"Lovely, isn't it?", said Aziraphale brightly. The two of them were currently strolling casually through the Munich Glyptotheque's new 'Gods in Colors' exhibition. "How wonderful that they have rediscovered the colours! Truth to be told I've always been a bit annoyed by all the white marble… I always thought I should just go and point it out to someone, 'Look here, chaps, this is not how those statues looked at all' but I never got around to it, you know how it is."
"Tell me about it, angel", said Crowley, before the angel could ramble on. "You do realise they've known about the colours for ages though?"
"But… if they knew about them then why wouldn't they restore them, my dear?", asked Aziraphale and sent him a puzzled look.
Crowley shrugged.
"Didn't fit their white suprmacsssist world view I suppose", he ventured cynically.
"That was nasty."
"Need I remind you of all the missing noses?", said Crowley, raising his eyebrows.
Aziraphale conceded the point, then got distracted by a particularly fine figurine of an archer. It looked startlingly accurate, which meant that it was positively garish by modern standards.
"Hang on, that archer statue seems familiar", said the angel excitedly and scuttled off. "I think I've seen this one before. Oh, where was it…" Aziraphale bent down to examine the sign beneath it. "The archer 'Paris' from the West Pediment of Aphaia Temple in Aigina, ca. 480 BC ", he read. "Huh. Could have sworn it was in Thebes. Have we even been to Aigina?", he asked, turning to Crowley who had followed him.
Crowley furrowed his brows as he attempted to stitch together the shambles of his vague recollection of Mediterranean geography.
"Dunno. I don't think I was, but I can't be sure… Weren't we at war back then?"
"I think you might be right", said Aziraphale. "I'm sure there was a Naval battle at some point. Err, do you remember who we were up against?"
"Beats me", said Crowley. "Too bloody many of them."
"What, battles or enemies?"
"Both", said Crowley darkly.
Aziraphale gave a little sigh.
"I agree. Anyway: The point is, my dear, that I remember that archer and the colours seem about right to me. It looks absolutely lovely."
"Yeah", agreed Crowley absent-mindedly, his attention already wandering elsewhere. The gloomy expression on his face brightened up considerably when he spotted the armless statue of a young man at the other end of the room.
"Check this out, angel!", he said excitedly and crossed the room the room in several big strides, dragging the unsuspecting angel along. "I definitely know this one!", he said and gestured at the statue with a broad grin.
Aziraphale inspected it but couldn't find anything unusual about it. He raised a questioning eyebrow at Crowley.
"Oh, for G-, for Sa-, for Someone's sake, angel! Look at the face!"
Aziraphale did and – after another minute of scrutiny – recognized it.
"Oh my!", he exclaimed. "It's you, isn't it? Gosh, I never knew you'd posed for a statue!"
"There's a lot you don't know about me, angel [1]. This statue is the least of it. Statues, actually", said Crowley smugly. "Plural. Didn't think I'd ever see one of them again." He admired the figurine's perfect painted plaster pecs and then scowled. "They got the colours wrong, though", he remarked pedantically. "I'm sure my skirt was more of a mauve, not this weird shade of lavender. And my sssskin was most definitely darker. I think someone needs to have A Word with the restorers."
Aziraphale constrained himself to an agreeable hum. He had only the faintest idea of what either colour was supposed to look like and, in all honesty, couldn't recall the exact shade of brown Crowley's skin had had at the time at any rate.
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[1] This was – to put it charitably – blatantly untrue unless you defined 'a lot' as 'an amount so small that compared to the things the angel did know about Crowley it was like a dust particle in a desert: it was technically there but in the grand scheme of things practically non-existent'.
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A/N: Oh Gods I was trying to come up with another chapter for Christmas... and then I realised that I had not even posted the last one I wrote for some reason! Probably because I was saving it for Christmas and then forgot about it. Is that good luck for me now or a terrible oversight?! Anyway, the ancient Romans and Greeks really did paint their statues and the "Gods in Color" exhibition is real too. I saw it and figured it's something Aziraphale would have an interest in :D (I'd quite like to go myself sometime!)