Crowley thinks that maybe, perhaps, Jim Kirk might be worth the wait. Not that he'd bet anything substantial on it.

Crowley is an angel who does not Fall so much as Stride Furiously Downward. She does not get caught up with the wrong crowd; she simply lives too many millennia under His thumb, and, anyway, the shoes are better in Hell.

Do yourself a favor: listen, when the heavens open. Come now, sweetheart; did you think the patriarchy was something new?

Aziraphale would have missed (or perhaps deliberately ignored) the nuance of together, but Crowley was a man-shaped being of the world, and knew what was being asked. "We've been around since -- for a while," he said. "But it's not like that."

They say Man was made in God's image, and that's not wrong, exactly, except for how it's all wrong, except for how it's always been wrong, because Man was made in God's image, that first time, but man, lowercase, widespread, always evolving into something worse, man was made in the image of man, who was made in the image of Man, who spent too much time gorging himself on apples to remember much about whose image it was he was made in.

X-Men AU, Good Omens-style, with Charles as Aziraphale, Erik as Crowley, Jean as the Antichrist, and Raven as a badass motherfucker.

Crowley is, apparently, being recalled for good. Aziraphale doesn't like what that does for the Arrangement.

Whereupon great was the wrath of Pharaoh’s magician, and he looked upon the man of Israel with a wicked yellow eye, and spake harshly unto him, saying, What art thou doing in this place? Verily, I thought we had agreed this was my turf.

And the man of Israel did shrug, and looked dismissive and likewise apologetic, and he answered Pharaoh’s magician, saying unto him, New orders from on high, you know how it is.

7 And their leader, who was fair and just and a little pudgy about the hips, for he had a penchant for baked goods, stepped forth and lo, he shone with the wisdom of the LORD.

13 And, behold, an angel of the LORD stood atop the ladder, and lo, he was indignant with righteous fury; and behold, an angel of the LORD stood at the bottom of the ladder, and lo, he looked a right mess.

And said the dark scribe unto the king, What would his majesty desire to be read? And the king waved a hand and said unto him, Read any page which you doth happen upon. Therefore the scribes opened the book of records of the chronicles on a certain page, and read aloud.

And after a few moments the dark scribe bent his head and made good to whisper unto the light scribe, How is it that you always get to read, angel? And the light scribe didst reply in a low voice, saying, Because you hiss your sibilants, yea.

An actual angel was definitely over the top, he decided. Not to mention decidedly Papist. Angels didn't usually appear to members of reforming Churches, did they?

Aziraphale tries his hand at a little light tempting.

"Armageddon": An experience most seasoned hitchhikers say it's better not to be around for.

“Why are you even here?” Crowley said in irritation.

Aziraphale looked vaguely surprised.

“I thought you said you wanted to go for a drink?”

Crowley thought about that for a while.

“That was seventy years ago,” he said finally. Stupid angelic sense of time. The bastard had probably looked in his diary, thought ‘oh, I can fit in a quick pint in a few decades.’

“I had to think about it,” Aziraphale said. “Would you like dessert?”

These people were perhaps on his side. Theoretically. And they'd killed Crowley. That wasn't theoretical. His hands had begun to shake, he noticed.

"Wow. I just never thought, er, that you would." He picked distractedly at the loose threads on the shabby armchair. "Was it, er? Did you? With a human?"

"Did the Mayor send you? Just deliver your message and get out."

"Mistletoe," Aziraphale said from the top of the stepladder. "It's not so easy to get these days, but Christmas traditions are Christmas traditions." He looked at Crowley's face and sniggered. "Don't worry, you're not my type."

There's a hissing behind him, and Aziraphale knows it isn't Crowley.

Slow death by dehydration, or slow death by chemical poisoning? Decisions, decisions.

Crowley stopped by Sodom once, back when it was just starting to develop from a standing collection of tents to something more permanent involving actual stone, and reported back Below that it was a nice place with good fertile ground around it, and the sort of enthusiasm for sin and vice that ought to be encouraged.

In which Crowley starts over. Again. And again. And again.

"No. I mean, yes. We were assigned to Ducks."

Crowley tipped the plastic bag full of water into the bowl and watched with some satisfaction as the goldfish slid out. It made a tiny plunck as it hit the water, righted itself, and came face to face with another fish, known as The Great White Bastard, Jaws of Steaming Hot Death, Tour Guide of the River Styx, Gilled Terror, and Your Ass Between My Teeth.

"But, my dear boy, you have wretched taste in movies."

It was dark, and there were no stars.

"I said, you KNOW THAT YOU LIVE IN A TIME OF SIN!"

He’s been human for thousands of years; it becomes unconscious eventually, the tensing of certain muscles. And right now Crowley’s shoulders, usually relaxed to the point of exaggeration, are stiff and clenched. Something is Up.

"...and so I'm being recalled."

I’ve got to write it in saints’ blood, and you’re the closest thing I’ve got.

Of course, it was bound to happen sooner or later, and a certain pair of representatives from either side of the celestial aisle had worked hard for centuries to make sure it was much, much later.

"But Ligur's male! Isn't he? This is very -- who? Who's the -- other father?"

Impersonating a cleric, Jack, weren't you even listening to the reasons they're going to kill you? And anyway, after you pretended to marry them you took the bride off for a quiet word and seduced her.

No one need ever know, Mordecai. Just you follow my advice.

"I could have sworn I just heard an angel suggesting I get involved in a festival of a false god."

"I was pressed for time, and had to come up with something, you know how it is," Vader said, circling round him slowly.

The palace was in an uproar, with everyone yelling loudly about Paris and Helen running off in the night.

"I see Abel's sacrificing again. I don't remember your root vegetables going down so well."

"Hello, Hagar, I'm Crowley. Where are you going?"

The recorded story of the birth of the Antichrist.

Aziraphale was just going to have to "give him an earful". As it were. He really needed to learn more about human slang.

The brochure boasted about was the time when everything changed: Cardiff twenty-first century. All Jethro saw was humans and cars, pavement and glass, and boring, boring water.

In the case of Absalom, this thought process was interrupted by a thought that would have been shouted in capital letters, if capital letters has existed in the script he’d been taught as a child, and it was: OH DEAR LORD MY HAIR.

Let’s go, lots more to see. That was an example of one of our support groups, of course. Werewolves. Terrible, terrible, especially living in crowded populations like those three, pain on the nose, from what I hear.

History has a funny way of repeating itself. A really, really funny way of repeating itself.