III — An Unlikely Alliance
A/N: Well, this has blown up to an insane degree. So happy to see the fandom grow exponentially now that the show is out! Warms my cockles. My tumblr is very active and very Good Omens oriented at the moment, so if any of you want to join in my gushing, my handle is acrownforaking.
Anathema, Newt, and Aziraphale stood in the parlor, gathered around the coffee table, which had a map of the world spread out upon it. Anathema was mixing a series of herbs into a bowl, occasionally requesting that Newt dip into her pantry to retrieve some ambiguous vial of liquid, usually with such helpful descriptors tacked on as, "the goopy one" or "the one that smells like that indescribable but somehow universally recognizable scent of the elderly."
When she seemed satisfied with the mix of ingredients, Anathema grabbed a torch lighter from the windowsill and held it down to the concoction, chanting a few words in Assyrian under her breath.
"You're sure this will work?" Aziraphale asked with a frown, hands clasped to his chest.
"As sure as I ever am now that I don't have a book of prophecy telling me exactly what to do at all times," Anathema replied evenly.
"She's really quite good," Newt tacked on helpfully, hovering behind Anathema. "Last week, I lost the keys to Dick Turpin, and she worked a spell and found them right away."
"They were in his coat pocket," Anathema elaborated tiredly as the ingredients in the bowl burst into bright emerald flames.
Newt blushed. "I was sure I'd checked there."
Anathema handed Newt the lighter and grabbed the bowl, giving it a firm shake before upending it onto the world map. The green flames spread like—well, like wildfire, as one would imagine—and quickly covered the entire map.
"It will burn all but where Crowley is," Anathema provided. "So if he's on Earth, it'll show us."
"But what if he's in Hell, as I fear he may be?" Aziraphale pressed.
"If he's in Hell, the map won't burn at all. But see," Anathema pointed, "it's already charring—he's on Earth."
Aziraphale nearly collapsed in relief. "Thank Heavens. Not that I wouldn't go to Hell for Crowley, surely he'd go Upwards to get me if I got in a snag, but, not going to Hell is always a favorable alternative to going to Hell."
"I would imagine so," Newt agreed with a nod.
The map continued to burn. North America, the British Isles, Northwestern Europe...Eastern Europe. Africa.
"He must be in Asia somewhere," Aziraphale said, but his voice was absent surety.
Asia burned away.
"Australia then. I'm sure he's made enemies in Australia. Or perhaps he just nipped off for a touch of Sullivan's Cove on a whim. He did always say how much he liked—"
Australia burned away.
Aziraphale gulped. "New Zealand...?"
No dice.
The map was ash.
"What," Aziraphale said slowly, visibly paling, eyes wide, "what does it mean if the map burns completely?"
Anathema stared down at the ashes. "I..."
She was amazed by how all refinement the angel usually maintained vanished in an instant. His eyes glistened, and he raised a trembling hand to cover his mouth, as if struggling to hold back a sob. He let out a muffled, "Oh dear," and she could see how close he was to breaking.
She didn't know precisely what the score was with the angel and the demon, but she never thought of them as separate entities. Since meeting them, it had always been CrowleyandAziraphale. AziraphaleandCrowley. Said in one breath, ascribed to one being. To think of the two independently felt unnatural. They were one thing in two bodies, two halves of a whole idiot.
"I would feel it," Aziraphale said with abrupt certainty, jerking his hand away from his mouth and clenching it into a fist. "I would. We are part of the scales that balance the universe; if he were to...to...to have something happen to him—" the angel said in a near unintelligible rush, "I would know it. I'm positive."
"I actually agree with you," Anathema said, mind whirring. "I think you would feel it. And if Crowley had died anywhere on Earth, this would still point us to his body. Demons as powerful and as old as Crowley, according to some of the light reading(1) I've been doing, it would be like a miniature nuclear reactor exploding if he were to actually die, rather than just being discorporated. And if he was discorporated, the map wouldn't have burned."
"...and if he were in Heaven?" Aziraphale broached, seeming to dread that idea even more than the concept of the demon being in Hell.
"I suppose he could be, but if the angels knew where Crowley was, they know where you are. Why not take you both?" Anathema pointed out. "Or at least tell you that they'd taken him, so they could use him for leverage, or bait."
"So if he's not on Earth, not in Hell, and not in Heaven, where is he?" posed Newt, swinging his head between Aziraphale and Anathema.
"You say he just disappeared? Right in front of your eyes?" Anathema asked, for clarification.
Aziraphale nodded. "In a blink."
"If that's the case...forgive me if this sounds like a stretch, but I think he may have been transported to another universe." Anathema buzzed off to her near-buckling bookshelves, hunting for a particular tome. "Supposedly there's—ah, here it is," she opened up a dusty leather bound book that was several centuries older than she was. It was a theory on adjacent planes of existence, created by a very old Bavarian witch long before string theory and quantum mechanics made alternate universes hip. "Supposedly there's infinite universes. Every single choice spawns a different one, every single choice made by every single person. Mirrors reflecting into other mirrors reflecting into other mirrors."
"And you think Crowley may have been teleported to one of these parallel universes?" the angel's brows dipped in doubt.
"That's my best guess. Either that or I did that spell very wrong, and I don't often do things very wrong," Anathema replied.
Aziraphale seemed to find this answer vastly more comforting than the idea of Crowley being dead, or in the possession of those Above or Below, so he laid his reservations to the side. "But, that does beg the question, Anathema, how exactly do I go about getting to another universe, or getting Crowley back from where he was sent?"
"The fabric of reality should be thinner where he was taken from." She tucked the leather book—Es Gibt Noch Andere Verdammte Universen—underneath her arm. "You're a Principality, right? You should be strong enough to tear a hole and step through to whatever is on the other side. You likely won't find Crowley just waiting for you there, but you'll at least be in the same dimension as him."
"I do remember you prefacing all this alternate universe talk with 'supposedly'..."
"I don't think you'd like any other answer I have for you," Anathema said bluntly. The best hope for Crowley was that he'd been taken to a different universe. Entertaining any other option was pointless, as it all meant the same thing: the demon was gone.
Aziraphale's face crumpled. "I see," he said. "Then, I'll just—I'll go on after him, then." Aziraphale glanced between Anathema and Newt. "I do hate to trouble you further, but it would be wise if someone were to guard the portal while I'm on the other side, assuming that this pans out as we hope it will. You never know what might come through."
Aziraphale looked like an absolute slew of Lovecraftian horrors were currently doing a conga line in his mind's eye.
Newt turned to her. "Do we...have the means to protect against otherworldly threats?"
"No, probably not." She was already heading for the door. "Did you put gas in Dick Turpin yesterday?"
"Gas—? Oh. Petrol. Yeah. All, uh, gassed up," Newt chuckled nervously. "Should we have guns or something?"
Anathema dipped into the kitchen and secured a steak knife from the knife block. "We'll be fine. Let's go."
Newt paled a bit, but still nodded. He seemed to have developed an almost unshakeable faith in her since the apocalypse that wasn't, and she appreciated that. Given how her life usually went, he would need to have a little faith to survive.
With that less than cheery thought, she made for the door, Newt and Aziraphale in her wake. They were waylaid halfway to Dick Turpin when the Them rolled down the streets on their bikes, Adam, as always, in the lead, with Dog nipping along at his heels.
"Hi Anathema. Hi Newt. Hi Aziraphale," Adam greeted, and the Them echoed him. "Where's Crowley?" he asked immediately, noticing his absence.
"That's what we're trying to find out, my dear boy," Aziraphale replied in a somber tone, looking down at the Antichrist. Dog bounded up to him, and Aziraphale gave the hellhound an affectionate scratch behind his ears.
"How're you gonna do that?" Brian posed.
"We're going to rip a hole in the universe," Anathema provided.
The eyes of the Them lit up immediately. "Can we come?" Adam asked. "To wherever you're doing the hole ripping at."
"Adam, you four have school tomorrow," Anathema scolded him lightly. "You can't come with us. Plus, this could be dangerous."
"Nothing's dangerous to me," Adam said, totally unconcerned.
"And actually it's a Baker Day tomorrow," said Wensleydale, adjusting his slightly too big glasses. "We don't have school."
"We have no idea what's going to happen when we do this. Your parents'll be very cross with us if some huge tentacled monster crawls through and eats you lot," Newt said to the Them. His goal was to scare them, Anathema assumed, but he'd only succeeded in making them more enthused to come.
"Please Anathema!"
"We won't tell our parents!"
"Actually, tentacles aren't even that scary—"
"Please, children," it was Aziraphale who eventually interrupted their pleading, the angel's eyes somber. "This is something that could put all of your lives at great risk, and I cannot abide that." He smiled sadly at the four tweens. "Crowley would have very strong words with me if anything were to happen to you."
"Also, we, ah, we can't fit that many people in Dick Turpin," Newt added.
The Them seemed to realize there was no arguing their way into coming, and promptly deflated. "Fine. But next time you go to another universe, I want to come," Adam said very seriously.
"You have my word," Aziraphale said, extending a hand to Adam and giving it a firm shake. Adam seemed satisfied.
"We might be gone for a few days. Pepper, can you water my plants in the meantime?" Anathema asked Pepper kindly.
Pepper seemed to take the duty with dignity. "They'll be even better when you get back."
"Good. We'll see you all in a few days. Behave."
And then the witch, witchfinder, and angel were piling into Dick Turpin, and off.
"Bit mad, isn't it? Having a telescope underground? Can't look at anything. I get that it's decorative, but I'm guessing you don't get a lot of company here..."
"What the fuck are we gonna do with this guy?" Dean asked lowly. He, Sam, Cas, and Jack hovered around the strategy room table, hands planted all over the earth, watching Bizarro Crowley wander around the bunker and poke at things, an endless stream of jabber all the while.
"Send him home," Cas said, eyes following Crowley's every move as he wound his way over to the Commodore 64(2).
"But how do we find his home?" Jack questioned. "There's so many universes."
The demon lifted a chained hand to press one of the larger, redder buttons, "What's this one do—"
"DON'T," Sam and Dean chorused.
Crowley withdrew his hand, shrinking somewhat. He hadn't argued when they'd put the cuffs back on him in the Impala, seeming perfectly pleased that he got to sit in the backseat instead of getting thrown in the trunk once more.
Dean leaned forward, biting back a sigh. "Look, Crowley—"
"Crow-ley," the demon corrected automatically.
Dean just flung his hands around in a vague gesture. "Okay, okay, this is too weird. What did you say your full name was?"
"Anthony J. Crowley," the demon announced proudly. "The one and only."
What the hell kind of demon has a first, middle, and last name? "Cool. I'm calling you Tony. So, Tony—"
Crowley let out an outraged, incredibly snake-like hiss. "Do I look like a bloody Tony to you?" he demanded. "Tony. Good God. Err. Satan. Good somebody. If you want cutesy nicknames, I'll answer to AJ, but I don't understand what's so hard about Crowley."
"Because we've got a..." he struggled to find the correct way to describe their relationship with Crowley. "Friend," he settled on with an eye roll, "named Crowley. And it's freaking me out. So, whatever. AJ—" Dean took a deep breath, but Cas spoke before he could.
"You're obviously strong enough to have gotten away from us by now," the angel pointed out bluntly. "Why not run?"
Crowley swayed a bit on his feet. "Full disclosure, that was the plan, but then I realized, well—off in a universe I know nothing about, want to go home, you four seem to know what's up over here and don't seem to want me slithering around—it's..." he spread out his hands, searching for the word with a furrowed brow. "Synergy, that's it. You want me gone, I want to be gone."
"You aren't strong enough to get yourself home?" Cas questioned, narrowing his eyes at the demon.
"Really shook you up, waltzing out of that devil's trap, didn't I?" Crowley grinned. "We're running on two different sets of rules, far as universes go. Obviously demons are weaker over here, but back home, we're not gods. I could probably tear open a hole in the universe if I really tried, but I've no idea where it would drop me. Could end up floating in some void in space for the rest of forever. Could end up in another universe. A worse one. Rather not take the risk if I can avoid it. So, if you all can whip something up and send me back to the proper place, then everything's..." the demon seemed to be sharing a private joke with himself, "...everything's tickety-boo."
"Tickety-boo?" Jack repeated, baffled. Dean would have explained if he knew what the fuck it meant.
"Also, can I get some names? If we're gonna be in cahoots?" Crowley asked, wagging a finger between the four of them.
"We're not in cahoots," Cas insisted.
"We're kind of in cahoots," Crowley argued, face scrunching.
"I'm Dean Winchester, this is my brother Sam, this is Jack, and this is Cas," Dean rattled off quickly, eager to skip the introductions. The less the demon knew about them, the better.
Crowley's finger came to rest in Cas's general direction. "Is that Cas as in Cassiel or Cas as in Castiel?"
"Castiel."
"Shame. Angel of the moon would've been loads cooler. No offense." Crowley redirected his attention to Jack. "And this one's got an aura like nobody's business. Tastes Nephilim-y. Looks just like you. Your son?"
Cas seemed to completely blank at the question, mouth drifting open slightly. He made to stammer out a response, but Jack provided a simple, "Yes," before Cas could get a word in edgewise.
Cas blinked a few times, as if double-checking that he'd heard Jack right. Dean knew that constipated look on Cas's face all too well; that meant a lot for him to hear that from Jack. Dean knew that Jack looked at all of them in the paternal sense(3) but it was different with Cas. Jack had been born thinking Cas was his father. It was no wonder the kid looked just like him, with the way Jack had once been able to naturally manipulate things to his will. He'd known before he was even born that Cas was the dad that mattered, so instead of popping out looking like a little mini-Lucifer, he looked like the picture perfect combo of Kelly and Cas.
"Sending you back isn't that simple," Sam said with a grimace. "The only way we know to open a portal to another universe is with Archangel Grace, which we're fresh out of."
"Well, you've got Archangels here, right?" Crowley asked, confused. He plopped down on the strategy table, legs an unreasonable distance apart. He swung his dangling feet, looking expectantly at Cas. "Who's in charge Upstairs?"
"Frankly, no one. Naomi leads what few angels are left."
"Naomi? We don't have a Naomi over in my world. And how few is few?"
Dean ran both of his hands through his hair. "Holy shit. We're gonna be here all night explaining our greatest hits to him."
"Well EXCUSE ME for wanting a bit of backstory—" the demon said loudly.
"We're operating on two completely different lore systems here," Sam cut in swiftly. "There's going to be confusion if we don't clear it up. I have an idea."
Sam vanished for a few moments, leaving the rest of them in awkward silence while Sam rifled through something in a back room. He returned two minutes later with his arms full-to-the-brim with books. He deposited them unceremoniously in front of Crowley.
"This'll give you a crash-course, and there's more books online after that," Sam explained.
Crowley merely raised an eyebrow and scooped one up. "On the Head of a Pin," he read the title aloud. He held the book aloft and peered at Sam over the top of his sunglasses. "Am I missing something here?"
Dean looked at the large pile of paperbacks in open revulsion. "We own these?" he asked with a scowl.
"I figured they'd come in handy some day," Sam said begrudgingly. "Crowley, these cover a lot of things about our world. I'm assuming you can read faster than humans?"
"See. Big Boy over here can call me Crowley. Not so hard," Crowley taunted Dean, then tossed the book back on the table, shifting through the pile to find the copy labeled with a '1'. "And yeah, I don't particularly like to, but I can read quickly. So what even are these?"
"The Winchester Gospel," Cas informed him. "Written by God Himself."
"Himself?" Crowley cocked his head. "Your God's a He? And a bloke named Carver Edlund?"
Dean exchanged looks of udder befuddlement with Sam, Cas, and Jack. "Your God's...not a He?"
"No. Definitely a She. Definitely didn't make the Bible a mass market paperback pulp fiction series, either," Crowley responded, finally finding the first book in the series, entitled 'The Family Business.'(4)
"Well, that's kind of like the Bible 2.0," Dean said. "All the stuff from the Bible still stands. Kinda. The bigger stuff." After some consideration, he amended, "Okay, uh, mainly Revelation got it right."
"At least we have that in common," Crowley muttered, flipping open to the first page. "Great. Homework. Can I have the cuffs off now, please? Seeing as we're working together to our mutual benefit?"
"No," Dean and Sam said together.
Crowley threw his head back dramatically, groaning. "Like your angel said, I could've escaped if I wanted to! It's itching my wrists like anything, is all."
"Shut up," Dean said, pointing authoritatively at Crowley. "Shut up, read, and the four of us will try to work through all these fucking notebooks of Rowena's to see if we can find anything that might be able to send you back without us having to drain an Archangel."
Crowley blew out a long breath, and slid off his sunglasses. He redirected his unnervingly reptilian eyes to the book. "Fine, fine."
Dean watched Crowley as the others began grabbing notebooks at random and opening them up, prepared to try to decipher Rowena's incoherent shorthand. Dean couldn't help but think that the demon came across as so...harmless. Their Crowley had been more friend than foe to them in the last few years, but even then their Crowley had always felt...dangerous. Even at his weakest, even at his lowest, there was something about their Crowley that triggered something in Dean's brain, the instinctual wariness that had been preciously cultivated over the years by both his father and himself.(5)
But, somehow, he didn't get any warning bells with this freaky snake-eyed motherfucker. And he should have. It worried him that he didn't. Some kind of memetic brainwashing thing? To lure them into a false sense of security?
There's got to be more to him, Dean thought. Nothing is ever this simple.
Aziraphale felt almost as though he was betraying Crowley, letting Anathema and Newt into his flat. Logically, he knew the demon wouldn't give a care, under current circumstances, but Crowley had always seemed awfully guarded about his home. Aziraphale had never even been inside the flat himself until they'd successfully averted the apocalypse, and Crowley had been living here for at least fifty years, granted with several updates to the building and decor over that time.
"At the kitchen table, you said?" Anathema asked, wandering Crowley's sparsely furnished but well-stocked kitchen. There were occasions where going out didn't suit them, and they would stay in for the evening. After Aziraphale's less-than-successful attempts at cooking, Crowley had taken it on as his own responsibility. Aziraphale felt a pang of longing for his friend; so strange to be in his home with no trace of the demon to be seen, save his half-eaten breakfast still sat on the table.
6,000 years of Crowley's presence serving as a quiet comfort in the back of his ethereal conscious. Always there, always scheming, plotting, galavanting around the world and causing just enough trouble (or pretending to, at the very least) to stay in the good graces of head office. And now, gone. As if he'd never been there are at all.
Oh, if this didn't work, he didn't know what he was going to do.
"Yes," Aziraphale answered vaguely, mind threatening to slip into a blur of melancholy. No, he mustn't lose hope, he reminded himself firmly. Crowley and he had faced worse before. If they could stand up to Satan Himself together, surely a bit of inter-dimensional travel was a trifle in comparison.
"Then this will be the place. Can you sense that reality is weaker here? More fluid?" Anathema leaned against the kitchen table, Newt at her side, who was the picture of apprehension.
Spreading out his awareness, it became quickly clear that the young witch was correct. Where Crowley had been splayed out now seemed less present and physical than anything else in the room, or all of London, for that matter. A single worn hole in the jumper that was the mortal dimension. Aziraphale approached the chair, settling his hands on the back.
"If I'm not back in..." he thought for a moment, "Forty-eight hours, I'm afraid you two would be best suited to find a way to close the portal. If something untoward happens to me, there's no telling whether a greater evil may slip through the cracks. The risk is too high to take." He and Crowley certainly hadn't risked their lives saving the world to let it end some other way.
"Understood," Anathema replied curtly.
"Are you, uh, going to go about it, then?" Newt asked, a cross between interest and dim fear.
"I already am," Aziraphale supplied, letting his eyes slip shut. It was just a matter of digging his entirely metaphorical fingers into that entirely metaphorical hole-in-the-jumper and...tugging...
Aziraphale stumbled backwards when a thin slit of orange-yellow energy opened just to his immediate right, radiating a kind of energy Aziraphale had never felt before. Something distinctly Other.
"Well, to be quite honest, that was easier than I thought it would be," he confessed to Newt and Anathema. He wiggled a bit, straightening his coat. "Now I suppose I'll...just step right through."
"Good luck," Newt offered sincerely.
"We'll be waiting for you when you get back," said Anathema. "When both of you get back."
Aziraphale smiled warmly at her. A sweet girl, especially for a witch. "I'll just be a tick," he said, though that was more of a prayer than a statement.
Without further ado, he dragged in a deep breath into his needless lungs, and stepped through the crack in reality.
1. The reading was not light by anyone standards besides Anathema's—or perhaps Aziraphale's.
2. Charlie's nickname for the old-as-dirt computer had stuck quite effectively.
3. Damn lucky kid. Not one dad, but three. And all combined, they were almost a functioning parental figure.
4. Nobody ever accused Chuck of being creative with his naming conventions.
5. The Authoress apologizes for possible confusion in this paragraph, but she finds herself unable, in good conscience, to refer to the Demon Crowley as AJ without cringing.