#hob writes

we’re told “he could have chosen to leave wilf, but he didn’t! he chose to die for him instead!”. but the doctor doesn’t do that. the doctor doesn’t leave people to die while saving himself.

in the end of time, he talks about his fear of regeneration. the feeling of becoming a new man, leaving all he is behind.

if he’d left wilf in that chamber, he would have been a new man. it would have made him someone else, someone more arrogant and probably more susceptible to the countless temptations he faces on his journeys. it would have sent him down a path of bitterness and rage and pride, and it would have changed him.

and so accusatory — you took my land from me. you destroyed what was mine. you, my friend below my station, the one i took pity on, the one i invited onto my pastures of red grass, betrayed me. you burned up every memory we made there together.

i think it says something about aziraphale being a control freak. he has a very strong sense of right and wrong, unlike other angels who tend to just do what they’re told. he doesn’t like thinking outside black-and-white terms (as seen in e4’s minisode); he’s used to having things his way (see: the bentley in e3); he doesn’t like being taken by surprise. hell, he actively defied all of heaven and averted an apocalypse simply because he didn’t want to leave his bookshop. and he’s powerful — powerful enough, apparently, to mind-control a room full of people into becoming jane austen characters.

so when he’s offered a role that would essentially put him in charge of heaven, of course he’s going to take it. and when he asks crowley to join him, of course he expects him to accept. because aziraphale is used to having things his way.

but crowley goes off-script. he gets mad. and when he kisses aziraphale, it catches him off-guard. and aziraphale hates being caught off-guard. and so aziraphale leaves, and takes his chance to have control over things — his life, his work, his role as an angel.