Aziraphale rather liked people. They wrote books, for one very important thing. And Aziraphale could not live without books. If someone cut him open, there’d be a fifty-fifty chance he’d start bleeding ink instead of the angelic substitute for blood. His home is stacked to the rafters with books and scrolls and parchment to the point that someone who didn’t know any better would claim he owned a bookshop. Books were humanity put to paper, wonderful, horrible humanity summed up in skritches of ink.
Nobody Up There understood. He’d tried, on the occasions he’d been around. But they all had smiting to do. Aziraphale never much liked smiting. It tended to leave things rather messy, and took the books away with it. He’d been to Gomorrah. Afterwards. He’d been to Egypt. Afterwards. He’d seen what the Ineffable Plan tended to mean for the people who were scribbled in on the wrong side of it. And it wasn’t as if humanity didn’t do worse things. He’d seen what happened to Baghdad, when the Mongols came and turned the rivers to ink. He’d wanted to sleep for a very long time after that, but he never took to sleeping the way Crowley did.
The problem with people was that they were so temporary. They were just tiny, fragile things. They never lasted very long, individually. Either they’d burn themselves out creating or they’d burn others in destroying. And sooner or later, everyone he knew and all the books he loved would be forgotten or changed or brushed aside by the people who held the pens, Up There or Down Below or on Earth. Ideas were dangerous. Give people ideas and well, who knows what could happen? And any book worth reading gave people ideas.
Up There never much liked books. Or people. Or him, come to think of it.
Sometimes it was lonely, being the only angel on Earth. But a heaven without books was a heaven not worth having. Here, there were books to read, and ducks to feed, and people to meet, and Crowley to talk to. That more than made up for it.
5/5
Aziraphale rather liked people. They wrote books, for one very important thing. And Aziraphale could not live without books. If someone cut him open, there’d be a fifty-fifty chance he’d start bleeding ink instead of the angelic substitute for blood. His home is stacked to the rafters with books and scrolls and parchment to the point that someone who didn’t know any better would claim he owned a bookshop. Books were humanity put to paper, wonderful, horrible humanity summed up in skritches of ink.
Nobody Up There understood. He’d tried, on the occasions he’d been around. But they all had smiting to do. Aziraphale never much liked smiting. It tended to leave things rather messy, and took the books away with it. He’d been to Gomorrah. Afterwards. He’d been to Egypt. Afterwards. He’d seen what the Ineffable Plan tended to mean for the people who were scribbled in on the wrong side of it. And it wasn’t as if humanity didn’t do worse things. He’d seen what happened to Baghdad, when the Mongols came and turned the rivers to ink. He’d wanted to sleep for a very long time after that, but he never took to sleeping the way Crowley did.
The problem with people was that they were so temporary. They were just tiny, fragile things. They never lasted very long, individually. Either they’d burn themselves out creating or they’d burn others in destroying. And sooner or later, everyone he knew and all the books he loved would be forgotten or changed or brushed aside by the people who held the pens, Up There or Down Below or on Earth. Ideas were dangerous. Give people ideas and well, who knows what could happen? And any book worth reading gave people ideas.
Up There never much liked books. Or people. Or him, come to think of it.
Sometimes it was lonely, being the only angel on Earth. But a heaven without books was a heaven not worth having. Here, there were books to read, and ducks to feed, and people to meet, and Crowley to talk to. That more than made up for it.