Chapter Text
His breath stopped short at the sight of the red ink.
The latest whirlwind of complications left Aziraphale feeling there was nothing more he could do. He threw his reading glasses down on the latest stack of files brought up from the Heavenly Archives. In his hand, he held Uriel's military reports, littered with weighted, red stamps that mocked everything he'd tried to thwart. Tried to stop.
He tossed them too, aside in disgust.
The war was nigh. In small skirmishes and distant corners of the globe, the ethereal army's swords had been drawn and already met ichor.
Angelic blood shed.
He felt like he'd failed. Like he was failing the world.
Like he was failing their world.
Aziraphale felt the shock of it, felt the coldness of it flush his cheeks, coat his throat, flood his chest, and rush straight for his core. The chill next slashed and dragged the pit of him down with icy tether hooks as it sunk crashing through the tiled floor of his Supreme office; smashing every, damned, last, ethereal glass-ceiling he'd once reached on its descent; blasting through each blinding, righteous-red-tape covered, blessed floor of the Heavenly building, leaving whatever was left of his Supremely angelic frozen self spilled all over the mirror-sheen, metallic-slate floor of the lobby, for all the lower angels and demons to gawk and laugh at.
Panic, and an unending well of loneliness and sorrow, slowly crept inside the vacant pit of him instead.
What had even been the point? Without leads, without means nor clues from the Supremely sterile farce of an office he occupied, he was left navigating dangerous waters blind. The other Archangels he'd deliberated with and fooled well enough, but they were still all shut doors and blank stares, perhaps so compartmentalized that they, too, were kept in the dark and not able to affect any of the divine plan. There had been no word from the Metatron since he started. Nor God. Nor from any voice of reason.
Feeling deflated and numb, with little mind left to speak of, his muscle memory raised him from his Supreme executive chair and shuffled his worn self forwards, like some novice puppeteer working a marionette, still sorting out how to lift the knees and toes to move together. Quietly, he shuffled through the barren halls, only to the tune of his Oxfords.
Dazed, miraculously, somehow his feet found the lift, and Aziraphale got on and pressed at a random button. At this point, anywhere away from the red ink would be an improvement.
As the lift doors opened, he stepped off and pondered what he saw. A part of him evidently had some sense what he should do next. While his cerebral cortex should have had one, single idea left to stop the war, yet didn't, apparently his stubby, sweaty, tartan sock-covered feet should not have had any ideas of their own, yet did.
At this point, with his brain muddled in despair, who was he to argue with his own two feet. He sighed heavily. They might as well be more qualified and have a better idea than he did right now.
His feet had found the Heavenly Archives, a place of ancient records, tombs and texts; a place of possible comfort and solace where he hadn't ventured in quite a long time. Nearly two millenia.
He politely waved and smiled to the Head Archivist as his limbs joined his feet to carry him further past the reference desk. The 24th-class angel sitting behind it cowered from him, though a little less than when he'd seen her bring files up to his office. He thought if he kept smiling at her in the halls that in time he'd get perhaps a greeting from her, or a wave back, or even a smile.
In time… his mind repeated, as though there might be any left at all for such pleasantries.
In fact, that was his precise problem, the reason he'd failed, he scolded himself.
He'd run out of time.
Time seemed like such a strange and downright rude concept he never could quite grasp, and he'd had more opportunities with it on Earth than most angels to give it a half-decent shot. He thought if he ever met the proverbial titan of Father Time, he'd have a lot to say on the matter of consistency. If a minute was a measured minute and a day was a finite length, then it should stay that way. Something that spanned lifetimes of effort should not just run out of time. Hours should not fly by, and seconds should not stall. How could time be where ‘more than enough’ and ‘too much’ became ‘not enough’ and ‘over too soon’ so quickly? Where afternoons felt like forever, yet whole decades disappeared. Long days and short years. It was all a bit much.
And it all wouldn't matter now anyway, he inhaled unsteadily, pained and tearful at where all his efforts and sacrifices had so far gotten him. How once the heavier machines of war were put into play, and a Second Coming of some sort begun, none of it would matter. It would be the end of life, of recorded time. The end of everything except eternity.
Running out of time is what had happened between him and Crowley, between him and saving it all. To have fixed anything, he'd needed more time.
Too late is what Crowley would have called it. That it was already too late. That it was always too late.
As both some tears and his feet continued their light falls, Aziraphale felt a sharp grain of wood scratch under his fingers, grounding him. He'd had his hand extended, feeling along a low bookcase as he walked the more ancient archive stacks. The sensation calmed him, giving him comfort. It seemed like both no time and forever since he'd left the bookshop, and he'd missed the uneven feel of book covers and loose parchment lined in organised rows of knowledge — some of it useful, some of it useless, depending on one's viewpoint and circumstance, someday to be discovered at just the right perfect moment when needed.
It was then he thought he heard something to his left, like a dropped book, or loud ruffle of pages and even a wisp of laughter. He pivoted, and then peered in all directions, but saw no other angels about. The stacks were empty.
He wondered if the stress had finally gotten to him, though a dropped book certainly warranted attention. Quietly he tiptoed, carefully following his recall of the sound, scanning along the floor and the lower shelves until a glint of silver caught his eye.
There, on the second shelf of a bookcase sat a bright white and silver bound book, about the size of a large picture book one might have on their coffee table — one filled with images of David Attenboro's most colourful adventures, or a selection of Chesterfields and the history of antique dressers. Or perhaps some timeworn photographs of majestic mountains or old cafes. Something posh, tasteful and banally inspiring for such an elegant, silver-etched binding, as nondescript as it was.
He took the book to a nearby table and gingerly cracked it open. The careful peeling open of the tight binding — creaking and crackling as if ancient, though solid and sure to the touch as if new — he accomplished with a marksman finesse known only to the most devout antiquarians, cautious to protect the spine. For all he knew, if his destiny was to find and perfectly open this book of knowledge at exactly this urgent time of need, at this exact time on the precipice of war and humanity's destruction, then as an experienced bookminder he had truly found an Earthly calling.
He dared to think the word ineffable for a second, then winced.
The book was indeed a unique kind of picture book, with images that waved, floated and flashed across each page, as though each single sheet spanned the length of years or decades of fluttered images; stills shifted to form senses of movement, disjointed in their layout, and yet still connected as though chronologically in scenes of historic fate.
The position and movement of the photos expressed more than their subjects, showing laughter in a way, or sorrow, or panic and turmoil, or joy and thrill. A rush of photos on one page whooshed as though a race of cyclists had passed him, the sounds of the townsfolk carrying signs and cheering them on enthralling him, the excitement of it all on the cold Alps with the crisp smell of field flowers and pine in his nose — a lot of visceral feeling to find in a photograph. Some other pages were so serene they seemed to bend time rather than stand still, to elongate a few minutes into hours, just in their calm breezes, cool waters and the melodious sounds in his ears of birdsong.
All in a photograph. In this book. And wasn't that a thought, Aziraphale marveled.
Had he found the Book of Life? He gasped with a tightening in his chest, shoving his hand over his open mouth so as not to alert anyone nearby. He didn't know. He had no idea what the Book of Life looked like. By the way the Metatron and Michael threatened with it so casually, never mentioning it before nor since, he suspected they might not know the Book's exact whereabouts either.
Aziraphale scurried back up to his Supreme office, leaving the archives with the Book hidden amongst a bunch of larger parchments in his arms. As he stumbled past the reference desk, he gave a terse hello-goodbye. At least this time, he left the Head Archivist's expression puzzled instead of frightened.
The angel cleared his Supremely extravagant desk with the swipe of his arm, scattering the other files, and laid the Book down to examine it closely. He put on a pair of gloves as he would wear restoring an aging manuscript, even though the pages felt as crisp as fresh cut. With a renewed, keen focus, much as he once employed while poring through a book of prophecy when the entirety of the world depended on it, he began to read.
Within the margins of certain pages, he found a series of odd sigils and forms he'd not seen before — possibly before now they were above his pay grade. He recognised some Earthly symbols of glyphs and numbers as well, strangely recently human for a text so ancient and infinitely divine.
Before he could get more than a few pages in, he sensed a summoning of him, and his focus splintered. He had forgotten all about his weekly meeting with Muriel. Attempting to sigh out his fluster from having to leave the Book, he walked into the summoning light by the glaringly-brilliant windows.
"Hello?" came the echo. "Your Supreme Eminence? It's me, Muriel, here. I mean, of course me, here, since I'm the one summoning you, who’s not here. Is this the right time?"
Aziraphale did give thanks that Muriel hadn't called upon him earlier, when his wits were beyond their frayed ends, and he now felt at least a little more put together. All in all, Muriel's timing was excellent. He also wondered how his face appeared to Muriel in the beam of light downstairs. Would it be just as the Metatron appeared to him once? It was an odd way to communicate for certain, but time was too rushed for anything more personal.
"Yes, Muriel. Lovely to hear from you. I believe you've chosen the perfect hour for our status call," he said, trying to sound chipper.
"Jolly good," Muriel reported. "I was afraid I'd be tardy. There was this customer who said she's a regular of yours? She was saying you had a book of hers?"
There was only one customer of late that Aziraphale thought it could be. One of his more pensioner set had been more persistent lately, taken to arriving at the bookshop right as he'd usually open each Tuesday — his precise hours those days of 1:45 to 4:15 with a 15-minute closing break at 2:30 for tea apparently hadn't dissuaded her.
In terms of customers, she could be worse. She was always polite and very punctual. Lately she used a walker, and was easily recognised by a blue tint to her head of tight, white curls as she slowly strolled up and down Whickber Street among the hustle and bustle around her. He helped restore the occasional odd volume she'd bring in, normally quick work. And she usually asked for time with certain works from his older collections, to which he'd make some excuse and wave her off. Although she did speak very highly of the classics. That he could appreciate.
"Err, if it's who I think it is, she may still have an order in progress, though I could be mistaken," Aziraphale ruminated. "Mind you, under no circumstances are you to grant her, or anyone, access to the special collections. Is that understood?"
The rest of the summoning call went without complication. Muriel, quite the competent and organised scrivener Aziraphale was learning, took to swiftly running a status call with established protocols and professionalism, even ending the meeting earlier than he anticipated. Quite efficient, he approved, giving him ample time to dive right back into the Book. He smiled excitedly.
Continuing with his reading, over an indeterminable amount of time, eventually he reached the middle of the Book. Here, the endless summer breezes, turmoils of war, and crashing waves gave way to more text and drawn images, where the sigils became larger and more intricate, and the Book more of an instructional guide. The static lines marked in silver with Roman numerals drew him in, along with drawings of human corporations, concentric circles moving slowly clockwise and widdershins around them, as though he was watching some simple animations a human child might draw in the corner pages of a notebook to watch flip by, the movement mesmerizing.
One whole page had diagrams and details on how to insert ones' divine essence and consciousness into a corporation — both the process of new or renewed souls entering a body, and of the ethereal and occult-afflicted claiming one following a discorporation. It especially covered the importance of sticking to the exact flow of linear time.
All angels knew the process of obtaining a new body after an unforeseen event like discorporation — the litany of paperwork and registrations. Or at least this was what angels were taught in procurement processing. From all that he'd heard, it was often a griped-about, tedious and lengthy undertaking to sort out, leaving most angels to complain whether it was at all worth the trouble.
Aziraphale'd always wondered how it would feel, in essence dying, having only been discorporated the one time in his bookshop. Seeing all those red stamps and recent military supply requests for new corporations on his desk, he couldn't bear to imagine. And even in the pains of entering a new corporation, he himself had bent those rules. Well… justified, he argued, as there was a full-on Armageddon in progress. Urgently, he'd escaped to find Crowley through the ether and inhabited Marjorie's body instead.
The body part he'd had to jigger, but the timing of his cohabitation with Marjorie was impeccable, exactly as the silvery spooled threads of sigils and words in the text in front of him indicated. The Book had several warnings in large silver letters of the importance of aligning points in proper time, with varying planetary orbits of minutes and seconds, to ensure recorporating into a body in the precise proper timeline and…
Aziraphale blinked.
Time as related to corporeal possession, to him, was always a given, an obvious fact, an automatic. You discorporate one moment and then recorporate at the designated stamped date and time once your request was approved. Even for humans, there were time signatures in birth certificates. There were set appointments and dates stamped in triplicate for an issued corporeal form dictating the precise time.
But if time was such a fixed aspect, then why were there so many warnings in the Book on getting it right, he asked himself, thumbing through them. Pages and pages of warnings.
Was time not such an automatically assumed constant, he questioned.
Were all the signs and warnings in the text about making sure to inhabit a body at the right time of possession suggesting there was the possibility of a "wrong" or different time to inhabit one? Sometime in its past or future?
"That's preposterous," he whispered, scoffing at the idea, knowing how the whole process was guarded and tracked heavily. All the request forms, licensing and grueling systems necessary to keep track of Heavenly issued bodies…
But… not his corporeal body, Aziraphale remembered, putting a slow hand to his chest.
That had been a gift to him from Adam.
When Adam restored his corporation in Tadfield, separating him from Marjorie's body, his new corporation felt to himself like… himself, only… a bit more of himself, if that made sense. A stronger and more whole him. It even came with some minor differences of awareness, and stretch, which he'd had to get used to.
Was his body still traceable by Heaven?
Aziraphale leaned back, lacing his fingers to rest them on his stomach and consider things.
Heaven had certainly not bothered him on any excursions away from the bookshop these last few years, he pondered. It was perhaps possible, when not performing miracles, that they couldn't tell where he was at all.
Would it then be possible for him to severe his celestial, ethereal ties, or consciousness, from his current body and have his divine mind inhabit his same, untraceable body, but at another point in time? Not in a discorporation sense, of course, as that would involve an utter mountain of D-125 forms. No, he'd need more of a rather — what was that term Marjorie would use — an out-of-body experience. Or would it categorically be a possession, he mused. Given the widdershins movement of some numerals and metaphysical properties necessary per the instructions…
Aziraphale slammed shut the Book and sat back in his chair. This was ludicrous, he chided himself. This Book was hinting that on some atemporal hodge-podge of a technicality… time travel existed, like in some depression-era newsstand, ten-cent detective comic science-fiction weekly. In all his 6,000 years since the dawn of time itself, when had he ever experienced a turning back of the clock?
Although… he had experienced something perhaps similar with Crowley, it dawned on him. Brief moments, like the moment before Satan arrived in Tadfield when he, Adam and Crowley remained in an ethereal stasis of sorts that Crowley created, giving them a chance to give a good pep talk to the young Antichrist.
Had Crowley stopped time then?
Aziraphale assumed Crowley had some ways of miracling time, not knowing the particulars of it. He never asked the demon what he did when he’d temporarily give pause to humans and events around them, knowing he possessed some key talents in creation that Aziraphale lacked in both clearance and acuity. And Crowley was rare, quite politely, to ever voluntarily converse on those quite seemingly more natural abilities of his.
What if Crowley had manipulated time in precisely this manner before? What if ethereally manipulating time this way was possible?
Aziraphale opened the Book, more rushed, fanning and chasing the middle pages in search of the larger sigils. What if all this was executable logistically, baring a few minor issues? That essentially, he could shift widdershins to a point in time where he could stop all this. Where Heaven wouldn't detect him in his unlicensed corporation. Where he could find a second chance to stop the war, and this time with Crowley.
Where Aziraphale could find more time.
Chuckling excitedly, he grabbed the Book off the desk. He could do this; Crowley could do this, he was most certain, and the demon might even would do this. And now with proper directions — even if expressed in the text as opposite don'ts — and his new Supreme Archangel prowess, Aziraphale could do this, too. He would just have to manage a few tertiary, overly-cautious warnings per the Book was all. Simple really.
One was the issue of Heaven tracking him… already sorted.
Another was the surging flow of existing linear time. Well, once he'd changed that, altered a word he said or an event, time would flow differently, right? Like a forked river. He could manage that after all his time on Earth, surely.
And finally, the issue of occupying the same space of another consciousness, even if his own. His current sense of mind and his mind at the point in time of possession needed to be compatible, warned the ancient text. Or would two minds in the same body cause an issue? At that he had to laugh, for he might have been the only angel who already had experience there. In fact, he had handled it well enough to fly two humans and three consciousnesses on a light blue Vespa motorbike from South London all the way to Tadfield. No small feat.
This could be done.
This time he nearly vibrated out of his chair, Book and supplies in hand. He drew the proper circles and sigils needed right on the tile floor, the design surprisingly stark and simplistic, to the point he thought he might have missed something. Just for good measure, he drew some protective wards he knew around it.
Before activating the sigils, he ensured the Supreme Archangel suite was fully locked, not sure if he needed the extra bit of security. If he needed to return to this corporation, he would simply come back to the same point in time as he had left.
Aziraphale wiggled where he stood. He felt so very clever.
With all prepared, he lie down in the circle — a safety precaution as he did not wish his consciousless corporation to fall and face injury — on this the warnings in the text were helpful.
The process of targeting when he'd need to re-enter his corporeal form was described almost like he pictured sleeping to be: closed eyes, astral, mind's eye visions, peaceful, easing into it — something he'd seen Crowley do many times on the bookshop's sofa before. He'd watched for only protective and perfunctory curious reasons, of course.
As the angel's eyes closed, he clenched the Book to his chest. Immediately, visions of his life flashed through him intensely beyond normal recall or contemplation. He could feel his body's eyes twitch under heavy eyelids and his ethereal tendrils of angelic essence stretch and relax, releasing from corporeal confinement. Even his wings unfurled and curled around him like a protective cocoon, allowing his highest mind to ascend and float beyond the physical. Lastly, every one of his hundred, divinely, angelically astral eyes flew open in unison.
And he began to remember.
The memories felt more tangible than rote imagery, more vivid. Some splendiferious, and some starkly painful. But very visceral. Where he could smell the scent of his vanilla aftershave he fancied, and the scent of his bookshop; could feel the brush of a demon's hand on his skin with a spot of brandy, and could touch the grainy feel of fibers of his soft waistcoat under his fingertips.
He attempted to focus his mind on just one feeling, one thing, one point in time as the Book cautioned. With so many competing distractions of thought, this had to be an absolutely clear shot.
What point in time had brought all this to ruin? What point could he return to, to try to fix… well, everything?
He drifted through his own personal timeline, his ethereal consciousness humming, the many eyes of his chakra keenly sifting through flashed images, feeling drawn into them the more he extended himself; almost thinning as he rose above his corporeal body, his focus like an arrow solely honing in on only one guiding target in his mind:
It had to be the kiss…