Michael awoke with a headache, and when she opened her eyes the world seemed painfully bright. She felt disorientated. She'd never slept before and it took her a moment to realise where she was and what had happened.
This was Crowley's flat, and she was tied to a chair. Hastur must have done this - he'd stabbed her with one of those stupid needles during the fight over Crowley's phone.
Michael looked at her arms and was relieved to see that she hadn't been hooked up to an IV drip like the traitors. She scanned the room for Hastur, ready to tell him off, but he was nowhere to be seen. Instead she found Crowley and Aziraphale sitting side by side on the sofa.
Michael's stomach flipped, a cold sweat coming over her. They were awake! How? What happened? Crowley wasn't even in his pyjamas anymore, he'd had enough time to get dressed. They even had cups of tea in front of them.
"Hi," said Crowley ominously.
Michael struggled against her bonds, painfully aware of how dangerous they were, of what they could do if they were angry. They could destroy her and there was nothing anyone could do to stop them. Heaven wouldn't even be able to avenge her.
Michael sat up straight, trying to appear confident. "Hastur did it! I found out and tried to stop him but he knocked me out! I'm the victim here! Untie me right now!" She hated the terrified edge to her voice but she couldn't help it.
"We dealt with Hastur."
Where was Hastur? Why wasn't he tied up next to her or something? Hastur's absence seemed all the more sinister considering what Crowley did to Ligur.
There was a fire crackling in the grate. Michael could feel the heat of it on her face and it was uncomfortably hot. Had there always been a fireplace in this room? It wasn't Hellfire, right? Surely they wouldn't…
Crowley stood up, making Michael jump. "We know you and Hastur were working together so stop bullshitting us. We know you were fighting over my phone. Tell me where it is!"
"Hastur threw it at the wall," Michael gasped, nodding towards the corner of the room.
Crowley found his phone behind a potted plant, and the crack on the screen instantly healed itself under his stern gaze.
Michael focussed her attention on Aziraphale who was still sat primly on the sofa. He'd always been so meek and nervous, always so keen to please. She fully intended to berate him and order him to untie her but when she saw the look on his face the words died in her throat. She looked away, shifting uncomfortably in her seat, the ropes digging into her wrists.
"Where's Hastur?" she blurted out. Neither of the traitors responded. She stared at the fire, panic clawing up her throat. "Untie me right now! You can't keep me here! Let me go or…" What could she possibly threaten them with? What could anyone do to them? She wasn't used to being afraid. People were supposed to be scared of her, not the other way around.
Aziraphale's voice was angrier than she'd ever heard it. "Or what? You can't keep us unconscious and you can't destroy us, you can't do anything!"
There were tears in the corners of her eyes. "Please, I'm sorry! Let me go!"
Crowley tilted his head. "You've always been such a stickler for the rules, Michael, and yet here you are disobeying direct orders from Heaven to keep away from us. What happened?"
"I'm sorry! This was all Hastur's stupid idea! I should never have listened to him! Heaven and Hell had nothing to do with it - we went over their heads. I'll never do anything like this ever again, I swear. I'll leave you both alone. Please, just let me go!"
"All we ever wanted was to be left alone," Aziraphale said, leaning forward. "If we ever see you again you'll regret it."
The French doors swung open at the same time that the ropes that bound Michael to the chair vanished. Heart racing, she leapt to her feet and ran out onto the balcony.
Michael beamed back up to Heaven in a flash of brilliant white light, the human world falling away beneath her.
Michael didn't tell anyone about what had happened. She knew she'd only get into trouble for disobeying orders, and besides, she felt deeply embarrassed about the whole thing.
She found a corner of Heaven where she knew she wouldn't be interrupted and then, with a sick feeling in her stomach, she called Hastur's number. The phone seemed to ring for an eternity, and for every passing second that Hastur didn't pick up she became more and more convinced that he'd been destroyed. When he finally answered with a grumpy, "Who's this?" she felt both relieved and furious.
"Who do you think this is, you halfwit?" Michael hissed.
"Well, how am I supposed to know? The traitors might have found your phone and then decided to play a trick on me. Where are you?"
"Heaven. Where are you?"
"Hell."
"You injected me!"
"You didn't give me a choice!"
"I should never have trusted you. What happened after you knocked me out anyway? The traitors were awake when I woke up! Did you get their doses wrong or something?"
"No, I did everything perfectly. And don't forget that you double checked every single thing I did!"
"Well, it can't have been perfect or they wouldn't have woken up! I should have known you'd mess things up the moment I wasn't there to help!"
"But they were already awake when I went into the bedroom straight after I injected you! It was lucky I was able to fight them off and escape."
"Yeah, and leave me there to face the music alone, you coward."
"I'm not a coward!"
"I fought them off too. That's how I escaped." Michael hesitated, and then tried to make her voice sound casual. "Did you light a fire in the grate at Crowley's flat?"
"Why the fuck would I light a fire?"
Michael's stomach twisted. "There was a fire in the grate when I woke up."
Something in her tone must have sounded ominous because Hastur immediately understood what she was driving at. "Was it Hellfire?"
"I don't know."
"Crowley came at me with a plant mister full of holy water! I was lucky to get out of there alive!"
"I told you this was a stupid idea."
"No, you were up for it. And it seemed to be working. I don't know what went wrong... Getting revenge is too dangerous. I think we should give up."
"Gee, you think?" Michael scoffed. "I'm never working with you ever again. And don't you dare try any other hare-brained schemes. When your next plan inevitably fails the traitors are bound to think I was involved too."
"Are you deaf? I just told you, I'm out. I don't wanna end up a puddle of goo on the floor like Ligur."
"Glad we're on the same page. Never call me again."
"You called me, wank wings!"
Michael hung up on Hastur, and then stuffed her phone into her pocket. She went off in search of Uriel and Sandalphon, hanging out with them always cheered her up.
Aziraphale was still feeling a bit rattled by the time they'd finished their cups of tea. They were still sat together on the sofa, and Crowley had just poured them each a shot of whiskey to help 'take the edge off,' as he'd called it. The French doors were now firmly closed.
Aziraphale patted Crowley's knee. "Well, I doubt Michael will bother us ever again. We gave her quite a scare!"
"Heh. Yeah. Did you see the way she looked at the fire?"
Aziraphale chuckled. It'd been his idea to light an innocent fire in the grate and let Michael's imagination do the rest.
Crowley placed his hand over Aziraphale's and gave it a reassuring squeeze.
A loud and enthusiastic beep came from the laptop on the coffee table and Crowley scrambled to pull it towards them. There was a serious look on his face as he started clicking here and there.
"Michael made a phone call already," Crowley said. "Hang on, I'll press play..."
When they'd carried Michael from the bedroom into the living room her phone had fallen out of her jacket pocket. Crowley had used his powers to tap the phone – just like a spy out of one of his favourite movies. Now they would receive a recording of every call Michael made, at least until a new model came out and she replaced it.
Sound erupted from the speakers and Aziraphale sat forward. They listened as Michael and Hastur squabbled.
"It looks they took the hint with the plant mister and the fireplace," Crowley said after the recording had ended. "It sounds like they really are going to leave us alone."
"Thank goodness."
At first Aziraphale had been uncomfortable with Crowley's plan to tap Michael's phone. It was terribly invasive. But their own safety was paramount, and besides, tapping sometimes phone was nowhere near as invasive as trying to keep someone in a coma for the rest of time. It was such a relief to know that Michael and Hastur truly had abandoned their plan. Aziraphale would always have wondered otherwise.
"I'll keep an eye on any future recordings," Crowley said. "Just in case."
"I do hope she doesn't realise what you did to her phone," Aziraphale said nervously.
"She'll never know. And even if she does find out, what's she gonna do? Complain to Gabriel and explain how we got hold of her phone in the first place? And I'm sure he'd have something to say about all of her calls to Hastur. And Ligur for that matter."
It had been a surprise to see how far back Michael's calls to Ligur went.
Over the next few weeks the majority of Michael's calls were internal, between herself and the other angels. Crowley and Aziraphale enjoyed listening to the angels gossip about how scary and mysterious they were, but most of the calls were work related and so boring that it was almost a relief when Michael replaced her phone with the newest divine model and they stopped having access to her calls. Luckily, they felt perfectly reassured by then, and Crowley quite enjoyed the subterfuge while it lasted.