He keeps fooling himself into thinking that the pain will stop this time.
It's a stupid human habit: hoping for the end of something without doing anything to achieve that end. He doesn't know where he picked it up. But when he's bound down by ancient spells and runes and good, old-fashioned chains, there's little left to do, save hope – beg, pray – for the end. When even his wings have been made useless, what else is he meant to do?
He's been left alone for the moment, collapsed on his belly on the cold floor, those great, sweeping appendages too battered and ruined to fold up properly. They're stretched out across the concrete; two more pieces of a broken angel. Some of the bones of the right one are exposed – the feathers and flesh have been ripped away, scattered, and so the ends project, gleaming and sickeningly white where they aren't red with blood, into the cold air. The left has been crushed out of shape by the impossible strength of hellhounds, and it too has been well-mangled. Everything is chilled; clothes and hair soaked with sweat; he's been screaming for hours on end. The soft tissue of his throat has been worn raw and then some.
Never before has he been so wholeheartedly appreciative of human suffering.
Discomfort or pain is one thing when you can flick it away with barely a thought. When you're locked down and made to live with it, it multiplies exponentially, becomes nigh-unbearable – but you must live with it; you must survive it, because otherwise there is no point.
If there's one aspect of this whole nightmarish experience that he hates about all else, it's knowing that the only way he'll be healed is if a demon does it.
He's alive on Crowley's whim right now; because the King of Hell thinks he can pry the location of the Winchesters from the lips of the most self-serving angel in the garrison – thinks he can barter survival for information. The logic is sound: his captive has a track record of running when events get hot. And a pack of hellhounds makes for an exceptionally good bargaining chip when you can have them rend the flesh from someone's back in a handful of moments.
Such a pity that this was the one time where Crowley misjudged.
Instead of the easy trade of tell us where they are and you're free to go, Balthazar has been trapped here for… for… for a long time. Long enough for the blood on the floor to have dried several times over, turning near-black where it had pooled in indents in the floor, still a crusty red in other places, but always turning darker with each successive layer.
Red blood, black blood, silver blood in the moonlight, gold blood where the overhead lights touch it, thick, semi-congealed blood with feathers the color of thunderheads stuck in it. But all his blood, spilling from arms and back and face and even his wings.
The first thing he is going to do after getting out of here is figure out which demon had dug up the spell for forcing an angel's wings into physical form against their will, and burn them. His hands flex into claws at the thought.
"I dare say, all these years, and I don't think I've ever seen anything quite so pathetic." And there's Crowley again, smug and collected as ever, pacing closer once more. The not-quite-silent steps and panting breaths of hellhounds are following close behind him. "An Angel of the Lord laid low, and not even bothering to be ashamed of it. Defenseless as a baby chick." Crowley crouches next to him. "It's not even like they'll thank you for it." A hand brushes his shoulder.
He snaps back with a growl, slaps away the gesture and maybe even lunges at Crowley's eyes before a weight slams into his chest to send him back to the floor. His wings take the brunt of the fall, twisting further out of shape, and he can't help a gasp.
Crowley just smiles. "I'll make you a deal: tell me… just tell me who's with them, and I'll heal you. Wings and everything. Who's guarding them?"
He doesn't even let himself think of the tiny cabin in the woods of upstate New York, nor of the quasi-God protecting its occupants. Instead, he calls up an image of Dean Winchester's face when he saw an angel coming to drag them out of the Pit and pushed Sam in front of himself, shouting "take him first!" as Hell's guardians closed in. And, damn it, he's not going to break that easily.
"Go back to Hell." It's a weak insult spoken in a hoarse, croaking excuse for a voice.
Crowley looks unperturbed. "I can see why they've taken to calling you The Human Angel. Their level of intelligence has clearly been rubbing off on you. And since when did you learn devotion? You're Balthazar – you fake your own death, steal Heaven's arsenal, get killed by the nearest thing there is to a God… and now you're suddenly siding with the two most troublesome humans in all of history?" He chuckles. "Then again, they are exactly your brand of infuriatingly difficult."
Balthazar doesn't even bother to respond. The hellhound isn't sitting on his chest anymore, but he can feel it standing over him, warm breath wuffing in his ear, and if he opens his mouth the only thing that's going to come out is a whimper or something similarly demeaning. At this point, the only thing to do is delay until Crowley gets fed up and kills him and goes to find the Winchesters on his own.
"You know what I think?" Crowley says, and then continues without waiting for input. "I think that you're perfectly willing to tell me where they are and who's with them and every niggling little detail of how to get to them, you just haven't been given adequate… motivation."
And, okay, maybe that sort of makes Balthazar want to curl up into a ball and hide (because if having his wings torn to shreds isn't motivation then he doesn't know what is) but he forces himself up onto his elbows, then even manages to shove the hellhound out of his way to stand. His vessel is taller than Crowley – not by much, but enough – and he even manages a bit of a cocky grin as he looks down his nose at the demon. "I'm sorry, you must be mistaken."
Crowley bares his teeth in something that's half-smile, half-snarl. "You know something, Balthazar?"
He raises an eyebrow and waits.
"You have such… beautiful wings."
That's when the hellhound launches itself at his shoulder blades.
He hits the ground with a grunt, feels the claws dig into his wings once more, thinks alright, more wing-rending, I've survived it all before, and then registers the teeth closing around the base.
Crowley is smiling down at him. "I think they'll look quite lovely over my mantle – wouldn't you agree?"
They don't do it neatly. The right one goes first, the meat around the base being scrabbled away with frantic paws, then bloody, dripping jaws grip the joint and twist, twist, twist until even the skeleton of an angel can't take the strain and the whole thing gives way.
"It's just a pity they're already torn up. That might add a nicer decorative touch anyway, though.
Half-mad from taunts and pain, shame and rage, Balthazar, The Human Angel, Protector of the Winchesters, cries for the first time in his life.
He doesn't recognize the tears at first, doesn't understand (why hasn't he cried before? why is he crying now?) until he realizes that it's because they're ripping his Grace out of him, and then he screams, too, screams again, screams as the right wing is shoved aside and the hellhound clamps the left one in its teeth.
He'd never known that angels could cry. Maybe they can't. Maybe it's just a human body's response to extreme pain that's triggering this. He's not sure, and can't make himself care about the blurred vision or extra stripes of damp across his skin, because they're release, because his wings are getting torn off, because he wants nothing more than to give up and die.
Angels can cry. They can also lose consciousness. It's a fact that Balthazar is relieved to discover.
When the darkness comes in a rushing wall of black and all sensation slams to a halt, he can't help but be glad; can't help but think a soft thank God as his mind shuts down.