Shit. You think. Winchesters.
The commotion down the hall is unmistakable. Crowley had warned you a hundred times if he'd warned you once - no matter how discreet you think I am, or you think you are, he'd said, you'd bloody well better keep an eye out. Those two have a way of stumbling ass-backwards over the impossible.
"She's here." Grumbles a voice on the other side of the wall. "She's here somewhere, she's gotta be."
"Are you sure, Dean?" This one must be Sam, then. "I mean, I want leverage just as much as you, but Crowley doesn't seem like the type to just leave his things lying around, if you know what I mean. Even if she is here, it could be a trap. He's gotta know we're looking for her."
A trap. That would have been a good idea, you consider. You should have thought of that. You try to think fast, to decide whether you should run or fight. Under ordinary circumstances you wouldn't hestitate to take on two lunkhead humans, hunters or not, and you're hungry for a kill. Quite frankly they don't sound like anything special, but when Crowley's cagey about something, You know better than to ignore it - that instict is what's kept the both of you alive so long, while older and more powerful things have fallen.
"Hey!" Shouts the grumbly one - Dean, probably. "I ain't dumb enough to think I'm gonna get the jump on a vampire at home, so how about you just come out here and we can talk?"
Talk? What benefit could possibly come from talking with them? You aren't stupid enough to think you can get anything out of this situation.
"You can't trust demons." Sam shouts, taking a different tack.
Yeah, and these two are the epitome of trustworthiness, I'm sure. You shake your head, slip a worn bag over your shoulder, and climb deftly out the window. It's only once you land on the ground that you realize your mistake - the sharp pinch in your ankle, and the hot spike of dead man's blood burning its way into your body. Before you crumple, you look down the length of the house and sees the same tripwire setup beneath each of the second story windows.
When could it have been prepared? How did you miss it? Questions blur together in your head as you fall and the world goes gray.
You aren't out for long - just long enough that when you wake, you find you are tied securely to a chair. You open your eyes, expecting to see those two scruffy, plaid-covered freaks hovering over you with needles and knives. You brace yourself for it, but ultimately find yourself alone.
The room is a mess, and there are muffled voices outside, but the bad blood has dimmed your hearing and you can't make out what they're saying. First Dean's voice, then Sam, and then...
Impossible.
Hearing the low rumble, even when you can't parse the words, is like a drink of cool water. Eventually the conversation ends. Only one set of footsteps approaches, and you'd know them anywhere - the weight, the stride, you've got it memorized down to the brand of shoe. Crowley.
"You shouldn't have-" You slur, words thick in your mouth.
"Don't be stupid." Crowley murmurs.
You can only watch as Crowley slices easily through the engraved strap around one arm. He raises your wrist to his lips.
"We should stop this." You say. "You were right, about them finding me. You should not have come, it was foolishness, if they thought I would give them leverage before, now they know for sure. I am a liability, you have to find a new-"
"I'm sorry, did you want to die?" Crowley interrupts you, terse and angry, eyes aflame. "Did you want five centuries of life to end with a couple of bird-brained hunters torturing you until you were a bag of meaty parts?"
You watch Crowley's face soften after he realizes how loud he'd gotten. He braces his forehead against one hand and closes his eyes, takes a long breath, and lets it out slow.
"Are you alright?" He asks
You nod and swallow.
Crowley squats low to cut the straps on your ankles. As he finishes the last strap, he looks up, and gets caught in the glimmer of your eyes, filled with worry and fear. He frowns.
"You really didn't think I'd come?" Crowley asks.
"Why would you?" You search his face. "You're a dealer. I'm a toy. You must have a hundred toys just like me."
"Do you have a hundred other dealers?"
You bark a laugh. "No one gets the stuff you get."
Crowley sits back on his heels and runs a hand across his hair, talks through a tired sigh. "Yeah, once upon a time, love, you'd have been right. The unfortunate reality, however, is that scrub crossroads demons have all the time in the world to collect blood-sucking toys. Kings, on the other hand... I mean have you seen Hell? It's a mess."
"You didn't tell me how much things had changed."
"Darling, we don't usually talk even this much." He lets out a low chuckle.
Looking at him, you're a little lost, and you'd almost forgotten you were released. You try to stand, but only belatedly realize that you're still too weak. Your legs give way and you can hardly even control your fall.
Crowley catches you effortlessly, with speed and grace that shock you. Hadn't he been on the floor a second ago? And yet now here he is, holding you up as you try to work through your embarassment long enough to get your legs beneath you.
The world tips and spins and it's everything you can do not to yak, but at the same time your heart jumps from the thrill - it's maybe the third time he's ever teleported you, and the other two have both ended in fun times.
Your back hits something soft - based on the gauzy gray canopy above draped over four towering black posts, you've got a pretty good guess that it's a mattress. Being horizontal is wonderful - that "dead man's blood" headache throbs a little lighter and you finally get to rest your thousand pound limbs. You let out a long breath.
"Better?" You don't have to look at Crowley, you can hear the smirk.
Something warm and squishy is pressed into your hand. You smell the blood bag before you see it.
"Crowley?" You lift your head and realize your mistake when it throbs painfully. "This is...?"
"Your favorite blend." He sounds a little pained.
"Thanks, but I'm not sure if I can uh... you know, I'm not really up to..." You dance around the topic of your usual mode of payment. Guilt simmers in you. He gave up valuable intel that could leave him vulernable to attack and now he's feeding you the vampire equivalent of an expensive steak, and you can't even manage to offer a little fun in kind?
"Drink. Rest. I've got business. I'll be back before you wake. Later, we'll see what you're up to." There's a predatory edge to his voice that makes you want to recover before he returns, maybe less for the sake of his desires than for your own.
You drink deep, and in the cradle of the soft bed, you drift away. You haven't dreamed once since you were turned, but the escape of sleep is welcome nevertheless.
The fresh blood sweeps your system clean as you sleep. You don't know how long you've been out, but the last time you got hit with dead man's blood, it was days. What patience he must have, you think.
Wherever Crowley's gone, he's still gone when you wake up, something that rings an alarm bell loud and clear. You weren't turned yesterday - you can put two and two together: The Winchesters pursuing Crowley, his unfinished business, and his broken promise to be back before you wake - It was't a real promise, you realize now. It was Crowley Code. He was saying that if he's not back...
Suffice it to say, you smell trouble.
It doesn't take too much fishing about the rather intensely decorated suite (the man always did have a flair for drama) to locate a black canvas bag with a nondescript laptop inside. You crack it open, half-assuming that the password will be some impenetrable demonic nonsense, but when you click the button for a hint, you see the following:
Who do you trust?
Well, you ask yourself, who does he trust? You can think of about a thousand names of "friends," such as they've been, over the last few hundred years, but nearly all are dead or no longer friendly, and given the nature of your relationship, you haven't exactly gotten a lot of updates about every Tom, Dick, and Demon he comes into contact with on a regular basis. You grit your teeth - this is almost worse than if it were nonsense, you feel like you're so close to an answer, but not quite there.
In a moment of truly mad vanity, you type your own name, and press enter.
Nothing.
Of course. Why would he use your name as a password? What could be more foolish?
Well, keeping you around even when hunters know your relationship, for one.
But then, at the same time, you find yourself typing in one more thing - the pet name he calls you. You've never heard him use it in public, you can only imagine it's something that only he knows.
"It's latin." He'd said to you once, while kissing his way up your neck, but you'd been too distracted to remember what he'd said it meant.
You type it in anyway - ADYTA. Your heart flutters as your finger presses down on the enter key, you hold your breath.
Ho
Ly
Shit.
It worked. You try to suppress the little surge of your ego and remind yourself to google that word later, find out what it means. Here you'd been assuming it was just some latin dirty talk, but it must be something more, if he's using it as his password - and does this mean he trusts you? The little flicker of hope and excitement is snuffed quickly. You're not losing sight of what you're here to do.
Just because you're an old lady by human standards doesn't mean you haven't kept up with technology over the years. You'd gone in hoping that the thing hadn't just been wiped, but you find more than you could imagine - saved passwords, backups of emails going back to a year you're pretty sure is before the internet existed, and a file on the desktop whose name makes your heart jump.
You double click.
You always were a nosy one, weren't you?
If you're reading this, there are a few things I believe we can safely presume:
1. I have not returned, after telling you that I would.
2. You have been able to deduce that I trust you.
3. You care sufficiently re: point #1 to go poking around in my private business.
You always were my cleverest pet.
My adyta.
If the previous three assumptions are true:
You can be nearly certain that Sam and Dean Winchester have something to do with my less-than-timely disappearance. I may have mentioned their irritating (to say the least) luck. Follow the terribly clumsy trail I'm sure they'll have foolishly left, and you'll find me, if you care to. If there's anyone I've known who could pull it off, my money would be on you.
If not:
Perhaps we'll meet again, perhaps not. Well met and best of luck.
What startles you the most about the document is the date it was last altered - it was years ago. How long has he been planning for trouble with those two troublemakers? And hoping that you'd show up as backup?
No matter. You're not planning on letting him down now.
At the bottom of the document is a set of phone numbers, and the name of a .exe file. When you open the program, you discover that its purpose is to triangulate cell phone calls, like the receiving end of an emergency services number. You type in the first number - as long as his clues are going to be this obvious, you might as well give it a fair shot.
After a few rings, someone picks up.
"Crowley?" Grunts a voice familiar to you from back at the house.
You say nothing, click execute, and wait for the program to do its business.
"He's locked up." Says another voice in the background. "Who's calling us from his phone?"
"Listen." Says the first voice (Dean, you recall). "I don't know who this is, but you go ahead and do your worst. You're never gonna find him. He'll be with us until we're done with him, and that's the end of it."
The line disconnects, but it doesn't matter, the program's had more than enough time to do its work. The phone on the other end is stationary, and fortunately for you, not even that far away:
Lebanon, Kansas.
You print the map and pocket it. You're not sure where this lead's going to take you, but you've got little choice but to follow. After all, the two of you have unfinished business.
It hadn't been difficult to find folks with a grudge against the Winchesters. Turns out they're everywhere if you know where to look, people, demons, angels and monsters all alike who want a piece of the hunters who break worlds before they put them back together again. That's just fine by you. A little piece of you feels bad for manipulating them this way, but you've got less than zero interest in a head-on fight and you can't see any other way into the well-secured bunker compound but to make a diversion that Sam and Dean can't possibly ignore.
It's what Crowley would do, you think.
You've covered yourself in a simple glammer that hides you from view as the boys climb into their silly muscle-car and head off in the direction of the positively irresistible event being created by a few unlikely allies.
Exploring the ancient edifice, stealth is your best friend. Sure, the big baddies are out to lunch, but you're not sure who or what else lurks in these dated halls, and the last thing you need is an unexpected confrontation with an angel or a prophet or anybody else who doesn't understand.
None of them understand, and you wouldn't expect them to listen. As far as you're concerned, Crowley's the last sane man in this insane universe, and yet you can't expect anyone to let you speak long enough to explain without trying to chop your head off.
Depressing, really.
It's up to you now. You pass through the empty kitchen and the dirty library, and the dormitory areas don't yield much either. It's only on the third pass through that one particular hallway that the door stands out to you, pretty much the only one you haven't opened yet. Naturally you open it.
Narrow wooden stairs dip down into an inky darkness. You flip switches as you descend, lighting up section after section, until you get to an antechamber at the bottom with a bookcase on the far end. You'd have almost fallen for the fake shelving unit, if it hadn't been left open just a crack.
When you flip the last switch to illuminate the area, you hear a ragged voice:
"Moose?" It says.
Crowley!
"Not quite." You push the shelves out of the way just enough to slip through the crack and run to him.
"My adyta." He whispers it like it's one word, like the two words go together inseparably. He can't keep the ghost of a smile from his bruised face, and your mouth stretches a little as if to answer his.
You know you should hurry, you know that there's no time to waste, but you can't help yourself. You cross the room in a few long strides and drop your head to his and press your lips briefly against his. Something about the blood on his lip tastes familiar. At first you can't place it, but then you realize, it tastes like...
It can't be. There's no way he'd have been giving you his own blood all this time?
"Not that I don't appreciate the gesture, but..." Crowley waggles both his brows and his restraints.
"Fond of bondage, aren't they?" You quip as you set to work freeing him. "You know, someone a bit more cynical than I might imagine that you rescued me as a sort of just in case maneuver, rather than some uncharacteristic act of demonic devotion."
"Who, me?" Crowley presses his newly freed hand to his heart. "You wound me."
As soon as he's liberated enough to stand, he takes you by surprise, looming deep in your personal space and bringing both hands up to your face. His palms cup the curve of your jaw, and his fingertips bury themselves deep in your hair. You can feel the sweet scratch of his whiskers against your cheek as he mashes your mouths together.
His tongue darts out to dance across your bottom lip, and it's just as your hands come up to make fists in his lapels that he pulls away, leaving you gasping for breath.
"We should go, don't you think?" He murmurs, inches from your ear, irritatingly pleased with himself.
You nod hastily, swallowing hard and trying not to punch him in the face.
Safe in the same room where you woke up, you sit anxiously on the edge of the bed, watching him maneuver around the little bar at the far corner, mixing drinsk for the both of you with a flourish here and there, clearly reveling in being unbound. He hums softly to himself, a tune that sounds familiar and yet not, like something you might have heard in another, more human life.
There's something about the way he moves, though. It takes a moment to register, but eventually, it clicks.
"You really didn't think I'd come?" You ask. You'd love to turn the line around on him, all snarky and strong, but it comes out more like a choked whisper.
He freezes in place for a fraction of a moment, mid-pour, before recovering.
"You know me, love." He deflects smoothly, "Always prepared for the worst case scenario."
"What does it mean?"
"What does what mean?" He doesn't take his attention from the drinks, pausing only from humming long enough to ask for clarification.
"That word, adyta. You said it was latin, but-" You trail off.
The humming stops. He takes his fingers off the glasses and leaves them untouched on the countertop, breaking completely from his task to close the distance between you.
"You don't remember?" He asks, voice low and full of smoke. He sounds almost hurt.
"No, I'm sorry, I- I mean- I was-" You stammer.
"Aha." Crowley chuckles gently, a rumble like a distant storm. When he speaks, he does so slowly, word by word. "I'll remind you then."
His hand deftly brushes your hair off your forehead, and he plants a little kiss at the corner of your mouth, then another on your cheek, and then another at your temple. You hear him take a long breath and let it out slow right by your ear with a puff of air that raises goosepimples up your arms and down your back.
It doesn't take much pressure against your shoulder for him to lay you on the comforter. He follows you down, and you follow the amber glint in his eyes as they skirt up and down your face from one feature to another and back again, as if he's trying to memorize it.
"It means sanctuary." He says.