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044. Circle

"Good afternoon, Aziraphale."

Aziraphale was mildly surprised to hear this particular voice in his circle of light. "Uriel? Is it you?" he asked.

"Were you expecting somebody else?" Uriel asked, sounding faintly amused. "Michael's out for the day so I decided to take the call for him. Of course, if you had some intimate business with him, you can call later."

"Don't be silly," Aziraphale huffed. "I just have to give a report and I didn't feel like writing it down."

"Because all written correspondence goes through the hands of Gabriel's men, correct?" Uriel inquired.

Aziraphale didn't bother to answer, for they both knew it was true. "I don't understand what's his problem, anyway. Nobody else I've talked with – not that there are many – even remembers the whole incident anymore. Why is he so stuck on it?"

"As your brother, he has had to hear about it quite a bit," Uriel revealed, sounding just a bit reprimanding. "I'd imagine he is a bit annoyed at the whole commotion."

Aziraphale sighed. "I guess it can't be helped," he muttered. "What about the others I haven't been in contact with? Are they all mad at me?" It was good, actually, that it was Uriel who had taken the call. As the archangel had not wished him to the lowest pits of Hell yet, he knew that Uriel could at most be mildly annoyed at him. Mildly annoyed he could handle. It was definitely better than Gabriel's biting coldness.

"Michael has got over it already, so don't worry about the report," Uriel soothed him. "At first he was annoyed, but then he decided to use all this extra time on his advantage to hone the skills of his warriors. Raphael is secretly glad, I believe, although he would never reveal that to Gabriel – apparently he is in no hurry to heal half of the Heavenly Host. Most angels don't even know who did and what, and those who do – your former fellow generals, for example – seem to either not care or support your views. Canael in particular kept grinning constantly for a whole month. Apparently he thought it was a great joke in some way."

"Well, at least not all of Heaven is against me, then," Aziraphale sighed. After a moment of hesitation, he asked, "What about you, then?" With Uriel's rather limited range of emotions, he'd probably better know whether it was indeed mild annoyance or something else the archangel felt over his little act of rebellion. Annoyance he could handle, but it might still get troublesome.

"Me? I don't really care either way, to be honest," Uriel replied to the other angel's great relief. "It happened, and without any serious consequences, too, so it had to be by His Will. In a way, I guess I'm glad, though," he then added thoughtfully. "When the Battle arrives, many will die, no matter how it all ends. And, I fear, many will Fall."

"Good," the Principality said. "One annoyed archangel is about all I can take at the moment."

"I'm sure Gabriel will come around sooner rather than later. Well, for a given value of sooner, anyway. You are more important to him than you even know."

"I wonder," said Aziraphale. "Although I hardly could be any less important to him than he lets me understand," he added in a bitter murmur.

"Now, now," Uriel chastised in something bordering on amusement. "He does love you; I can feel it whenever he talks about you."

"Sorry," Aziraphale replied. "He just has been very difficult lately. Anyway... how are things in Heaven otherwise? Any particular difficulties?"

"Not that I know of," the archangel replied. "Not that I'm always the most informed person when it comes to difficulties in Heaven, of course. But we had an archangels' meeting yesterday and nobody reported anything significant, so I guess the situation is quite okay."

"A meeting of how many archangels, exactly?" Aziraphale asked quietly.

"Still four," Uriel replied with something close to a sigh. "Some are trying to change that, but I'm going to resist until the very end. The public opinion seems to lean towards the direction of us needing seven archangels, like humans believe we have. I wonder if they think we aren't fulfilling our duties properly."

Aziraphale shook his head in sympathy. Simply giving up music to Israfel had been hard to Uriel, and that had been the part about his duties he least liked. It wasn't that he was too proud or attached to his position – still the most usual reasons for an angel to Fall – just that he desperately wanted to prove his worth. At least, that was how Aziraphale figured it. He would have never dared to say it aloud – saying such a thing about an archangel couldn't have led to anything good.

"So, how is your report, then?" Uriel asked. "Give as much or little details as you'd like to. I can weave a pretty tale to Michael anyway that's just about as truthful and probably more pleasant than anything you could come up with."

"My, my, an archangel encouraging untruthfulness?" Aziraphale tried to sound shocked but failed. "I'm very disappointed, Uriel."

"I prefer to think of it as artistic licence," Uriel said lightly. "It's not like I'm going to lie anyway. I swear to be just as truthful as you have been in your reports until now."

Aziraphale shook his head again. His reports in the last seven or eight centuries had mostly consisted of half-truths and exaggerating. "Fighting with a demon" sounded much better in a report than "argued over what wine to drink over dinner", didn't it? And everybody was a lot happier that way.

So, he gave his usual report, putting more weight on little arguments than they ever could have got in real life, pointing out irrelevant details, and dubbing a victory in a match of Chess "a glorious triumph over the powers of darkness". The greatest thing he had actually done in his battle against the forces of darkness was not letting Crowley run over a few more pedestrians with that car of his (or, like he told Uriel, "saving countless lives from the evils of beings of darkness"), but that hardly mattered.

Aziraphale knew Crowley was doing the exactly same thing with his own reports, only the demon didn't have to worry about lying. He wondered, really, what the demon would call the fact that he had lost their other game of Chess. (As he later discovered, it had been called "causing a pure ruler to fall under the temptation of an evil woman". Apparently this evil woman – Crowley's queen piece – had also led into temptation "several clergymen" – or, rather, the two white bishop pieces.) So, he had no qualms about thus using the demon on his advantage.

Uriel accepted his words without any further comments. "I shall forward your report to Michael," he finally said. "Was there anything else?"

"Not at the moment," Aziraphale replied. "Unless you had something to say?"

"Well... If Gabriel contacts you, be polite," Uriel said. "Don't forget a single 'sir' or he'll probably demote you. I'll let you know when he has calmed down enough to be sensible again."

"I'll remember," sighed the Principality. "Goodbye, then, Uriel, and God be with you."

"May the Presence be with you," Uriel replied.

And, as Aziraphale returned to his usual chores, he actually could believe it would be, at least for another moment.

Next Prompt: Moon