What Isn't And Came To Be
Chapter 21: An Argument With … Memories
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Michele woke to the sensation of a paw batting at her face, then the highly unwelcome feel of a cold wet nose pressing just below the junction of her ear and jaw. She responded to the assault by burrowing deeper under the blankets, her eyes mashed stubbornly shut.
Sadly, Slinky had long ago perfected her wake up routine. When her first two ploys didn't gain traction, the little cat grabbed a mouthful of Michele's long hair and tugged on it.
With a groan the woman tried to push the cat away, but missed making contact.
"Chris isn't up, go 'way cat." She grumbled burying her face in the pillow. Then stretched out a sleepy, questing hand for the blasted cat's two year old partner in crime, and to nudge her husband awake.
Her reaching hand found only a flat expanse of bed, cold and empty.
Then, it hit her.
Phil was gone, Chris and the girls were gone, it was only her and knowledge took her breath away, just as it did every morning.
A second realisation crept through, close on the heels of the first; something else wasn't right.
She wasn't in a single bed, the cold expanse her hand had searched was proof of it.
Sitting up with a start Michele looked around, and recognised the Master bedroom of Crowley's Dubai penthouse apartment. Swiping messy, cat salivated hair out of her face, she took in her surroundings with a wary, confused frown.
Last thing she remembered… was Crowley forcing her to watch some Arthouse cinema film with him. Sitting there, beside him in awkward silence staring at the screen, and being unable to make her mind follow the plot.
She'd been so tired. Had just shut her eyes for a moment.
She must have fallen asleep… And instead of waking her up or just leaving her on the sofa… Crowley had brought her in here and put her to bed.
Slinky climbed onto Michele's legs, kneading the blankets and purring up a storm, and she leaned forward to stroke her pet. Felt a resistant tug in the blankets around her, and was stumped to realise Crowley hadn't just put her in bed, he'd made sure to tuck her in as well… Which was… yeah.
Her glasses were on the bedside cabinet. Beside them was a glass of water … and a note in curly, cursive handwriting.
Bemused, she reached for both her glasses and the note.
"I have to disagree with your husband.
You're not hard to get into bed, at all
Xx— C"
Reading the words sent a sudden horrible suspicion thrilling through her, but only for a moment.
Surely, she'd know if he'd done anything… like that to her. She'd always known when Lucifer…when he… even when he wiped her memories of it afterward...
Fingering the anti-possession charm around her neck to steady herself, Michele pushed the not-memories away with a cold shiver, looking down at the note in her hand again. Then glanced across at that glass of water. The note was just Crowley's usual innuendo, what passed for his sometimes unsettling sense of humour; but the glass of water and tucking her in, those were disconcertingly human touches. If his innuendo made her feel nervous, vulnerable and irritated, the fact he'd tucked her in and left a cup of water, made her feel like broken glass was sliding round her insides, lacerating them all over again.
'You're not my Crowley.'
She had thought she was finally making some peace with the fact that the Crowley who was holding her captive now, was not the person Chuck had given her all those not-memories of.
But that glass of water brought to mind her Crowley.
Dressed in that filthy, tattered pink and yellow polyester clown suit, holding out half a crushed baguette to her, with a self deprecating smile on his poor, battered and refuse smeared face.
"I got you something while I was out, Darling. Pity the wretches didn't toss any cheese to go with it."
—Out being beaten and made sport of in Lucifer's stocks, by demons who'd once been his subjects— that had all gone unspoken as she'd taken the bread from him with trembling, hunger weakened hands.
She had only been able to guess how much the outing had cost his pride. Yet in the midst of it all, he'd thought of her and risked punishment if he'd gotten caught.
Then, there he'd stood, struggling to make it all seem like nothing but a joke.
"I was quite the pickpocket in my early years, nice to know I've still got what it takes."
She didn't want that not-memory, it was like a crushed butterfly in her fist.
When she'd lost her first child to an unexpected miscarriage, had laid him in the dirt of her parents farm, because he was too tiny to be considered anything but medical refuse; she'd thought there was no greater grief than burying and missing someone you'd never known. But now, looking at that face and hearing that voice every day, the face and voice of someone who had been her only friend and ally in an impossible, awful, fucked up situation. She knew there was something worse.
That not-memory Crowley, her Crowley, had never existed, but there was no comfort to be had: thinking of him as safe in heaven with Jesus, or just an unformed ball of cells with potential to become the person who she'd invested her heart in, like with her dead son Davi'.
Crowley was right there in her face, sounding and looking just the same; but nonetheless gone.
She had to believe if her captor really was her Crowley, somewhere inside, he'd never have swindled Johnny for his soul. Problem with that logic was that involuntary remembrance of Crowley's monotone voice, telling her about open ended contracts without a fixed deadline.
Sometimes, she almost wished he'd beat her and lock her in a bare cage like Lucifer had done in those not-memories, or do something awful she couldn't forgive him for, it would almost be a relief.
That stupid glass of water hurt, because it made her hope all over again.
Slinky stood up, ears pricked towards the direction Johnny and Jack were in, and Michele remembered tiredly that the boys would be awake soon.
Hauling her fatigued body out of the bed, she hurriedly made it.
Crowley, she was learning, liked having everything in its place. Perhaps that included her too, she mused. Perhaps it explained why he'd posted her off to bed; he just suffered from some weird demonic equivalent of OCD. Something which wouldn't let him be, unless all his toys were put away on their shelves at night.
Carrying the glass of water and Crowley's note, Michele made her way down the hall to the room she shared with Johnny and Jack, Slinky trailing behind, like an honour guard.
Johnny was still asleep, but Jack was awake in his crib, burbling away quietly to himself and waving his arms like he was conducting some unheard orchestral composition. The sight of him made her smile.
Finished with checking Slinky's food and water, (which was still full.) Michele bent over the crib and swept Jack up into her arms, was rewarded with a little giggle and a coo for her efforts.
"Good morning, sweet boy."
Jack's chubby fingers gripped clumsily at her wrist, sending a warm pulse of greeting and query, and an image of her un-slept-in bed into her mind.
"Yeah," she sighed and shook her head, "I fell asleep, and Crowley put me to bed."
Another pulse of query and a repeated image of her un-slept-in bed, this one edged with something pointed.
"Yes, Jack, I know that's my bed, but Crowley seems to think I should sleep somewhere else." She tried to build a picture of the master bedroom with its giant bed in her mind for Jack's perusal, but felt him attempt to chase the dark threads of emotion attached to her other, previous, memories in that room. Warily she pulled her wrist away from the nephilim's questing hands. Jack didn't need to see any of that.
"Why, why, why?" she murmured softly to the child, trying to make it teasing and light, and ruffled his hair. "Sometimes we don't know why other people do things, Jack-Jack, my little Incredible. Sometimes, people don't even know why they do stuff themselves. Guess that's part of what makes us all human. Speaking of human, I bet you're hungry, aren't you? After your big sleep."
That got Jack's full attention, it drew his focus away from badgering her with queries or chasing those less than nice experiences attached to the Master bedroom.
Jack was growing far quicker that a normal baby, and growing little bodies needed food, which meant milk for a wee while yet.
Settling on the bed and pushing up her pyjama top to unclip the cup of her bra, Michele settled Jack into latch.
Like always, she was hit with a warm wave of his hungry appreciation as his mouth filled with milk. He gulped the nourishment down as quickly as he could, making small snuffling grunts with each swallow.
"Slow down little piglet, or you'll give yourself colic again," she chided indulgently, rubbing his back.
Jack flashed her a small memory of that mild bout of colic, like screwing up his nose in disgust, and chased it with a pulse of reluctant agreement. Then slowed his guzzling.
Michele smiled down at the baby in her arms fondly, humming a lullaby under her breath as he drank, and smoothed his soft curls between her fingers.
Jack's focus was so deep in his contentment, filling his little belly, that his emotions overflowed and filled her up as well. He was like a cat by a warm fire, purring.
She must have closed her eyes at some point and drifted in that shared gratification. When she roused again, Slinky was draped over her legs purring and Johnny was propped against her side, laptop open across his knees, thumb corked in his mouth as he worked on his Minecraft project from the day before. Jack was still curled safely in her arms, conked out in a well earned milk coma.
Throat scratchy and dry, as it had been almost constantly since Crowley brought her to the stupid air conditioned glass box, Michele picked up the glass of water Crowley had left for her and drained it dry.
oo0oo
Crowley was sat at the little bistro table in the kitchen waiting, when Ma Cherie walked in, set on making herself and the lad breakfast.
He looked up at her and smirked.
"Dear Abby, should I be worried that my significant other falls asleep in the middle of things," he asked drolly, as though writing into an agony aunt column.
The little flush his words brought to her cheeks made him smile more.
"Crowley I'm not your—" she gritted, flummoxed, "—and why do you have to make everything sound like it's about fucking?"
Mummy does swear sometimes, how utterly delightful.
"Language!" He scolded her teasingly, colouring his voice with scandalisation. "I can't have the mother of my children sounding like a fishwife. Whatever would the neighbours think!"
Her bottom lip jutted out in response. "We don't have neighbours, Crowley. And I'm not 'the mother of your children.'"
He smiled at her again, brow raised. "Oh, don't sell yourself short, Pet. You may not have birthed him, but you're still Jack's mother."
"That's not— what I meant!" She looked abashed. "They're not your children, Crowley— and we aren't in some kind of," she waved an annoyed hand, "weird relationship."
"Oh, but we are." He argued, wetting his lips. "'Any pattern of interaction between two parties can be defined as a relationship,'" he quoted her own words from weeks ago back in her face, tilting his head. Rested his elbow on the table, and propped his chin in his hand to smile flirtily up at her from under lazy lids.
She turned away from him then, and he thought the only thing he'd get out of her now would be stormy silence.
"Okay, point made." Her voice was unexpected when it came, sounding surprisingly mollified and in control, considering how much he'd flustered her. "By that definition, this is a relationship," she admitted, still turned away, her hands busy with her task. "—But 'significant other' and 'mother of my children' you're implying things with those words which aren't true."
"How, pray tell?"
Ma Cherie blew out a long breath, the extended pause making it obvious she was choosing her response carefully. "Those words imply partnership and… rights. Whatever you say of this 'relationship,' you can't claim those are components here. They can't be, if whenever I tell you something, you get angry at me and fall back on using threats of violence towards the people I love. You're all over the place with your expectations and reactions, Crowley— and I don't know what you want, or the rules."
'There is something offered to you here. If you make me spell it out, it won't be anymore.
So I suggest you work out what you want.'
Those words had been conveyed to him through the prophets mouth, by God or Chuck or whatever that force wanted to call itself. He'd been too busy at the time to truly ponder them. But her words now felt like a distorted echo, a reminder.
What did he want? That was a question wasn't it.
His answer had always been, 'to win.'
But what was the definition of winning, here?
'Is winning all you care about? No matter how you play it, YOU can't win the game you've begun.' She'd said that to him too, on the day when she patched up his hand, after Dean nailed it to a table with his damnable demon knife.
He flexed that hand restlessly, remembering. Opened his palm and traced his nail along the faint line of scar tissue there.
'I have won,' he told himself stubbornly, 'she's wrong, Lucifer's gone, I'll get Hell back.' The fact she was standing there with him, being over dramatic, was proof that he'd won, wasn't it?
'I was with you on your throne, Crowley. I looked out at the sea of your subjects with you, none of it even gives you satisfaction anymore. You're just going through the motions. The worst kind of liar is the one that lies to themselves.' Another memory of Ma Cherie's voice refuted.
He clenched the scarred hand into a fist and knocked his knuckles on the tabletop, trying to regain the playful levity of earlier. This was ridiculous, sitting here having an argument with … memories.
He watched her peel and chop fruit, her back turned to him, and considered his next move in their little game.
"You're interested in my wants?" He asked finally, voice shaded to imply things he wasn't interested in.
She turned then and met his eyes, chin raised.
"I'm interested in, and need … a job description. You were a crossroads demon, surely you can see the value of having expectations written down. At least that way I'd know when I'm stepping out of line, and what to expect as a consequence."
Consequence, did she even know how titillating that concept was? No he didn't think she did, innocent little lamb.
"You say you don't want me to swear, well that's firetrucking fine; I can work with that.
You want me to wear irritating dresses in the world's most impractical colour; sure.
You want me to raise the love child of the Devil, the President of the United States and a dead woman… Hey, I'm doing my best.
But what I can't do is read your mind, or live constantly walking on eggshells like this." She was trembling with pent up emotion, eyes bright and fierce, rapid breaths making her chest heave almost fetchingly. He noted the dark shadows, like bruises crushed into rose petals under her eyes, and knew he'd been their cause. Wondered what she'd look like stretched out on the rack, and what sounds a trained professional could drag from between those argumentative little lips.
Pushing out of his chair he rounded the table. "You're right, you can't." He agreed with an amicable smile.
If she could read his mind she'd have run far, far away. "—our partnership, it's a learning process—"
"But I'm not your partner, not in any sense Crowley, not with the way things are. I'm just—"
"Course you are," he argued lightly. "You're my better half, the Yang to my Yin."
"Why do you keep s—"
"Uh, Uh," he waggled a scolding finger down at her. "You are what I tell you to be."
"It's not…" she took a breath and looked down at the floor, then back up skittishly, her eyes and freckled face earnest. "And if I just can't make myself be what you want me to be? What then? I'm not exactly good at faking it."
He knew she wasn't, it was something that irritated and gratified him by turns.
With the blood from the previous night still chasing round his system, the fact she was such an open book; it almost made him feel a trifle maudlin.
With a small hum of amusement he reached out and mused her hair, then bopped that freckle on her nose.
She cringed slightly at the contact, but continued to meet his gaze with stubborn determination.
"Darling, married all these years, I'm sure you can fake it just fine."
-/-/-/-/-/-/-
Authors Note: I really love hearing from readers, even if it's just an emoji or some grammar critique, it's nice to know you're out there and reading.
Please pop in and say hi.
This chapter and the last were a bit more fluffy, with Slinky the cat and baby Jack interactions. I actually have some art for both Slinky wake ups and Crowley in that pink and yellow clown suit over on my Tumblr account hobbitual-psychick-art-stuff.
No shout outs this chapter, I do know at least 20 of you are reading (thanks traffic stats) so its not like no one is reading or cares, please throw me a comment cookie -big hopeful puss-in-boots eyes- or just some crumbs.
Stay safe out there in your corner of the world until next time.
-MC2