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Aziraphale stands beside his old desk and sips his tea.
It’s a lovely cup. Brewed to perfection, of course; after so many centuries on Earth he should bloody well know how to make a good cup of tea. Just the right amount of milk and sugar, sweet and warm and comforting.
It’s strange, though. He’s stood here by the window and drank countless cups of tea over time, but there’s something wrong with the taste, something…lacking. He can’t imagine what. How very odd.
But no matter, it’s only tea. He takes another sip.
It’s an indulgence, of course. He shouldn’t be drinking tea, shouldn’t be here at all in truth. He should be up in Heaven, planning for the Second Coming. Overall his transition to the position of Supreme Archangel has gone rather well, despite the upheaval and uncertainty surrounding the change. How strange and incomprehensible Gabriel’s actions are! And yes, it had been a wrench to leave his beloved bookshop, but it was Aziraphale’s responsibility to step in and fill the place and do the best he could for the Great Plan. That’s his duty, of course. He would never have considered any other option, and is honoured that the Metatron trusts him with the task.
In short, there’s no reason for him to feel as unsettled as he does.
He can’t deny he is, however. The feeling is even stronger here than it has been up Above, and it’s been quite distracting there. A constant niggling feeling that something is deeply, fundamentally wrong, somehow, something missing. He put it down at first to an overzealous attachment to his old human clothing, now discarded in place of something less worn and more appropriate for a representative of the Divine. He did love his human trappings, but even so it doesn’t seem enough to account for the sense of displacement.
Tea doesn’t seem to help either, though it does give him something to do with his hands, which is always welcome. One can only hold them clasped for so long before feeling one is grasping for support somehow, if only from one’s own self.
Aziraphale tries not to think of how lonely he feels, with no humanity around him.
One of the floorboards behind him squeaks and he smiles with a bit of an ache in his chest, recognising the exact note of the creak. The dear bookshop! His oldest and closest friend, for all that it’s inanimate. At least it’s in good hands, even if those hands aren’t his.
“It’s these, your Supreme Archangelness–”
Aziraphale turns and smiles at Muriel. “Just Aziraphale, my dear, please.”
Muriel smiles back awkwardly. They’ve taken to dressing more as he once did, in the belief that such clothing is the correct ‘uniform’ for a bookseller of Earth. They even have a bowtie. It’s sweet, if a little unnerving, not least as the clothing is all a creamy off-white colour, all the exact same shade, just as the ‘Inspector Constable’ outfit has been. The one exception is a small enamel pin shaped like a teacup, apparently a gift from Nina across the road. Muriel goes faithfully every day to purchase a ‘cupperty’, which they never actually drink but greatly enjoy holding while reading a book. Aziraphale rather envies them the ritual.
Muriel currently has several stacks of notebooks of varying ages in their arms, and places them on the desk next to him. It had taken great courage for them to send a message asking to see him, Aziraphale knows, though the message itself had been a bit of a muddle. Something he needed to see that they didn’t understand or know what to do with and could he please just come have a look if he could spare the time they knew he must be extremely busy only they had a feeling it was important. Aziraphale doesn’t know Muriel well, but they are doing an exemplary job of looking after the bookshop and not selling any of the books, so he felt he rather owed it to them. Besides, he missed Earth and was finding his work rather hard going for some reason and hoped it might do him good.
Aziraphale picks up one of the notebooks and examines it. It’s excellent quality, leatherbound and with no damage to the spine at all, though a bit worn away at the edges. It’s also very familiar. “My old journals?” he says, frowning as he tries to decide if he considers this an invasion of privacy.
“Yes.” Muriel leans up on their toes a bit, leaning nervously over them. “I hope it’s all right that I read them, I mean, I wouldn’t want to–but I was told to care for all the books in the bookshop, and these are, well, books in the bookshop, and they weren’t locked or encrypted or anything. So I began reading them as well, only there’s a lot in them I don’t understand–”
Aziraphale sighs a little, trying to be patient. “My dear child, of course there would be, you haven’t had the benefit of thousands of years living on Earth, I imagine there’s quite a lot you have left to learn. I wish I could help more, but I’m afraid–”
But Muriel is shaking their head, bouncing more on their toes. “No no no, not about Earth, I can learn about Earth from all the other books. Just…” They bite their lip and pick up one of the other notebooks, flipping through it until they come to a particular page. “Here, look at this.”
And they hand him the diary.
It’s his handwriting, unquestionably. He remembers the years when this was his primary journal, the early 1600s. Years of plague and plays, humanity at both its best and worst around him in abundance. This appears to be some thoughts on the wonderful playwright Shakespeare, who’d recently gotten a theatre of his own and been performing what would become his best works. He remembered it very fondly, particularly the opening night of Hamlet. He can still taste the grapes he’d bought.
He does not at all remember drawing the face sketched into the middle of the page.
Aziraphale frowns. It’s a compelling face, certainly. Angular, one eyebrow slightly raised, a pair of small dark spectacles covering the eyes. Waves of hair to either side–red hair, he’s suddenly sure, though there’s nothing in the sepia lines to indicate one way or another. A beard that looks as though it would be more at home on a goat.
It’s the faint smile that strikes him to the heart. He can read amusement and tolerance and genuine enjoyment there, see the laugh waiting behind the lips. He knows that smile, that mouth, that jaw, those cheekbones, the quirked eyebrow, the eyes he can’t see behind the glasses. He knows this person, he’s sure, as sure as he knows his own name.
But he’s never seen him before.
“There’s pictures of him everywhere,” Muriel says. Aziraphale is only half paying attention, still entranced by that slight curve of lip, the lines in the skin next to it. “In every journal, all the way back to the first one. And I know humans don’t live that long, and, well, it’s just…” They take a deep breath. “You say yourself that he’s a demon? Several times? The demon Crowley, your wily adversary. Or sometimes you call him a serpent. Apparently you did quite a lot of things together?”
Aziraphale looks at the words below the picture. ...Upon further reflection I suspect Crowley may have cheated at the coin toss that sent me to Edinburgh. I would be more vexed had he not so amply fulfilled his word regarding the success of Hamlet, which is quite wonderful, and if he had not paid for several rounds of sack at Deadman’s Place. Even so, I must remember to be cautious when betting with him in the future…
Almost feverishly Aziraphale flips through the pages, looking for more pictures, and when he comes to the end of one book he picks up the next. Words leap out from the pages, times and events he remembers, and Crowley’s name is in almost all of them. There are other sketches. There’s the lines of a hand, delicate long fingers holding a wine glass or a fork or a pen. A snake’s head. A quill made from a black feather–he has that quill, he’s almost sure it’s one he owns, a favourite, though come to think of it he can’t remember when he last saw it. Another hand, this time holding the handles of a bookbag he’s sure he owns.
And that face, again and again, a hundred variations. Roman curls under a silver laurel wreath, long hair with small braids, cut short and topped with a trilby. Dozens of expressions as well, brows furrowed in vexation or head thrown back as he laughs, long throat exposed. Smiles, frowns, excitement, annoyance, smirking and sneering and questioning. And the eyes, snake eyes, sometimes hidden or half-hidden by dark glasses, but always, always turned towards Aziraphale, he knows. He knows.
He doesn’t know how he knows.
“I don’t remember drawing these,” he says quietly. He’s forgotten Muriel standing next to him, watching as he flips through the records of his own past. He touches the name on the page as though that will impart some meaning, some explanation.
Crowley.
“Supreme Archangel?” Muriel looks nervous but determined. “Who is Crowley?"
“I don’t know.” Aziraphale stares at the name and feels the unsettled something inside him suddenly firm with purpose. This is important, this is crucial. He can’t say why, but he’s sure of it. “But I think we should find out.”