The eagerness with which she began clearing the items away and offering to become involved in helping seemed to encourage him, giving him a small surge of not-quite-happiness. Pride, reassurance perhaps, at how wonderful humans tended to be when they were faced with a problem and given something to do to resolve it. It was sometimes during the worst moments when their goodness shone the brightest, and it was one of the reasons he loved them so much.
"Yes, exactly! Even a single life saved when they would have perished otherwise is a win, and if there are enough of us who try, hopefully it will be a great deal more then one life saved! And any help you would be willing to offer would be splendid. I may be an-...a very determined individual, but there's only so much I can do on my own. I've been keeping everything confined to the cabin me and my - er..." Beau? Friend? Paramour? Well, perhaps not that one. They didn't have to be secretive, anymore. He was still trying to find a word to describe Crowley that seemed to fit. "Partner," There, ambiguous enough for now. "Crowley, were given. It's beginning to be a little cramped, unfortunately."
And then the question of dates came up, and he paused, a sort of disgruntled confusion crossing his face. This was obviously something that had vexed him a bit.
"To be quite honest, I'm not sure, entirely. One would assume it was sometime in April, given the circumstances, but our moment of arrival here coincided with the stroke of midnight no New Years. We're more then four months and a century off-schedule. Not that silly things such as time ever seemed to matter to our captors before."
He stepped away from the door of her cabin and gestured for her to proceed him into the corridor as he prattled on in irritation. He shook his head and cast a reassuring though still rather somber look back her way at her concern for those residing in steerage.
"Oh, no, not exactly. At first, that had been a concern - something to do with isolating those in need of quarantine from those in first class, for immigration purposes when we reached New York - but once they realized what was really happening, they opened the gates and let them onto the deck, as well. Little good it did. By then, they'd already launched a great many of the lifeboats, and hardly many of them were filled more then half full."
The more he spoke, the more distant his tone was, the voice of someone who was remembering things he had seen firsthand and not simply imagining the situation based on third-hand accounts retold through movies and historical documentaries on the telly. There were moments, when he was almost able to discuss it with the emotional distance one achieved after a century of being able to come to terms with what had happened. But then their current situation would remind him all too quickly that it was happening again, and an angel's memory was much stronger then that of a human, besides. What was more then a lifetime for them was a drop in the bucket for him, and the memories reigniting themselves vividly in his mind had only served to make his anxiety worse.
"That, my dear, is one of the greatest hurdles we will face, once the events start. E.J will try to call the lifeboats back for more passengers, yes, but none of them will listen. We will need to find some way of ensuring that they are filled to capacity before they launch. And honestly, I'm not exactly sure what chance we have in that regard."
His hands had been tied in 1912. Heaven would never have allowed for him to exert such a massive use of miraculous force over the sinking, so he had been as useless as any of the humans in changing the way things would go. He had spent every possible second of the sinking trying to help people onto the boats when he could, the way a human would, trying to keep them calm, trying to get people to the dryer parts of the ship once it began flooding, up until the moment the human he was supposed to have been would have drowned in the freezing water. In the end, a small miracle to render himself invisible before leaping off of the bow of the ship and gliding over the aftermath on white wings had been all he could do. He'd circled above for hours, until the last life boat had been loaded onto the ships who had come to their aid, and had finally allowed himself to land on the deck of the Carpathia for the trip to New York.
No longer hindered by worries about what Heaven would think of his intervention, Aziraphale was left without his powers no thanks to Deerington's incomprehensible control over the Sleepers. Where now he would have gladly used a great miracle to ensure not a single soul on the ship perished, he was still forced to act as a human would, short of having the foresight to know what was coming. The irony of the situation did not help his mood in the least.
I am so sorry for this teal deer
"Yes, exactly! Even a single life saved when they would have perished otherwise is a win, and if there are enough of us who try, hopefully it will be a great deal more then one life saved! And any help you would be willing to offer would be splendid. I may be an-...a very determined individual, but there's only so much I can do on my own. I've been keeping everything confined to the cabin me and my - er..." Beau? Friend? Paramour? Well, perhaps not that one. They didn't have to be secretive, anymore. He was still trying to find a word to describe Crowley that seemed to fit. "Partner," There, ambiguous enough for now. "Crowley, were given. It's beginning to be a little cramped, unfortunately."
And then the question of dates came up, and he paused, a sort of disgruntled confusion crossing his face. This was obviously something that had vexed him a bit.
"To be quite honest, I'm not sure, entirely. One would assume it was sometime in April, given the circumstances, but our moment of arrival here coincided with the stroke of midnight no New Years. We're more then four months and a century off-schedule. Not that silly things such as time ever seemed to matter to our captors before."
He stepped away from the door of her cabin and gestured for her to proceed him into the corridor as he prattled on in irritation. He shook his head and cast a reassuring though still rather somber look back her way at her concern for those residing in steerage.
"Oh, no, not exactly. At first, that had been a concern - something to do with isolating those in need of quarantine from those in first class, for immigration purposes when we reached New York - but once they realized what was really happening, they opened the gates and let them onto the deck, as well. Little good it did. By then, they'd already launched a great many of the lifeboats, and hardly many of them were filled more then half full."
The more he spoke, the more distant his tone was, the voice of someone who was remembering things he had seen firsthand and not simply imagining the situation based on third-hand accounts retold through movies and historical documentaries on the telly. There were moments, when he was almost able to discuss it with the emotional distance one achieved after a century of being able to come to terms with what had happened. But then their current situation would remind him all too quickly that it was happening again, and an angel's memory was much stronger then that of a human, besides. What was more then a lifetime for them was a drop in the bucket for him, and the memories reigniting themselves vividly in his mind had only served to make his anxiety worse.
"That, my dear, is one of the greatest hurdles we will face, once the events start. E.J will try to call the lifeboats back for more passengers, yes, but none of them will listen. We will need to find some way of ensuring that they are filled to capacity before they launch. And honestly, I'm not exactly sure what chance we have in that regard."
His hands had been tied in 1912. Heaven would never have allowed for him to exert such a massive use of miraculous force over the sinking, so he had been as useless as any of the humans in changing the way things would go. He had spent every possible second of the sinking trying to help people onto the boats when he could, the way a human would, trying to keep them calm, trying to get people to the dryer parts of the ship once it began flooding, up until the moment the human he was supposed to have been would have drowned in the freezing water. In the end, a small miracle to render himself invisible before leaping off of the bow of the ship and gliding over the aftermath on white wings had been all he could do. He'd circled above for hours, until the last life boat had been loaded onto the ships who had come to their aid, and had finally allowed himself to land on the deck of the Carpathia for the trip to New York.
No longer hindered by worries about what Heaven would think of his intervention, Aziraphale was left without his powers no thanks to Deerington's incomprehensible control over the Sleepers. Where now he would have gladly used a great miracle to ensure not a single soul on the ship perished, he was still forced to act as a human would, short of having the foresight to know what was coming. The irony of the situation did not help his mood in the least.