Somebody I Used To Know.

the darkening.

Aziraphale awoke in a white room. He didn't know where he was. In fact, he didn't really know 𝘸𝘩𝘰 he was. Well, of course he knew who he was, but... everything felt blurry. He could barely remember his own name, his favorite song, his life. He remembered some things, but other things were blurred around the edges. Things weren't just black and white anymore. They were many different shades of grey.

He started to panic. He felt like he was stuck in his own head and was unable to escape. 

But that's when he found the photo. The photo of him with a red-haired man he had no recollection of. The photo was sort of wrinkled, and it looked a bit old. Very old, in fact. 

Suddenly, there was a flash of light, and he saw a man with white hair and white wings, who then spoke to him. "You have disgraced the angelic-kind and are from here on out banned from entering the kingdom Heaven."

And everything stopped.

Aziraphale could feel himself falling, but couldn't see that he was falling. He felt the wind go through his hair, through his clothes, and it almost felt like it was going through 𝘩𝘪𝘮. He was falling for what felt like decades. 

Then he stopped falling, and for a while, everything was dark. Until he woke up in a bookshop. 

𝘏𝘪𝘴 bookshop, to be more precise. He recognized the smell, the look, the air that circulated around the shop. 

He stood up and cleared his head. He knew where he was but he had no clear memory of anything that had happened there. He only knew that this was his shop. 

He knew that something was wrong. He knew that he couldn't remember anyone besides himself. (and even then, he had forgotten things about himself too.) He knew he had to do something. 𝘈𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨. He had to remember, before all was lost.

He decided to look through the bookshop to see if anything would jog his memory.

He looked through what seemed like thousands of books. He looked in drawers, through papers, through everything he could have possibly looked through. 

All he found was a few phone numbers, a sketch of a snake that he somewhat remembered drawing, and a diary. 𝘏𝘪𝘴 diary.

Before he knew it, he was flipping through the pages, and reading every last detail. 

"Dear Diary," he read. "The demon Crowley has been helping me a lot as of late. I don't think he's aware of just exactly what he means to me."

Aziraphale stopped reading. "Crowley..." He spoke to himself. "That sounds a bit familiar. I should find this... this... 𝘊𝘳𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘺." 

And so he left the bookshop.