The Angel in The Window

A Good Omens fanfiction

"Excuse me, frightfully sorry to interrupt, but I thought–" Aziraphale dithered, waving – splaying his elegantly manicured fingers nervously – in the glowing doorway of the large conference room.

A group of seated Seraphs near the back turned – nearly as one, rather an interesting sight under any other circumstances – and, registering him as little more than a joke, returned to whatever presentation they'd been paying attention to before his interruption.

A cherub minding the doorway took pity on him, gently herding him from the room and closing the door behind them both. "Principality?"

"Yes, that's right. I thought we were meeting in here today." He inclined his head uncertainly, apologetically towards the door they'd just exited.

Aziraphale sincerely hoped he hadn't come all the way to Heaven on the wrong date – it had happened once or twice before and had been rather embarrassing, not to mention a dreadful waste of time.

"There was a double-booking," the cherub told him. "The archangel Gabriel is giving his usual overview to the Principalities in one of the older rooms. It was all that was available when the mix-up was discovered. Weren't you informed?"

"I've been on earth," Aziraphale explained, his smile brittle. "Must have slipped their minds."

"Well, no worries, my friend. You just go through the usual open space and make a few extra rights, three pillars down, little room with an ivory keyhole. Sort of smells like camphor, but otherwise decent enough – you can't miss it. You can go straight in; they're already in session."

That means I'm late, Aziraphale thought grimly, Gabriel will not be pleased. But he thanked the cherub warmly all the same, and headed that way, struggling against the heavy, sour feeling in his stomach.

Surely it would be all right. Nothing too awful. It wasn't as if it were his first time being late.

Which honestly might have been why he was so nervous. You got ineffable mercy for a first offence... A second – or was it a third? – was a touch more dicey.

Aziraphale had never been in this particular meeting room before – in fact, he was pretty sure it had been unused for eons. The last time he remembered anyone going in there was before the rebellion; in those days, it had primarily been the archangels that used it for their private gatherings, never any principalities.

The angel pressed his plump hand to the wood of the door and sighed.

Leaning forward, he peeked through the little keyhole.

It was very small, a corner-set room with a slopped ceiling on one end. There was a long row of what resembled pews with desktops. A fine layer of dust had settled over much of it and apparently hadn't been entirely cleared out before the meeting began.

The light in there was utterly stunning, however.

It reminded Aziraphale of a library in a monastery. The windows were stained-glass, casting triangles and rectangles of multicolours everywhere. He wondered if this was what gave God the idea for the sky-set version of a rainbow after the flood.

Straightening up and adjusting his bow-tie, Aziraphale took a deep breath and opened the door, trying to slip in unnoticed.

Gabriel, who was addressing the rows of nodding, note-taking Principalities, stopped in the middle of whatever he'd been saying and stared straight over their heads at Aziraphale. "Kind of you to join us, Aziraphale."

An angel near the middle coughed, glanced at him and met his eyes, then turned away.

"I went to the wrong room," Aziraphale sheepishly admitted.

"Have a seat," Gabriel motioned to the nearest empty pew. "You'll have to catch up with the rest of us, and I highly recommend you ask someone who was here on time if you can borrow their notes after the meeting has concluded."

"Yes, of course," he agreed, climbing over the slightly sprawled legs of a principality seated at the very end in order to get into the empty pew Gabriel had indicated. "Excuse me, sorry, just got to get through...there we go..."

Gabriel rolled his eyes. "Now, back to the matter at hand..."

Aziraphale couldn't help it – he was distracted by the beauty of the windows. From the peek in the keyhole, he'd taken them for a simple design of coloured shapes. Inside, he could see they were actually full-scale depictions of the archangels.

There was Gabriel, in the furthest window. He couldn't make out that one properly; it was obscured from where he was seated. He could see the side of a wing, and a strong, thick arm.

Then there was Uriel, who was depicted with a green-gold aura.

Even Sandalphon's stained-glass depiction looked rather nice – his expression suggested he could smite you if you crossed him, certainly he could, but that he wasn't entirely in the mood to do so, too serenely focused on a more heavenly ideal at the moment. He was holding a red sceptre that flashed like a long, thin ruby.

Michael was positively breathtaking. She was done in various shades of sparkling blue and her raised, shining wings were curled forward, bending over her bowed head like a parasol.

Then there was another angel, in the tall window directly to Aziraphale's right, glowing with stained-glass radiance in his peripheral vision.

This archangel, Aziraphale didn't immediately recognise.

There had been more archangels before the rebellion and it occurred to him that this must be one of them, one of the fallen, almost at once.

He was magnificent.

If he'd seen that image staring out at him from the pages of a book, Aziraphale would have bought the tome at once, and for any price.

Unlike the other angels, who all looked sombre in their serenity, his lips were curled ever so slightly upwards. One of his dark eyebrows was quirked, as if with faint amusement.

His build was slender, the complete opposite of Sandalphon's obvious bulk. There was no aura depicted around this slim frame, but he did wear a golden circlet that might have been either a crown or his halo over a cascade of long red hair.

The calm eyes appeared to be some hue of golden only a couple shades off from the circlet above his head.

His wings – a soft dusty white, glowing with a lavender-grey hue – were open behind him, splayed so you could see the individual long feathers dragging down by his legs.

Something in his expression endeared Aziraphale, making him want to smile for real for the first time since arriving in Heaven, then struck an uncomfortably familiar cord.

He had met this angel some place before. He'd seen that face. It was very, very familiar.

Something about those astoundingly good cheekbones, and the almost mischievous expression...

And...

Aziraphale wasn't even glancing out of the corner of his eye any more; he'd turned his head and was staring straight at the stained-glass angel.

Wait...

It couldn't be.

But...

If you took away the brocade-type collar, the long white robes, and replaced them with a stylish black suit...if you added a pair of dark sunglasses...

The exact person you'd be looking at was none other than...

"Crowley," Aziraphale breathed.

"Aziraphale, is there something you'd like to share with the rest of us?" Gabriel was standing a couple feet away, his brow lifted.

"I said..." – and he tried to think of something he could have said – "I said, er, Whoo-eee." The angel pumped his fist in the air, a little pathetically, cheeks aflame. "I'm thrilled, what."

A couple principalities exchanged puzzled glances. One of them scooted a little further away from him, as if they thought he had some malady they could catch by proximity.

Gabriel looked at him for a long, uncomfortable moment. "I'm glad you're so enthusiastic about Project Clean Up Alpha Centauri. Perhaps you'd like to be in charge of processing the paperwork for it. After all, you must have a lot of time on your hands when you're not selling those material objects of yours. You also have that big desk in your shop you could spread it all out on."

"Er, of course, I'd be delighted to," Aziraphale agreed, with a grin that was not mirrored in his eyes.

Gabriel dropped a stack of papers and envelopes tied together with several layers of string into Aziraphale's lap, where it thudded impressively. The angel had to bite back an "Ow," and keep on smiling.

"Brown paper packages tied up with strings," quoted Gabriel.

"These are a few of my favorite things," finished Aziraphale. Did anyone else in the room have this much trouble keeping a smile on their face?

Satisfied, Gabriel made his way back to the front.

After briefly wondering what Gabriel would say if he dropped the whole dreadful bundle into the duck pond at Saint James's and then claimed it was an accident when asked about it, and – with regret – concluding that such a lie was not acceptable to his conscience, Aziraphale shifted in the pew again and was staring, once more, at the image of his demon friend as a beautiful angel in the window.

What happened to you, my dear?

Crowley was surprised when the next time he met Aziraphale, who'd just gotten off a bus, he was enfolded in a sudden tender embrace.

"Oh, my dear fellow."

Crowley squirmed, broke partially free, and looked at the angel with vaguely annoyed puzzlement.

Aziraphale just stared back at him pityingly, still gripping the sides of his arms.

"What was that for?"

"Oh, Crowley..." You were so beautiful...

"Wot? What is it? Why the Heaven are you looking at me like that?"

The angel shook his head, let go, and stepped back a bit. People were starting to stare, and he couldn't bring himself to tell his friend what he'd seen.

"No reason." He blinked away the tears and smiled brightly (and for real). "Come on, let's have lunch."

"It's nine in the morning, angel."

"Oh," said Aziraphale. "Right. Breakfast, then?"

A/N: Reviews welcome, replies may be delayed.