CR-AU:

[temptationaccomplished]

diatu was set up as a magical academy and Aziraphale (going mostly by the alias of Mr. Fell) arrived powerless except for the spells he learned along the way in his studies.

Like with OTHER more famous magic schools, the students were sorted. He was sorted into Ka - the house focused on Sundering magic. Sundering, or summoning/portals/etc, is the formerly banned magic that sundered/ripped the player characters from their own worlds into the world of Diatu. Ka's uniform colors were red and black (Crowley's colors), and the house had a reputation as "a House of dangerous weirdos all inches away from unleashing demonic hordes into the Tenscore Kingdoms." Aziraphale took a snake as a familiar because he missed a certain wily serpent.

Missed him so much, actually, that he spent the better part of his time for the first few months attempting to learn and master the art of Sundering so that he could...you guessed it...summon his friendly neighborhood demon.

As a security measure, he recruited his friend and confidante Yotosuyu, as well as the young hero Eleven, to serve as backup during his summoning attempt. The attempt failed and instead he swapped bodies with Crowley for a time, with Crowley in the world of Diatu and Aziraphale in Crowley's body back home. Depressed by his own failure, Aziraphale (once returned to his body and Diatu) threw himself in studies. He met the troll Tyzias and they came to an antagonistic friendship/studybuddyship.

And then Crowley arrived. The "tea party" Aziraphale ambitiously held to introduce his best friend to his classmates was a disaster, but in true ineffable fashion...it somehow worked out in the end. Tyzias overthrew the party, started a raucous DJ booth and got Aziraphale drunk. Tyzias thought she'd killed him and used her music magic to enable Crowley to heal Aziraphale with song. And then the ineffable duo peaced out of their own party and went upstairs to enjoy their time ...together.

The next month, Tyzias unleashed shadow versions of everyone on the campus. After they conquered those, there was a battle against Tyzias' own shadow and her truth was revealed. Aziraphale helped in the battle, mostly offering encouragement and support among the others counting Tyzias as a friend.

It wasn't long after that his time in Diatu ended.

---

Tramitem:

Aziraphale was born in June at the tail-end of the 1960s in London, UK, to a single mother [1] : Rose Gretchen Fell. A product of the baby boom following victory in Europe, Rose came of age during London's Swinging Sixties. Her self-absorbed hedonism, sheltered life with her father's wealth, and her youth left her ill-prepared for the child she brought into the world. As a result, growing up, Aziraphale found himself with strict, but undefined rules from a negligent mother. In her place, he was taken under his grandfather's guidance and instilled with more conservative, careful, still very strict views. The widowed Admiral Fell wanted Aziraphale to make something more of himself than he felt Rose had become.

His grandfather had many rules, including old-fashioned ideas of how to properly "be a man," how children should be seen not heard, and how a young man should dress. Aziraphale learned early how to play polo, how to tie a tie, how to stand straight and "at rest," and to keep his thoughts and opinions to himself around adults.

Grandfather Fell also had a study/library that was not to be touched, but was filled to the brim with curiosities--old books and art, mostly from travels around (what was then, particularly during the Admiral's youth) the British Empire's colonial assets in parts of Africa, India, Australia, and the far away world of Canada. Aziraphale developed an interest in these mysterious cultures, their art and artifacts, despite the Admiral's anglo-centric world view on them.

His grandfather and early schooling would shape his personal style and aesthetic choices. The study--with its dark, deep rich wood paneling and whole-wall shelving, and Old World feel, always smelling of cedar and pipe tobacco--would especially make an impact. Aziraphale was also fond of the boarding school's chapel's vaulted ceilings and stained glass rose window.

At age 8, Aziraphale started attending boarding school. Bullied by the other boys, he spent his free time either in the library or helping the kitchen staff, and discovered a love of food and classic literature. Because of the bullying, he became supremely protective of his possessions, hoarding them in his room in fear of their destruction; however, Aziraphale remained kind and generous to those in need, often taking other bullied boys under his own wing, leaving them friendly gifts or helping with homework. He was social, but to a short limit.

On the whole, his classmates also came from middle-class and upper-middle backgrounds, and many reflected the views of their often very conservative parents. Aziraphale found himself both parotting those views (including those from his grandfather), and questioning them in turn. Many of those views were unfair, uncaring, and unkind, and Azirphale felt that on the whole, humanity could do better with itself than it currently was: kindness, after all, begat kindness. But it was very hard to go against the grain. He clung to the safety of things he knew and had always been told were (and had seen enforced as) right.

Still, he found subtle rebellion a secret joy; nothing outright, nothing blatantly against the rules, and nothing out of malice. Usually helping someone other than himself. Sometimes kindness and understanding was as much a rebellion as destruction. Aziraphale knew the school's rules inside and out. If there was a loophole, if the rules didn't explicitly state something was off limits, he wasn't in the wrong, was he?

During his late teens, to his grandfather's dismay, Aziraphale's literary interests broadened into things like Baudelaire and Oscar Wilde. He came down with a deep appreciation for art, for music (classical and opera, which his grandfather approved of...and many other types which he did not), for philosophy, and for world cultures.

When he went on holiday with his grandfather, Aziraphale felt like he was kept on a leash away from the fascinating world around him, or shamed for his interest in the variety humanity had to offer. Aziraphale wanted to view himself as a kind, good person, so the resentment he felt about his grandfather's limitations were--at least in Aziraphale's mind at the time--a sign that he was not being good enough.

It was also around this time that the young Aziraphale, who had first began participating in the school's theater department as a way of making friends, fully immersed himself into acting, dancing, and other fun theatrics (like sleight of hand magic). He wasn't especially good at any of it, but he enjoyed himself immensely. It was in this theater club that he first developed a crush on a fellow male classmate: a young, dark-haired brooding boy with a wicked grin and a motorcycle. Aziraphale never confessed his attraction to the young man, but he attended every single play his classmate was in.

From boarding school (now high-school, what the UK refers to as college), he went on to university, where he studied law (at his grandfather's behest) and found it dissatisfying. He persisted, however, for the sake of not rocking the boat, ending his work at university with a BA in Law and a minor in History. His friends tended toward poets and writers, artists and actors. People who also questioned the world, but asked those questions outright, out loud, and moved at the fast pace of the world. He admired their malleable nature compared to his own steadfast careful anxious one and relished in social debates over drinks. Their views broadened his. His mother neither encouraged nor discouraged this behavior--she hardly seemed to care. His grandfather began to fear he was a wild-child like Rose.

As his school-time ended, when it became clear Aziraphale had no interest in law school, Admiral Fell tried to thwart what he saw as a bohemian lifestyle and attempted to push Aziraphale into the military for some proper discipline.

In a blatant act of rebellion, Aziraphale (aged 23) refused, packed his belongings, and left home.

While living on a friend's couch in Edinburgh, he saw that the former boarding-school classmate (that dark brooding boy from theater club) had just ended a play in the West End and had been offered a role on Broadway in America. Inspired, Aziraphale booked a flight to New York. He arrived, as many had before him, with few possessions and no plan. It was terrifying. It was exciting, like the world had begun anew for him.

He lived in The Bronx for period of time, making use of his law background to work as a paralegal. In that time, Aziraphale found his footing, and found inspiration in the bustling culture the city had to offer. First, the immediate area: a delicatessen, a hole-in-the-wall taco shop, a local record store. Then of course the traditional touristy fare: Broadway and Radio City Music Hall, Time Square and Lincoln Center, the Met... Every gallery and restaurant and spectacle the city offered. Central Park became a favorite place to unwind when downtown. There was something calming about sitting on a bench in a garden oasis in the middle of a metropolis.

Gradually, he became more bold, and curious. The artists and writers he met and befriended introduced him to the music scenes of the East Village and he found himself attending gay dance halls and other music and art scenes, even if he felt at times that he didn't fit in. He began going to charity events and offering support to the HIV preventative causes.

His grandfather passed the year he turned 27, and Aziraphale flew back to the UK for the funeral. His mother, who had no use for antique books and artifacts herself, offered him the contents of the Admiral's study when she took ownership of the family estate.

Sometime after he returned to America, he moved from The Bronx to Manhattan when he acquired a loft space from an aging artist friend. His new living space--originally decorated in an eclectic, bright, bohemian cluttered style befitting the original inhabitant--was gradually merged with his own dusty, old-fashioned, equally eclectic and antique style.

He had no use for the space as an actual artist's studio and it soon became filled with not just his grandfather's books and items, but others as well, dug up in antique stores and from travels. The walls were filled with art, both local and antique, but some of his purchases needed more care than others. In his free time, he began to research and learn art preservation and restoration for his own collection. This led to an internship with a university conservation center in Massachusetts...and subsequently a career change.

(Oddly, he has no desire to create art or write his own stories. Maybe he has the talent, though he hasn't really tried. His interest is in preserving what others have done. Protecting Earthly creations. It feels...right.)

He's now 50. He's never married and has no desire to have children or a family of his own, though he wouldn't mind a partner. Sometimes life feels a little lonely and more than a few times he's found himself looking over his left shoulder as if expecting someone to pop in. Currently still living in Manhattan, he works as a collector and restorer of antiquities and fine art. His own collection is private and very rarely loaned out to museums, if at all, though he works for the various museums, universities, and galleries in the area, and has taught only a handful of guest lectures.

He busies himself with his work and a few social clubs, going to shows, and dining out.


[1] For the record, my intention was to parallel/foil God as she is represented in Good Omens (using Rose, with the Admiral standing in, sort of, for Heaven), not to make Aziraphale a literal bastard. But, you know, that works too.