caveofsapphires | some days I don't know if I am wrong or right;

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some days I don't know if I am wrong or right;

WHO: Aziraphale (John) and Liam (Owen).
WHAT: Memory rehab feels, OR an unwise conversation.
WHERE: Aziraphale's condo.
WHEN: Tuesday, April 24, evening.

-

It was not an unfamiliar story.

God made the angels and God made man, and whatever Aziraphale currently knew of God and himself the story was the same.

Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Good and evil were, perhaps, rewritten here; and even if they were not, hadn't he been warned? Everyone had said, and he'd sensed it, an undercurrent of tension never quite mentioned but nigh physical in its constant presence.

In his way, he wondered if he had been judged. After all, in his brief time as a human he had not lived well. He had disobeyed; he had been gluttonous. He had insisted on his glory and a history of which he had no proof other than his own memories. And there was still that spark hovering on the edge of his mind that said, No, you were right all along. You know better. You're an angel, and you shouldn't be here.

The worst part had been the physical blow of emotion. He'd remembered lying still and silent, staring at nothing in particular on the ceiling, dirty and smelly and empty-minded, as if he was there right then. He'd missed work. He hadn't left the house for a day and a half until it started to seep away, and even then he hadn't been able to escape it entirely until Saturday. Such a vulnerable feeling - nothing he'd ever felt had been like it - a raw, gnawing, empty hunger. He'd cried. He didn't think he'd ever cried, in his Dream.

It was so tempting to blame all of this on Gabriel, but really Gabriel had had nothing to do with it. He'd sinned and he'd suffered. Gabriel had simply been a convenient excuse. In any case, he'd been careless before he met the other angel (or whatever). Careless enough to apparently miss something that had happened to Owen in the last week, although admittedly everything had been foggy recently. And careless after, allowing himself to be persuaded into this meeting. (Persuading himself, he chided himself silently; no good trying to lay the blame on Owen after all of this, he didn't deserve it.)

It would be lovely to scurry away into a quiet corner with a window out onto the busy street or the chalk, he wasn't picky, open up something old and clever that he'd read a hundred times before, and forget all of this. As it was, he had the choice of either putting Owen in further danger or being cautious, for once.

So he made his way to the front of the building, head down, brow furrowed, to head Owen off. He would never forgive himself if something happened to him because Aziraphale was feeling sorry for himself. By the time he made it out the front door, he had nearly figured out how to persuade Owen that everything was actually fine and he should go home to his husband.

Threaded | Flat

It really did not take very long for Liam to find his way. He wasn't very familiar with all the twists and turns with the Cave, and he realized that some of the most foreign scenery was so close to "home", yet that didn't mean it was difficult to navigate. Simply... revealing. He had been spending far too much time absorbed in himself or Ken (or even the stupid ceiling lights) apparently, that he hadn't even tried looking out for anyone else near the living quarters.

Time to change that. Although he felt that he knew where he was going, more or less, Liam kept his eyes open to make sure he would arrive at the right spot. It turned out to be a non-issue when he spotted the man exiting his condo. Speeding up his step, Liam met Aziraphale at the threshold with hints of a smile.

"Hey," he greeted. "Told you I'd be here soon, aye?"

Aziraphale was so deeply focused on the floor that he nearly bumped into Owen. Glancing up with a start at the sound of his voice, absurdly surprised, he stopped fast and couldn't help the overt expression of guilt that flashed across his face.

"Oh. Hello," he said. "So you did." With a tense pause, he glanced around slightly and sucked in his cheeks. "Would you mind if we walked?"

It wasn't any safer, not really. Aziraphale knew that. Still, he had a vague sense that they were more likely to be monitored within the confines of the flat than at various more or less random locations around the Cave.

"If you still want to talk," he added after some thought. His hands had found their way into his pockets, and his smile was nearly genuine but oh, he was a terrible liar. "It's fine if you have somewhere to be, of course, I appreciate you even coming."

Liam glanced around the street. It looked empty enough, although he was certain that sooner or later one of their keepers—policemen, whatever they were—would be by. Better not to loiter or dillydally on deciding.

"I wouldn't have come if I minded," he answered. "Trust me on that one. Let's walk and talk, then."

He gestured for Aziraphale to begin and then matched his pace easily. The slight chill of the Cave prompted him to huddle into his jacket, ignoring the shiver. There was another reaction he still wasn't used to. After a moment, he prompted, "Careless, you said."

His first steps hesitant, Aziraphale quickly began to walk as if something was following him, then slowed slightly to a pace brisk but not overtly terrified. It was, he had to admit, a bit suspicious, and they were fairly close to curfew as it was. He hadn't thought this through; sometimes he marveled at his inability to think things through as a general rule.

There were so many ways to respond to that nudge. It would be so easy to just say - yes, well, I met my brother, I think, and we let our tongues wag and I think, I think that's what happened - but he felt sick and a bit protective, and so he shrugged slightly and didn't quite look at Owen.

"I met someone," he said shortly. "We got a bit drunk. We had a conversation, and I said too much." If he could help it, he wouldn't mention who Gabriel was at all. It was too complicated and not strictly necessary.

"Anyway." His fingers twisted in his pockets. It was cold. "Not entirely sure what happened next." Although he had theories.

Liam watched Aziraphale as they walked, expression curious but muted in deference to the story he was telling. The lack of specifics gave it more of a sinister edge than it frankly deserved, but there was no helping it. Their current hosts apparently disapproved of not playing to the beat of their drum, which left them only to rely on heavy implication and clever inference.

"What happened after the part you're not sure about? Did anything seem... off?" asked Liam once he was sure Aziraphale was done. It was a long shot, but perhaps not as much as he feared. He couldn't be the only one who had been stricken with such profound confusion after some sort of whiteout. He pursed his lips and then continued quietly, as if to try and empathize with facts yet revealed, "I got my own name wrong for almost a week there."

Off. "Yes," Aziraphale said ruefully. "Everything seemed off." Watching the buildings go by, he added, "It was all very new and unpleasant and I really believed all of it. I really did." He slid a glance at Owen - not Owen - then. "I was very definitely John Gates, and I did not enjoy it."

Was that the purpose, he wondered? To make them believe? If so, if they had the power to do that, why hadn't they done it from the start? Surely no one had believed that people would honestly accept this as what had always been. Some, perhaps, but not everyone, not every Sleeper here. He'd thought it would take more than a mysterious blankness to rid himself of the memory of five entire years, but apparently he'd been wrong.

Liam gave Aziraphale a searching glance at that information, breath beginning to tremble and he began sucking in deeper lungfuls to try and steady it. He glanced forward to pull him from those thoughts.

"I didn't believe it," he said, brow unconsciously beginning to furrow, "not that I was ever anyone I didn't remember being. Which doesn't make much sense when I say it like that, but — for that week, I was Owen Bates, not Liam McNally... as I had dreamed myself to be. Nothing else had changed." He risked a glance back to his walking companion. "Maybe that's why it was so shocking and scary. Not being able to tell the difference, but knowing there was one."

"I . . . don't know if I was ever that aware of what was happening," Aziraphale admittedly honestly. "Aware enough to realize that there was a difference, I mean." Because it had been incongruous, yes, it had been wrong, but he'd been too absorbed in the intrusion of the memories to even approach consciousness of that fact.

Even now he was too absorbed to notice Liam's discomfort, focusing instead on the ground and Liam's words in order to dispel some of his lingering fear. He honestly hadn't sensed anything odd in Owen's behavior in their previous encounters, which only made him feel worse.

He was not a fan of fear. The only time he'd felt it with as much intensity as he had in this past week and a half had been at the actual end of the world, and then he hadn't had the dubious benefit of human adrenal responses. His voice shook a bit as he asked, "What did it feel like when you - came back?"

"I wasn't either," Liam contradicted. He shook his head and gave a very rueful smile. "Just lucky I had someone who knew better than I did."

It was even more disturbing that way. Liam would never have noticed until it had... settled, for lack of a better word, that something so invasive and wrong had wormed its way into his mind. He couldn't possibly be more grateful for Ken and his continued presence by Liam's side (or, really, it was the other way around). Whatever the case, it helped him stay strong even though he had known from the start that his name had become something no longer his own.

Turning the question over in his mind, Liam shrugged. "Depends on what you mean by back. If you mean when it all started, I remember... not remembering what had happened. Like a mist in my head, but that cleared and nothing felt out of place when it was gone. Kind of like I'd slept wrong, I guess." He allowed a grin as he added, "If you meant when I came back to myself, then—well, it felt like taking a breath of fresh air. Metaphorically speaking."

"Lucky," Aziraphale echoed, and the hint of bitterness in his voice was raw. He, apparently, was not lucky, if luck was even a term that had any meaning here. He'd lost all meager substitute comforts (books, Bibles, ridiculous eateries) and had unsuccessfully attempted to fill the serpentine gap at his side with wine and silly fruity drinks. The Lord, perhaps, was testing him, although he found it unlikely. Had Crowley been there, the test would have been passed quickly and with flying colors, because Crowley would not have allowed him to sulk, and Crowley would have done something instead of just fretting.

He reacted with visible distaste at the suggestion that the odd memories were what he'd meant by 'coming back,' shoulders twitching and lip curling. "The latter," he said, voice a bit clipped. "But you're angry." It wasn't a question. He wondered if Liam had the same restless feeling that he did, something quite the opposite of what he'd felt since Saturday, a frantic need to do something, even if it was only worry and pace.

"You know," he added in a low, agitated voice, "what truly frightens me is that I can't begin to imagine how they're doing this. Or why." He waved his hands in the air. "All of this. The motivation behind it - I can't - " He lost his train of thought, thinking on what Olsen had said ages ago - great laboratories, experiments. It couldn't be, of course - because in some way he still couldn't manage to believe that he was outside of the bubble of protection he'd enjoyed from Adam.

"Of course I'm angry," Liam snapped. The first bit of his temper he had shown outside of private moments with Ken. There simply hadn't been anything to inspire it in public. At this rate, Liam expected that to change very quickly; his temper was volatile at best once sparked, and difficult to dampen without a proper idea of how he worked. This bubbling anger was constantly simmering inside, tempered by his fear of putting himself or others back in that helpless position, but impossible to smother. "Why wouldn't I be? Who the fuck do they think they are?" he muttered, acid dripping from the hushed tones.

His hand curled around the lighter in his pocket. Perhaps in a moment of good foresight, Liam had opted out of leaving his pack of cigarettes with him. He wished so badly for a smoke right now, but they were already racking up a dangerous amount of "wrongful behaviour" just by speaking of all this.

"Frankly, I'd rather not even try. Don't care about their motivations, I care about the results." Who knew what these people were capable of if they could so casually root around his very identity?

Aziraphale jumped slightly at the sudden anger in Liam's voice. It was so difficult to mentally separate human anger and angelic wrath. One of those instincts that he wasn't really supposed to have. And Liam, well, Aziraphale didn't know him well by any means; he didn't know what Liam's anger meant, or would lead to.

He managed to keep his reaction to that slight jump and a shiver, tucking his hands back into his pockets, and resolutely did not meet his companion's eyes. “I didn't mean to imply - “ He hesitated, fighting with himself. “I didn't mean to imply that you shouldn't be.” Because he was, too, sort of; down underneath the guilt and the fear, he had a rock-hard certainty that this was not as it should be. It was, in fact, Wrong. Still, he was so unsure of himself – what he was, what he had been, what he should be – that all he could manage was a vague shrug and, “You should be angry.” Nothing more articulate than that.

His fingers tingled with fear and adrenaline at the word 'results'. “What do you mean?” he asked, not entirely sure he wanted to know the answer, but too curious to be able to help it. Liam hadn't acted like this before – for good reason, obviously, he hadn't been Liam, not entirely – but he was experiencing a distressing amount of excitement and forward motion and he couldn't not pursue this to its natural conclusion.

Liam gave a long sigh, reaching up to tussle his hair. He left his hand there, tugging on some of the strands as if to ground himself — it was the best he could do without his usual option (maybe he should have invited Aziraphale over to his own place, where Ken would be, but it was all too late for that now) because he certainly did not want to attract too much undue attention. It did not smother the simmering, although it did help him force himself into a less-volatile tenseness.

"I mean, it doesn't matter why they're doing it, just that they are," he clarified. "They don't give a damn whether we want this or not and give us fuck all of a clue it's even happening. God, it's like some kind of low budget horror film or one of those cheesy stories you tell 'round the fire." Or worse, but he didn't want to voice those thoughts just yet.

Now that he was so alert and becoming more aware of Liam's reactions, he noticed the nervous gestures and hesitated, not sure what to do. It was clear that Liam was at least as tense as he was, but if he didn't even know how to handle himself in these situations - well. He couldn't very well advise Liam to dither, that would be the opposite of helpful.

It sounded, when he put it like that, quite like the end of the world, and while Aziraphale had connected certain superficial similarities - an apocalyptic wasteland, that was clear enough - he hadn't really understood it in the terms that Liam seemed to be seeing it. In terms of control and censorship, which, while they should be strictly human ideas, never really had been - and wasn't he human now, anyway?

"Messing about," he muttered, and stopped, looking at Liam with wild eyes. "We haven't done anything wrong," he added, his voice plaintive as he realized what he was saying was entirely true.

Hearing the tone of Aziraphale's voice, Liam gave a grim little smile. It wasn't vicious so much as it was both trying to be comforting without compromising the anger. It fell soon after and he let his hand drop to the back of his neck, before he eventually just slid it back into his pocket.

"We're being ourselves," he agreed emphatically. Then, quieter, "That's apparently wrong enough for them. If that's the price to pay for everything else they've given, then believe me when I say I'm not sure any of it is worth this."

Whatever else either of them was going to say wasn't going to happen any time soon because from around the corner two people come into view, one of them a spikey haired boy in the guard force uniform and the other a girl wearing a bomber jacket and carrying a doll. The girl had a serious expression on her face as she looked at the two, but her companion was the exact opposite.

"Ooooh, you guys are in so much trouble right now," the guard force member said, sounding more like a kid than he looked. "You broke the rules."

"Eli, hush," the girl replied to him, glaring at him for a moment as he shut up and saluted before her attention turned back to Liam and Aziraphale. "John Gates and Owen Bates, you're now under arrest for breaking the rules and speaking of your dreams as if they're real. You're to come with us and deal the consequences of your actions."

As she said that, two more guard force workers walked up, this time coming from behind Aziraphale and Liam to lessen the chance of either of them deciding to run. The guard force really didn't like taking chances with this sort of thing.

Aziraphale started at the sudden intrusion. A pit formed in his stomach. Was this what had happened last time, someone looming up out of the darkness and declaring him under arrest? This wasn't how it was meant to work. He half-turned to look at Liam and saw the other two out of the corner of his eye. He tapped Liam on the shoulder to draw his attention to the fact that they had nowhere to go.

They were cornered, and he couldn't smile at the guards and make them forget about him or vanish them to somewhere else, and he couldn't protect Liam. He didn't even have a blunt object on hand.

He could easily give running away up as a bad job, but there was only so much they could make him forget, hopefully, and only so long they could tamp his memories down. Liam was right - it wasn't worth this, and sooner or later he'd remember it.

Liam bristled immediately. Fear was blotted out as indignation bubbled over and he shook his head vehemently. Oh, he saw who Aziraphale was indicating but like hell he was going to simply lie down and take this. No fucking way.

"Your rules are asinine and arbitrary," he bit back, hands balling up at his sides as he fought back the urge to smack the smugness right off blondie's face. He had fewer qualms with the girl, but that anyone would take pleasure in trying to stifle everyone under this veil of fear hit all the wrong buttons. "You would arrest us for just talking about what is the only thing we know! Might as well just cut out our tongues and be done with it if you're so opposed to it."

"I didn't make the rules," she says and for just a moment, her tone is apologetic, but it's gone quickly and replaced with her usual serious demeanor. "It is our job to uphold the rules no matter what and that is what we will do."

With a quick motion of her hand, the two guards move up closer to the two men. The girl squeezed the doll in her arms and looked at them for a moment before turning around so she could lead them away. "Don't worry, we will only keep you in our custody until you've paid the fine. Then you'll be free to return to your rooms."

The fine. Surely that was a euphemism for - whatever had happened before. Aziraphale's shoulders tensed as he felt the guards move closer, keeping his eye on the girl as she turned away.

"Can I just ask," he said to her back, a bit louder than he'd meant to speak, "can I ask why?"

"Fine? That's sure one pretty way to say it! A fine, like we're paying for an injustice that's put anyone out of their way," Liam said, eyes narrowed. He stepped away from the ones approaching from behind, turning halfway between them so that he could try and keep an eye on both groups of guards. He pointed at the two helmeted ones, eyes narrowed. "Don't even think about it."

Doing this all over again was not an option. Of anything that could happen, Liam did not want them messing with his mind again. There was no other way to interpret a fine than that they would be taking it in flesh.

"You're causing trouble by clinging to your dreams," she states rather bluntly to both of them, believing it answered them clearly enough. She hugged her doll tightly, making her look younger than she really was. "I used to have the same problem with the dreams that you Sleepers have. I thought that I was Alice Hazel and denied everything that I was told about who I really was. Then I remembered that I was really Delilah Heidrich and what I thought was real was actually a dream just like they said."

The helmeted guards didn't move any closer, but it was obvious from the way they stood that they weren't at all intimidated by Liam and that they were waiting for orders from Delilah. Eli shifted impatiently at Delilah's side, but he didn't try anything as she continued to speak. "We're only trying to help you. It's not our job to antagonize you or anything silly like that. We were in the same position as all of you at one time. You just need to be patient and let your memories come back to you. Being stubborn about it only makes it worse when they finally do."

On some level Aziraphale realized that he shouldn't underestimate this girl. She was clearly powerful, and power in the confused was dangerous. At the same time, his heart ached for her. She looked so young, and didn't he know about the susceptibility of youth to influence?

"I'm sorry, my dear," he said quietly. "I wish none of this had happened to you. But this isn't right. You must allow people to make their own choices, or else what will you have accomplished?"

That said, he had no intention of physical resistance. He truly just wanted to understand. So little of this made sense. Perhaps if he learned more, the next time he'd know to do - something.

"How in the fuck are we causing trouble?" Liam demanded. The guards' lack of progress toward them did not fool him for a minute — it did, however, leave him feeling safe enough to give Delilah more of his attention. "The only trouble I see is what you're making. I'll do what I damn please to do, and guess what? It's not hurting anybody!"

For Liam, he was trying to do the opposite of Aziraphale and not pay attention to the girl's youth. If he did, then he would probably crumble under the need to take her away from whatever had happened to her. None of this was right, and the fact that they had put someone so obviously young in such a high position only sickened him with worry over what it could mean and how desperate she or the one who put her there might be.

Threaded | Flat

some days I don't know if I am wrong or right;

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