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.

"You're gonna be sitting out here in the rain forever. Whatever they're doing up there, they're not thinking about you." As she came up to the door she was met with the back of man who was faced towards a raven on the ground. It wasn't the strangest thing she had seen in the world, a man talking to a raven.

As he turned around towards the door, she saw his face and gasped.

"Morpheus?" He stopped in his movements and glanced back at her in surprise.

"Astraea? What are you doing here?" She could here the surprise in his voice as his gaze flitted between, her, the door and the raven on the ground.

"I live here. Or at least I used to before..." There was an awkwardness left in the air as they both rememberd what before she was referring to, "Whose your friend?" She turned toward the raven on the ground, remembering Jessamy and her untimely death.

"He's not my friend."

"Matthew at your service." The raven cawed at her, startling her. A man talking to a raven was one thing, a raven talking to a man was another. She didn't know what she had expected, but it wasn't this.

"Well it's very nice to meet you, Matthew. What are you doing here, then?" She turned back to Morpheus, to her knowledge, she had no connection to this flat block.

"My sand is in there, someone is getting it for me." She heard the raven scoff at that, she never thought she would hear a raven scoff.

"Rach!" They heard the yell from upstairs and rushed up the stairs to the call. They found a woman staring blankly in front of her, panic written all over her face.

"Constantine. Wake up." Her eyes snapped to Morpheus as he gripped her shoulders, she seemed even more panicked now than she was before.

"What did you do to me?" Her voice was shaking with panic and anger, Astraea grabbed onto her arm and tried to calm her down and stop her from hitting him.

"Where's Rachel?" She freed herself from Astraea's grip and ran around the flat.

"Rachel?" She ran into the bedroom and was met with the sight of an elderly woman, "Rach?"

"Jo? Jo is that you?" The woman's voice was hoarse with age and Astraea couldn't help but let a gasp escape from her mouth and turn away from the scene.

"What's happening to her?" She could hear Constantine's pleas from behind her as the woman she loved retched at the loss of the sand. Tools of supernatural abilities should not be in the hands of humans.

"We can go."

"What?" Astraea turned back around at this point, both her and Constantine looking at the man before them as if he had grown a second head.

"What? We can't go, we can't leave her like this." Astraea reached out and brought the woman into a hug, shushing her and holding her, attempting to comfort her.

"We can't do anything. The sand was the only thing keeping her alive." Astraea had spent the last century with the man before her and even she was surprised with his lack of compassion.

"You have to do something." Constantine whimpered as she nestled more into Astraea. One feature of being an angel was that people were more comfortable in your presence.

"I'm not the one who left her with it." To Constantine it seemed that her words were the thing to get through to him, instead, it was the fierce glare that Astraea leveled him will. Anglic disappointment could make even the most stubborn of people change their minds on their core values.

"What is wrong with you? You want your sand back so that you can save all of humanity, well, here she is! But we're all just Rodrick Burgess to you." Astraea flinched at the mention of her captor, "All you care about is your sand. Your power. What is the point of you? Well, you got your sand back. why are you still here if you wont help."

"Wait outside." Constantine left Astraea's embrace and moved to Rachel's side, whispering to her as Astraea moved towards Morpheus.

"I was worried for a second that you weren't going to help." She whispered to him, it was strange being this close to him after being separated by two spheres of glass with five feet between them for a century.

"I can't keep her from dying." He whispered back, watching the girls say their goodbyes.

"I'm not expecting you to." Constantine looked between Morpheus and Rachel one last time before leaving the room.

"I'll go with her, keep her company." She turned to walk out of the door before pausing in the doorframe, "Good luck."She waited outside with Constantine for five minutes, holding her close whilst she nursed her tears, until Morpheus came out.

"She died in peace. In her sleep."

"I'll let her dad know," She removed herself from Astraea's hold, "You know, she was actually a good person. There are a few of them out there, you know. They're not all like me and Rodrick Burgess."

"You are not Rodrick Burgess." Matthew made his presence know at this time by cawing off to the side.

"And what's your friend's name?" Constantine turned to look at the Raven.

"His name is Matthew, but he's not my -"

"- Take care of him Matthew. He needs it." Astraea almost laughed at the look on Morpheus' face at that. In his opinion, he most certainly did not need Matthew.

Constantine turned towards Morpheus and Astraea, nodding once at them before walking away into the night.

"Constantine! That nightmare won't affect you anymore." Morpheus called out to the fading figure and she acknowleded him before moving on.

"I'm proud of you, Morpheus." She smiled at him from beside him.

"I don't need your pride, Cherubim." Her smile didn't drop from her face.

"Still, you did something you didn't want to, for someone else. It takes a lot of courage to do that. So, I'm proud of you." She moved to walk away from him and back to her brother's flat.

"What happened to you living here?" He called after her.

"I'm afraid someone else moved in. Though, maybe I can buy it again. The current owner won't have any use for it now that she's passed on." She grinned at his panicked look, "Good luck with the rest of your hunt, see you around, yeah?"

With that she disappeared from in front of him and down the street back to her brother's book shop where she would have to try and climb back in through her window without alerting her brother that she had sneaked out. She had made it into her room after almost falling twice on her ascent to the window.

She was met by her pitch black room and she let out a sigh of relief that she hadn't women anyone.

The light turned on.

"Where have you been?" She froze in place as Aziraphale's voice cut through the air and met her ears.

"I... I went out." She slowly turned around to face him, but she couldn't meet his eyes. She knew she'd break if she did.

"Out? You went... Out?" The shake in his voice showed his very loose grip on his emotions. The last time he had been angry at her was when he found out she was involved with Zeus and the Greeks.

"Yes?"

"Angel, leave her alone. She's a big girl." Crowley's voice slithered in through the door in a hiss of frustration. She hadn't had time to think on the relationship between the two of them since she had returned, but it was clear that something had changed.

"Very well. Good night, Astraea. And go to sleep this time." She chuckled at his words as he left her room and she settled back down into her bed.

She really had felt like a teenager, sneaking out of the house through the window whilst trying not to wake anyone and meeting a boy whilst she was out. It was only Morpheus, but that didn't explain why her heart was still beating out of her chest as she closed her eyes for the night.