Rowena lay on the floor, bleeding profusely. A run in with a nest of vampires had vexed the witch, and although she had eventually bested them, it was not before they sank their claws into her jugular vein. Her adrenaline raced as she tried to remember a spell to stop the bleeding, but her mind was coming up blank. She heard voices coming toward her and looked up in a daze. Her son was there- and alongside him the Winchesters- but it was her son who mattered to her. She was banging down death's door very rapidly. She knew that even demon healing powers could only do so much. She knew instinctively that this- this was the end for her. There would be no going back. Not this time.
Crowley approached his mother, feeling a strange mix of emotions. There was anger of course, mainly that someone else had gotten her before he could. But there was also some sadness, and some odd disappointment that now he would not ever hear his mother say she cared. He had based so much of himself and his kingdom on his hatred of his mother. But underneath all of that, he still craved her approval. It was buried there, underneath layers of bravado. He wanted love. He deserved love. His mother was his only living relative. Logically, she would be the only one to give it to him outside of a romantic partner, and that sure as hell wouldn't be happening for him anytime soon. There would be no closure for him, he was certain.
But, as fate would have it, his certainty was wrong.
Rowena stared up into the face of her child. The vessel he was in now looked nothing like the boy she gave birth to, but the look in his eyes was the same. She reached up to him, too weakened to move more. She stroked his cheek, which was scratchy with the hair from his beard. There was a look in her eyes that Crowley had never seen before. It took him a minute to place it. It was love. That surprised him more than anything else.
"I'm sorry." She whispered. He didn't need to ask what she meant. He knew she was sorry for the abandonment, for the failed assassination attempts, for trying to trade him for pigs, for the way she'd treated him.
"I know-"
"No." She cut him off. "Look inside. Look inside of me and see." She implored him.
He was hesitant to do so, but eventually he relented, wanting to fulfill her last request.
He used his powers to look in her mind, to see what she saw. And he was surprised at what he found.
He could feel her emotions as they were tied to her memories.
The moment she held him for the first time, it was mixed with so much love and joy that it took his breath away. He had never seen nor felt such potent emotion in either of his lifetimes. He saw things from her point of view at first, but found he could see from the outside too. It was a bit complicated, but he got to see firsthand the way she looked at him when he was born. It was… It was pure love. There was no other way to explain it. The small flash afterward detailed his father's departure from her, and how devastated she felt afterword. That was the moment that stemmed her hatred. The hatred she took out on him. But despite that, it took time for the animosity to grow. That love was so pure and so strong that it was like a raging wildfire. It took a long time to put out. The memories she focused on were mainly from his earliest years.
The first word he ever spoke was "Mama" and the way it lit her up with joy… Crowley didn't think he would ever see or feel such a pure thing again.
She told him a story at the age of two, feeling love and contentment the entire time. Having him in her arms was a comfort to her, and it amazed him that he made her feel that way.
She chased him through a field at three. The sound of his own laughter twisted something inside of him, made him sad. But his mother's exhilaration trumped that.
He saw himself singing quietly in a room, apparently not knowing his mother was there, and his mother's pride was bursting through him like a punch to the gut.
He was asleep, at the age of five, his mother watching him. Her love, her pride, her joy, and oddly enough her fear were prominent. However, he remembered that around the age of five was when his mother first joined The Grand Coven. Her fear, now that he explored it, was fear for him. That he would be used against her. That someone else could hurt him. But the rest of the emotions were there, and more intense.
He went through the memories, catching flashes of everything. A small gift on his birthday, a hug and kiss, a glimpse of his smile. All of them sent that cocktail of maternal emotion, one that he could not name, through his mother. And then, there were the less pleasant memories. Her abandonment of him was prominent, and the emotions to match it were guilt, sorrow, frustration, anger, and self-loathing.
And then, a time skip, to when they had met again. When he had called her mother, there had been a flash of hope, so strong and intense that it took his breath away. That love that she had felt for him, it had tried to breach through those piled on layers of hatred, but it didn't make it through.
There was the memory of her telling Olivette that he was the king of hell, and that incredible surge of pride that she had felt for him.
And finally, there was the memory of him calling her Mummy, and the way her heart had fluttered at it.
All those moments, those memories, those feelings… They were real. And he had now felt them firsthand.
He pulled out of her mind. Though it had felt like an eternity to him, it had only been a few moments here. He came back, and he looked into his mother's eyes. They were desperately begging him for forgiveness. For mercy. For love.
He looked at her, knowing that she only had moments left. And he knew what needed to be done.
He avoided the blood collecting on one side of her, and went to the other side. He curled himself against her, and whispered the words so long been denied them both.
"I forgive you."
Rowena felt tears running down her face, but they were not fearful. They were joyous. She didn't know where she was going next, possibly to a place her son could not get to, but she would hold this memory wherever she went. She was weakening rapidly, but was strong enough to card her fingers through his hair.
"I love you." Those words, though whispered, meant more to him than any kingship could have. He shut his eyes for a second, letting it sink in.
"Mummy…" It was a whisper only she could hear. It made her smile, despite the effort it took. She knew it would be time for her to go, very quickly. But with her son beside her, his forgiveness within her, and his love to warm her, it was enough to make her content. It would be the best way to die.
Rowena's hand carded through her son's hair, but she was weak, and the distance became shorter, before it stopped. Crowley looked up, and his mother was taking in shaky breaths. Though he had inflicted torment on millions of people, demons, and creatures alike, he could not stand to see his mother suffer. Not for him.
He put a hand on hers. "Let go." He said. Her eyes looked to him.
"Fergus…"
It was so quiet it barely counted as being said at all. He hushed her.
"Let go, Mummy. Please. Just rest." He implored.
She took one look in his eyes and saw that he was distraught. It would not have been visible to others, but it was to her.
"Fergus…" It was a sigh.
The breathing shook, then quickened, and finally, with one last sigh, it stopped.
Crowley looked up at the sound of silence that greeted him. His mother was gone. Emotions flew by him at a hundred miles per hour, so fast that he couldn't name them all, but he dared not let them affect him. If he let one in, he might let them all in, spelling embarrassment for him. As a leader, he was expected to be stoic and unemotional. He could not afford to be anything less if he wanted respect.
He pulled himself up, eyes fixated on his mother's face. Her eyes were open. Her expression wasn't scared though. The one she wore and would wear for as long as her face would be visible (and he grimaced thinking about it like that) was one of peace. It wasn't agonized. It wasn't regretful. Her face showed nothing but acceptance of her fate. He wondered briefly if she would have looked the same had he not forgiven her. He would never know the answer to that question, but that didn't matter very much to him now. He had done what he had while he still had time left with her, and that was what mattered. A lifetime of mistakes and regrets had been absolved between them.
Now, he could only focus on the fact that he had a future ahead of him. What it contained was unknown, but he was certain of one thing: He had never been so happy to be wrong about something. His mother had cared about him. All his life he spent thinking that he was unlovable to her, and it was contradicted and countered by those memories. He held tight to them then boxed them away, saving them for a rainy day. He had been able to see past the callous and cruel persona she had created and now, his view of her was forever changed.
He had seen into her heart.
Finally, after a bit of staring, he picked up her body. Though she herself was skinny, she wasn't light like he hoped. Most likely because she was deadweight in his arms. The jugular vein in her neck had run dry, and no more blood was coming from it. The blood remaining on her neck had dried. Not a single drop hit the floor.
Finally, he turned to the Winchesters. "I've got this one boys." He said. They nodded, and he left before they could psychoanalyze him or his actions.
He transported his mother's body to a hillside in Scotland. It was barren of life, and had basically become nothing but grass and dirt. But it hadn't always been that way. This was the original site of the village he had grown up in. The memory of her chasing him in a field had sprung the idea to his mind. He would bury her here. The place where most of her happy memories with him had happened. He thought she would like that, and he certainly did, because whenever he might come to visit her, he could remember those times too.
He spent most of the day digging. Mercifully, since these hills were abandoned, he was not disturbed, and he didn't want to be. This was a private activity, and not just because he was burying his mother. But because he was working through his emotions, and that could only be done alone for him. Most demons, thankfully, did not like to go into the sun, so he was as free as he could be in the circumstance.
He began by exploring the emotion most familiar to him- anger. There was anger at the vampire nest for what they had caused. There was anger with the Winchesters for ever bringing her there. There was anger with himself for being in a state of such shock that he could not heal her. Even if he knew it would not do much good, he could have tried. Just to give himself peace of mind, if nothing else.
Next he moved to shock. The shock was divided in half. Half was shocked that his mother was indeed mortal. The other half was courtesy of knowing how she had felt about him. He focused on the first part for the time being. It wasn't like he didn't think his mother couldn't die. He knew that although she was incredibly resilient, she was still, for a good part of her, human. Conventional means could not kill her, but that did not make her immortal. Ageless, certainly, but not immortal. He supposed that he had thought his mother to be something akin to an action hero. She would get bloodied, sometimes get close to death, but never actually die. The fact that she had… that was what he had to wrap his head around.
And then there was the separate issue of seeing and feeling that his mother did indeed love him. If he had not done both of those things, he doubted he would have believed her. He may have tried to appease her on her deathbed, tell her that he understood she was sorry, but then spent the rest of his days walking the earth not believing it. But to know she felt that way all of those years and never told him… It was just incomprehensible. On the one hand he almost applauded her for being able to keep herself and her priorities together so securely. But on the other, anger flashed dangerously at her keeping secrets. But the flash fizzled out like a bad detonator on a bomb as he realized that part of the reason she had done so was to protect him.
The guilt came next, irrational as it was (and he knew it was). A part of him blamed himself for this. He did not know if he would ever stop. He blamed himself for letting his mother know the Winchester brothers. He blamed himself for not being able to see past her façade. And most of all, he blamed himself for forgetting the scant memories he had with her that had been happy, for letting them be soured by his years without her. He should have seen the genuine look in her smile. The love in her eyes. How could he have forgotten that? He rationalized that part with the years of cruelty and neglect, but even then, he should have known. If he had learned anything from his time as King of Hell and his time with the Winchesters, it was to never take things at face value.
The guilt gave way to ineffable sadness. He did not think he had felt this upset in over two hundred years. His vessel's eyes pricked in the strangest way. He felt sadness that his mother had hidden herself for so long. He felt sorrow that he didn't have more time with her. But the most crushing and absolute pain of it all was that he would never get to know the mother he had encountered in her memories.
He felt a wetness on his cheek, and touched his face with his hand, and realized with a start that his vessel was crying.
No- He was crying.
The meat sack he was in was still capable of tears. But he himself had never had any use for them. Tears were a mark of weakness. That was what he had thought. But today, today he was wrong. Tears were not weakness. They were a sign of being strong for too long, of bottling things up, and of holding onto things. Now, he let everything go, and the emotions spilled out all at once. Anger, shock, guilt, sadness, all combined into his tears, and he felt himself shaking with sobs. He did not restrain himself or try and pull back. Bad as it was, he needed the release.
He did not know how long he stayed like that. But eventually, the sobbing ceased, and the tears stopped flowing. With his emotions now spent for the time being, he returned to his digging. Soon enough, the hole was done.
By that point it was sunset. The hills captured the full sun beginning to dip below them in a wink. He stared at it a moment, knowing it was his first without his mother. A pinch of emotion came through his chest at that, but because he was spent, and exhausted, he ignored it.
The time came for him to put her inside. He had been quick to teleport a coffin for her. It was dark cherry wood, with golden handles. He had brought it to the side of the grave. He opened it. The inside was lined with white silk, the pillow for her head one of the best money could buy. He lifted up her body, and placed it inside as delicately as he could manage. He kept her hands at her sides. He wouldn't fold them over her chest like many were wont to do. His mother was a worshipper of nature. Not of any God. With that in mind, he had buried her with a book of spells, albeit one of the more common ones, but he had to give her something to read in the afterlife.
He laid her head on the pillow. Her eyes were open, and it was he who closed them, but not before giving her a good look at his face. He wasn't sure where she might be right now. Heaven? Hell? Purgatory? He didn't know for sure. Wherever she was, he thought she might somehow still be watching him. So he put on a good face for her. Someday he would seek out what happened to her. Purgatory was the most likely candidate since she was a supernatural being. Hell seemed a good option though, despite the fact that he knew she might not be there because it would be her heaven all at once. Heaven… Well, that was a bit far fetched considering her history. But knowing what he knew now, perhaps she had gotten in. Maybe the love inside her had changed the impressions of whomever guarded those gates.
He felt the urge to say something. He wasn't sure what to say though. After a few minutes, he said the only thing that came to mind.
"Rest well, Mummy."
Closing that lid was one of the hardest things he had done, but he knew he had to do it. The sound of it, wood hitting wood, was ominous to him. Like a crash of thunder before the rain came. And then, the coffin was closed. It was done.
Being a demon often came in very handy, and this was one of those times. He was able to lift and lower her coffin into the grave on his own. She would have wanted it that way. No Winchesters here to burn her bones, no strangers gawking. Just family. As he finished getting out of the grave, he looked down. Perhaps he should sing something to her? He contemplated it. But, she didn't like any particular songs that would be appropriate for this. Instead, he read a poem. "I Do Not Think My Song Will End". He finished the poem, then stood a moment in the quiet. Finally, he began to refill the hole, though it was infinitely easier than digging it up. When the grave was full again. He stood there a moment, listening to what was around him.
The warm summer air, the gentle breeze, the sound of waves crashing on a distant shore. But in those things, he felt her. The warmth reminded him of how his mother felt when she had held him all those years ago. The breeze was her caressing his cheek. The waves crashing was the thunderous sound of her cheering for him. And for a moment, he felt peace.
Then, he had to go. Hell wasn't going to run itself. He said goodbye to his mother, and promised to visit her, and returned to Hell. As he sat upon his throne, he mused at those who came and groveled before him. He wondered what was left of who they once were. If they ever knew love. Not all supernatural creatures didn't. He knew firsthand.
His Mummy may have been a Witch, but her heart was that of a human.