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I see this person. I know the features of him, i know everything about him, we talk all the time- but i never get the answer i wish for. Every time i talk to him, he tells me he isn't real.
That to save myself, i need to move on.
I talk to him about anything and everything, i talk him about the people on the bus; i tell his lanky frame about the personality's i made up for them today. The other day i saw a man with dark frizzy hair- he hadn't had time to fix it in the morning i suppose. He looked around 24 years old, as though he would have had a name like Christopher or Damien- something boring but not because he looked as though he would be a boring person. His name would be generic because no matter what, interesting people always have the most common and uninteresting names. His hair showed he was in a rush and the flowers showed he was travelling toward someone he loved a great deal- he loved and trusted this person so much there wasn't even a need to sort his hair. And this is exactly what i told ...him.
"you need to move on, Angel."
"Move on?" I asked him, tilting my head and staring at him, directly into his eyes.
"I'm not here anymore, you know it, I'm in your head,"
"What ever are you on about dear?"
The man just stood there, a loving expression plastered on his face while also conveying the sense of thinking about something incredibly important,
"Think ,Aziraphale, i died."
"I'm going out get Adam, ill see you later."
There's a thing people do when they loose something they wished could have been their forever- It's a form of denial. That when someone is in such pain that they can't think of anything else to do. They're so utterly heart broken and in pain the HAVE to do this thing in order to stay alive- if they don't their world crumbles, the floor beneath them cracks and then they're as a never ending fall into nowhere. It's a necessity to their life.
Imagine. Pretend.
Pretend nothing happened, ignore the ten thousand foot dive into a pool you'll never be able to escape or die in, never be able to breathe in again an will forever be drowning. You'll be trapped in this pool and the air won't enter your lungs, just water- gallons upon gallons of water. It'll flood your lungs ,you'll be gasping for air and while you try and swim up something will pull down on your legs, gripping on your calves and scratching them till they bleed. But when you look down there's nothing there, the pulling is still there and there's blood oozing from the marks on your legs, but its almost as if you're doing it to yourself. You're screaming and crying but no noise leaves your lips. No one pulls you out. And eventually there's no water ad your in a pool of thick red blood, coating your body and flooding your lungs with more pain than any living human can imagine, every time you cough you inhale more and then thousands shards of glass are sent plummeting towards your throat, slicing right threw the skin as if that was their only purpose. It's this type of pain that feels never ending., so choosing to ignore it seems the only effective solutions.
But imagining, imagining is only for the smart people. The ones that plainly refuse to accept that any pain as bad as that has occurred in their lives. The ones that wrap it into a ball every day and label it "tomorrow" and continuously throw it through the big oak doorway of "tomorrow" ,and today, they imagine. Sometimes they imagine that who ever they lost. Is just on holiday, sometimes they imagine there's nothing wrong- they don't pretend they just wish because deep down they know something is they're just not prepared to deal with it at that moment. Some of them, the really smart ones, morph their lost one, back into reality. They talk to them, they love them, they imagine them in everyday situations. Anything to escape the never ending pain. And this is what Aziraphale did with Crowley.
Have you ever been in love with someone that feels like your soulmate and your best friend at the same time? No matter what they do or say you'll always forgive them? Yourself and this person are so close that you're pretty sure you can guess exactly what they're doing at any given moment? For Aziraphale, that was Crowley. The one man in the entire world that he could trust without second guessing himself- the one person he could love without second guessing himself.
But life, at times, steals the most precious things without asking, and death flies by without disturbing anyone. It swoops beneath us and steals our loves like its nothing. And everyone's despises death, even if they haven't met him- the french call him "mort" even the word reeks of sadness, The tears pour from it and there isn't enough tissues in the world to mop it and its mess up. As death has ruined many peoples lives, when he stole Crowley everything collapsed. It was as though the ground beneath his feet purely ceased to exist and he was just sinking, waiting for that drop. Because cancer destroys more than one life.
The imagination began small, thinking up a light touch on his shoulder, and then letting Crowley drift away again. Or just a small good morning kiss before the day began; but while heroin is one mans addiction, imagination is another's. It became impossible to not see Crowley everywhere.
"You're arguing with yourself, Angel." Aziraphale stopped as he approached the door, and turned slightly.
"What ever are you talking about?"
"I'm not here." Three words that stung Aziraphales entire body, so he threw them behind the door and chuckled lightly, ignoring the tears prickling at his eyes.
"My dear boy, of course you are. I can see you ,my love." He choked a bit at the sentence, playing it off as a cough.
"I'm in your head."
"I love you."
"I'm not real."
"Ill never stop,"
"You need to move on, angel." Aziraphale looked down, the tears streaming from his eyes silently. "I'm dead."
There was a silence. A thick, unforgivable silence. A silence that locked you inside your own head and forced the strongest protection inside you out.
"I know." And the, as if acceptance came with forgetting, Crowley disappeared .
Yes, no one ELSE came to save aziraphale, because when he accepted it, he was sent into that swimming pool. but from the distance, as he was screaming, he saw himself running toward him, reaching his arm out to drag himself from the pool.
And Crowley smiled.