i think the bit about “i lost my best friend.” “so sorry to hear it.” is loaded as fuck, WAY more than people give it credit for despite having been analyzed to hell and back, because:
when we get to “i lost my best friend,” aziraphale has NO IDEA that the bookshop burned. he fully thinks crowley is talking about their fight. and that crowley abandoned his plan to leave earth just because aziraphale disavowed their friendship.
aziraphale senses that he needs crowley’s help here, if he’s willing to give it. deep down, though he doesn’t know what they’ll do when they get to the airbase, aziraphale’s faith truly lies with crowley. that’s why he called him immediately when heaven put the kibosh on his request to stop the war. and it’s why he asks if crowley went to alpha centauri - to find out what his plans are.
and crowley appears to be available.
but.
aziraphale has been trying to protect crowley.
that’s why, at the bandstand, he switches so fast from “you can’t leave, crowley” to “there is no our side.” as soon as he realizes crowley does technically have a plan he can go to if armageddon happens, he assumes that he must sever their connection so crowley won’t hang around.
so when he finds out that crowley changed his plans because aziraphale tried to cut him off, aziraphale is thinking that his attempt to sacrifice their relationship for crowley’s safety has failed. he says “i’m so sorry to hear it” because he’s not just hearing crowley’s sadness - he’s also facing his own failure, and also having to admit he misread crowley when he believed that cutting him off would make him leave.
AND he’s about to ask crowley to make another sacrifice: to come to the site of armageddon, face to face with a lot of people who want them both wiped out of existence.
he knows he needs crowley’s help. and he knows crowley is loyal enough to give it.
he is about to ask crowley to join him in sacrificing themselves to save the earth.
with all that in mind, i don’t think aziraphale would be in a headspace where he could either apologize or have a deep heart-to-heart about friendship. he is doing what it seems he has to to keep even WORSE things from happening. but i think aziraphale still does not feel like he is being a good friend and feels too guilty about it to start openly embracing this notion of friendship at this moment.
Yes, to all of this.
Aziraphale really has no idea the shop burned, plus he has no idea Crowley thinks he died, so yes, from Aziraphale’s perspective, Crowley is this wrecked over Aziraphale ending their friendship. And that’s awful for Aziraphale on so many accounts, because I’m with you, he did that in a last ditch desperate effort to keep Crowley safe. Crowley was going to run away, and running away would keep him safer than Aziraphale could provide, and Crowley’s safety has always been his priority, so he breaks both their hearts in order for Crowley to go and safe himself.
And then the stupid demon doesn’t do it! No, it’s worse, he says he didn’t go to Alpha Centauri because stuff happened and he lost his best friend. This is Crowley saying “I won’t run away without you”. That means Aziraphale did that terrible thing to them both, you can see how much it hurts him, he’s nearly crying when Crowley leaves the bandstand, Aziraphale did that terrible thing, and it was the wrong thing to do, because that’s what made Crowley abandon his running away to save himself plans. This is, like, the absolute worst thing that could have happened. Not only did Aziraphale hurt Crowley, he was aware he was doing it, but he was telling himself it was the right thing to do, because it would keep Crowley safe (better safe and heartbroken than dead).
It would also give Aziraphale time to convince Heaven to stop Armageddon, which at the time of the bandstand argument he’s still convinced he can do. If only he can reach the right people, they’ll make everything okay again, and then he can go and bring Crowley back and apologise.
But now, he knows Heaven isn’t going to be swayed. God is unreachable. Her spokesperson thinks nuclear armageddon is a great idea. Everyone but Aziraphale wants the War. Crowley was right, Crowley was right all the time, Aziraphale lied to him and pushed him away for nothing, and it didn’t even do the one good thing he thought it would do: keep Crowley safe by making him follow his running away plans by himself. This is an unmitigated disaster.
One of the things Aziraphale always worries about is doing the right thing, and doing the right thing is always navigating a conflict of interests for him, too. He’s got his own internal sense of right and wrong, and this sense clashes with Heaven’s morals and actions sometimes, and with Crowley’s, and with humanity’s. He’s confronted with at least four different ideas of what is the right thing in a given situation. Sometimes some of them align, but hardly ever all of them. He has to choose whether to do right by Crowley, by his own morals, or by what Heaven wrote down in his orders. By pushing Crowley away, he thought he was doing the right thing by Heaven (no consorting with the demon), by humanity (can still save Earth because certainly Heaven will see reason), and also by Crowley (because he did what would keep Crowley save and is thus ultimately in Crowley’s best interest, even if Crowley doesn’t see it).
And unlike previous occasions, all of these were the wrong things to do! Heaven doesn’t want to avoid the War, he did nothing to help save Earth, he didn’t keep Crowley safe. This is everything going absolutely, catastrophically wrong for Aziraphale. That’s so much to unpack.
But they’re on a very tight schedule. Armageddon is hours away. He doesn’t have time to unpack any of that. He doesn’t have time to apologise to Crowley or to try and salvage their friendship. Aziraphale has priorities, and the top of the list right now is “stop Armageddon”, because if they don’t, none of the rest will matter. All of the hurt and damage will be in vain.
He can’t deal with Crowley’s obviously heartbroken state there, even though he thinks it’s his fault. They don’t have time. World ending. That’s the deadline of deadlines. So he does the minimum of what he can do at that moment: he acknowledges that Crowley lost his best friend, aka, that Crowley thinks their friendship is over, and he’s sorry to hear that, but they can’t deal with personal stuff right now, because the world is ending, and Crowley and him have been business partners way before Aziraphale himself dared consider them friends. Crowley wanted to save the world, that was Crowley’s idea, and they agreed to work together on that, this is business, this can be business even if they aren’t friends anymore, and he needs Crowley to listen to him and get to Tadfield, because if they don’t deal with business first, there won’t be any chance to settle the personal issues.
I’m fairly sure Aziraphale still thinks he ruined their friendship even after Crowley immediately agrees to come to Tadfield. He looks so poised for rejection at the bus stop, so disbelieving that Crowley is still all “our side” with him. He’s got all this previous experience of Crowley forgiving him, it’s not like this is their first argument, but he can’t believe it. In the pub, he sort of relies on Crowley’s loyalty and forgiving nature, but at the same time I don’t think he expects to really get it. He’s super confused that Crowley like immediately goes back to being his friend.
Yes! That actually reminds me…
At the bus stop, Crowley and Aziraphale are at another crossroad.
The world is saved for now. Adam has made his choice about Armageddon: it’s not happening. Aziraphale and Crowley’s “mission” is officially over. They didn’t set any goals for a post-Armageddon wherein their Sides would know about them. They had assumed that if their plan worked, their Sides would be none the wiser and the status quo would resume.
Therefore, they are now in danger that they didn’t plan for and have no other future in mind except to figure out how they are going to handle their Sides. Their options are pretty much to stay where they are or to flee.
Crowley has spent the last day or so talking about fleeing. Aziraphale has spent the last day or so refusing to flee.
By saying “I suppose I should have him drop me off at the bookshop,” Aziraphale is describing his own plan for handling Heaven: he plans to stay in one place, the place where he belongs, and face Heaven’s wrath head-on.
Aziraphale already knows Crowley was willing to flee to survive before, and now that the world is saved, maybe he can go into hiding. He’s a very smart, wily serpent. He’d be great at that. We even saw him looking at a globe, contemplating where he’d go, and he nixed the idea for Armageddon (which will destroy anywhere he could flee to), but not necessarily for escaping Hell.
But Crowley just comes out with “you can stay at my place” and “we’re on our own side.” Now maybe he already figured out Agnes’s prophecy. Maybe he already knows they have to swap corporations.
They only have to do that if they both want to survive, and it’s not a very straightforward prophecy so they could be wrong. The body swap itself is a risk, and whether they do it or not, Crowley will be looking over his shoulder for the rest of time.
There is time to make a calculated choice here. Satan is not bearing down on them.
There is nothing forcing Crowley to participate in any body-swapping.
Nothing except the desire to be together.
Aziraphale’s token resistance, “I don’t think my side would like that,” is a warning: “if they catch you with me, they’ll destroy you.” And as far as he knows, they will be caught, because he’s going to face down Heaven.
And Crowley’s answer, “We’re on our own side,” is a commitment and a statement of faith: “I will stay and face them with you. We will win.”
Do you ever write a whole essay and realize you saved the draft to the wrong blog? Sorry about that!
