Chapter Text
Wrath
The first time Aziraphale feels wrath is in 48 BC.
It's the library, of course. Up until now, every time something terrible has happened on Earth Aziraphale's feelings about it have been quite complicated. If anger presented itself he drowned it out with sorrow and compassion, because to feel anger at human tragedy would be to feel anger at God. It is all part of the Divine Plan, and Aziraphale believes in that Plan. He has to. His faith grows stronger every day, because he couldn't bear to witness all of humanity's pain and suffering if he didn't believe it was for a reason.
All the same, he can't understand about the books. Books do not have souls. Books do not need to be exposed to evil so they may have the opportunity to save themselves by choosing good. A book martyred in the flames does not shed its sins and enter into Heaven. It just burns.
So Aziraphale wrestles with a new feeling in Alexandria, not yet knowing what to call it. He feels like smiting something. He feels like smiting Caesar, but he knows the flames were not meant for the library, and he also knows he can't interfere that much without Heaven demanding to know why.
It feels like his lungs stay tight with smoke for years.
By 793 when the Vikings are busy destroying monasteries, Aziraphale can put a name to what he's feeling. But it's all right, he reasons, because the books being destroyed this time are gospels; it's righteous wrath he feels, not just wrath. He's only reacting as he's meant to.
He tells himself that several times, over the next few centuries. It's all right to feel angry about the destruction of bibles. But in 1193 he is in Nalanda, due to a lost coin toss with Crowley (he does have the worst luck with their coin tosses), and as the Turks reach the university the world's largest repository of Buddhist wisdom turns to ashes before his eyes. The loss he feels, the anger, is no less than at the monasteries. Aziraphale can no longer pretend it is his God's wrath he is feeling.
A few years later, Crowley mentions with an air of studied unconcern that he was commended for the particularly vicious way he carried out the temptation in Nalanda. There's an invitation buried in his tone, an offer to listen, but Aziraphale chooses to ignore it. Crowley lets the matter drop.
In Constantinople (always in Constantinople, always the holy wars and the holy cities as the humans push each other back and forth along the same invisible lines), Aziraphale makes Crusaders drop their swords from fear, and forbids their torches from kindling, but it does not matter. It never matters. Books, and knowledge, are too flammable.
Then, in 1258, the Mongols sack Baghdad. Aziraphale sits on the banks of the Tigris and watches the water turn black with ink. He himself translated many of the volumes in the House of Wisdom, tomes of mystic poetry and experimental math and medicinal herbals now thrown into the river to drown. He stares at the inky water and feels a hot itch where his wings are gathering, feels like it would be nothing at all to take down a human army or two. He finds he no longer particularly cares how God feels about it.
That is his last clear memory of Baghdad. Things turn foggy after that, the way a great deal of wine will make them do. He knows he was still on the banks of the Tigris when Crowley and the wine found him, because he remembers shoving Crowley into it. Remembers being pulled down in his turn by his ankle, flailing and spluttering and furious. The fight that follows is a mess. Crowley is determined to become the target of Aziraphale's anger, even if it means brawling in the river while the city wails and shrieks and bleeds around them. Aziraphale knows that's what he's doing, but it works on him anyway, because Crowley is right, and Crowley is infuriating when he's right. Crowley is infuriating when he's smug, and infuriating when he's blithe, and infuriating when he tries to manipulate Aziraphale; infuriating when he thinks he can trick Aziraphale into thinking Crowley's being evil instead of breathtakingly kind. He has the gall to stand there an arm's length away, chest deep in the ink-burdened river, and act like he isn't unreachable. Act like he isn't the only being in the universe who understands Aziraphale or ever will and he's a demon, he's unsaveable. Aziraphale can never return the favor Crowley is doing for him now.
Crowley keeps him drunk for weeks. It numbs the anger in a way Aziraphale suspects the demon is already intimately familiar with. He has very little memory of that time, but he knows that Crowley was there, keeping him company and keeping him safe and waiting for him to be done working through it. One day he wakes in a room somewhere on Cyprus, feeling clean and peaceful, and finds Crowley sitting at the window, watching the waves.
From then on, whenever Crowley fails to offer a coin toss for a temptation/blessing combo that falls too near a war zone or a point of ideological conflict, Aziraphale pretends not to notice. They are not fooling each other, but they do not need to. The fact that Crowley shields him from the sin of wrath is just one more of the countless silent obstacles sunk between them; jagged wrecks they never speak of but deftly navigate around, two ships at home in treacherous waters.
The fact of Aziraphale's anger at him, for being everything he wants and nothing he can have, is also sunk. But this wreck lies closer to the surface, and Aziraphale knows some day they will flounder on it. And drown.