the thing I keep thinking about really intensely is that yes, for like 99% of their acquaintance, Crowley was the one who had more understanding of the way heaven and hell really work. but for that brief moment in their first meeting, he genuinely was more naive and idealistic than Aziraphale. like, Aziraphale was scared, even back then, at the thought of questioning god; even right back before the beginning, some part of him knew that he was fearful and unsafe, and he realised that before Crowley ever did. 

it’s honestly almost like some kind of, Aziraphale fell first, Crowley Fell harder - he never completed the realisation the same way Crowley managed to, but he arrived there earlier. And I wonder so much what exact kind of effects witnessing the demons’ fall had on him, given that he’d already obtained some of that awareness that he perhaps was not in a very good place to be. but the only alternative of places to go, as far as he knew, was at the very least just as bad, and in some ways legitimately worse.