Oh my god, this story. It's broken my heart. I feel like I want to cry and laugh and shake something until they all get happy endings, but I know that's not going to happen and it /hurts/.

...Basically, all the feels. You write beautifully, it's almost a crime this story will never get published. I've not been this moved by any story, fic or actual book, in a long time. Thank you. Thank you so much for writing this wonderful story and sharing it with us. 3

I am crying so hard, you have no idea.

The idea that someone so good as Azirphale might go insane and become the worst of demons if he fell was inspired. I really bought your characterizations given the twist. Crowley as an unfallen angel was recognizably him. This took a lot of thought and hard work and the result is impressive.

Oh, jeeze. This is so impressive.

Zirah would kill a baby just to stop him crying, and just because there happened to be a conveniently-sized encyclopaedia at hand. He wouldn't do it because he enjoyed it; he wouldn't stop because it was the son of Satan and there'd literally be Hell to pay for. He'd do it, because he was a mad bugger and anyone with a mind shaped like that would do anything. Then he'd probably wash his hands and fuss about the carpet and offer them another cup of tea, and Satan knew what he'd do with the body . . . . I love how you can write a demon Aziraphale and have him perfectly in character. But crazy. But perfect.

This is so beautifully crafted. It's got shades of the original, yet it's entirely new...it's amazing, really. I can't even really review properly, but I do know that I LOVED this.

I am kind of blown away by this story. The characters, the plot- they were familiar but you made it your own.

I almost cried. Ah well, just saying that I'm putting this on my favorites list because I can't seem to form a coherent review. I loved it is basically what I'm trying to say.

Love from,

Charlie

It took me a week to read everything through because it kept hurting too much and I had to go away and try not to come back and keep failing because this story is beautiful. In the way a tsunami or an earthquake or a drought splitting earth is beautiful, I would suppose. But I couldn't not finish.

The last few chapters gave me heartburns I think.

And in the Aziraphale lied no more than did Caphriel, right? So that can mean a thousand different things at the same time and I thought the epilogue surely couldn't do any more to me than what's already been done so I was unprotected when ambushed by the seven-foot-tall skeleton (though Azrael is nice enough. Azrael might be the most genuinely nice supernatural being in this universe. Which is saying less than nothing.) and oh. Zirah. Oh no. Please. Oh no. Thank Go- Merli- Milton Friedman Aziraphale and Crowley are not Zirah and Caphriel. They hurt less.

-blank stare-

...In retrospect, reading this in a state of vague confusion and mild sleep deprivation wasn't the smartest thing I've ever done.

I read with increasing confusion up to around the middle-to-end of Chapter 7, at which point I woke up, my chest started to ache and the confusion either vanished or became merely inconsequential. My mother informs me that, by halfway through Chapter 8, I was turning my famous "puppy eyes" onto the screen, as if that could actually influence the words.

Some point around Chapter 9, my eyes started stinging. If I was the kind of person who cried, I would have misted up here. I came close. At Chapter 12, I had a look of horror on my face and began to pull away from the screen. I gasped aloud when I realised what Caphriel had in the glass in Chapter 13, twitched violently when Zirah was doused in Holy Water and spent the rest of the story frozen in shock with my hand over my mouth and wondering vaguely why I wasn't crying. I knew it was coming... I knew it couldn't end happily but... I wished...

The epilogue... I liked the epilogue... it had hope...

I guess what I'm trying to say is 'Damn you' because it's just not fair that you could make me love these twisted characters so much, so fast and then... and then do something like that to them... no, it's not fair at all...

-sniffs- And I guess it's only fair to tell you that you're amazing, because I don't get influenced emotionally by stories to this degree...

Wow, just wow. Chapter 13 made me so teary eyed. Amazing story. Keep writing!

Needless to say, I loved every bit of it.

The dark ambiguity behind Zirah’s convoluted mind, fascination for blunt kiling things and hidden yearning to be forgiven… Caphriel’s attachment to humanity despite its constant (and prevailing) stupidity, his tendency to dissolve into a sad, emotional puddle and his love for someone he thought he understood. Ugh. Just fucking brilliant.

The epilogue was also nice touch. It makes you think that the story will never end. It leaves the lingering thought of: Is this the beginning? The real beginning of the many other beginnings to come?

An excellent job! Tragic, yet, as Pratchett and Gaiman's original oeuvre, strangely hopeful. One of the best fanfics I have ever had the pleasure to read. Keep writing, afrai, keep writing.

If things had been different.

It's interesting, the way Aziraphale was still himself even as Zirah. I've read a few fanfics about Aziraphale as a demon, and this is the only one I've found where he's still just the same old British, intelligent, "confirmed bachelor," just fighting for the other side (although I think he was really fighting for his own side - he wasn't really ON anyone's side except in name). The bookshop and tartan and tweed aren't affectations or reflections of Aziraphale's holiness, it's just who he is - just like Caphriel still wore sunglasses and dressed maddeningly well.

This was brilliant. And the ending was perfect. Have you ever felt like you wanted to cry, but that it wouldn't be appropriate or appreciated by whoever it is you're crying for?

That's how this makes me feel. I might go ahead and do it anyway. Because wow.

I've just finished Chapter 11 and I'm going to finish this thing before I go camping because if I don't it will, quite probably, drive me up the wall. But I have to say something now, I can't wait. Because holy moly.

This is masterfully written, every bit of it - Zirah's madness and how it is methodical even if there is absolutely no method in it, Caphriel's hopelessness in everything he does, and the characterizations of Newt and Anathema and all the rest of everyone. And I love how you say exactly what you mean, without too many words or too few. Everything just Is, and it Is what it Is in the only way that it possibly could Be. And it's brilliant.

The last chapter left me in shock. I had to read it a few times for the end to sink in. That is the greatest mark of a story, to make you think it cannot end.

I'm wondering if i should be worried, that his explanation for using blunt instruments made perfect sense to me...

Anyway, this story is just brilliant. Zirah is so wonderfully twisted.