Closed RP: Aziraphale and Crowley
mood: tired
The tea shop wasn't open that day. It was the first day (other than Sundays, or what he thought were probably Sundays) since setting up at the cafe that the angel hadn't gone and tended the place for at least a few hours.
Mainly, this was because he'd spent most of the day sleeping.
Aziraphale didn't know what was wrong with him. He had little grasp of terms like clinical depression, and if he had, it would never have occurred to him that they might apply to himself.
What he did know was that lately he'd been unaccountably tired all the time, angry at a number of people who most likely didn't deserve it (and at least one who probably did, but whom he ought to forgive anyway just on general principle,) uninterested in food or books or anything else that he normally enjoyed, and on a few alarming occasions recently, close to tears for absolutely no reason at all.
Like a human, if he had known it, some of this could be written off as a very logical reaction to being stuck in a frustrating and increasingly frightening situation over which he had no control. That, and the ugly stories he'd got from Kira and Setsuna, Sam and Dean about entire worlds where evil apparently reigned supreme and where God was either absent or impersonated by some horrible sadistic monster (or both.) He had no answer to those tales, could neither reject their reality nor reconcile it with the faith that he literally depended on for his very existence; and his old standby of ineffable was, at long last, starting to fail him. All he could do was try not to think about it, but his own considerable intelligence worked against him in that respect.
The fact that he was not human only complicated matters further.
It had been some time since he'd been able to bring himself to seek solace in the Presence. It, He, was still there, of course; always just on the edge of Aziraphale's awareness, a bright spot in the growing shadow that seemed to have fallen over him. But to shut the world away and come before his Lord sullied with so much wrath and resentment and doubt would have been like walking into Westminster Cathedral covered in filth. Shame and disgust at his own weakness--and the fear that, if he should find peace within the Presence, he might not be able to bring himself to leave it--kept him firmly grounded in the physical world. Rather, the ugly, plastic mockery of His good Earth that he was slowly growing to loathe.
When Crowley's rage had got the better of him, he had rather sensibly channeled it into a minor explosion all in one go. Aziraphale wasn't given to damaging the crockery, and at the core of his own distress was the patent wrongness of everything around him, so his own outlet was taking a subtler (but ultimately no less destructive) form.
Silently and subconsciously, entirely unaware that he was doing it, he had declared war on the park.
Everywhere he went, things were being fixed. Clocks quietly wound themselves to match the correct hour, according to the position of the sun or moon in the sky. Faux wrought-iron transmuted from rubber to the real thing. Plastic turned to wood or metal or stone. The effect lasted only as long as it took the park to 'fix' it after he'd passed, but as practically everything around him was false or unnatural in some sense or another, he was continually bleeding away a tremendous amount of energy.
Possibly most seriously, it had started to affect his own corporation. He was losing weight. Because that was what one did when one didn't eat, it was a matter of natural law. The lack of food didn't really hurt him, and he certainly could do without the extra pounds, but the sheer subliminal effort of fighting off the park's attempts to put him back where he'd started...
Well, it was small wonder he'd been sleeping so much. It only made him more unhappy when he woke to find he'd wasted most of a day in slothful indulgence. In his own mind, if he couldn't manage to shake this black mood, it was his duty to at least put a good face on things.
Of all sins, despair was most loathesome to His eyes. He had to remember that.
With that in mind, Aziraphale tried to motivate himself to get up and do something useful, but eventually wound up sitting in his armchair with an unopened book in his hands, staring listlessly at nothing.
The tea shop wasn't open that day. It was the first day (other than Sundays, or what he thought were probably Sundays) since setting up at the cafe that the angel hadn't gone and tended the place for at least a few hours.
Mainly, this was because he'd spent most of the day sleeping.
Aziraphale didn't know what was wrong with him. He had little grasp of terms like clinical depression, and if he had, it would never have occurred to him that they might apply to himself.
What he did know was that lately he'd been unaccountably tired all the time, angry at a number of people who most likely didn't deserve it (and at least one who probably did, but whom he ought to forgive anyway just on general principle,) uninterested in food or books or anything else that he normally enjoyed, and on a few alarming occasions recently, close to tears for absolutely no reason at all.
Like a human, if he had known it, some of this could be written off as a very logical reaction to being stuck in a frustrating and increasingly frightening situation over which he had no control. That, and the ugly stories he'd got from Kira and Setsuna, Sam and Dean about entire worlds where evil apparently reigned supreme and where God was either absent or impersonated by some horrible sadistic monster (or both.) He had no answer to those tales, could neither reject their reality nor reconcile it with the faith that he literally depended on for his very existence; and his old standby of ineffable was, at long last, starting to fail him. All he could do was try not to think about it, but his own considerable intelligence worked against him in that respect.
The fact that he was not human only complicated matters further.
It had been some time since he'd been able to bring himself to seek solace in the Presence. It, He, was still there, of course; always just on the edge of Aziraphale's awareness, a bright spot in the growing shadow that seemed to have fallen over him. But to shut the world away and come before his Lord sullied with so much wrath and resentment and doubt would have been like walking into Westminster Cathedral covered in filth. Shame and disgust at his own weakness--and the fear that, if he should find peace within the Presence, he might not be able to bring himself to leave it--kept him firmly grounded in the physical world. Rather, the ugly, plastic mockery of His good Earth that he was slowly growing to loathe.
When Crowley's rage had got the better of him, he had rather sensibly channeled it into a minor explosion all in one go. Aziraphale wasn't given to damaging the crockery, and at the core of his own distress was the patent wrongness of everything around him, so his own outlet was taking a subtler (but ultimately no less destructive) form.
Silently and subconsciously, entirely unaware that he was doing it, he had declared war on the park.
Everywhere he went, things were being fixed. Clocks quietly wound themselves to match the correct hour, according to the position of the sun or moon in the sky. Faux wrought-iron transmuted from rubber to the real thing. Plastic turned to wood or metal or stone. The effect lasted only as long as it took the park to 'fix' it after he'd passed, but as practically everything around him was false or unnatural in some sense or another, he was continually bleeding away a tremendous amount of energy.
Possibly most seriously, it had started to affect his own corporation. He was losing weight. Because that was what one did when one didn't eat, it was a matter of natural law. The lack of food didn't really hurt him, and he certainly could do without the extra pounds, but the sheer subliminal effort of fighting off the park's attempts to put him back where he'd started...
Well, it was small wonder he'd been sleeping so much. It only made him more unhappy when he woke to find he'd wasted most of a day in slothful indulgence. In his own mind, if he couldn't manage to shake this black mood, it was his duty to at least put a good face on things.
Of all sins, despair was most loathesome to His eyes. He had to remember that.
With that in mind, Aziraphale tried to motivate himself to get up and do something useful, but eventually wound up sitting in his armchair with an unopened book in his hands, staring listlessly at nothing.