasn’t that old.
Compared to mortal beings whose species wasn’t that old in the entire grand scheme of the ineffable plan, he was ancient. An old god who walked among them since the beginning, the very beginning starting with the garden. A being who would understand their world and history better then they would ever be able to grasp.
Compared to the other angels who had helped weave cosmos and design worlds humans were very unlikely to see with their limited scopes on creativity and intelligence, the older angels had seen the great fraction of their species and lived through the civil war that created the fallen angel; Aziraphale was like an infant to them.
A little brother who often didn’t know any better and spent far too much time around a species that was not his own. It was very easy for him to fall out of step, fall out of sync with the well-oiled hierarchy that was pulling the ineffable plan along.
Aziraphale had been created with the garden with a very specific purpose from the almighty: to watch over and guide the humans.
He had been mucking up basic assignments since the beginning as well and Gabriel had an entire file cabinet filled with proof of that. He was supposed to keep the humans from eating the forbidden fruit and taking on free will, but instead he had been preoccupied weaving flowers together.
He fell into the temptations of the world faster then man if you asked Gabriel, always taking in and giving far too much attention to what he saw as ‘beauty’.
The almighty didn’t make mistakes though and despite all his faults, he had yet to be cast from the ranks by head office. No matter how many memos Gabriel called for his fall, he never did, each well documented account of Aziraphale’s failures being returned to him with a large red ‘DENIED’ stamped across it.
He raised this query to Sandalphon one beautiful morning (it was heaven, naturally all mornings were beautiful) and he gave him an interesting response he had never considered before.
“Maybe he was created less for the human’s sakes and more for our own.”
Gabriel gave him a look, not catching his meaning, it was tiresome dealing with their youngest angel, he often just left him to his own devices so he didn’t have to deal with him. He was the first ever angel they had to put a track on what miracles he made, Aziraphale was soft, not allowing the mortals do anything for themselves if he had the chance and wasn’t afraid to waste energy on material junk on himself either.
“Think about it,” Sandalphon pressed leaning back into the comfy office chair and drumming his fingers playfully on Gabriel’s desk, “All the work we must do to keep order, not only on Earth but the Cosmos and not to mention keeping the demons down stairs in check.”
There was a pause and a slight chuckle from Gabriel as he leaned forward, curios where his friend could be going.
“The war has been at a stalemate for what?”
“Thousands of years.”
“Thousands of years of pent up frustration and anger, it just makes you want to… what was that Earth phrase Aziraphale put on his ‘naughty list’?”
“Go ape shit?”
The other angel chuckled, “There you go. That’s it. Very clever.”
“So you’re saying we take our pent up emotions on the weak link in our chain?”
Gabriel paused considering a moment.
“That wouldn’t make us too... demonly would it?”
“The beauty of it is its helping Aziraphale as well, put the fear of god back into him about why he should shape up and give us an excuse to ‘let loose' as the mortals say.”
Gabriel smiled, it was a tempting offer. You wouldn’t exactly get away with such behavior in heaven, but on Earth? Performing such acts on an angel who didn’t quite fit into what an angel should be? What was the harm?