[ Aziraphale exhales his relief in one short huff. Even just a minute, that's-- good. It's better than nothing. Some easing of the constricted stone in his chest, and that may be the best he can hope for. If nothing else, scraping himself together a bit makes him feel less likely to say something regrettable.

Logically speaking, Crowley is coming from a reasonable place. Straightforward. Very better on our own terms. The logic of the matter doesn't really help settle things. Which probably isn't very fair. ]

It's not-- it's not that I don't--

[ Appreciate the gesture? Think Crowley knows precisely what he's offering? Want to take that offer on sight, very, very badly? A lot of things. He's supposed to be articulate. This is a disaster already. ]

The entire issue, it's... sailing between Scylla and Charybdis, you understand. Antithetical.

[ Terrifying, maybe, a little bit, in the sort of way he's always been ill-equipped to manage gracefully.

He can't pretend he hasn't ever enabled or contributed to harm across all of human history. He can't pretend that he hasn't arranged things in his own favor to get a book or a scroll or a bit of rare memorabilia to squirrel away solely for selfish reasons. He can't pretend it felt at all the same as this.

How many more steps removed from what they normally are does one get before they need to evaluate whether they're technically still an angel at all? ]