Good Omens: After the Tempting
Title: After the Temptation
Rating: PG
Character(s): Crowley-still-kindof-Crawly, Eve. Guest appearances by Aziraphrale and the First Family.
Warnings: Is this blasphemy?
Summary: Crowley visits with Eve. In a manner of speaking. And is indignant.
After the Temptation
Or
A Social Visit, After the Tempting That Wasn’t Quite According to Plan
It was a few years before the demon that Tempted humanity came up to Earth. By the time he’d found himself stationed on Earth, Cain and Abel were a few years into existence (having the First Sibling Squabbles and giving Eve gray hairs a few hundred years before her time).
He was still a snake, unfortunately (paperwork had just been invented Down Below, and due to the very nature of Hell*, all of the clerks were already behind, and therefore it would be about a half century before he got his new body**). His only comfort was that he was still a lovely shade of black, his scales were shiny, and that he had successfully changed his name. Crawly, though it had stopped being him a long time before the Temptation, became even less appropriate after God decreed that henceforth (and this is a direct quote):
On your*** belly you shall go,
And you shall eat dust
All the days of your life.
On whole, it wasn’t a bad decree, as far as what He did to mankind, which Crowley thought was rather overkill. Though, it was slightly appealing to his demonic nature to see them weep and wail and pull their hair when punished for their crime.
Only slightly.
In any case, Crowley’s first action upon coming to Earth, in a move that would define his plan of action for the next several thousand years, was to visit the First Couple.
Not to tempt.
He just wanted to look around.
Adam was the same as usual; hardworking, virtuous, and possessing more hair than was probably decent. Eve was slightly more changed, mainly in that she had taken to wearing her long hair pinned up, in what would become the Matron look, and she looked somewhat annoyed. Both, Crowley privately thought, looked much better with clothes, if less interesting.
The sons held no interest for Crowley. They looked about the same, they sniveled, and the older clearly had an inflated sense of self-importance and the younger might as well have had WIMP stamped on his forehead.
He watched them eat their midday meal-he was rather intrigued by a pungent vat almost-hidden in the pantry. Then father and sons shouldered their tools, and went to work in their fields, leaving Eve alone in the house.
As neighbors would not be a problem for a while, they left the door unlocked. It didn’t take much for Crowley to slither inside and get a good look around. Eve was a good housekeeper, and the inside of the little house looked clean and comfortable. It was a single room, with one large bed in a corner, a fireplace behind the table, and a flute resting on a chair.
It, on whole, was not a bad home, considering.
(Though Crowley couldn’t figure how they all fit on that bed and more importantly, how did Adam and Eve ever, er, know each other properly when their children were right there?).
It also smelled nice; in particular the dead rabbit, skinned and cleaned, resting on the kitchen table. Without even really thinking about it, Crowley slithered up a chair (getting splinters in the process) and onto the table.
He promptly was grabbed by the end of his tail and thrown to the floor.
“Serpent! How dare you invade our dwelling, after such an act of evil!”
Crowley hissed, both as an attempt to be suitably frightening and as a way to release his pain. He hated that kind of formal gibberish. Unfortunately, Eve was not a woman who frightened easily, and was now brandishing a knife with grim purpose.
“And He shall bruise the serpent’s head!”
…Ah. Crowley had forgotten that part of the decree.
“Wait! Wait!” He shouted, not through fangs, but channeling his words directly into her head.
Out of sheer surprise, Eve dropped the knife. It plunged into the dirt floor, clear up to the hilt. Crowley eyed it with agitation.
“Did you just speak?” demanded Eve, eyes wild.
“Er, yes?”
“How can a serpent speak? It hath no lips with which to speak.”
“Philosophical questions later, lady. Don’t you remember Eden? I wasn’t exactly using a mouth then.”
Even as the words came out of his mouth, Crowley recognized that it had been, completely, the wrong thing to say.
Eve’s eyes cleared, and she scowled, suddenly looking a lot more petulant than righteous.
“How could I forget?” she snarled, rhetorically****. “You seduced me, foul serpent! Tempted me with the forbidden fruit!”
Crowley bristled without actually having any hair.
“Hey! That is so not what happened! I was having a nap up in that tree, as pleasant as could be, while you and hubby were mooning around, happy as you please and naked as jaybirds. Then you came around to pick over fruits, waking me up. And you weren’t picking fruit from my tree, so I asked you why not and you said it was forbidden and I asked why and you said that He said you would die if you ate it, and I had had some earlier than day and told you that it was perfectly safe, and tasty too, and that I had no idea what joke the man was playing, so why not have a bite? Then you asked again if you should, and I was in a joking sort of mood, and said it was the choice that would define good and evil, which you took literally. So you ate the fruit, ran off screaming about being naked, and-”
“I do not have to listen to you, Serpent.” said Eve. With great dignity, she stooped and pulled out her knife, uttering a mild curse when it took more than two tugs to pull it up. She then turned her attention to the rabbit, as well as to the pot of water boiling in the fireplace. “Leave, before I make you into an appetizer for our evening meal.”
Crowley sulked, and unwound himself.
“Look, I’m not saying I was innocent in all this-believe me, demons aren’t innocent of anything*****. But you don’t look like you’re hurting very much. I mean, you wouldn’t have that nice prayer rope around your neck in Eden. The material and decoration is a bit too nice. Or that patterned blanket. Or cooked food. Aren’t they good?”
For a moment, Eve stilled, hands hovering above the meat she was preparing for the evening meal. One came up to stroke the woven cord draped around her neck.
“The prayer rope,” said Eve frostily, “Is a reminder of our sins, and how we must work to earn back the Lord’s favor.” She returned to her preparation, and didn’t address the other aspects he’d named.
Crowley shrugged, as best a serpent could. “Suit yourself.”
And he slithered out the door.
__
When he would later relate the tale to Aziraphrale (about two hundred years into the Arrangement), the angel would look both amused and confused, in his usual, fussy way.
“My, such a fearsome young woman. I’m surprised she didn’t carry through her threat.”
“You and me both. But I made it up to her, you know.”
“Oh, how?”
“Eating rodents that tried to get into the grain. Being generally menacing otherwise.”
Aziraphrale raised an eyebrow at that.
“So using your voracious appetite as an excuse to protect the paltry stores of food of the earth that the family you Tempted worked so hard for, was meant to make up for having them thrown out of Paradise on Earth?”
“…Well, they were happy. At least until that whole business with Cain killing Abel. She had a flute. And they had wine.”
“And a very good wine it was.”
“Indeed.”
__
*Or not, as the case may be. Heaven, despite their claims to simply divining carefully, were hardly on top of their paperwork either. It was, as Aziraphrale and Crowley would decide later, just One of those Things<>.
<>The neutral forces of the universe. Also includes chocolate, soft pillows, and most recently the internet. And cats.
**And the first of many. It wouldn’t be until the mid-1600s that Crowley got one just the way he liked it: young, male (after an Incident which led to Crowley taking credit for corsets), and very nice cheekbones.
***Crowley, in case that was not clear enough. Though the decree also applied to all of the other First snakes, decent reptiles whom were quite appalled to find that they must slither rather than work with thumbs, and led to a number of years in which Crowley, when confronted with a snake, would turn awkward and make hurried excuses about the weather and-did you see that mouse?
****Aziraphrale would later say that sentence was rhetorical. Crowley would reply: “Your mom.”
*****Not strictly true.