For the "'Bad things happen' angst bingo" on tumblr, here's some Good Omens angst. I haven't read this book in ages so don't expect this to be canon compliant, but have fun anyway


Crowley is not a fool.

If he was, he wouldn't have fallen. He wouldn't have been there, amid ash and fire, and he wouldn't have been here afterwards, curling around the human's shoulder and whispering in her ear.

He would have been more like Aziraphale perhaps, minus the dusty old bookshop. Crowley couldn't imagine having one of those in a million years, and he had been around during the literary renaissance and the invention of the printing press.

And not being a fool, Crowley knew his presence wouldn't last. And though it might not be ended by the likes of Hastur or Ligur or their swarms, it might end like this. Now.

Because there's only so many ways one can screw up the end of the world, the Great Showdown, all capital letters, displace the anti-christ that is, and get away with it.

So Crowley is not a fool nor is he very surprised when They come for him.

He is rather surprised though, when it's not him They go for.

And Hell's irony tastes bittersweet, like candy stolen from a child except it's something else, isn't it, that bothers him about this?

Not the annoying crying or the fussing display of parental love that unavoidably comes afterwards when meddling with a child. It is the looks in the angel's eyes.

Like he too isn't too surprised.

It slips out, between tight lips, and his sunglasses are in his hands because if this is happening, if this is the cruel twist fate has in store for them, after all the weirdness they've been through, then the least he can do is stare it in the face. And Aziraphale-

"Take me instead." He says, lowly, growling in his throat in languages no human could grasp but They merely laugh at his powerlessness. At his anger and his petty holy water and at the form he has shed in favor or maggots and darkness, as if They would be even vaguely threatened by a worm.

"Please."

And it twists in his gut, a feeling, an emotion he isn't quite familiar with because Aziraphale is smiling at him, with claws twisted around his chest, marks along his neck, his wings hanging useless and limp. And he smiles.

"Punishment is not to be disputed." Crowley hears, a mingled concussion of voices and noise. It has spoken.

Part of him wants to cry and part of him wants to yell but most of him knows those are human things and they wouldn't do any good. They won't change a thing about what's happening.

So he stays motionless, watches the ground open up beneath Their being and Aziraphale is smiling even as Hell surges to swallow them whole.

And Crowley is left behind, immortal and indestructible still, on an earth saved. Now without the person whom made that even remotely bearable.