What Isn't And Came To Be
Chapter 4: A Single Tear
She was asleep when he arrived, curled in the plaid armchair around her son, like a cat with it's last remaining kitten.
Her hair was damp from a shower, drying into ringlets, and perfuming the air with the subtle scent of the shampoo she'd used.
His shampoo, he noted.
She was wearing one of his silk shirts too, sleeves far too long, and rolled up, like a child playing dress up in Daddies clothes.
He ought to be irritated by that. Her going through his things without permission.
But the sight sent a lazy primordial satisfaction seeping through him.
His prophet.
He'd wrenched her out of heaven's grasp, and now here she was, at his mercy, wearing nothing but his shirt, and preferred scent.
Only thing he could do to announce his claim more clearly would be to pattern that soft skin with the bruised imprints of his fingers. Or piss on her.
But, those things were statements without any fineness or class.
Besides, you always trapped more little butterflies with honey than vinegar.
He needed his innocent, harmless little butterfly, didn't he?
He needed her to wrangle the nephilim and diffuse it.
Kelly was long dead by the time he'd stumbled his way through the rift and seen it close behind him.
A little misinformation and some Emmy worthy acting had liquidated Mary Winchester and gotten her out of the way.
Literally.
Her own fault, really.
Mary Winchester was a rash and arrogant individual, without even a shred of motherly compassion.
She got what she deserved for attempting to murder the baby abomination with a fake archangel blade.
It was hardly his fault she hadn't wanted to trust the injured King of Hell to do the dispatch job. Had snatched the blade out of his hands, as he crumpled on the porch.
Marched off, leaving him all grievously wounded and possibly dying (for all she knew,) on her warded doorstep like a flaming bag of dog poop.
He wished he'd been able to watch Sam and Dean's traitorous bitch of a mother march that expertly crafted but, utterly useless, facsimile blade up the stairs and plunge it into Lucifer's spawn.
He hadn't missed the resulting blast however, that had been obvious. It had blown out every window on the homey little rental bungalow Castiel had found.
The devil spawn had squalled on, unabated. Lusty, strong and strident as ever.
Crowley was willing to bet the nursery wall, Kelly Kline had painted, so lovingly, with an apple tree and her sons Real boy name, 'Jack,' was now repainted in sanguine, red.
The nephilim might be new born, but survival was a reflex.
There was no way Crowley was willing to risk his own hide by laying a hand on it.
He needed someone guileless as his patsy.
He stood, watching that guileless patsy sleep the sleep of the good, for a solid five minutes. Letting his meatsuit's blood drip and patter unnoticed to the R.V trailer's floor.
He schemed his schemes and planned his next moves, with her right there all unawares.
Finally he cleared his throat.
Her lashes fluttered open slowly, reluctantly, with that heedless lack of caution only the truly innocent could pull off.
"Well, well look at you, all tussled and morning after, wearing my shirt."
A frown creased her brow at his voice, sleep pushed aside.
But he saw none of the expected fear or recriminations writ on her guileless, girl next door face.
Plot twist. Somehow, she appeared to know nothing of the dastardly deeds he'd perpetrated.
Maybe he wouldn't need to threaten the boy for this part, after all.
The thought flitted through his head then, that maybe he'd bought himself a pup. Maybe the woman before him was no longer prophet of the lord.
She had died.
Still, that might actually be to his advantage.
With Sam dead, (though unlikely to stay that way) and the rest of Team Freewill locked up in the Apocalypse world with Lucifer.
Prophetic visions of the Winchester Gospels would only prove a distraction.
Meanwhile, pushing her hair away from her face, Michele sat up grabbing her glasses. "Crowley?" She breathed his name low, careful not to disturb the boy.
He looked down on her, head cocked. "You're wearing my shirt."
Arms folded defensively over her breasts, Michele Chadwick lifted her chin and pouted up at him militantly. "You dragged me out of my home, naked and covered in blood and you're complaining—"
"Oh darling, I'm not complaining." He cut her off, and eyed her slowly up and down, wetting his lips with a wolfish leer. "I have to say however, you only in red... that was… mouthwatering."
The look on her face was wary and complicated.
Her eyes dropped to her sleeping son before flicking back up to his face once more, tensely.
The game had changed and she knew it.
He could see her trying to calculate the safest course of action.
"With all due respect, your Highness." She spoke soft and careful, eyes lowered, only to flick back up to his. "Please don't tell me I'm your own personal brand of heroine. You're better than that."
Hmm… interesting.
A touch of humour, neither insult nor come-on.
He let a pleased chuckle escape, allowing it to morph and be chased by a cough that splattered his mouth and hand with brilliant red. Watched those pretty green eyes widen in surprise.
"Oh." She was on her feet, and at his side, in a shot, "you're hurt."
"Caught a few bullets, it's," he stumbled then, theatrically, "nothing—" Just as he knew she would, she slipped under his arm, to support a portion of his weight, and help him into a chair.
"Sit down." Her small hands were already on him, tugging at his clothing.
Checking his wounds and letting out genuine sounds of dismay at what she found.
He let her do her pointless Florence Nightingale thing, repressing a smile.
She really was, just too easy.
"I…" she looked up at him, small hands splayed over the meat he wore, eyes wide and scared by the injuries, "I think at least one caught your lung. This is bad…Crowley…."
"First aid kit under the sink," he waved a nonchalant hand. "Take the bullets out, patch me up. Not like I can die." He bared bloody teeth, and coughed again, sending her scurrying.
She was more gentle than he would have liked, but surprisingly sure and efficient, all things considered. Removing bullets couldn't be a usual part of her repertoire.
She hated it, he could tell. Hated causing him more pain, from the way her eyes glistened and her breaths came shallow and fast. Like the wings of a trapped butterfly brushing against his exposed skin, in half contained panic, as she worked.
It sent little shivers of sharp biting enjoyment into his core.
He played it up, exaggerating his discomfort simply to heighten her distress. Gloried in it, the way he still, even now, could fool her into thinking of him as a man, not a monster. How he could manipulate her into stoically repressing her own distress, in favour of servicing his enjoyment.
Not wanting the experience to end too soon, he even urged her to push her fingers into the wounds, using the pretence of possible bullet fragments.
The intimacy and immediacy of those small fingers sliding slick and hot inside his ravaged meat, an act of faux penetration. Drew small bitten off gasping shudders from his lips.
The sounds she took for pain, were anything but.
By the time she was finished her hands were smeared in gore and he was riding a pleasant lassitude like buzz of satisfaction.
Shooting himself had been damnably awkward, and had ruined some good Armani, but it had all turned out well worth it.
He sat, in the grip of afterglow, bare chested but for the bandages and medical tape, his ruined shirt still unbuttoned. Sipping at a glass of scotch she'd brought him and watched her wash her hands and tidy everything away.
Her eyes cut repeatedly across to where her boy lay sleeping as she worked, fearful of the child waking and gathering up another load of trauma.
Finally she came back, pulling up the chair across from him. There was a smear of his blood across her cheekbone, dark in the low light of the trailer. He manfully repressed a greedy urge to smudge his thumb across it, then force the bloody digit into her mouth. To watch her choke and gag around it like she had on his smoke.
"Is there anything else, I can—" she began, concern for his well being brimming in those large empathetic eyes.
"You're wearing my only clean shirt." He pointed out and paused a beat. Watched her hand rise to her throat, but didn't wait for her expected rebellion.
"Keep it." He shrugged, with the magnanimity of a generous King, allowing her modesty in light of her other acts of service.
"What happened, Crowley?" She asked finally.
Letting out a slow breath he pushed away his glass of scotch and allowed his shoulders to slump. Looked away. Added a small stuttering breath of despair and rubbed at the stubble along his jaw.
"You didn't see?" He asked without looking up. Low and intimate, a weary soldier about to share the horrors of war.
She shook her head.
"The rift's closed, Lucifer is on the other side of it."
"But?"
He let the silence stretch and forced his meatsuit's eyes to well up, but didn't allow that single manly tear to spill.
Not yet.
Another shuddering breath. "Sam, Dean and Castiel they didn't make it back through. I tried Darling, but…" Again he waited, expecting one of her visions to inform her of his treachery.
But nothing happened, there was nothing but empathy and grief in the eyes that clung beseechingly to his face.
"I don't know what happened, but, Castiel wasn't with the Boys when Lucifer chased them through. I was already on the other side. Had to use that grace you sacrificed to set up the spell. When they came through, Dean started shooting Lucifer with the automatic weapon, the one that fired bullets made of angel blades, Sam…. He helped me with the spell." An almost visceral flashback made him close his eyes, it forced that single, prepared tear, to leak down his cheek, moments before he intended to shed it.
"The gun jammed, and Lucifer started beating on Dean like he was a redheaded stepchild.
It went to Hell, Pet. Literally…" he dropped his eyes to his bruised and bloody fists, clenched before him on the cheap Formica of the RV table. Fists he'd bloodied not half an hour before. Not by fighting Lucifer, but by punching a tree.
"You were right," he gritted. Voice as flayed and bloody as he'd left Sam, laying in the dirt. "Sam… I think he's dead. I tried to get Dean to flee, after, to leave, but he was too overwrought, by Sam… He shot me." He shook his head as if bemused, hand rising to finger at the bandages wrapping his chest.
"…Then Castiel turned up and attacked Lucifer like he thought, a broken used up seraphim was capable of beating the devil himself. None of us were thinking right, Darling. I don't blame them. There was no way Dean would leave his stupidly brave angel, after losing Sam.
The spell was working and I'd left you here... I couldn't let you die again, not after I got you back… I…. I fled, like a coward." He finished in a rush.
Forced himself to his feet and strode away the few steps the cramped space of the R.V allowed.
Ended up facing the wall. Like a child in disgrace, as if he were too ashamed to face her. "…And then the rift sealed itself shut…"
"I left them..." He gritted out, repeating himself, voice layered with as much self hatred and bitterness as he could manage.
He stood there in silence for long minutes, letting his breath tear ragged and harsh between his deceitful, lying lips. Knowing he sounded for all the world like a defeated, broken man, instead of the triumphant, returning King who had defeated all his foes and wiped the board with one clever plan.
He waited.
Until, he felt that tentative little hand on his shoulder, and turned to half collapse into her arms burying his face in her hair.
Wrapped himself around her, like she was his only route to salvation.
Above her head, Crowley laughed silently. Delighted, at the feel of her hot tears. Stinging with salt and true grief for the Winchester's. They fell onto his bandaged chest as her hands rose in a benediction of unneeded comfort. Her soft little bleeding heart misinterpreting the motion of his body as silent, manfully repressed shudders of grief echoing her own.