A commotion wafted down from upstairs. Fighting. Screaming. General thumping and goons bumping and bumbling through the main thing Crowley had hired them to do.
He couldn't be bothered. He cut another strip of flesh, smiling a bit at the network of venom sacks, and the scream of the monster on the table, and the chaos on the floors above. It would serve those lazy excuses for demon security right to get their asses proverbially handed to them. If they couldn't manage to stop whoever found the need to storm his small castle, they had no business in his employment. No business topside, for that matter.
The door slammed open, and he turned with mild interest to greet his visitor. A small woman in a blue raincoat with the wrath of God in her eyes marched down the stairs. An angel. Obvious from the glowing, scowling faces hidden under her skin and the way she carried herself with all sorts of boring righteousness.
He wiped his bloody hand on his apron. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure."
She stormed forward, her shoulders hunched and tensed and ready to strike, her burning blue eyes—
Oh.
Oh, now this was interesting.
He beamed. "Why, Castiel, darling, is that a new dress?"
Her advance rolled on, not even pausing until she'd grabbed him by the throat and slammed him against a wall, cratering the brickwork and showering them both in a dusting of rubble.
He winced against the choke hold and held himself back from struggling, from grabbing for her wrist. "Makes you look fat."
A growl peeled back her lips to show her teeth, a palm slapped against his forehead, and they were flying, his soul turning inside out. He did struggle then, wrestling with an angel in mid-flight as his body threatened to rip apart and the smoke of his true self vibrated so hard it might crack and explode. He slammed into a chair with a gasp, his eyes bulging, and maybe the only reason he didn't fly apart was because of the demon trap holding him inside.
Typical.
She stepped out of the circle and glared at him as he rubbed his throat and glared back. It was a hasty demon's trap, done in red paint on a cement floor, probably a basement, probably Bobby Singer's given the smell and the detritus of sloppy spell books and what he could only assume was farm equipment. His kidnapper hadn't bothered to tie Crowley up, making this a social call. He rubbed his throat once more out of showmanship and straightened his tie, before looking up at her and her...companions.
Well, well.
"Cassandra, you minx. What are they? Shape shifters? Bit extreme, trying to make all your wildest fantasies come true, don't you think? But I shouldn't really be surprised."
One of the two Deans snapped, "Shut up," his arms folded tight over his chest to physically hold in the explosion of impotent rage that threatened to burst at any moment. The other just glared, solid and determined, trying to look imposing and failing like always.
"Not shape shifters then. They're generally proud of their suits, so this broody display doesn't fit." Crowley leaned forward, resting his elbows on the chair arms and threading his fingers together before him. "Let me guess. Through some happy accident, your boy ended up duplicated. But after the initial euphoria, the—I'm sure—shameless sexual escapades, there were side effects of some sort. Ripples in space time. Violations of the Pauli exclusion principle. All the mumbling cowboy voices and the custody battle over that ridiculous car are giving you a headache. The details aren't important. What's important is that two Deans are simply one or two too many, and you need my help either killing one of them off or super gluing them back together."
The Clones Dean stared at him, at a loss.
Crowley raised his eyebrows and shrugged, leaning back in his chair. "That or you want to give me one as a present. You shouldn't have, love, but I guess it's the thought that counts."
The angel remained unphased, her voice even and threatening, "You made a deal with Castiel."
His eyebrows rose. "Talking about ourselves in the third person, are we?"
"And you are using plural pronouns when you should not. There is no we."
"If there's no we, who have I been spooning all these months?"
The Dean on the left looked ready to punch him. Let the idiot try.
"You made a deal with Castiel," she repeated.
This was getting ridiculous, and he let his irritation spill out as he snapped. "Is your programming broken, you stupid robot? Of course I made a deal with you, and you better bloody well follow through with your end."
"And what is my end?"
"Are you kidding me, Cassandra? I don't take kindly to people kidding me."
She growled, moving forward and leaning in to brace her hands on the arms of his chair, her face unreasonably close. "Speak."
"Do you have amnesia or just a screw loose?"
"You will tell me the terms of your bargain or I will end you."
He narrowed his eyes at her. Same grumbly frowns on all her faces, same bad attitude like she was better than him even though they all knew by now that wasn't even remotely true, same frumpy dress sense and—fucking hell, was that a tie?! But something had changed since the last time the angel popped in, something other than the new outfit and the (rather nice) breasts.
Interesting. "Just a tick..." Very interesting. "You're not from around here, are you?"
Her silence spoke volumes.
"More like you're kinda far from home," Dean on the right said.
"Ahh. I see. Parallel universe? Alternate dimension, perhaps? Oh darling, I have no idea what you're doing here, but I hope you leave dear Castiel alone to make his own poor decisions. He's a big boy, experimenting with free will, and it's high time he learned to clean up his own messes. Besides which, he's quite set on the plan. I'd hate to disappoint him."
Her eyes narrowed dangerously, her nose crinkling as her lips pulled back in a snarl.
"Strangely, I find this much more arousing in your other suit."
With a flap of wings and a pulse of power, another angel appeared. Another Castiel. Also a woman, but with a gray pea coat that was almost savvy in comparison to the disaster before him. She scowled at the lot of them. "What is this?"
Crowley was rather interested in that answer, but before his kidnapper could respond, yet another angel appeared in the form Crowley was most accustomed to. Except for the cheep red tie. He took in the scene and frowned.
"As nice as it is to be invited to your family reunion—"
"Shut it, Crowley."
"First it's 'shut up' and then it's 'speak' and then it's 'shut it.' You people need to coordinate a bit better."
The angels ignored him, Cassandra asking, "Where's Castiel?"
"Thebes," Red Tie said.
"Keep him there." She turned to Nicely Dressed, "Where's Castiel?"
She pronounced the name ever so slightly differently, as if she could differentiate between the photocopies with just the intention behind the name, the millimeter differences in the roll of her tongue.
Crowley could feel the beginnings of a migraine.
"The library."
"His assistance would be appreciated."
Nicely Dressed huffed with an irritation that Crowley knew very, very well. The huff that said, "I'm too good to run your errands, yet I'm clearly going to do it anyway, which means I'm not too good at all, so this is all just terribly trivial and I should get over myself already." That huff.
God.
When her helper bunnies vanished, Cassandra turned back to him. "You are going to tell me every specific of the deal you made with Castiel."
"And if I don't?"
"Then I kill you." She tiled her head. "Or torture. We could do either."
"Come now, you plan on killing me anyway. Let's not pretend."
"Will killing you release him from his contract?"
Please. What did she expect him to say to a stupid question like that? Why, yes! Kill me and your precious Castiel goes free and you win twice over.
"Actually, no. He'll die along with me. Those are the terms."
She smiled, an amused twitch of her lips. "We'll see."
Yet another angel appeared. This one with an even more hideous tie in gray stripes. How could they function with so many of him? How had their brains not exploded from the overwhelming number of judgmental glares and bumbling eagerness to prove themselves? They must be falling all over each other.
The newcomer blinked at Crowley, then at one of the Deans, then finally at Cassandra. "You're going to kill him?"
"Will that get Castiel out of his contract?"
"It wasn't a contract. There's no way he could have held me in one. It was a...gentleman's agreement. Mutually assured self-destruction should either of us back out."
Cassandra smirked, catching Crowley in his lie. He shrugged. "Worth a shot, love."
The Dean on the left sunk in relief, running a hand over his face. "So we kill him and this whole Purgatory thing goes up in smoke."
"Yes," Gray Tie said. "His lieutenants hate him. They won't avenge his death."
Crowley rolled his eyes. Those fools he employed would dance on his grave, then fall on each other like hyenas.
"Awesome. Let's do this," Dean on the left said, letting his arms fall from his chest. He raised an eyebrow at Gray Tie. "We can gank your guy next if you want."
The angel shook his head. "Dean killed him already."
"With his freaky powers?"
Gray Tie tilted his head instead of answering.
Everyone else cringed.
Dean on the left shied away from the subject, turning to his doplegangar. "You got your Colt?"
"Umm, no..."
"What do you mean, no?"
Dean on the right shrugged. "Sorta lost it."
"Will the knife work on him?"
"Probably not," Cassandra said.
"You could always burn my bones," Crowley offered.
Dean on the left snapped off a painfully typical "Screw you."
"I could get Dean to do it," Gray Tie offered.
The resounding "No" came in stereo from all parties. Gary Tie frowned, muttering, "He's not that bad once you get to know him."
"Dude," Dean on the right said, "You made a deal with a demon and then agreed to be a vampire Capri Sun. It's pretty much decided that you don't have the best judgment."
Gray Tie grumbled some more.
"I'll smite him," Cassandra said and rolled up her sleeve, which was completely unnecessary for smiting.
"Now, let's not be hasty," Crowley said. "Don't you have any idea what will happen if you kill me? Hell will be in chaos. You don't know who will take control after me. Things could get much much worse. You have to admit that my version of hell is far superior to anything they've tried before and anything they'll try in the future."
"I've dealt with hell," Dean on the left said.
And he must be the Dean from his own universe. The Dean he knew and despised and for whom he held a faint amusement. The Dean he'd bent over backwards for in order to keep the angel appeased.
Crowley threaded his fingers together again, resting them on his stomach. "Alright...and what will you tell dear Castiel? That you've ruined his one chance to win his war? That all these months he's worked to keep you safe, to protect your pathetic world, to stave off the apocalypse because it's what you would want. You're going to tell him that none of that means anything to you in the slightest."
Dean glared, his hands in white knuckled fists at his sides.
"The lengths he's gone to. The sacrifices he's made. He put aside his own high and mighty morals for you, and you're going to tell him it wasn't worth it." He shook his head and tutted. "I really would like to see that. I think it may break him. All he ever wanted was your approval, after all. But here's the thing everyone knew but him: really, the bastard never had a chance."
Their audience stood on pins and needles, ready to grab Dean should he make a move, hold him back, keep him from doing something stupid.
Crowley hoped he would try something stupid. It seemed likely.
Instead Dean let his words come slowly, each a roll of anger. "You're a snake. You're a manipulative, ugly, lying sonuvabitch, and I'm going to gut you and strangle you with your own intestines."
"Sounds fun."
He jerked his head at Cassandra, his eye never leaving Crowley. "Do it."
She stepped into the devil's trap, adjusting the roll of her sleeve.
And thunder broke above them, rolling and rolling, clashing and jarring. Cassandra paused, looked up to the ceiling as the lights flickered and the loose boards on the stairs shuddered and banged. Crowley smirked.