Fragile Glass | Morpheus

Chapter 4

Aziraphale hadn't let Astraea out of his sight since she had woken up, she had spent the entire day on forced bed rest that she didn't need. She loved him and she missed him dearly, but she had spent the last century confined to a small space, she didn't want to be confined to yet another small space in the shape of her bed.

"So... what did I miss?" She had been gone a century and from the look of things, she had missed a lot.

"Well, the apocalypse almost happened." Aziraphale watched as her mind processed it, or at least he tried to, her usual easy to read aura had shifted to a colder, more closed off one. He hadn't asked about where she was, if she wanted to tell him then she would.

"Yeah, I thought that would happen." She didn't act the same, she was more guarded, more blatant. She didn't dance around her words anymore, instead getting her point across quickly. He didn't know that she had had to be quick with words to be able to talk to Morpheus with any meaning more than hello during the brief moments where they could speak.

"You... You knew that would happen?" Aziraphale was used to her warnings of things to come, the day she disappeared, she had said that something felt wrong.

"Yeah, I knew it was gonna happen in the next century and I knew I'd miss it. Still, sounds like an interesting story." Aziraphale was stumped, she usually was the one to hold most of the conversation whilst Aziraphale busied himself, he wasn't used to this quiet Astraea that let him lead the conversation.

"Yes, well. Crowley and I stopped it. It happened in a village called Tadfield you know. Small village, nice people." He stood from his seat next to her bed, it was getting dark and he was unnerved by her silence.

"Hmm, sounds nice. You'll have to take me there someday." He walked towards the door and made to leave the room, clearly anxious.

"Yes, I will have to. Goodnight my dear, sweet dreams." Dreams. She wished she could have sweet dreams, but every time she closed her eyes all she could see was Rodrick Burgess' evil smirk as he threatened to cut her wings off. She still hadn't looked at her wings, she was scared to. The damage of a century on disuse was too much for her to handle. Some angels who hadn't used them in even half a century had completely lost the ability to use them, just featherless stumps on their backs.

She couldn't sleep, she sat in darkness staring at her ceiling wishing that sleep would come to her. She hadn't slept in years, too scared to be able to close her eyes.

Maybe a walk would clear her head, she hadn't seen the world in over a century and she was sure that lot had changed in that time.

She felt like what she could only imagine a human teenager would feel like, sneaking out of their parent's house to go to a party as she climbed out of her window as quietly as she could. She hadn't had a chance to see modern day London yet.

She couldn't grasp the changes much, people were dressed in much less clothing and women's and men's fashion seemed to be interchangeable. She saw women in business attire and men walking around with small children on their hips, giving them their undivided attention. This new era certainly was more progressive.

She wondered if her flat was still empty, whether Aziraphale had kept it from being sold all these years. She doubted he had, he barely even knew where she lived, she stayed at his flat, he did not stay at hers. She loved her brother with all her heart, but sometimes she needed her own space. And after one hundred years of almost isolation, she needed her own space at the moment.

She came up to her block of flats that she hadn't seen in a century, it wasn't nearly as run down as she thought it would be and in all honesty, she was surprised it was even still standing.