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Time moves much too slow when Crowley isn’t present.
Which is bad. Especially with the aftermath of their absolutely disastrous prior conversation weighing heavy on his mind. He doesn’t dwell on it, because if he did dwell on it, the ramifications of everything that was said and done would threaten to destroy him, but still—it’s continued presence is felt, like an ominous cloud hovering in the distance. There’s nothing to be done but to wait it out, and hope that it eventually blows over.
Aziraphale has no shortage of things with which to occupy his time, of course. Too many things, frankly. Emails, paperwork, meetings, paperwork, training, paperwork, spreadsheets, paperwork, paperwork, paperwork paperwork paperwork.
So much paperwork.
These tasks do not make the time move any faster. If anything, they slow it down even more. Heaven is horrible, but it is also boring, so unbelievably mind-numbingly boring, and Aziraphale hates being bored. He used to have a surefire way to keep himself from ever becoming bored, but that’s not exactly an option anymore. He can’t pick up the phone and expect to hear Crowley on the other end of the line any more than he can expect to be granted an audience with God. Everyone knows that God doesn’t speak to anyone, hasn’t for an incredibly long time now. She most certainly is not speaking to him.
In a feeble imitation of God, The Metatron chooses not to speak to Aziraphale either.
It does, however, watch him. Not constantly, not overtly, but just enough to remind Aziraphale that nowhere is safe from its prying eyes. Which is entirely unnecessary, really, that much was obvious, but oh well. The panopticon will do as it will, he supposes.
It’s just as well that it keeps its distance, actually. There’s nothing the two of them have to discuss. The Metatron is not an angel in the sense that Aziraphale is an angel—it is, instead, a walking, talking representation of the Word of God. It is Heaven in microcosm. It is a machine.
And how can he possibly hope to challenge a perfect, immortal machine?
Well, any way Aziraphale looks at it, he can’t.
Not alone, anyhow.
Unfortunately, his usual collaborator isn’t available at the moment, and the pickings amongst the sycophants of Heaven are, let’s just say… slim. And really, what is Aziraphale expected to do? Go paste up a poster in the break room asking for interested subterfuge candidates to report to his office? Something tells him that’s not liable to play out in his favor.
No, no matter how he looks at it, Aziraphale is, at least for now, stuck in a holding pattern. Which is fine. A good plan takes time to formulate—and even then, the correct opening in which to enact the plan may take longer yet still.
But Aziraphale is nothing if not patient. He has waited a long time for this opportunity, after all. The last thing he intends to do is squander it by acting rashly. And so, a plan to arrive at the real plan begins to form.
This prototype plan, if you will, is perfectly summed up by a quote from one of his absolute favorite authors. In fact, all human wisdom could be said to be contained within these two little words:
Wait and hope. 1
Hope arrives in the form of an angel.
An extremely low-ranking angel, to be specific. After the fact, Aziraphale will consult the organizational chart and confirm it: Muriel is positioned at the absolute bottom of the ladder. To go any lower, they’d have to establish a new rank—38th Degree Scrivener, or something equally inane. The fact that The Metatron handed over his beloved bookshop to someone so low on the totem pole must have been intended as some sort of insult. Which is fine. Aziraphale can suffer a simple insult.
But that it also, apparently, instructed them to routinely report in to Aziraphale’s office and run down the list of which books they’ve sold and for how much… now that’s just rubbing salt in the wound.
Still, Aziraphale takes the exercise in humility in stride. He’d already made the decision to start parting with his collection, anyway. So this is really no different. Aziraphale can accept each blow with grace, can maintain composure as they ransack his life’s work. He can wait patiently for 40 days and 40 nights—wander the desert for 40 years, even—until the ideal moment to strike presents itself.
He can do these things, because he is working towards a cause greater than himself.
And really, it’s not poor Muriel’s fault. They’re just following orders. He harbors no ill will regarding it. He forgives them: they know not what they do.
At least, that’s what Aziraphale initially assumes. He nearly misses the tip off that something is up—it takes him a minute or two, during one of their otherwise standard debriefings, to realize that something sounds a note wrong. “Daily sales, £183.03, closing time approximately–”
“Wait,” Aziraphale interrupts. “Did you say that you sold a copy of A Modest Proposal today?”
Muriel blinks, and then nods their head. “Yessir.”
That’s not right. “You said you sold a copy of A Modest Proposal last week. I only ever stocked the one copy.” This is true. Aziraphale owns multiples of plenty of books (in true obsessive collector fashion), but he has only ever owned a single copy of the Jonathan Swift essay. Mostly because he has conflicted feelings on the work. A righteous message, delivered in an incredibly crass fashion; not quite to Aziraphale’s taste. Muriel, for their part, appears to have been struck mute upon being presented with this contradiction in their testimony. He frowns at her, perplexed. “Did you sell it already, or not?”
Muriel falters. “O-of course I sold it!” Their shoulders square up, and for a moment Aziraphale momentarily feels rotten for calling them out, but then: “That’s my job, after all. Book-seller. Pretty much the best job ever. And I’m really good at it. So why wouldn’t I sell it?”
Pause. “I’m sure I don’t know,” Aziraphale says, slowly. “Why wouldn’t you…?”
Having been subjected to the tiniest amount of prodding, Muriel proceeds to unravel. “I don’t know,” they cry, “I have no idea! Because it definitely doesn’t bother me when a human gives me a bunch of strips of cloth and a pile of little metal disks in exchange for a whole entire book with all kinds of ideas in it, and then they take it with them, so I don’t even get to have access to it anymore! I mean, why would I want the book more than the cloth strips? It’s not like I do anything with the books, right? That’s not part of my assignment, is it? My title isn’t Book reader, it’s Book seller. So obviously all I do is sell them to people who probably don’t even alphabetize them correctly, or dust them regularly, or make sure the jackets don’t get nicked on the edges, or–” They stop mid-rant and divert their gaze to their feet, suddenly aware that they have spoken out of turn. “Um. Excuse me, sir.”
Now, normally, a situation like this would call for discretion. Ambushing your subordinate with the fact that you know they have performed actions that exceed their role is the kind of thing that makes them not trust you, makes them get nervous and shut down. And Muriel does seem plenty nervous. But they also seem wired—like something big is ready to burst out of them, if given the chance. And Aziraphale would be lying if he said he wasn’t naturally compelled to nurture a fellow angel’s budding interest in the wide world of human literature. So he lets curiosity get the better of him, and asks, “Which of my books have you been reading, if you don’t mind me asking?”
They startle for a moment, caught in the headlights. But then Muriel sees that he isn’t angry with them—in fact, he’s pleased—and they simmer down, their expression growing hopeful. Aziraphale expects them to eventually respond with something from the fiction section. A novel—Dickens, Hemingway, Tolstoy, that sort of thing. 2 Complex and engaging works, yes, but accessible. Or perhaps the series of young adult adventure literature that Adam incorporated into his collection; those would make sense for someone taking their first steps into–
“Well,” Muriel says, cautiously, “I’m nearly done with Anti-Oedipus.”
Aziraphale’s eyes widen. “You read Anti-Oedipus?” That’s… hard to believe. It’s, er, dense, to say the least. “I have to admit, I’m… surprised. Hard to get much out of that one unless you’re studying it on an advanced level.” Perhaps they meant they simply read the words on the page, without necessarily comprehending them? Fully digesting an entirely different thing than just completing it, after all. Even Aziraphale found Deleuze difficult to penetrate, at first. 3 “Did you… like it?”
“Oh, yes.” Muriel nods their head vigorously. “I’ve read it twice now, actually! Once I read up on Spinoza and Lacan, I went back and read it again. The weirdest thing happened: I realized there was so much more I understood the second time around compared to the first!”
Oh goodness. They cross-referenced. This is not what Aziraphale expected.
And nor, he realizes, with a start, is it something that The Metatron expected. After all, it had summarily dismissed them as “dim” when assigning them to tend to his bookshop. It must have thought there was no risk whatsoever in placing this particular angel in charge of Aziraphale’s meticulously crafted wealth of knowledge. Oh, Aziraphale thinks, here it is, the exact thing he’s been searching for, he’s found it: a flaw in the programming.
Now: how best to exploit it?
“Muriel,” Aziraphale begins. “Would you say that you enjoy reading books?”
Their eyes nearly bug out of their head. “Oh yes! Yes! It’s wonderful! You can learn so much, all without having to experience it first hand, and you really have such a large collection, and–” They pause. “Erm. Unless I wasn’t supposed to read the books, of course. Because they’re, um, yours. And… not mine. I’m just temporarily watching them. Oh, and, um, selling them,” they add, almost forgetting their script. “...Obviously.”
“Obviously,” Aziraphale agrees. “However,” he says, delicately, deliberately, in a way that will hopefully lead Muriel towards catching his drift, “I’ve found that in order to be a truly effective bookseller you have to actually know what it is that you’re selling. After all, a customer might ask you for a recommendation—and if you haven’t familiarized yourself with the product, what then?”
“Huh,” Muriel says, thinking that over. “That makes sense! I… think?” She furrows her brow; one can almost hear the gears turning. “So, basically, it’s like I have to read as many books as possible. If I want to be the best bookseller I can be, that is.” They look back up at Aziraphale, questioning. “Right?”
“Exactly right,” he answers.
She is positively ecstatic to have received his blessing. Their grin threatens to split their face in two. “Wow! This is… it’s perfect! I mean, I already thought being a bookseller was great, but this is amazing! This promotion is, like, the best thing that’s ever happened to me!”
At least one of them is having fun moving up the ladder. “I suppose I’ll leave you to it, then,” Aziraphale says. “Far be it for me to keep a fellow angel from their Godly work.”
Muriel nods and dismisses herself with a curtsey, in a hurry to return to her study. Once they’re gone, Aziraphale reclines back in his chair, recounting everything that he has taken away from this encounter.
There is a lot to account for.
To summarize:
Muriel likes to read. Muriel has a penchant for theory. Muriel possesses an insatiable desire to learn. Muriel is capable of (though not necessarily skilled at) lying to their superiors. Muriel is willing to falsify written records. Muriel is willing to be open and honest when discussing a shared interest. Muriel is unwilling to part with physical objects that she is attached to—which is to say that she has a personal stake in the continued existence of the bookshop, if not quite the planet Earth. Most importantly, Muriel is eager to follow along when presented with a script.
Yes, Aziraphale thinks, upon reviewing the facts. Yes, yes.
He can work with this.
It is interesting, isn’t it, how our limited perspective often leads us to make the wrong conclusion on things. It is equally remarkable, as well, how quickly the mind can adapt to reframing a situation. How, just like that—with one little conversation—Aziraphale comes to view Muriel’s dispatches from his former piece of Heaven on Earth as not just a minor indignity he is occasionally subjected to against his will, but, in a surprising turnabout, the undisputed high point of his day.
It very quickly becomes apparent that Muriel has hardly sold anything at all. The reports they assemble are more a list of what they’re currently reading through than an account of transactions rendered. Aziraphale hasn’t pried, but he finds himself wondering what methods she uses to shoo potential customers back out the door. His usual crotchety old man routine doesn’t seem quite her speed—but then, who knows? They’ve already soundly subverted his expectations as it is.
Today’s “sales report” is much like any other. Hobbes, Nietzsche, hooks, Foucault. Muriel tears through it all at a pace Aziraphale previously thought was impossible, and yet they seem impatient to get their hands on even more. They also clearly want to share their analysis of the things they’ve read, want to bounce their own ideas off of someone else, someone who knows what they’re talking about. Who better to discuss all this with than the person who introduced her to literature in the first place?
Still: Aziraphale makes a point to shut her down every time she tries.
He really doesn’t have the time to spare, first of all. Aziraphale knows himself; he knows that if he gets into a discussion about a mutual interest with someone even half as passionate as himself, they’ll wind up stuck, interchangeably info-dumping at each other for days. And as fun as that sounds, they are still on the clock. Deadlines wait for no one.
However, that’s not the only reason he continually curbs their enthusiasm. There is also this to consider: in Heaven, the walls have ears. The less specifics Muriel goes into about what, exactly, Aziraphale is encouraging her to read up on, the better. Names like Plato or Orwell don’t mean anything at all to The Metatron and its ilk, because it has never seen any reason to concern itself with piddly little things like the philosophies of man—and, if this plan has any chance at succeeding, it would be best to keep things that way. As far as it is concerned, Aziraphale is simply encouraging Muriel’s newfound hobby out of a misplaced sense of sentimentality. There is nothing else going on behind the scenes.
Plausible deniability is, as always, the name of the game.
And Aziraphale’s cover story is entirely plausible, to be sure. After all, no sane ruler would ever package and deliver the tools needed to overthrow them to their own underling. But perhaps Azirphale currently finds himself gripped by a temporary bout of insanity…? Happens to the best of us. “I’m surprised you’ve yet to dig into Freire,” he says, following another one of Muriel’s updates. The newest additions to her repertoire include Freud, Dewey, Fromm. Probably time to move onto something a bit more heretical. “I think you’ll find his work the logical next step, given what you’ve read previously,” he explains, perfectly innocently.
Muriel bounces on their heels, starving for any feedback they might receive, any at all. “Oh! Yes! I’ve been meaning to get around to him! Pega… pegda…” Pedagogy. That is the word they are looking for. As in, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a text which argues—to great effect, in Aziraphale’s opinion—that freedom can be achieved by even the most marginalized among us through the process of humanization. “Kinda a tongue-twister, innit? Well, however you say it, I guess I’ll have to move that one up in the queue.”
“I highly recommend that you do,” Aziraphale advises. And then, in a tone that can only be described as conspiratorial, he adds, “I remember it being a hit at book club.”
“Book club?” Muriel’s head lists precipitously to one side. “What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing,” Aziraphale lies. “Just a little group I put together once, years and years ago, that would meet up and share opinions on a previously assigned reading.” This effort had quickly dissolved into drama and in-fighting, but that’s neither here nor there. He really should have forseen that things would go that way, in retrospect; well-to-do women in the mid-1800s seemed to engage in gossip like it was an olympic sport. “Nothing like a little intellectual debate amongst friends.”
Muriel looks like she wants to cry. “Ooooooh, I’m so jealous,” they whine. “I wish I had friends that I could talk lit with...” They tap their pointer fingers together, and pout down at the floor.
Tragic, really, the way they seem to need permission before they do just about anything. But it's also extremely useful: it allows Aziraphale to steer them in precisely the direction they need to go. “Why not ask some of your coworkers? Surely there’s at least a few other scriveners with a latent interest in–”
Muriel interrupts him before he can finish setting up the pretext. “That’s a great idea!” they shout, nearly beside themselves with excitement. “And, as it turns out, I know exactly what book we could start out with!” As soon as the words leave their mouth, they turn and bolts out of his office.
Erm. Aziraphale finds himself a bit taken aback. They certainly took that idea and ran with it… literally. Maybe Muriel doesn’t need quite as heavy a helping hand as he previously thought…
Not five minutes later, Muriel zooms back in, this time cradling something in her arms.
“You know, I’d actually already thought a lot about where the best place to begin would be! If I wanted to start reading all over again from scratch, I mean,” Muriel explains. It sounds like the exact kind of thing she would do—comb back over all the great masterworks, just to see if she’d missed anything, eager to find out if any previously buried insights would reveal themselves to her. Aziraphale himself has returned to his favorites again and again for that same reason. When you revisit a true classic, it always feels like you’re reading it for the very first time. “And I figure this one’s the only choice. Plus, it’s so short! I want to avoid the super long stuff, at least at first. It wouldn’t be a very fun book club if I wound up scaring everyone off right from the get-go, right?” They present Aziraphale with a thin paperback—nothing more than a pamphlet, really.
It is a copy of The Communist Manifesto, replicated in Esperanto, published 1908. Quite the rare edition, and extremely delicate. Aziraphale paid a pretty penny to get his hands on it. Normally, he would quail at the thought of such a prized possession being passed around a group of uneducated, ignorant plebeians.
But, then again, isn’t that the exact audience a manifesto is written for? Educating the masses—that’s the point.
“Muriel,” Aziraphale says, “I think that’s a wonderful idea.”
The Scribe-turned-Bookseller-turned-Activist nearly squeals in joy, but manages to reign herself in right at the last second. Which is a relief. It would be unfortunate should she get too carried away and attract undue attention. “Yaaaaay,” they whisper, doing a model job of using their indoor voice. “Okay, so. Now I just need to make a flier, reserve a conference room, find some extra chairs…”
Ah. Time to pull the breaks. It is not especially wise to allow a bunch of subordinates to congregate in mass in order to discuss revolutionary propaganda.
Not within the confines of the office, in any case.
"Actually, Muriel," Aziraphale says offhandedly, "I think there may be rules against conducting extraneous activities on company property."
"Oh," they reply, crestfallen. "Aww..."
Aziraphale politely gives them a moment to reach the correct solution to this problem on their own. They don't. "Perhaps a relocation to an off-site facility might be in order?" They continue to show no signs of understanding. "Perhaps... a location outside the borders of heaven? That you currently have jurisdiction over?"
When the idea finally hits them, they nearly fall over. "Oh!! The–” They lower their voice to a whisper. “The bookstore!" Very perceptive, this angel is. More than most. “I mean, duh! A reading club where all the books are!” Muriel is, as they so often are, thrilled. “That’s brilliant, sir!”
Now, Aziraphale does not have much experience working in upper management. And the demands of his precarious new position mean that he does not have a great deal of free time with which to fully research the ins and outs of competent leadership. He has, however, stolen away enough time to discover this very useful piece of advice in a otherwise completely unhelpful self-help book:
If you want something done right, you do it yourself.
But if you want something done efficiently, you get others to do it for you.
Aziraphale cannot be seen fraternizing. He has not been in a safe enough position to be able to do so openly for a very long time now; not back when he was stationed on Earth, and certainly not here and now, where he is the primary subject of The Metatron’s prying eyes.
Muriel, however? Dim, powerless, invisible Muriel?
Muriel very much can.
In the past, Aziraphale was never especially popular amongst his coworkers.
Needless to say, these days, things are different.
The upper echelons, his fellow archangels in particular, behave like they have undergone a complete personality shift. They all suck up to him now, greeting him with beatific, child-like smiles plastered onto their faces. Meanwhile, their knuckles turn white, tightening their grip on the knives hidden behind their backs. None of them can fully disguise their bloodlust. They are all not-so-secretly rooting for his demise.
All, except for Saraqael.
Now there’s an odd one, that Saraqael! She’s one tough nut to crack—a true wild-card that defies any classification. On the one hand, she shows no signs of wanting to buck authority, but on the other, she makes no show of extending any undue deference towards her “betters”. Everyone earns approximately the same amount of respect from her, which is to say, very little. How she manages to look down on her peers despite them all towering about two feet above her is impossible to say. Aziraphale, in particular, she seems to regard as not much more than the dirt beneath her wheels.
Yes, the more Aziraphale thinks about it, the more he is sure that something about her is different. Furthermore, no one save him appears to have noticed this.
It’s worth investigating, in any case.
“Ah, Saraqael,” he calls, barely catching her at the conclusion of yet another meeting which could have been an email. “If I could perhaps borrow a moment of your time?”
She thinks it over before she responds, probably trying to come up with a good enough excuse to get out of having to speak to him. “What do you want,” she demands, after failing to come up with one in time.
“Not to worry, I won’t keep you long. I just hoped to pick your brain for a moment, that’s all.”
Saraqael huffs. She does not appear to be in the best of moods. In fact, she never does. “Make it quick.”
“Well,” Aziraphael begins, “I’ve actually been working on a presentation in my own time—a side project, if you will—and I thought you might be willing to advise on a few points. Perhaps, depending on how things go, I could even credit you as a co-author?” If her expression is any indication, this suggestion is received as an insult. “Are you familiar with the concept of DEI?”
As expected, she is not. “You’ll have to enlighten me.”
“Happily!” Aziraphale clasps his hands together. “It’s an acronym, you see. One that stands for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.”
Saraqael glares at him in a way that indicates that if it were not for the general etiquette observed within this workplace, she would have slaughtered him by now. “You are requesting my input,” she states, icily, in order to confirm that she heard that correctly, “on matters of diversity.”
“Oh yes,” Aziraphale chirps. “Diversity of thought, specifically.”
“There is no diversity of thought in Heaven,” she snaps, even though she just sat through the same strategy meeting Aziraphale did—one that Michael and Uriel hijacked for at least 20 minutes to quibble over something that they ultimately agreed upon. “There is only the infallible, unambiguous word of God.” Her eyes narrow, accusing. “You know this.”
Aziraphale is well aware of the company line. He just so happens to reject it. “Oh, but there is! The humans arrive here across all manner of denominations, after all.” They regularly kill each other over minor variations within these constructed belief systems, in fact. One can argue that the debate over whether Deus Incognito or Deus Absconditus provided the better model by which to know and worship God essentially ripped the church in half back in the 16th century. “The golden fields are occupied by Calvinists, Baptists, Pentecostalists, Lutherans, Seventh Day Advantists… Mormons.” Truthfully, there’s nothing that makes your run of the mill Catholic any more qualified to enter Heaven than a member of any of the more obscure denominations, such as, let’s say, the Paulicians. A recognition of the God of Abraham, Issac, and Jacob is all they check for at the pearly gates.
Well, that, and a record in good standing… but that goes without saying! The unrighteous are swiftly turned away at the door; security is positively airtight. It would be unheard of for someone who is not supposed to be here—let’s refer to this hypothetical intruder as a ‘murder hornet’ for the purposes of this thought experiment—to make their way into the depths of the hive. It would be even further fetched to suggest that this ‘murder hornet’ was coerced into joining the bees’ ranks in the first place. And the notion that the ‘murder hornet’ would then be placed in a position of power over the vast majority of the bees, even given a grandiose title within their own organizational hierarchy? Now that would be ridiculous. Entirely unthinkable. Perish the thought!
However. If such an absurd scenario were to somehow be uncovered… That would be indicative of a grave institutional problem indeed, would it not? It’d be a proper scandal. One far too big to simply sweep under the rug.
What would happen then, Aziraphale wonders.
Saraqael is silent, clearly reassessing him as he fumbles about, shuffling through his folder of research material. “You are playing with fire, Supreme Archangel,” she says, eventually.
Aziraphale has to disagree. On the contrary, this is, if anything, a safety measure. The most effective way to cover up an act of malicious compliance is to engage in a healthy amount of toothless insubordination. This works in much the same way that a truly skilled liar knows to occasionally be caught telling a fib, or in the way that a hunter knows to coat himself in the scent of a prey animal before pursuing game. Aziraphale knows that a costume isn’t donned just for fun—although it can indeed be great fun! More than just that, the image we project can, if wielded correctly, become one of our greatest tools. The easiest way to make a target believe you are what you say you are is to walk, talk, and act in accordance with their expectations.
And what Aziraphale’s adversaries always expect him to be is a bumbling, sentimental fool.
“Oh goodness,” Aziraphale exclaims, as a diagram mapping out the major schisms in western Christianity slips out from the poorly organized manilla folder he was carrying at his side and flutters to the floor. “Whoopsie daisy. You’ll have to excuse me.” He makes a fluttering motion with his hand. “Butterfingers.”
Saraqael must see something she likes, because as he bends down to pick the piece of paper up, she sighs, and says, “Forward me your little history lesson if you must.” Aziraphale glances up, surprised that she’s agreed so readily, and finds her expression deadly serious. “Just make sure your files are properly encrypted,” she warns. “The former occupant of your position couldn’t follow protocol to save his eternal life. It would be a pain to have to repeat the hiring process all over again.”
She’s quite good at doublespeak. Color him impressed—Aziraphale didn’t take her for an angel who knew how to dance.
“Excellent!” Aziraphale buzzes with excitement. “This is perfect! I’m greatly looking forward to your input on–”
“I made no promises about reading anything,” she clarifies, annoyed. “And you can forget co-authoring. I don’t put my name on anyone’s work but my own.”
Ah. That puts a damper on things. But fair enough.
“Oh, and do keep in mind,” she adds, while stifling a yawn, as though this conversation has bored her. This single, unnecessary gesture is a fantastic example of how things have always worked around here: everybody plays the fool. There is no exception to this rule. “Muriel happens to be my direct report. Not yours.”
…Huh. She is, isn’t she.
Noted.
Having said her piece, Saraqael dismisses herself without further ado. Aziraphale, after much deliberation, mentally assigns her the designation of “definitely maybe.”
Time passes. Muriel reports in. Aziraphale remains up to his neck in paperwork. All continues just as it should.
Muriel’s dispatches do not include any updates on how the book club is going. Aziraphale does not want them to. It would be prudent, after all, to maintain a healthy distance between himself and whatever little flock of increasingly learned angels Muriel is tending to. Aziraphale might currently occupy a (theoretically) powerful position here in Heaven, but that does not mean that he can offer anyone any protection. If anything, he is a liability, trapped as he is in his gilded cage. All he can truly offer is guidance, relayed from afar.
Which is not a problem. They say that one ought to keep their friends close and their enemies even closer. The Metatron surely thought that was what it was accomplishing by bringing Aziraphale back into the fold. The sword, however, cuts both ways—two can play at that game.
And Aziraphale plays exclusively to win.
Muriel, meanwhile, seems like she’s just thankful that someone actually picked her to be on their team. They’re as happy as ever, all smiles and pleasantries, but there is a noticeably quieter energy about them—they’ve a lower-key, more tightly put-together presence now, maybe—ever since they got their little club meetings off the ground. Aziraphale wonders if having an excuse to socialize with others might have been the very thing they needed, questions whether this is the first time in a while they’ve had the chance to truly connect with their peers. If so, that’s a shame. Heaven wasn’t always such a thoroughly compartmentalized place, you know. Before the rebellion, the various angelic departments were much more integrated with each other, were encouraged to act neighborly towards each other. Communication was freer, the general vibe around the office was lighter. Things were different. Very different. In fact, if he didn’t know any better, then he might even be compelled to say that things were better.
Oh, but there’s no use in dwelling on the past, is there? Not when Aziraphale has a future to secure.
Which might be easier said than done, he realizes, when, one day, Muriel stops dead in the middle of relaying their fictional business transactions and blurts, out of nowhere, “you should join us sometime, sir.”
“I-” Aziraphale blinks at them, opens his mouth and shuts it again. This is not part of their script. “What?”
“Oh gosh that was forward of me wasn’t it,” Muriel utters with a nervous exhale. “Gah! Sorry, I’m sorry! I couldn’t figure out how else I was supposed to say it,” they confess. Which… is by design. Because they are not supposed to say this. This breaks the illusion. This compromises everything. “I just felt really weird about excluding you. Like, it’s so weird! I have all these friends now, plus I get to read tons of books, and you’ve always been so nice to me even though I totally thought you were a no good dirty traitor when I first met you!” Oh, did they, now? “And you’re not! You’re seriously not! You’re actually really, really kind! I mean,” they finish, “it’s not like any of the other archangels would ever bother being friends with a nobody like me.”
Oh goodness, Aziraphale thinks, his stomach sinking. They have such an incredibly good and pure heart. The true salt of the Earth.
“Muriel,” he replies, “I am not your friend.”
Muriel stares back at him. “You’re not?” She doesn’t look upset. Instead, she looks perplexed. As if she does not believe that he believes what he is saying.
“No, dear,” Aziraphale says, regretfully. Because of course he’s not her friend—how could he be, when a friend is not someone that you refer to with the title of sir? No, a friend is someone who is your equal. A friend is someone who takes your best interests into account. A friend is someone who communicates on the same wavelength as you, who innately respects you, who always does their best to do right by you. A friend is someone you can look in the eye and not be afraid to speak freely to, even when the two of you adamantly disagree with each other. Above all, a friend is someone who is honest with you when it matters most. “I am your boss.”
In retrospect, Aziraphale admits that that conversation maybe could have gone better.
Despite his repeated protests, Muriel had simply not heard what he was trying to say about the importance of maintaining the professional veneer of the mentor-mentee relationship—they’d either missed his meaning entirely or understood it and refused to accept it. Knowing how observant they are, Aziraphale assumes it must have been the latter. Muriel couldn’t hide their grin, had laughed and said suuuuure thing Mister Supreme Archangel sir, told him to think their invitation over before their next—air quotes included—”sales report”, and all but skipped out the door. Right before they’d left, they’d even turned and winked at him in an incredibly conspicuous manner, much too cute for their own good. Troubling stuff, to say the least.
Ah well. No matter. It’s not her fault. Aziraphale simply wasn’t clear enough in his messaging. Sometimes, actions are needed where words do not suffice.
…Which brings us to the final stage of the plan.
To be perfectly honest, Aziraphale was hoping to put this part off for just a little while longer. Mostly because it’s… well… mean. Normally, that would not give him pause. Aziraphale has no issue with getting a little hostile when the situation calls for it, when the target of his ire is asking for it. Of course, he feels no ire towards Muriel at all—he likes them very much, in fact, finds them incredibly endearing—but that doesn’t change the nature of the predicament they currently find themselves in. By all accounts, he’s left with no other choice.
…Although, he’d really prefer not to.
Oh, how did that song go? He only heard part of it before he groused at Crowley to change the radio to something more palatable, but the chorus stuck with him. Right, yes, that was the line: “you’ve got to be cruel to be kind.” Ugh. What a dreadful little ditty.
Regardless, the good ship Pretense has been upended, and it must be righted—for both of their sakes. The innocence of their association needs to be reaffirmed; there’s nothing untoward going on over here, whyever do you ask? Luckily, Aziraphale just so happens to be a master at establishing this very thing: he has had lots, and lots, and lots of practice maintaining a facade. Come to think of it, that’s the only reason he’s even managed to make it this far.
See, there is an important distinction between one who is in the closet and one who is—ahem—on the low. It’s a matter of command: is the denial driving you, or are you driving the denial? Inconvenient feelings are no different than any other feelings, when it comes down to it: with enough self-discipline, they can be turned off and on like a switch.
It is clear, however, that this is not quite where Muriel’s head is at. What’s going on in their psyche is a bit more like blowing bubbles. There are countless bits of contradictory information floating around up there, occasionally running into each other—but instead of actually coming into conflict, they gently bounce off in the opposite direction, no harm done. So long as everything remains sealed off, contained in its neat little capsule, no idea has to challenge any other, and so they can all happily coexist. Every idea from every book she’s ever read lives together in perfect harmony in her mind; the matter of sorting out who is right and who is wrong has simply not occurred to her. What need be resolved? God’s in Her Heaven, and so all's right with the world.
Unfortunately, should Heaven have its way, all will very much not be right with the world. And so Aziraphale is forced to pop a couple of bubbles. The first bubble being the idea that higher ups (barring, of course, The Highest) are not to be trusted, as their interests will always oppose the interests of the rank and file—the common man. The second bubble being, of course, that Aziraphale is awfully high up.
Aziraphale imagines they will reach the necessary conclusion immediately. Muriel is an incredibly perceptive little angel, after all. They had an accurate read on him from the very moment they first put eyes on him: he is a traitor, just as they’d thought.
Aziraphale sighs, lets his heart be hardened, and presses send on an email that’s been sitting in his drafts folder for weeks.
Subject: Workforce Reduction
Cc: (none)
Bcc: Aaeros, Aalfricael, Abmiel, Abquitel, Accillyon, (+777 others)
Fellow Servants of the Most High God,
After six thousand years of rapid growth in clientele and the recent success in enacting the Second Coming, we are now facing uncertain headwinds that require us to refocus our approach to the market. That change in focus leads to fewer entities required to deliver the souls of the righteous to their eternal reward, since, as you are all already aware, life on Earth has concluded. As a result, we are announcing a workforce reduction today.
A reduction in workforce is a difficult decision and one we do not make lightly. Everyone here is a highly valued member of the team. We simply need a smaller team going forward. After extensive, thoughtful work by our senior leaders, we have created a reduction plan, identified impacted employees and we are now ready to implement the plan.
All impacted employees will be notified on XXXXXX by XXXXXX. Meeting invites will begin going out first thing XXXXXX morning. An AR representative will relay the necessary steps involved in the return of company property (including corporations, halos, divine weaponry, et al.) and brief employees on the offboarding process. Your cooperation throughout this challenging process is greatly appreciated.
I wish my first email to all of you was of a different nature, but I knew when I took this role that it was highly likely my first email to you would be announcing a workforce reduction. I’m sorry to start like this, but I am certain that this is the correct move and one that will make us a stronger and more resilient team going forward.
Blessings,
Supreme Archangel Aziraphale
~
“Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.” Psalm 37:1 4
Aziraphle counts to ten, then presses send a second time.
Subject: Workforce Reduction [CORRECTION]
Cc: (none)
Bcc: Aaeros, Aalfricael, Abmiel, Abquitel, Accillyon, (+777 others)
Please disregard my previous email. It was sent in error.
Blessings,
Supreme Archangel Aziraphale
~
“Fret not thyself because of evildoers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity.” Psalm 37:1
It’s a masterstroke, if Aziraphale does say so himself.
To the naked eye, nothing happens. And why would it? Aziraphale constructed the mailing list so that only members of the bottom echelons—the lowest of the low, 30th Degree and down—were included. The odds that any recipient of the email would endanger themselves by going to a higher-up for clarification after being explicitly instructed to disregard by the big boss himself are essentially zero. The odds that any higher-up would actually give a lesser angel the time of day should they unwisely request an explanation are literally zero. The odds that a recipient of the email might pull another recipient aside and whisper, in hushed tones, ‘do you have any idea what that was about?’ are very low, likely somewhere in the single digit percentage points—but, crucially, not zero.
Where there is even a sliver of a chance, there, one can expect to find hope. Where hope is found, faith is never far behind. At the end of eternity, only three things shall remain: faith, hope, and—greatest amongst these—love.
And, really, why would he go through the trouble of arranging all this, if not for love?
Aziraphale fully intends to reap all that he has sown. He has placed all his chips on this, has maxed out his leverage: he is betting the farm. This is a high risk game Aziraphale is playing, the same game he has been playing for eons, a game that he does not foresee himself losing. The stakes are now double or nothing. The winner takes it all.
Well, actually, that’s not entirely true, is it. There is something that he has had to give up, at least temporarily, as a result of this latest gamble. It’s an obvious, undeniable sign that the paradigm has quantifiably shifted: Muriel no longer talks to Aziraphale.
This, of course, was the intended outcome.
They remain friendly. They continue to brief him on the activity of the bookshop’s till, but these check-ins are now strictly business. Sometimes, before they turn to leave, they pause, considering him from the corner of their eye. Aziraphale doubts that they resent him, or anything like that. It’s much more likely that they simply no longer know what to make of him.
Which is a positive development in their relationship. If this is going to go anywhere, if the book club has any hope of evolving into that dirty little word that every corporate stooge fears—a union—then they need to become much more wary. Especially of him, Supreme Archangel that he is.
Still. It’s a shame. He very much enjoyed their little chats. He thinks, sometimes, about how nice it would be to actually have a friend around here. 5 It would provide a nice break from the doldrum of paperwork, in any case. But Aziraphale did not come here to make friends. On the contrary, he walked into Heaven with the intention of making plenty of enemies. As far as he’s concerned, the more the merrier.
You know, there’s something about the constant tension following Aziraphale everywhere he goes that leaves him feeling rather nostalgic. It reminds him of the general mood in Catalonia, circa the first half of 1936. Nothing had happened, not yet, but something was palpably brewing, you could taste it in the air. The republicans and the nationalists, the elders and the youth, the revolutionaries and the pacifists—they would pass each other in the square each morning and hold each other's gaze for just a moment too long, as if silently asking: “you can feel it too, right?”
Muriel watches him in much the same way, these days.
The Metatron watches him too, closer than it ever has before. It can also sense that something is up, something it cannot quite pinpoint; Aziraphale can see a nervousness in the glare it fixes him with during meetings, around the water cooler, when they pass each other in the hallway. It is welcome to search Aziraphale all it wants: there’s nothing to see here. Turns out The Word of God is a surprisingly shoddy strategist: it got so wrapped up in the minutia of its game of 4-D chess, over-accounting for the tiniest movements of the various bishops and the rooks, that it missed a pawn being promoted to queen right under its nose.
“One copy of Rules for Radicals by Saul D. Alinsky, £11.52,” Muriel sing-songs, chipper as anything. “One copy of A Theology of Liberation by Gustavo Gutierrez, £23.10. And…” She pauses for a moment too long, just long enough that Aziraphale looks up from the spreadsheet he is currently combing through. “One copy of Freedom: A Disease Without Cure by Slavoj Žižek, £13.75,” they say, maintaining solid eye contact.
Ah! Fantastic. She’s begun to branch out into unknown territory: Aziraphale has never owned a copy of that book.
He hums a disinterested acknowledgement, and returns to his work. Muriel concludes their report, and then leaves to return to theirs. No one is any the wiser.
Aziraphale does not spend much time wondering about what, exactly, Muriel is getting up to. They are an autonomous being, capable of making their own choices, and it’s the least he can do to respect that fact. It’s not for him to monitor their every step, nor to intervene further; not this late in the game, at least. Aziraphale’s role here was simply to wind them up, and then let them go. You know, the watchmaker analogy used to be somewhat popular amongst enlightened thinkers before falling out of fashion around the late 1800s—thanks a lot, Darwin—but Aziraphale always remained partial to it. He’s long since accepted that he believes in a different sort of God than anyone else. It’s a tad lonely, being the solitary holder of his particular brand of belief, but at least it feels true to himself. At least it feels honest.
In a way, he now finds himself right back where he started: time moves slowly, little of interest occurs, and he’s fresh out of valid distractions to pull him away from the ever-present mountain of frivolous tasks this job demands he complete. So it goes—in the end, as in the beginning, there’s really nothing that Aziraphale can do.
Nothing, aside from wait and see.
1. The famous final words of The Count of Monte Cristo, written by none other than Alexandre Dumas. A gripping tale of treachery and comeuppance, faith and perseverance, the darkness lurking inside the heart of every man, and the impeccable timing of God’s divine judgment. A masterpiece, in Aziraphale’s opinion. return to text
2. Muriel has not touched any books by these authors yet. What they have read, as far as fiction goes, is the copy of The Crow Road that Crowley handed them, and Aziraphale’s personally annotated copy of Story of O by Pauline Réage. They found both of them a little hard to follow, to be honest. Those books have human characters in them, and the humans interact with each other in all sorts of weird, foreign, ambiguous ways, and Muriel doesn’t fully understand the nuances. To them, theory is much more straightforward and self-explanatory! return to text
3. The concept of Bodies Without Organs especially vexed him. Perhaps because he literally possesses one. And that’s to say nothing of Rhizomes… return to text
4. Actually, Aziraphale’s favorite part of this psalm is “the meek shall inherit the Earth”, but putting that as his email signature would be akin to giving the game away. return to text
5. It would also be nice to have a certain fiery redhead perched on the edge of his desk, ready and waiting to scare Sandalphon off the next time he comes around asking to borrow his stapler. But then, we can’t always get what we want, can we? Actually, now that Aziraphale thinks about it, if he’d said “seductive secretary” instead of “second in command”, Crowley might have given in. Darn. return to text