Twist of Fate
Disclaimer: I do not own a certain magical index, it's characters or it's elements.
Chapter 34: Ghost of Christmas Past
Crowley was not having a goodnight. His dead wife had come and warned him about something which he didn't truly understand. He had run all sorts of scans and he had detected a trace of something but it was so small that he couldn't say anything for certain. For all he knew a device inside the building was not working properly. He thought about asking Aiwass but he assumed that it wouldn't end well. What Rose had spoken about sounded like something out of the Christmas Carol but he had never read the original grimoire.
Yeah, the book is actually a grimoire.
Still he searched over the city for any sign of someone trying to trick him. His eyes fell on the screen showing one of the many festivities going around the city. A large clock displayed over the square of partiers as it rang out to Ten O'Clock.
"Oh, that looks like a fun party."
A small voice chirped next to Crowley.
The infamous magician found a small girl with brown hair standing next to him.
"Last Order?"
The girl looked just like the Misaka clone except she was wearing a cute green dress and hat that gave her a christmas tree look especially with the ornament decorations on her.
"I do not know who this good looking girl of which you speak of. I am the Ghost of Christmas Past come to help you along your journey."
"I think I will just have to pass."
"Not an option." She snapped her fingers.
They found themselves on a snowy landscape and Aleister Crowley tried to do any number of things but found that his powers didn't seem to work here.
Snow gently fell around them, "Edward Aleister Crowley born the 12th of October in 1875 to Edward and Emily Crowley in Warwickshire, England. " The spirit spoke facts about him with ease. "In March 1887 your father died of tongue cancer when you were just 11. That was a major changing point in your life, that was when you started to look into magic, you wanted to prevent death you wanted not to lose people. You wanted to overcome death. You started of like many western magicians and used the bible as a standing stone but you saw faults and things that didn't go match with the morals they preached. It started to cause a rift with your mother and she sent you to school. You own mother even started to call you a beast which you later took you on as your own magic name."
"I know my own history."
"You know but I don't think you understand." The girl continued to walk into the snow and continued to speak to him much in the same way as a teacher.
Crowley followed her with little else to do.
"Let's see, you did very good in school, very smart and even climbed mountains at a very early age. Some people said that you were spitting in the face of God and the world for the faults in their teachings and words and for death. To give life and just as easily take it away, that was something you couldn't agree with."
The age old magician glared at the young girl.
"Allan Bennett was your magical tutor, giving you drugs to open the senses and performing rituals from Goetia. You moved around learning more and more but nothing felt right for you. You even progressed with the Golden Dawn. You even wrote your first grimoire The White Stains."
"Why are you telling me all this?"
"On a trip to Stockholm in 1896, during Christmas you Allan a few other people met to perform a rather risqué ritual."
The girl pointed to a lodge in the snow. The windows filled with the light and an other wordily light illuminated around the building.
"This is your awakening." The ghost spoke with her arms out stretched. "This is one of the most important days for you."
"I got a taste of true power…. No, of my true purpose. I didn't know what it was at the time. I just knew I was meant for greater things,"
"Yeah, yeah, Frater Perdurado." She waved her hand.
"Brother I shall endure to the end."
He never forgot those words, he would say them a few years later but the ritual here lead to that and much more.
"Yes, you were to usher in the Aeon of Horus. You have a bit of an ego you know?"
"So I've been told."
"You've always been a jerk." The small one continued on. "But you did have a heart."
The area around them changed to a simple room somewhere in Cairo. He stayed there during a Christmas of 1904.
"Some people said you just married her out of convenience to the both of you but it's not the case. You did prove it."
In a chair he saw a younger version of himself holding on to his wife as he read her poetry.
"Rosa Mundi and other Love Songs." She whispered the words. "Then you would write Why Jesus Wept. You wrote them all to show her you loved her. They were actually very pretty and moving."
Crowley watched as his wife cried tears of joy hearing the world he had written for her. His usually emotionless face slowly faded away to reveal the emotion behind.
Even he was surprised to see the drastic change between the magician reading poetry to his wife to the man who he now was.
"You loved her and she was your world." The Ghost of the Past spoke in a solemn tone. "You told her your deepest secrets. Together you found more secrets and you got the number for your magic name from an exhibit she found after one of your rituals."
"They are waiting for you." Crowley repeated the words his wife had told him, how it lead him to the gods.
"The Equinox of the Gods." The fake Last order scratched her chin. "I think that is what you called it back then."
"She started to get sick after that, the rituals and all the magic we performed started to take a toll on her. She continued on even as we worked on the Book of Law."
"Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law." She repeated the words hidden in the book.
Crowley had no idea who this girl really was in the end but she knew secrets no one should no. If some magician had captured his wives soul and was using her in a ploy he promised he'd make them suffer. He'd find out what this all was.
"True will thing is you're teaching and your life were all based on from then."
The world once agains changed as Crowley found himself watching a younger self pacing with a child in his arms. A small girl, his Lilith.
It was a difficult Christmas as the baby wept and his wife was far too weak to help. He took care of the child all night so that she could rest.
"Really who was getting weak there. You were getting paranoid as you thought your friend Mather's was using magic against you."
"He was."
"So you say, you broke that friendship and many others and split your family apart from others. You didn't trust people and so they didn't trust you, it probably planted the seeds for why many came after you years later."
"My work was to important-"
"I know what you are going to say." With that she snapped her fingers.
The world changed to her command and a new scene took the stage.
A temple surrounded them as the younger Crowley in Ancient Egyptian like robes chanted in a language mankind hadn't spoken in many years.
Wailing before him was his wife, she looked ready to die and delirious as she chanted along with him as her eyes glowed. Light streamed from behind her as the figure known as Aiwass formed behind her.
"This was a Christmas, you can't tell though." The spirit nudged the magician. "You and your wife worked on summoning your angel just so you learn a little bit never resting no matter how much it took out of both of you."
"Isn't this supposed to be a day of celebration?" Aiwass asked the younger Crowley. "This does not seem very celebratory."
"There is no time to rest, there is much work to do." Crowley looked straight at his teacher's eyes. It was during these days that Crowley's stoic face first came into view.
Slowly the humanity in him seemed to seep away with each experiment and each ritual. Even Rose noticed it but never said, the end goal would be worth it.
"You started to work on Liber777, you picked that name for your book after Rose's magic name. Why?"
Crowley looked at the small form, "What does it matter? It is only a name."
"I think it does matter, magic names always matter." The small girl looked him straight in the eyes. "Is it because you know that you that she would die.
Crowley didn't say anything."
"How many years passed? How many people sacrificed? Even your own children died by your own hands to further your goals."
The world was black around them leaving them the only things there.
"Do you think she hated you? For spilling the blood of your children, your daughter for those experiments just to glimpse the other side."
Crowley didn't say a thing.
"Magic Cabals were disgusted by what you had done that they went to the church for help. That is when the world turned against you, so why not your own wife too."
"She didn't." Crowley said in a hollow tone.
The world didn't change but the visions flashed before his eyes. It was the final ritual he needed, his wife stayed with him even when his followers left and turned against him. Every magician in Europe was after them but she stayed with him. He remembered the look she gave they were in and the tired look in her eyes and she bowed before him. He remembered how she smiled at him as he plunged a dagger - one rumored to be used by Medea- into her heart. Her death was quick and the blood rushed out just as quick. He collected it for his final ritual.
He didn't remember the next few days clearly. They all heard what he told his cabal about going into the science side before he carried his last ritual, it caused those who didn't leave him after those bloody experiments to leave him then. They helped the church look for him and they found him.
He couldn't even bury her as magicians tried to kill him. On mass they all came for his head, he ran for days fighting them all. They found her body and each and everyone one decided he wasn't human any more but he had earned the title beast. They would have punished him harshly for the experiments he had done, the blood he had spilled, and for betraying them to join enemy's side. Now they saw what he had done none saw anything human to punish the only thing they could give him was death. That was the only thin a monster deserved.
He should have died. He didn't.
In rural England a nearly dead Crowley looked at the face of his savior.
The world flashed to a tiny shack as the younger Crowley lay in bed watched over by a doctor with a frog like face and kind heart.
The young Crowley was drawing up plans in his journal.
"Let me know if need anything." The man who saved him left him alone.
Crowley wrote on the journal furiously as his plans were being drawn up. The doctor was helping him get out of England to go to Japan. He needed a city to carry out his goals.
He was writing everything that happened and everything that would when he wrote a name
"Rose…."
Both the past and the present Crowley said it together. The younger one wept and tears stained that book as he recalled her death at his hands. The older one didn't move or speak for a moment.
"Forget her! You have work to do! You know why she gave up her life! What it all means! You can't cry! You owe her and her sacrifice to continue! No matter the cost."
"Exactly." The spirit said softly.
The world changed once more they watched Crowley working in his tube, it was Christmas but neither one of them could say which they seemed like this. Working on the projected screens, making plans all by himself.
"Why show me all this?" Crowley finally asked the spirit. "Who sent you?"
"Both answers are obvious if you think about it." She said softly. "Ask a question that has more…. uh, more to it."
"You wanted to show me these for a purpose. You wanted me to learn something I take it. I fail to see the lesson."
"Are you happy?" The girl asked in her innocent child like voice.
"What?"
"Are you happy? It's an easy question."
"Why is that important?"
She frowned, "You had a wife and children, you had friends. Each and every single one of them cared for you. When you chose magic over your mother you made the first choice. Then you made another and another, every single time you picked your goals over people. " She tapped the glass tube. "Now you are alone, you are more alone than anyone else in the world. You live in a tube in a building no one can even enter unless they have a rare power. Even then you control the person. You have power that few have ever dared dream for. In the end are you happy for it when you are so alone?"
Crowley blinked and he found himself floating in liquid inside his tube. He checked the clock, the scans of the room, and video of himself. As far as he could tell nothing happened and no time had passed and certainly no one was there besides him.
"No, of course I am alone."
With that he closed the computer screen.
The spirit wanted him to realized that he had placed himself were he was and he understood that. Every choice and every turn was made by him, he had plenty of chances to turn back but he refused each and every one.
Still he told himself he didn't regret it.
Authors Notes: Okay, so I'm working on this and with luck I will get the last chapter of this arc by christmas day. Still looking for a beta so let me know if you are one and interested. Always happy to hear what you guys think. I'm already working on plans for the next arc, it's going to be different and have Mikoto, Index, Othinus and Tsuchimikado. Plus some other characters are going to get new takes. I'm working on some of the details but i want to write it soon and I still have to do a Kanzaki story, i have no ideas but I'm not starting that until this one is over so I got at least two chapters.
Okay, now for notes I researched a lot on the real Crowley to flesh out the portions were the raildex novels didn't go into, I hope it meshes. To get a feel of his drive and goals, I hope it came out well. Also I didn't know how much research Kamachi had done, the beast was a name given to Crowley by his real mother and the numbers were important to him from something his wife did find in a trance. Anyway I hope this all came out right.