diatu | you're the first one when things turn out bad

Who: EVERYONE, you're all invited. Or invited to happen upon this, if you missed the invite, and spot it happening in the Great Hall.
What: Aziraphale wants to show off his best friend, so he's invited you all to a tea party.
Where: The Great Hall
When: Tuesday after classes
Warnings: Tyzias is a menace, there's no reason to think anything at ALL about The Arrangement, and if the invite was any indication, the ineffables probably cannot be contained

Due to circumstances which will not be discussed (but, namely, that Pallidus cannot be in indirect sunlight), and using weather as an excuse, Aziraphale's planned tea party out on the lawn has been moved indoors.

He's gone all out. There is plenty of tea (with optional sugar and cream), biscuits (by which we mean crisp cookies), some small cakes that are rather adorably decorated, a fruit pie or two, and treats provided by Sunset Shimmer. (And possibly booze, if Tyzias did decide to bring some). Casual though the gathering is, he's set a proper table to hold their food, with a table cloth, a few candles, some nice napkins. This is not slipshod work. This is the work of someone aesthetically living in a past century who feels like he has waited a good millennia for this moment and is going to do this right.

And what This is, is introduce his demon best friend to polite company. As Crowley put it.
It's true, though. Except where Tyzias is concerned, anyway.

In the center of the table is a small, homey potted plant. Nothing particularly extravagant. Leafy and green and moderately well-cared for, recently purchased, and even more recently labeled with a tag that says "For: Crowley." The "for" was added secondary, after it occurred to Aziraphale that it looked a bit like he'd named the plant Crowley. Which he had not.

Aziraphale, aka Mr. Fell, is playing the anxious, bustling, gracious host as best he can, while being utterly preoccupied with his friend: a tall, gangly ginger who he introduces to everyone as "Crowley." Any assumptions one might make about the two apparently middle-aged, man-shaped beings is entirely one's own assumptions. But if Aziraphale is glowing with joy and affection, and eager to tell stories about the two of them, that's just how it is.

When things settle down and everyone has been served tea and introduced, he might try to show off some silly card-tricks: absolutely typical sleight-of-hand like humans perform, and not performed especially well. He's doing this mainly to annoy Crowley and seems to delight in that, even if he is a little genuinely embarrassed at how rusty his skills have gotten.

Come, join in, mingle. Hang out with your fellow classmates and enjoy some treats. We're coming up on the end of a year and, like a harvest festival, it's time to make new friends, rekindle old bonds, share in some good food, and party before the winter.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh. Why would he have to be a nice person for me to get to know him?" Xion, she of the million questions that no one else would ever thing to ask. But in her defense, she is like two years old. Just the right age for the endless why questions.

He remembered being young and naive once. Six-thousand years ago, standing on the Wall of Eden, terrified of all the questions he had that he could not ask, let alone have answers to. So he would answer her questions, because Crowley had often answered his, even the ones he could not voice, and she was brave enough to voice hers.

"Why would you want to get to know someone who wasn't nice? I mean, socially; why would you want to associate them if they weren't nice to you?"

"Socially?" she asked, confused by the word. But she shrugged and answered his other question. "Why would I have a choice?" she asked. "We know who we know, don't we?"

"You always have a choice. If you don't like someone, you have the choice to walk away from them and not let them know you further. And if you decide you do like someone," he said, looking up briefly at Crowley across the way with a smile, then back to Xion, "well, you have the choice to try and become their friend. There are so many kinds of people in the world; choose to surround yourself with ones who make you happy. It makes existence so much more enjoyable."

Have a moment where it looked like her jaw might fall off in shock. "Doesn't always mean past present and future?" Unless she misunderstood the word. "If that is always then I do not always have the choice. If I walked away I would have been turned into a Dusk or destroyed." She frowned, thinking. "And when I first arrived here I did not want to be with anyone, and yet whenever I walked away they followed me. I tried to make a choice, but since no one liked that choice they did not allow me my choice, at least one of them brought me back to the school by force. Maybe it is because I am a Nobody? Or was one?"

"You're so much more than that." The angel's pale eyes softened with sadness. The poor girl, thinking herself so little as to be a no-one. But Aziraphale, who had been belittled and bullied and quieted by the other angels, understood. He had been a nobody to them, too. "It's just...sometimes other people try to deny us our choice. Or sometimes you cannot act on your choice at the time, for your safety or that of someone you love."

This was a difficult lesson, one that took Aziraphale eons to learn, even with a patient guiding light at his side. Bad people bullied you into choices, into sides, and then made it unsafe for you. But the time would come when you had the support, the resources, and the chance to leave that toxicity behind, and what a liberating feeling it was. To finally step away and be an individual.

"But what I meant was... Choose people who support your right to make your own choices, and you'll find yourself empowered to leave behind those that don't. Sometimes you just need a little help." He straightened up proudly, giving a stuffy sort of wiggle and folding his hands primly over his stomach, the effect somewhat ruined, or enhanced, by a cheeky smile and wrinkle of his nose. "And if anyone says otherwise, they can take it up with me."

"I was not able to leave when I tried," she said, thinking, looking at her hands. "Not then. If I left I would be found. I was found, the first few times. But Riku was right, I couldn't stay," she said softly. "I had to be erased from their memories. When I woke up, in this place," well on the boat that led to this place, "I thought I had failed. That I still needed to die. I didn't know I already had." She considered, then looked up and gave him a small smile. "But it is alright now. My friends are here and they said that it is alright now. That everything is better. I am not a puppet anymore. Not a broken mirror or failed experiment. Now, my friends say they think I have a heart, that I actually exist." So much hope in those small quiet words. "And they would know. It is just a lot to consider, still, but..." right, she did have a point. "There wasn't a choice before. I do not know if I have one now. Maybe you do because you are a Somebody and have always been a Somebody. But I wasn't even a proper Nobody when I was created. Things are different here, so maybe here you are right, though." It would be nice to have a choice. But then again. "But too many times I have seen him here, in some part. The first time he was not really here. Axel was right about that. But the second time Noa saw him too and we fought, together. I do not know when he will come back again, but when he does, there is no choice. If I don't try and stop him, many people will be hurt. But at least... at least I won't be fighting alone. And my being strong won't destroy anyone else. Won't make my friends weak." She shook her head. "So no, I don't have a choice, but thank you. You are right that I am not alone. Not here."

"My dear..." He looked quite unsure of how to handle all the information he had been given. That she had died. Had been erased from her friends' memories. Had been a puppet and experiment. That she believed she had no choice and was a nobody.

Aziraphale wrung his hands a bit and looked around the room as if it might help him find a way to make this better for her. But there was nothing he could think of that would help, since pretty words and platitudes hadn't; he didn't even fully understand what was going on, had a feeling it was something so outside his foundational understanding of the world that he was missing some key concepts. But the poor girl needed someone to help her. And he was an angel without access to miracles; that made him feel very inadequate indeed. How did humans cope.

"Yes, things can be different here, for you. For many of us. Whoever 'he' is, we will help you against him." He put a steady hand on her shoulder, because it seemed the thing to do and he was rather at a loss at this point. "Now, if you are amenable, please do come enjoy yourself here with us. I promise to do what I can to make it safe and welcoming for you. You needn't even participate, if you're rather not. I won't pressure you to socialize. You can just be here and make yourself comfortable. Whatever you would like to do is entirely up to you; I'll support it either way."

She was so confused at the moment, but not the headache sort of confused. More like puzzled over how he was acting and speaking, but not the kind of confused where she was trying desperately to understand and failing.

She didn't know what 'my dear' meant, for instance. Or why his hand was on her shoulder. But sometimes Somebodies and even other Nobodies did odd things. Actually he reminded her a little bit of Xigbar, he called her odd things too and liked to touch people sometimes on their shoulders. For some reason Axel really didn't like Xigbar though, so she planned to keep that thought to herself.

But the word safe made sense to her and it put much of the rest in context. Though her context and his had venn diagram similarities rather than matching. "Oh. The bullies?" Or did he mean Xemnas? A little closer there. "I wasn't avoiding them for my safety," she said, simply. "Unless you met Xemnas...." she looked around the room and shook her head, Keyblade appearing in her hand as she made a fist at her side. "If he shows up here, get everyone else to somewhere safe. The three of us" Four? Five? Would Noa stand with her again? Would Saïx actually help? She wasn't sure anymore. She thought maybe. "Leave him to those of us who have faced him before, one way or the other. He would harvest everyone here for their Hearts. We know what to watch out for, now." Well... a little bit. Mostly Axel did. But at least she and Roxas would know better than to fall for his lies again.

you're the first one when things turn out bad

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[Spoilers] Wow this post is hard. rewrote parts a few times, hope the finished product makes sense.

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