Waiting Until The End
Summary: Canon-divergent scene in SPN 15x18 "Despair", in which Crowley survives long enough to make it to what may or may not be the end. Spoilers for that particular episode.
Author's Note: I did not mean to write this. It was supposed to be a Tumblr ficlet. I'm not sure what happened.
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Just like always, Crowley contributed. It wasn't the first time, but it was honestly beginning to feel like it might be the last. Chuck, Amara, Death. This felt like the end of the road, for all of them. But the Winchesters weren't ready to give up, so neither was Crowley.
They needed a safe, central place to bring all the apocalypse world refugees and serial reincarnaters, and what better place than the bunker? Already encased in top-notch warding against the divine. While Dean and Cas went after Death, and the kid put in a few more miles on his driver's permit, Sam and Crowley got on the horn and started sounding the alarm. Not that Crowley thought it would work, but for once, he didn't have a better plan in mind.
When they reached the bunker, he metaphorically rolled up the sleeves of his suit and along with Rowena and Sam got to work slathering reaper wards in blood magic. When Rowena said the magic would be all the stronger if they each added a little of their own soul into the blood, Crowley didn't hesitate. He didn't have much of one to offer, but if it would help in the slightest, then that would have to count for something.
Then he stood beside Sam and watched desperation and hope play out on the faces of the people around him. People he had once thought of as insignificant, fleeting blimps of light. People whose trust and respect he had spent the last three years trying hard to earn. People who were his friends, and might be about to die.
"Okay, what else? What else can we do?" Sam looked like he was about to either come apart at the seams from exhaustion and grief, or explode with frantic energy.
Crowley sighed and raised a brow as he looked over at the younger Winchester. "Well, we can rule prayer out."
"Are these really the only choices we have left? Billie wins, and all these people die. Cas gets shut up in Heaven, you down in Hell. Dean and I die, permanently. But the world is saved." Sam's shoulders slumped. "Or, Chuck wins, all these people, and all of us, and the last world in existence dies. That's it. That's what we've got."
"That's not all we've got," Crowley replied steadily. He watched Jack help an older refugee to a seat at the library table. Rowena had put on the kettle and was now handing out cups of tea, offering small words of reassurance. As frightened as every person in that room was, they still made the effort to smile, to reach out to one another.
Sam glanced at the demon, and must have seen something there. He smiled a worn, trembling smile.
"No, it isn't, is it?"
Having propped the hunter up for at least a little while longer, Crowley allowed himself to quietly mull over their situation in his mind. Everything he could come up with took more time than they likely possessed. They could rally the four archangels from the Empty and convince them to work together to slam Chuck into his own cage, as they had Amara at the beginning of creation. They could jumpstart the Jack-shaped divine nuke, as unappealing a solution as that was, and somehow jerry rig it to use against Billie. Or, Crowley mused, they could involve the Empty, who by all accounts was both as powerful as Death and pissed off at her enough to potentially be of use. But that would require the sacrifice of a certain angel of whom Crowley had grown fond. And if there was one thing he had taken to heart considering the Winchester family, it was that when one of them sacrificed themselves to save the day, it usually led to even more dire circumstances.
And even the former king of Hell could not possible conceive of how this particular situation could get any more dire, and had no desire to find out what that would look like.
Crowley had not expected to make it to the end, if that's what this was. Not after everything. He wasn't one of the good guys. He wasn't even considered family. And he was fairly certain that despite being one of Chuck's "guilty pleasures," he wasn't included on the list of main characters in this little story. But somehow, he'd survived. More than that – Crowley had somehow managed to stumble at least part of the way towards something resembling humanity, had made an effort at amends by closing the gates of Hell, patched things up with his mother, begun to work on a plan to reinstate the American Men of Letters. He'd even been invited out for a beer and game of pool by Dean, before all of this. Crowley had never expected to be standing where he was now, possibly at the end of the world, next to Sam Winchester, ready to fight and die for something more than himself. But here he was.
"Well," Sam sighed, and nodded towards the friends and family gathered in the library, "at least we're just about all here together." The notable exceptions being Dean and Cas, of course.
Crowley was fully prepared to make some remark about how the two lovebirds would likely leave them all waiting in suspense while celebrating the triumph of Eros over Thanatos – he'd really come to appreciate sharing these knowing little asides with Sam – when there was a sound like dust birthing dust, and one of the children in the group vanished.
It happened quickly, so quickly there was nothing to do but watch in terror. The girl's sister, their parents, the young couple now scrambling towards the stairs. The man frozen in place beside Bobby Singer. The old hunter himself turning towards them, mouth open to shout instructions or call for help or say so long. Gone in a puff that swallowed itself in an instant. Charlie, running towards them. "Sam, what do we do?!" Gone. One by one, and then all at once. All of them, just gone.
Rowena, standing at the table over a massive, crumbling book of magic. Her hair like fire as she swiftly turned, caught her son's eyes with her own. Crowley reached for her, started to say – he didn't know what. Everything that had gone unsaid. And then she, too, was gone.
This really was it, then. This was the end. He hadn't believed it. Until this moment, Crowley had not really believed the Winchesters wouldn't save the day. The reality of it was something cold and dead inside him.
Jack was standing in the midst of the empty library, staring around him. Staring at them.
Crowley took a deep, unnecessary breath. There was something tingly and insubstantial at what felt like the edges of his self. He looked at Sam, eyes wide. The hunter stared at him, grief-stricken, terrified. Completely helpless.
Not even enough time for a snarky one-liner or a rousing "kick it in the ass." Not enough time for a "goodbye, boys" or everything else Crowley realized he'd been waiting until the very end to say.
Only enough time for Sam to say "Don't-"
In the end, that would have to be enough for Crowley.
And then he too was gone.
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