For the record, I didn't plan on giving Dean a different name. Or if I did, I certainly didn't plan on starting to use it to refer to him in the third-person narrative. But he really has become something else, to the point that continuing to call him Dean would have felt even weirder, I think. So hopefully this decision pays off. By the way, if you forgot where "Emery" came from, it was the name of Dean's last host, the one he was exorcised from.


Rowena watches her son through Dean Winchester's eyes for all of thirty seconds before the body count begins.

Not only can he kill demons, but he can kill demons efficiently. For a moment she holds her breath as she sees the shockwave he sends out knock Fergus flat on his back, but he appears to be fine. Her relief, however, quickly turns to disgust as she watches Dean transform him into a pathetic sniveling worm with just a few words. Even when he's much harsher than Rowena had pictured him being.

Maybe Fergus could use a rousing round of torment to help him get over this ridiculous hangup.

Honestly, what would he do without her?

"All right," she whispers to Dean Winchester—or Emery, as he's now dubbed himself—as the two of them head from the throne room to a nearby meeting room to sit down and discuss their plans. "It's a deal."

He doesn't react with any abnormal head movements or locutions, fortunately. The spell that gives her a direct feed from his eyes and ears will wear off in another hour or so, but for now she leaves that line open as she continues to stroll through the hallways of the archives and storage rooms beneath the complex around the throne room, beginning to gather up everything she'll need for the locating spell.

It's not the only one she'll be casting, though. She doesn't foresee it being too difficult to concoct a potion she can coat her son's bones with that will ensure they can't be destroyed. Damaged, sure, fine. But not destroyed.

She wonders just who this Dean Winchester was, and what he's become. All she's really heard from Fergus, other than his high opinion of him and his hurt at the "betrayal," is that they've got a history, and that he's very powerful. By the style of his clothes, it's obvious he died very recently. She's not sure how he could have become a demon so quickly, but it almost seems to her like he's a different breed of demon entirely. Like he doesn't operate under the same rules as the rest she's seen.

It worries her, just a bit. She might be in over her head.

She'll have to proceed with extreme caution.


Crowley has always seemed like nothing more than a businessman to Emery, and Crowley himself has even acknowledged this as the truth. When he became the self-proclaimed king of hell, it didn't really make sense to Emery. He was no leader, and he had never seemed ambitious in the least. But as they sit in the drafty meeting room together, Emery finds himself continually surprised by the loftiness of Crowley's goals.

He says he wants to create "the perfect hell." A kingdom of terror that everyone on earth will fear. He wants to mold the world into a place where nobody will ever deny the existence of demons, because everybody will personally know the fear they bring. He wants to mobilize his troops, spreading havoc strategically across the globe, beginning in bigger cities in first world countries from where the stories will spread far more readily, and gradually reaching the furthest corners of the earth. In the meantime, he wants to return hell to a similar state to what it was before his reign began—when Emery was serving his time all those years ago. To take inventory of all the souls, to train new torturers, to hear constant screaming and weeping. He wants to remake it into something to truly be afraid of. And while Crowley facilitates things in hell, he wants Emery to lead the charge on earth, till every living person knows their names.

There's only one problem. Crowley doesn't seem to have a lot of concrete plans in the working. He has an end goal, but not a game plan. The way Emery sees it, he needs a lot of consultants and experts, but when Emery points this out, Crowley shies away from the idea of asking anyone else for help.

Emery really doesn't care. He has no need for hell on earth, and he's certainly not about to be Crowley's bitch, or to genuinely work with the guy who took the Blade from him. The sole fact that Crowley hasn't offered it already is more than enough evidence that he wants to keep Emery in check. He's afraid of what he'll do if he has the Blade. There can be no trust in this relationship, no matter how much Crowley wants it.

There is something Crowley wants to say or ask, though. After the first hour there have already been three or four instances where he paused, looked at Emery for a while, opened his mouth slightly, paused again, and just continued with what he'd been saying. "You know," Emery observes upon the next such occasion, "this entire time you've been wanting to say something. I suggest you say it."

He glances at Emery, eyes widening slightly. After a short pause he says hesitantly, "I'm… I'm not sure I should."

He raises an eyebrow. "Well now if you don't I'm going to be obligated to root around your head till I find it."

Crowley stares at him, head tilted, for a long moment, before suddenly saying, "I expected you'd be upset. That I took the Blade from you, that I handed you over to Sam. I've seen what you're capable of when you're angry. I just—"

A question is coming. Something about the Blade. Not an offer—definitely just a question. And Emery doesn't know if he'll be able to handle it with grace. He was a professional liar his whole human life, and now that he's a demon, it's never been easier, but the Blade… the Blade is a sore spot, and it could very well crack him.

So he lifts his hand, twitches his fingers ever so slightly, and Crowley's mouth snaps shut.

Emery leans in close, and though he didn't plan it, he feels his eyes go black. And he simply says, "You did those things to Dean."

Crowley stares at him, eyes wide, and Emery leans back again, twitching his fingers again in a casual gesture. Crowley coughs, his hand to his throat, as Emery says, "I think I left the very last piece of Dean behind some months ago, at least. Up there." He props his elbow on his knee and points his index finger upward, indicating the level of hell above them, the cells where he wandered for so long. He purses his lips, thinking. "You know, in all that time I never stopped to do the math. A month is ten years, so what's a day? Man, we'll have this whole plan ready to go before Sam's anywhere close to healed."

Crowley, his throat apparently feeling normal again, says, "Oh, no, it doesn't work like that."

Emery blinks. "What? Of course it works like that. This ain't my first rodeo."

Crowley shakes his head. "The space affected by the time distortion is solely for torture chambers. The entire purpose of the distortion is to accelerate the demonization of the condemned souls. Where we are now, it moves in tandem with the world above."

Emery stares at him. "You're kidding. Why not knock some walls down up there and move the entire base of operations into the space with the time—the—what did you call it?"

"Time distortion."

"Time distortion, man!" he cries. "You'd have a leg up on everything!"

"Hell wasn't built," Crowley says defensively. "The walls can't be 'knocked down.' It's… it's different, up there. I… I tried renovating, once, but it didn't last. In time, hell returned itself to the way it had been. To the way it's always been."

Emery shakes his head. "Then just repurpose the cells themselves. Conduct meetings sitting on the damn floor, if you have to. It's worth it."

Crowley turns his hand over, searching for a rebuttal, but eventually says, "We can look into it. Anyway—"

"Wait," he says, a question occurring to him. "So then… you know how long I've really been off the radar."

"Yeah. Well, since Moose and Feathers last saw you. I have no idea when you were exorcised; we haven't been in contact since."

"How long?"

"About two weeks."

He blinks. It feels like months, maybe even years since he's been aboveground. Two weeks? Since his last encounter with Sam? He can't wrap his head around it.

"Let's get back to work, shall we?"

"Right. Go on." And Emery has to go back to pretending to give a rat's ass about Crowley's grandiose visions for the future.

Maybe one day he'll regret not putting greater stock in the notion of long-term planning. Maybe one day he'll even regret bailing on the highest possible post he could ever hope to have. But right now, he… he just can't bring himself to be engaged. No position or amount of power can ever hold a candle to the Blade. With every passing hour its call grows stronger. It's even enough to distract him from the hellfire burning at his core. And maybe the time dilation up till now was messing with that somehow, who knows. But whatever the reason, now it feels stronger than ever. It's all he can do not to just close his eyes and dream of the moment he can hold it again.

Crowley doesn't understand. No one does.

But they will.