Title: Clockwork Mice
Author: Daegaer
Rating: G
Author's Notes: Written for the LJ-community contrelamontre "no
dialogue" challenge.
Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.



Clockwork Mice



The natural order had always held. The representative of Hell popped
up in front of a representative of fallen humanity and held out
something shiny or delicious, or shiny *and* delicious and twirled it
round and round till the representative of fallen humanity made a
grab for it. At some point in all of that, the representative of
Heaven showed up and put a metaphysical spanner in the works. The
representative of fallen humanity was generally left somewhat
bewildered in the middle while the representatives of Heaven and Hell
either glared or giggled at each other, and thought up new ways of
messing each other round. The shiny delicious thing usually turned
out to be merely chrome plated and full of worms.

After the first couple of thousand years, appearing in person wasn't
as much fun as it had been. It was much more subtly challenging to
tempt and thwart humans at one remove and to compare notes later. Or
simply to set something big in motion, and to bugger off for a
century or two and leave them to their own devices. Crowley thought
of it as winding the bastards up and letting them whirr round the
floor. Aziraphale thought of it as a self-regulating mechanism. In
both cases it meant a bit of a breather until the spring ran down and
some supernatural twiddling was called for.

The current whirring around the floor had given Crowley a nice four
hundred-year lunch break. He'd been convinced Aziraphale was up to
good with a disreputable group of sheep farmers. One of the kids had
a horribly bright and shiny air of destiny about him. He was also an
obnoxious little prick, which Crowley encouraged and encouraged and
wound the kid's brothers tighter and tighter until there was a
satisfactory attempted murder and a spot of selling into slavery.
Crowley slapped a famine on the whole area to keep the rest of the
family busy, and headed off for a well-deserved rest.

He roused himself from a tipsy slumber with the sure and certain
knowledge that Something Big was going down. He could feel the air
crackling with ethereal lightning, somewhere off . . . to the south.
And the southwest. If it looked like he hadn't kept his finger on the
pulse he'd be in trouble. He set off immediately, stealing horses and
a chariot from the first garrison he came across. After a deeply
unsettling few minutes where the horses attempted to bite him, bite
each other, escape from their traces and kick the chariot to shreds,
he started walking.

He ran into them as he came to the Egyptian border. Lots of them.
Hundreds and thousands -- no, *millions* of them. He was dumbfounded.
He wandered round the crowd, listening in on conversations. Ah,
*fuck*. It looked like the spring had run down, and there were
currently pudgy angelic fingers busily winding up the key. He was
going to track Aziraphale down and give him a piece of his mind. Or --
no. This looked like the entire bloody working class. That couldn't
be good for the economy. He fought his way through the crowd and went
straight for the tax officers, who shortly thereafter pointed out to
the king that the country would go down the plug hole, not to mention
being an international laughing stock and - bang- one set of humans
chasing another set of humans.

He caught up with the crowd by the seaside. Maybe Aziraphale thought
they'd like a nice picnic. They seemed rather panicked, especially
when reports of the approaching army came in. Crowley wondered how
Aziraphale was going to get out of this one. Maybe some of these
people could make a heroic last stand, allowing the women and kiddies
to flee. It wouldn't be sporting not to allow that. Maybe there'd be
a mass suicide. That would be dramatic. There were plenty if them to
work with. Crowley metaphorically sat back and waited for his
opponent's move. He could see Aziraphale rushing round, pretending to
be one of the yokels, and encouraging them. Oh well, it looked like a
dither rather than a plan. So much for this lot. Here came the army.
Crowley suddenly found it prudent to hide behind the most pious
people he could find as a massive pillar of fire poured down from
heaven. Holiness crackled over his skin. It was not a pleasant
feeling. He worked his way forward, determined to get the hell out of
range. As he got nearer he saw Aziraphale hadn't been running round
in a dither at all, he'd been getting people organised into neat
companies. The angel was now standing unobtrusively near a rather
ratty looking fellow who seemed to be the crowd's leader. As the man
swung his staff round impressively and whacked the surface of the
sea, Aziraphale looked right into Crowley 's eyes, grinned impishly
and snapped his fingers. Crowley pursed his lips as the sea tore
apart like a cheap curtain and the crowd ran forward over the
suddenly dry sand. Lightning was splitting the sky and Aziraphale was
dancing round, impressively backlit and gleefully yelling something.
Crowley had no immediate wish to find out what. He applauded
sarcastically, and got out of the area before Anyone noticed one
small demon hanging around.

All in all, it wasn't what *he* would have called subtle.