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While a "rubber duck" between Crowley and Aziraphale is a dildo, Aziraphale sometimes feels like a metaphorical one. The fake cock of a rubber duck is metaphorically his imposter syndrome, and symbolic of what he sometimes thinks he is as a person. It's the I bet you're all wondering: what's that man doing up there? of 1941. It's his fear that he's jiggery-pokery and nothing but a sleight-of-hand trick-- an imitation of a human, rather than a real person.

And where does all of that burn? Where does it go up in flames and burn down, in equal measure, and always has?

In, and with, his eternal flame of Crowley.

Aziraphale feels guilty about his consumption, about his humanity, when The Four Horsepeople are riding for him. He struggles to accept that it is all for him, too, because to accept that is to accept his humanity, and he's so hard on himself. But while he can scale back food for awhile, and while he can try to deny himself human things he loves, like his side gig as a working, professional magician?

What he can never do is deny that he loves Crowley-- with a love that is as human as it gets. Every part of Aziraphale is human with Crowley. Loving Crowley is the best of him and the kind of person Aziraphale wants to be. And what kind of person is that?

A professional conjurer. Different from a magician because its definition is also that of an exorciser of demons... which are metaphorical darkness. A conjurer? Is a healer.

It's not just about being human but about being a good person. The one staunching the bleeding, not causing it. How much is in your wallet? How much, Doctor McFell? Asa: meaning: healer, doctor. Aziraphale is the Raphael. He has made his redemption be "liberating their Bentley." He has made it loving Crowley, but he's never truly believed he deserved him.

And it follows him, into this nightmare that he is having in S2 & S3.

It's a dream of the last week of his life and a fate where everything goes wrong and he and Crowley can't find the lady or hear the Nightingales and then Hell claims him, Death takes him, and he works his way through a bardo where he ultimately decides that Crowley's love for him might have meant that maybe he wasn't completely irredeemable but he also wasn't good enough for a truly happy ending, either. In this dream, Aziraphale opts to torture himself for all of time with another kind of rubber duck... an imitation world.

Imitation Crowleys. Pale, incomplete facsimiles of the real things. The rubber ducks of people. Ones that work well enough in the moment to sometimes help get you there but that never truly have the kind of warmth that can fully, deeply satisfy. An eternity of passionless Crowleys who study the stars, instead of making them... Aziraphale's artist lost to him forever, except in haunting his memories... Thank Frances that was all a dream. 😂

Thank Frances that Asa & Professor Anthony are the surplus baby. Thank fuck reality actually ended with 1.06's "The Very Last Day of the Rest of Their Lives" and, Aziraphale? You're going to wake up back in reality to the Crowley of the yellow eyes who calls you "angel" and be able to avoid the horrors of the rubber duck world your subconscious just showed you-- and I know that you do. We can see it here in your dream, as your mind works through all of this.

This very bad dream is a very good omen, helping to you to see the way through to what you will do. You've found the lady and you know that if you reach out? If you start treating the angels and demons like the people they are?

You can get all these ducks to talk about their frozen peas, which is the way forward. It's what this entire story has always been about-- winning the battle of personal Armageddon. Fighting The Four Horsepeople, and keeping your inner angels and demons at bay.

You know now that the answer is to group the books together by the first letter of the first sentence, like what Jim was doing in S2. I saw your subconscious telling you that you know about Michael, and of The Metatron's 'fiddling' with that book. You know exactly who she needs to talk to-- the same person you talk to. The one who understands that all too well. And you need to get all of you to a place where Michael can talk to Crowley soon because this dream shows how guilty you feel over having not reached out to her already.

It shows that you're thinking that, maybe if you do, you can keep her from going mad-- that saving the world first starts with something just as important: saving the world that is Michael herself.

It's a wild, new world that you're going to make, Aziraphale-- one that would have seemed impossible to you once, until this surreal dream showed you that maybe it's all more possible than you believed.

It's a world you actually already know how to make, which will excite you and make you nervous and make you be brave, all in equal measure, once you're on the other side of the panic attack you're probably understandably going to have when you wake up back in reality. What sort of world?

One where no one loses Canada... one where there is a metaphorical Canada for all of the people around you to live in. Canada: Latinized version of a now-extinct Iroquoian language word for a village; a community.

A space where everyone willing in your world-- angel, demon, human alike-- joins the Whickber Street Traders & Shopkeepers Association, like how you began dreaming with The Ball. A place where the bookshop is truly a functional embassy and a gateway to Earth for angels and demons alike... Michael and the copies of Our Little Village in S2 & Beloved Spouse's "our little village" of Whickber Street... it's North America. Heavenly liberation. That's what you build, after this dream helps you get there. After all, who wouldn't want to live in Canada? 😊 What a great place to write a book of life in...

You'll let them all in. You'll make it a real embassy. You'll make it happen, make it real, until, one day, not too long from now? There will be no chance of Armageddon: The Sequel because you can't have a war without war and because the archangel Michael can't destroy the Earth because then where would she and Crowley go get coffee?

Your mind has worked out that you don't stop a war from happening by trying to be put in charge of the army. You stop a war from happening by liberating the soldiers. You steal the army to your side of peace by treating them not as weapons but as people. You beat God and The Devil and The Metatron at their own game by getting them to play an entirely different one of your choice, instead-- a game that plays to your strengths.

Your dream taught you to own what it is you know and feel brave enough to be able to share it more and that's a good thing because you know how to live, Aziraphale. You and Crowley exemplified that to such an extent that Asa and Professor Anthony's "happy ending" was the most terrifying thing in this entire series.

Your dream showed you that you're not a rubber duck, you're human incarnate... and so are all of them. You can build this new model because you can see it now. It's not about having higher rank; it's about exorcising demons. That's a job for a professional conjurer, though, and that's why it's a good thing that you're really still here, about to wake up, as the very end of S3 showed us.

Speaking, as we were, about those Christmas lights... It's Christmas Day, Mr. Scrooge, even if you're really a Fezziwig-- or that's who you would like to be, anyway, as you quoted him to Nina in S2. You haven't missed it. It's not too late. It's three card monte with the Dickens novels, too, and the true ending can be found not in Bleak House or Hard Times but A Christmas Carol.

The cure to personal Armageddon is a cheese sandwich-- any form of it-- but if you wish to be delivered from evil, Aziraphale? If you want a truly scrumptious eternal life with your original, vintage, liberated Bentley, as we all know you do? You aren't going to get that dooming yourself to David Bowie's Life on Mars.

You're going to get it by dancing on the head of that pen-punning pin that you have Michael wearing in this thing and writing it. Create it into being. It's dominoes, Aziraphale, as your dream showed. They're all going to fall or go up-- to Earth-- if you help get them there. The long rope, and the medium rope, and the short rope are all the same length.

They aren't angels or demons-- they're people, as your dream helped you to recognize. People with their own inner wars that you and Crowley are uniquely equipped to help them fight. It's not about fighting The Metatron or The Devil directly, as you'll never get anywhere-- it's about weakening their ability to do harm by making the alternative of a more accepting world for their soldiers.

Saving the world doesn't look like a big, epic battle for the whole of the Earth; it looks like Jim's hot chocolate. It looks like Beelzebub's favorite human song. It looks like showing Michael how to metaphorically dance on the head of the most horrible kind of pin there is before it's all too much and she burns it all down with her...

...and, missing Christ on a bike, Aziraphale, we both know who the greatest dancer is. I mean, he's really not a great literal dancer lol but Crowley. can. dance. and you're a huge part of that. Your dream has an awareness of the fact that the two of you can help Michael, and a guilt over how you haven't already tried. It's what you'll know you need to fix when you wake up.

There will be war so long as no one is addressing that Michael has been abused. There will be war so long as no one is addressing that Gabriel has anxiety, depression, and an eating disorder. Helping them fight their personal Armageddons-- keeping them from ending their own worlds-- is how you save the world itself.

We aren't meant to be able to easily cope with these books of life of ours, and not on our own. You and Crowley know that, as you'd both have gone completely round the bend long ago without one another. The space that you made for one another needs to be opened up now. That is what you will know that your dream told you to do-- to start with Gabriel, and let them all in.

Let Gabriel in and you're also letting in Beelzebub, and where there are four of you "fallen" human ants? There will soon be oodles of them in this new world you're making.

There were four of you in the bookshop, and it was the whole world, and now, as this dream showed you? It's time to change who those four are.

Your dream-- so, you-- are trying to get you to fuck your concepts of God and Satan, Aziraphale, and to replace them with the real people of Gabriel and Beelzebub. To start with those two, other ducks and let them help you open the door. To metaphorically hire the assistant bookseller-- he's the key to everything. Do that and, one day, not all that long from now?

There you'll be, on a warm night in the South Downs, the cottage actually real around you, a few dozen people in the backyard-- angels and demons and humans alike-- all drinking literal cocktails on euphemistic Alpha Centauri under the stars. You'll want them all to go home after an hour lol but you will also be overwhelmed in a good way by how real it all is... and breathlessly grateful for all of their messy imperfections.

The dream of your Death, and your Hell? It helps you appreciate your life and gives you the courage to make the world you want to live in. It won't be easy, or smooth, as nothing is. You'll have to be brave, but you are braver than you think you are.

There will again come a tempest, Aziraphale-- there always will. Your story was left in reality with "the really big one" still to come for you (likely happening in the reality background of S2/S3) and this dream to show us how you dealt with it when it did. Because, the truth is? There will always come some tempests-- some darkness, some storms-- no matter how long you live because, if there isn't? You're not living. You're not in the real world. You're not human.

And you're human, Aziraphale.

The dead will leave their graves and walk the Earth once more, even if there are also great lamentations. It's just that how the dead resurrect-- whether it's a world of eternal life as zombies like we saw with Asa and Anthony or whether you find your way back to yourself in the world of the living-- is up to you. We judge ourselves and The Four Horsepeople never have as long a final ride as they think they might as, if you avoid salads? Then, well, everyday, it's getting closer...

You can Dr. Frankenstein yourself a rubber duck world of doom in Hell and have it never truly be real... or you can deal with the messy, silly reality by recognizing that, sometimes, things happen that just never before seemed like they could ever be real and, yet? Here they are. The world of the living is the magical world, where the miracles can happen. It's magic, and you know magic. You're a better performer than you believe.

I bet that, one day in the not-too-distant future, Gabriel will ask what made you reach out to him. What was it that made you send him a private message and ask him to come to the bookshop alone to talk? I bet you think of the dream and you hesitate but then decide, in the moment, to tell him the truth.

I had a dream about you. We used to talk a bit, back before everything, you and me, remember? And I thought that maybe everything might be better, for all of us, if we could start to do that again.

And when Gabriel asks what happened in this dream of yours that changed everything, Aziraphale? I think you tell him. He's definitely going to love hearing that you dreamt about him naked 😂 but he's also not dim. He doesn't need a Psychology doctorate to pick up on how the stripadeliveragram and the new name of Jim were really about being emotionally naked and fresh starts-- about how the dream you had was really a desire to have your old friend to talk to... and that you worry about him. Your dream, after all, was that Heaven tried to kill him... because you know they are slowly killing him.

Your dream saw through Gabriel clearly to the anxiety and depression and the consumption disorder. You dreamt he was traumatized and in danger and you insulated him in blankets and hot cocoa and a week spent hanging out with Crowley, talking about feelings and trying to set up the neighbors. You care deeply about him, Aziraphale. Your mind made a world to keep him safe-- one that also recognizes how vital he would be to your and Crowley's own safety. You gave yourself the answer, and the answer is getting the archangel Gabriel a go-to comforting beverage.

And, later, when the time comes for the first embassy party you throw? Your first attempts to make a better version of The Ball from your dream into reality? Gabriel turns up, in a rhinestone-laden blue suit with a really fabulous coat. (Naturally, one of the only questions he did ask about your dream was what he wore to this party in it lol.) It obviously won't be exactly the one from your dream-- which will make it all the better, because this one is real-- but it'll be a bit ridiculous, like he is. Like you both are, and like all of life is.

And when you're there, all nervous and in disbelief that this is actually happening, and you find yourself looking between him and your neighbor and saying the impossible thing of: "Ah, Mrs. Sandwich. This is Gabriel"? Gabriel will have taken the tray from your hand and offered it to her instead and you'll just be standing there as the Supreme Archangel quite literally makes your dreams come true:

"Hi, I'm Jim. It's short for James. Some people call me Gabriel. Do you wanna consume any of these, uh... small meal blobs?"

And you'll laugh and tear up at the same time. You'll touch his arm and then have to walk away for a minute because you'll know you've done it. This deeply silly, vainly insecure ostrich is your friend and you're never going to that terrifying world of Asa and Professor Anthony. He won't let you. It is, as your own dream foretold and you both made happen: you've been delivered from evil by the stripadeliveragram.

[You tell Jimbriel about the darker parts of the dream in more detail eventually and he says, and we quote: "This all sounds like a real drag, Aziraphale. Didn't this dream begin with me naked? Why did you give it, like... a plot?" to which Crowley adds: "I asked him that, too, actually." and Gabriel just points in "see, he gets it" at Crowley, who adds: "I mean, we were getting shop lesbians to vavoom together for the first part of it." Gabriel: *eyebrow* "That what they call it down here these days?" Aziraphale: *half-laughing* "Good night now, Gabriel, see you next Tuesday." /fanfic popping into the meta lol] But mah point izzz...

You found the lady, Aziraphale, and the path to a world where you and your lady live happily ever after. You know how to make the true ending now-- the one from the novel of a boy, and his dog, and a summer that never ends. Just as good an omen is that you might be getting more to a place of forgiving yourself and starting to believe that you actually do deserve to live in such a world. You now know that's truly the only way you'll ever be able to have that eternal flame forever.

You need to make peace with yourself, if you want to know forever the peace you find with Crowley, and I think this dream helps you get closer to that.

You wanna bring the baby, Aziraphale? You want to marry *your* Crowley? You want a world of silly and messy reality where the only rubber ducks are toys and everyone you know lives in a metaphorical Canada you helped to make? The first step is to do the thing that this dream tells me you are thinking a lot about doing in reality:

sending a private message to the archangel Gabriel.

I'm as totally certain as you are that everything would be better if you could also just be near this one, other particular person. Go get Captain Von Trapp to start playing the guitar again-- Liberace is how you liberate your Bentley forever. Think of your dream's bookending start and tidy finish, Aziraphale: Jim's hot chocolate. Cocoa delivery.

You will wake, having had a nightmare of everything you fear most and, after the understandable panic attack that is definitely going to come? I know that you will listen to Agnes Nutter and reach out and make the calm cometh by making a Canada where you can all approach to profess those peas and have some peace forever. You can do it, as you're not a rubber duck. You're a professional conjurer.