What Isn't And Came To Be
Chapter 19: The Back and Forth Battle of Love and Hurt
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Michele pushed up her glasses, rubbed at her eyes and laid the heavy stone tablet down on the side table. She'd read the tablet privately in her room once already, chipping away at the Leviathan lore in her stolen moments alone. Despite that, she'd been sucked into beginning to read it again.
It was just so fascinating; and the way the words seemed to move inside the stone, forming sentences and paragraphs that drifted over under and through each other, like something almost living, was down right mesmerising.
The fact, only she could see the words, while everyone else saw just a squared off rock covered in indecipherable carvings…. was beyond trippy.
She'd discovered early on, that reading the tablet gave her a headache.
After only twenty minutes reading, she'd feel like someone had sat her on a wheelie chair and spun it until her brain sloshed.
Surprisingly though, reading the tablet hadn't triggered a nose bleed, like her prophetic visions, and being forced to write the Winchester gospels, had.
She actually hadn't had a single vision, or nosebleed since Crowley drained the grace out of her.
Which left her with so many questions.
Were her lack of nosebleeds and blackouts, because she wasn't pushing things as much or as hard, as Kevin Tran had?
Or because the negative side effects were cumulative and took a while to kick in?
Or, had the previous prophet's blackouts and nose bleeds simply been caused by how badly the Winchester's had fed and looked after Kevin? Had his problems been caused by a combination of scurvy and the Winchesters feeding him excessive amounts of aspirin (which thinned the blood, and could cause bleeding) to combat the headaches.(It wasn't like she hadn't experienced Dean's shoddy history with dispensing medication herself.)
Or had Kevin's deterioration instead been caused by the Winchesters forcing him to push through the pain and provide them with the answers they wanted.
Those questions sat uneasily with her. They felt mean-spirited and disloyal.
Sam and Dean were her friends.
They were either dead, or trapped in a broken alternate universe with an apoplectically furious Lucifer; and she'd been part of making that happen.
She'd been the source of the grace for the spell that healed the rift; the key that shut and locked the door between realities.
Crowley had chosen to come back, for her, in those last moments, before the rift closed, instead of standing with Sam, Dean and Castiel against Lucifer.
Did Crowley regret his choice?
Did he blame her for it?
Was that why he acted so bipolar with her, one moment mean, the next almost doting.
Crowley's relationship with the Winchesters had been complicated; but there was no denying the Winchesters had mattered to him. Far more than he wanted them to.
Now they were gone, and Crowley flatly ignored every attempt she made to discuss them. (After that one time, when he first came back, bloody and riddled with bullet holes; and told her Sam was dead. That Dean and Castiel, blinded by grief and the drive for revenge, had refused to flee back to their own universe before the rift closed.)
Part of her still couldn't process how something like that could be real.
She suspected, Crowley's refusal to talk about the Winchesters was his own grim form of denial.
A hope deferred, a hedged bet, that the Winchester's would once again cheat death like they'd done so many other times.
Michele wasn't so sure, her lack of visions and urge to write the Winchesters story… those seemed damning.
If she were totally truthful, it felt as though she'd been fighting pointlessly to change the course of a river ever since she first became aware that Sam and Dean Winchester were not in fact fictional characters.
She knew Sam and Dean would have died facing off against the Loughlin witch family, that previous February; after Dean got hit with a progressive memory disintegration spell in Arkansas.
But her prophetic visions had given her a choice.
Do nothing and let the Winchesters die, and with their deaths she'd have been free of the prophetic visions; free of writing the Winchester's story, free of slowly and inexorably bleeding to death.
She could have grown old with Phil, been with her friends and family, watched all four of her children grow up. Seen Johnny go through college, fall in love, and get married.
Or, she could have convinced Rowena to write a few post-it notes, save Crowley's witch mother and the Winchester brothers both. But as a result she'd continue to see, and write and bleed.
Saving the Winchesters led down a path where she would bleed to death one day. She'd been shown that.
She'd thought then, that she understood those choices, and had chosen to save Sam and Dean despite the cost.
Because it was the right thing to do, the only thing, to do.
The Winchesters were her friends, and they'd spent their whole life sacrificing to save others.
They were heroes. Heroes who had stopped the world ending, not once but several times.
The world needed them.
To choose differently would have been wrong, and the height of selfishness.
But she hadn't seen enough, and she'd failed to calculate the true cost. The price hadn't settled on her head.
Here she was, alive.
Alive after bleeding to death, not from one of her visions, but from the poisoned blade of a Men of Letters assassin.
Here she was, alive at the cost of a demon deal and her son Johnny's soul; the one person she loved most in all the world.
Her son had bought her return to life at loanshark prices, traded his soul over to an eternity of torture and subjugation; because he didn't understand, and she was his mother. She'd always been the centre of his autism limited universe, and Crowley had used that, was still using that.
Now, if she couldn't find a way to break that deal, Johnny would end up broken and corrupt and become a demon himself.
God! How she wished she'd let the Winchesters die. If they'd just died in Arkansas, back in February; the British Men of Letters would have never learned about her when they bugged the Winchester's bunker, never listened in on her many Skype conversations with Sam and Dean; and Crowley would never have found out about her. Or started stalking and threatening her, attempting to use her prophetic knowledge to his own ends.
She wouldn't have ended up passed out, bleeding in Crowley's lap; and he wouldn't have tasted her blood that first time, or renewed his old addiction. Or accidentally weakened his control over Lucifer.
Crowley would still have Lucifer in chains, he'd still be the unchallenged King of Hell, and no one, and nothing, would have cared one iota about a pointless soiled prophet who wrote fanfiction, or her autistic eight year old child.
Instead, she might never see her husband or her other three children again, and Crowley held her son's soul. They were both trapped in a glass tower, forced into acting out a sham family unit, with the King of Hell, for the purpose of raising baby Jack Kline, Lucifer's half human son, to be Crowley's replacement weapon of mass destruction.
Despite who his father was, and the brief displays of potential power he'd already exhibited, it was plain that Jack wasn't evil. He was just a baby, a little boy with an innocent open heart like Johnny.
Just as he'd used Johnny's love for her, and her love for Johnny, Crowley wanted to use the same familial attachment to forge the chains that bound Jack.
Crowley wanted a malleable, controllable replacement weapon. He didn't want a mindless killing machine, he wanted Jack raised feeling attachment and loyalty.
It was working and it would work.
All Crowley needed to do, to get her to comply with anything, was threaten to hurt her son or collect on his deal. Long before Jack developed any reliable control over the power he'd inherited from Lucifer, he'd be trapped, and habituated into the same pattern.
Love was weakness.
Crowley had warned her of it, so many times. And he was right.
But without love what was there? She had to believe love could be strength as well as a weakness.
…
With a sigh Michele ruffled the fur behind Slinky's ears and looked up to where she knew Crowley would be standing, as soon as the sleeping cat on her lap jerked awake and grumbled a low warning growl.
Slinky didn't like Crowley. Michele didn't blame her, the mostly healed burns were proof she'd been inside when the demon had set their home ablaze.
"It's the Leviathan tablet," she said simply by way of greeting.
She'd avoided looking at the tablet, for days. Worried he intended to force her to translate it for nefarious means.
But Crowley hadn't demanded or even mentioned it, so she'd gotten curious.
Perhaps he'd known she wouldn't be able to resist the tablet's pull.
She soon realised why Crowley had bided his time and hadn't been insistent.
He already had a translation. Kevin's translation.
Crowley tilted his chin sideways, a slow, almost teasing smile tugging at his lips, while his deep set eyes studied her intensely.
"Practically useless really." He acknowledged waving a dismissive hand. "What with Dick getting boned by the Winchesters and their pet angel."
His double entendre made her want to roll her eyes, but she didn't.
"You already have a translation of this," she said. Her own hand finding its way back to the tablet to curl around it's bulk, pull it close.
Crowley watched her subconscious gesture and his smirk grew wider.
"Honestly, I simply thought you might like to know if you were still a prophet of the lord. Or if 'Chuck' had chucked you on the garbage heap."
'You, wanted to know,' she thought.
Slinky shifted in her lap, the sharp hint of claws pricked through the velvet of her skirt as the little cat drew herself into a more tense position, the fur along her spine ruffled with unease.
Throat tight, Michele ran a quelling hand down Slinky's body, soothed her pet and herself.
Then, mimicked Crowley's head tilt.
"Or, perhaps, you were trying to work out if it was worth retrieving the demon tablet. Trying to make me translate it; like you did with Kevin."
Crowley didn't change his almost languid pose in the doorway and his smile remained undimmed, but she thought she caught the slightest increase in tension in his neck.
She let a low breath slide between her lips, heart beating fast.
This was a conversation she'd been dreading, and avoiding.
But sometimes, you just had to rip the Band-Aid off.
"But do you really want to give me access to a spell that can close the gates of Hell, or, perhaps, cancel Johnny's deal?" She asked the question she'd been rehearsing in her head for days, mildly.
Forced her lips to form a smile to match Crowley's.
His eyes narrowed and his expression soured in response.
Leaving the tablet on the side table, Michele made herself get to her feet and carry Slinky over to the sofa. Set the cat down beside the children. Run one quelling hand down the little cat's body, pressing her into the cushions and encouraging her to stay put.
She spared only the briefest glance for Johnny and Jack. The two of them were tucked up together there on the sofa, Johnny's arm looped easily round Jack's small frame.
Both children were staring intently at the screen of the laptop Crowley had bought, enraptured by what ever thing Johnny was currently doing in Minecraft. Something to do with redstone and sticky pistons, from the few words she caught of her son's low, constant narration to the nephilim.
She was relieved Johnny and Jack were too wrapped up in the game to notice much else.
…
Two evenings ago Crowley had asked about Johnny's lessons and she'd told him how Johnny's online teacher had set the class a research task to do with their national heritage.
She'd shared awkwardly how Johnny had refused to research New Zealand or England, (because they were boring,) electing instead to research the Scottish portion of his heritage.
At first Crowley had seemed almost pleased with the information.
Until, Johnny had broken in, announcing that both he and his mother were Scottish royalty.
Crowley had scowled then and scolded Johnny for lying, telling him off for being a bad influence on Jack.
She'd found it necessary to defend her son and explain; that Johnny wasn't lying, but it also wasn't like he or her, were in the line of succession. The connection was tenuous.
She'd gone on to explain how her husband had developed a fascination for researching the family tree after their argument with the twins birth mother, over the girl's family tree assignment.
Spoken, with a painful reminiscent heart, of how Phil had started researching and recording everything, using an online family tree database.
Phil had gotten a little obsessive over it, honestly.
Spent hours pouring over various databases and all the records of births deaths and marriages, to compile his monstrous ever expanding family tree, that just kept on going out, and back, and back.
Phil had dug up all sorts of useless facts about their families combined heritage.
She'd found his insistence in dragging all that dead family information out, like a dog with it's long buried bones, both annoying and endearing.
One of those bits of information he'd laid at her feet was the fact that, she, his beloved wife, Johnny's mother, was distantly related to some Scottish queen.
Johnny's eight year old logic had taken that information and extrapolated it to mean he was Scottish royalty.
Crowley hadn't seemed overly mollified by the explanation, (if anything, his scowl had deepened, the longer she'd talked about Phil's obsession;) and of course he hadn't retracted his charge that Johnny was lying, and a bad influence on Jack.
Johnny had reacted to the perceived unfairness of it all by blurting out, that Crowley 'was just jealous.'
Crowley had scoffed and told Johnny, HE was an actual King, not a little boy with pretensions, because one of his distant ancestors had been a queen hundreds of years previous.
Michele had tried to mollify things, and told Johnny Crowley was indeed a King, and please could he just hush and accept her word for it.
But then, Johnny had turned to Crowley and asked with perfect clueless curiosity, how he could be a king if he wasn't related to any other royalty. Wouldn't the correct term instead be tyrant, or a usurper or… what was the other word Mum? He knew it started with a D…
Johnny had then run off to find the thesaurus. Leaving his internally freaking out mother, with Crowley. Who didn't seem to know how to react.
Johnny could say some extremely oblivious yet cutting things without batting an eyelash. His thoughts travelled in straight lines and he tended to state things, and take them, all incredibly literally.
Crowley had glared at her, while she'd waited for the inevitable storm.
But instead of blowing up at her over Johnny's rudeness, he'd abruptly discovered some business he had to attend to, elsewhere, before Johnny returned.
Johnny had come back waving the thesaurus triumphantly and announced that the other word for a non hereditary ruler beginning with the letter D, was Despot and dictator. There were two, wasn't that great?
The incident had underlined an uncomfortable truth. Johnny had no filter. He hadn't been raised to be seen and not heard, and he was incapable of reading a room. Now he was starting to become acclimatised to Crowley's presence, he couldn't be relied on to keep his mouth shut and avoid making Crowley mad.
…
"Crowley?"
"Hmm?" The demon was standing beside the table she'd left the tablet on, looking down at it pensively.
"You wanted to know about any new development with Jack?"
"I do, yes."
"I've got something to show you, in the kitchen."
Crowley grimaced. "Let me guess, more charts and figures?"
Crowley thought the measurements she took on Jack each day were excessive and pointless. He'd done nothing to hide his withering distain for her attempts to plot that data against similar for an average human infant; to form some kind of expected timeline of when Jack might hit the usual developmental milestones.
She didn't answer Crowley's question, just led him through to the kitchen and pulled the pot out of the cupboard and held it out.
Crowley frowned down at the twisted and melted thing in his hand and cocked a brow.
"Jack, did it," she explained.
"Percussion gone awry?"
She shook her head.
"Johnny and I were making popcorn to eat with the movie. Jack was under his mobile—"
"And Lucifer junior felt left out?"
"No, and please don't call him that.
Johnny went to get one of the popped kernels, which jumped out of the pot, and accidentally touched the side. Burned himself— Not bad…
But, next thing I know, the pot is on the other side of the kitchen." She pointed at the cracked tiles on the wall opposite the cooktop, then back at the baseball sized lump of crushed and melted metal in Crowley's hands. "Like that."
Crowley hummed and wandered over to examine the damaged tile more closely. Rubbed his thumb over the cracked and slightly melted tile-work while bouncing what was left of the ruined cooking pot in his hand.
"He is the son of an archangel, the devil himself. Raising him is going to be a little different than raising one of your—" he made a low contemptuous sound in the back of his throat, "— beasties." He smirked over at her again, unconcerned.
"You do realise, you are practically training him to destroy your cookware, by allowing him to bash at them with kitchen implements."
"I don't think you understand."
"Oh, do tell."
"It's not what Jack did, or even how. It's why."
Crowley licked his upper lip and worked his jaw, telegraphed his shortening tolerance.
"Jack doesn't have a full grasp of things yet, he's still working out how the world fits together. But one thing he knows, is that he likes Johnny. A lot. He also knew, that the pot hurt Johnny."
They locked gazes and Michele lifted her chin.
"Jack also seems to be able to read our emotions without physical contact. He reacted instantly to his surrogate brother's shock and pain, and did that," a gesture at the pot, "to the thing which hurt him."
Crowley was scowling and giving her a squinty eyed look now.
"…Johnny might say or do something that upsets you. Or perhaps you are considering hurting him, to force me to translate a less useless tablet."
"Are You, trying to threaten me?"
"No, not at all, I'm warning you."
Crowley balled his fists, but she forced herself to continue, even though her fear made her feel like puking.
"—For all our sake! Jack immolated Dagon before he was born. And I'm sure you were smart enough to write Johnny's deal with a clause that makes his soul revert straight back to Hell's ownership, in the event of your death."
Crowley's lips pursed, then he let out a low bark of laughter. "Clever kitty, you think like a lawyer, don't you pet?"
If she thought like a lawyer it was only because being Johnny's Mum had trained her to. Her autistic kid took everything literally and found all the loopholes.
Crowley stepped toward her then, and she fought with herself to stay put.
He leaned in, far too close, and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
"Lawyers make excellent crossroad demon's," he murmured mildly, and draped a heavy arm across her shoulders, pulling her tight against his side.
Then snapped his fingers.
With a stomach wrenching lurch they were standing in the middle of a field with a house in the distance.
The recognition was immediate, the red roof, the pale brick facade, and the tree beside her childhood bedroom window.
She was standing in the back paddock of her parents farm.
Crowley tightened his arm around her and looked down with dark glittering eyes.
"MacGuffin isn't the only one you care about, Darling.
What say we have ourselves an object lesson.
Perhaps your father; the man would be no great loss. Where do you think he'll go hmm. Up or down?"
She looked up at the demon and gulped.
Crowley gazed back like an incoming storm, his expression too shrewd and knowing; like he'd seen every childhood tear and seething teenaged resentment, the back and forth battle of love and hurt she fought every-time she saw her father.
That was the worst bit of his threat, and it made her feel unclean.
Finally she dropped her eyes, knees weak with defeat.
"I'm sorry. You're right, I get it. I'm weak, you're strong. You're smart, I'm dumb… Just Please… don't hurt my father."
Crowley looked faintly surprised. "The man didn't even cry at your funeral, Darling. I'd be doing you a favour."
"Like Lucifer did you a favour?"
With another snap of Crowley's fingers they were somewhere else.
Crowley let go of her and she pulled away, looked around in confusion.
They were back in the master bedroom of the apartment in Dubai.
"You like science, so let's experiment, shall we," he slid out one of the bedside draws and picked up a handful of plastic wrapped syringes and needles, and a tourniquet.
"Sit." He pointed to the bed.
Reluctantly she sat as he stripped away the packaging, attached a needle to the syringe and uncapped it. Tossed it and the tourniquet on the bed beside her.
"You know how to do it, draw some blood."
She did, had even done it on herself a few times recently, when the student nurses at the hospital had struggled; but admittedly that'd been with vacutainers.
He watched her like a hungry dog while she put on the tourniquet and found a vein. Slid the needle into her vein. (The syringe didn't burst into flame, but she didn't expect it to. It wasn't just pain Jack was reacting to, or she'd need a new hairbrush every time she snagged a knot brushing her hair.) Drew up the blood one handed.
Crowley made a low appreciative sound and bit his bottom lip.
"Good girl."
Snapped his fingers again, and the syringe was in his hand.
He looked at it lingeringly, before he capped it, and dropped it into his pocket.
"Now, shall we return to the living room and repeat the
-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Authors note: Hi, it's me, the person behind the keyboard, asking once again, that if you are reading this story to pop in and comment or just say hi.
I know my writing speed has slowed down recently, and my updates are coming sporadically, sorry about that, my life has gotten kinda hectic and all over the place. Honestly this is also because the reduction or lack of feedback has sucked the wind out of my sails…. Anyway…! If you want to be informed when I do update it might be an idea to click that tick and follow either me or the story you're interested in.
I've also decided to change the way I respond to reviews and go back to doing so when I post the next chapter, giving shoutouts down here at the end, because thats more fun than PMs.
As always, thank you so much for reading and I hope and pray you stay safe out there on your little corner of this spinning ball of dirt.
️-MC2