I Forgive You

Chapter Four

Not much longer now, guys. We're almost there. They'll talk soon. 

Reference to "I Bet You Think About Me" by, you guessed it, Taylor Swift

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It wasn't working.

He pressed the elevator button towards Earth again, but they had simply stopped moving, suspended between realms.

"And what exactly is it that you're doing there?"

Aziraphale had to close his eyes, taking a deep breath before he turned to face the Metatron with a strained smile plastered on his face.

"I'm ever so sorry", he said, hoping the tension in his voice would read as politeness. "It appears that I ah...forgot about some things that require my immediate attention. On Earth, that is."

"I thought you said there wasn't anything you needed", Metatron reminded him, one eyebrow raised in question. Aziraphale didn't like that look, those eyes that seemed to be boring into him, laying all the secrets bare that his treacherously pounding heart was holding.

"Oh, yes." Aziraphale chuckled nervously. "Silly me. It must have simply escaped me. But I remember now", he tried again. "Rather important responsibilities that need tending to, you see."

"More important than leading Heaven?"

Oh, bugger.

"Well, not...necessarily, as such..." Aziraphale trailed off, mind working furiously to come up with a decent argument. "If you say it like that. Immensely important to myself however, which is why I would prefer it if you'd just-"

"What kind of responsibility would that be, may I ask?"

Getting out of here and back to-

"Ah..." Aziraphale smiled, swallowed hard. "Personal matter, I'm afraid."

"Aziraphale." The calmness in Metatron's voice sent a shiver down Aziraphale's spine, something in that tone carrying a sense of danger he couldn't quite ignore. "Lying is a sin, you know."

"L-Lying?" Aziraphale clasped his hands behind his back, wringing nervously where the other couldn't see them. "Who said anyone was lying? No one's lying here, I'm sure. Why would anyone be lying?"

"You seem terribly nervous all of a sudden."

"I'm just..." He shrugged his shoulders in an attempt at lightheartedness, swaying back and forth on his feet as if that would hide his restlessness. "...eager to get back, you see. So I can sort things out, as it were, and...return to work. Yes."

"Alright." The Metatron nodded. "What is it, then? We can send someone to take care of whatever business of yours needs tending to."

"Oh." That's not- think of something, you idiot, think of something and quickly- "I'm afraid that wouldn't do. This will take my personal attendance. Really no way around it."

"Aziraphale." He didn't like how the Metatron said his name. Cold and calculated. He had always liked the way it sounded when Crowley said his name...

"If you're trying to go back on your promise-", Metatron said just then, and perhaps that was it, perhaps that was his only opportunity, perhaps he'd just have to get out with it and-

"A-Actually..." Aziraphale took a deep, steadying breath. "I'm sorry", he said then, hoping he sounded as regretful as he wanted to make him believe. "I truly am. But I don't think...I don't think I can do this, I-" I can't stay here, I can't leave him, can't be without him, I- "I appreciate the offer, greatly so. But-"