IV — An Unimpressive Narrative
A/N: I was originally going to have Aziraphale in this chapter as well, but I got so carried away with Crowley fucking with Team Free Will that it just didn't happen. Forgive me.
The Winchesters, their angel, and their Nephilim worked through the night with the ginger witch's notes in relative silence and stillness, on occasionally slipping out of the room to grab a beer, or another tediously long book to use for reference. Jack spoke the most of the four, occasionally asking Crowley innocent questions about his own universe, which Crowley happily answered, as the Nephilim was a sight more friendly than his father, or the Winchesters.
"So there was an Antichrist in your world?" Jack asked, head tilted to the side, a bit like a bird.
"Mhmm. Eleven years old. Told his Dad he wanted none of it. It being the apocalypse. Whole thing was brilliant, really," Crowley replied, leaving out the part where he'd been pissing his trousers the entire time. He absentmindedly continued reading through another one of the Supernatural books. He was about thirty in at this point, tearing through them at infernal speed. He was still waiting for them to get good. He had a feeling he would be waiting a long time. "What about here? Got an Antichrist?"
Jack seemed embarrassed by something, and didn't response. Crowley chose not to pursue the subject further.
At one point, Crowley, listlessly turning yet another page, said, "It's all a bit camp, isn't it?"
Dean and Sam both looked up at him. "What do you mean?" Sam asked.
"I mean...it reads like a soap opera, only with monsters," Crowley elaborated.
"It's our lives. Not a soap opera. And not campy! Real stuff can't be campy," Dean defended, an angry set to his jaw.(1)
Crowley tossed Heart into the finished pile. "Beg to differ."
"Oh, what, like your life is so much more book-worthy," the older Winchester shot back. Strange to be talking to the two of them, now that he'd just read through approximately a year and a half of their lives, plus all the flashbacks to their childhoods riddled with parental neglect and psychological trauma. He'd barely scratched the surface, and he already wondered how these two were still standing.
"Maybe not book-worthy, but less depressing," Crowley replied, picking up Hollywood Babylon with a grimace.
"Yeah, well, we live in a world that keeps trying to end itself. Not exactly Saturday morning cartoons," Dean said, abandoning his current translations of the witch's scrawlings to glare at him. "Newsflash, our lives suck."
"Dean," warned Castiel, glancing pointedly at Jack, who did flick his eyes briefly up to Dean when he said that.
"I mean," Dean amended, "they sucked pretty hard back then. And you haven't even got to when we had to full-on stop Armageddon yet."
"You lot stopped Armageddon?" Crowley asked, not bothering to hide his disbelief. Still, nice, wasn't it, that there was another universe where somebody said, oi, why should we stomp out the whole world? Maybe just don't? Maybe just let things crack on as usual and see what happens?
"We had help," Sam said vaguely, not nearly as incensed about Crowley's ribbing as Dean was. "A lot of it."
"Us too," Crowley said with a short nod. "Witch. Witchfinders. Some eleven year olds. Aziraphale was in a dress. Fun times." Not really fun times, actually quite terrifying times, but tragedy plus time equaled comedy, right?
That got everyone around the table to look at him. "What do you mean by 'us too'?" Castiel asked slowly, narrowing his bright blue eyes at him.
"Well, me and Aziraphale. Uh, an angel. Angel of the Eastern Gate, Principality, etcetera." Crowley brightened, a sudden thought hitting him. "Don't suppose you have a version of him here?"
"Aziraphale? No. We have an Israfel, but he's been dead for years."
Crowley deflated somewhat. "Right."
"You and an angel stopped the apocalypse?" Dean seemed floored.
"Maybe his universe isn't so different after all," Jack said lightly. "An angel and a demon helped save the world here and there."
"Demon helped you out?" The pieces clicked together in Crowley's brain. "Ohhhh. Other Crowley. He helped you muck up the Ineffable Plan, hmm? I like him already."
"Yeah, well, he's dead," Dean said shortly, returning to his work. "Just like almost everybody else we know."
Crowley kept his eyes on Dean for a few more moments before reluctantly redirecting his attention back to the book in his hand. He needed to get out of this universe before the soul-crushing angst of it all started to get to him.(2)
It was well past two in the morning when Crowley sighed loudly, throwing the final book, No Rest for the Wicked, on top of the finished pile. "There. All done."
By this point, Jack and Sam had given up and gone to bed, with the mindset to begin again in the morning. Castiel had excused himself to go search through the file room for something (Crowley was, admittedly, only half-listening), leaving Crowley alone with Dean, the broodier of the two Winchesters.
Dean barely glanced up at him. He shoved Sam's laptop in his general direction. "You've still got like, forty more."
Crowley head-desked. "Please, if you're going to torture me, just torture me. It's better than this."
"You're the one who wanted to be in cahoots."
Crowley sank down petulantly in his chair, crossing his arms. "I thought cahoot-ing would be more exciting. Sitting here in a bunker that could withstand the literal end of the world with a stockpile of supernatural weapons and a whole lot of prophecy behind you." He tapped the surface of one of the books in a restless, irritated fashion. "Wish Aziraphale was here. He would've eaten all this up, rubbish writing or not." He actually just wished Aziraphale would show up and take him home, already, because he was rapidly losing interest in all of this.
"Watch whose life you're calling rubbish," Dean snapped, but there wasn't any real energy in it.
"Weren't you just saying earlier that it sucked?"
Dean paused, but eventually conceded, "Point."
Crowley started in on Lazarus Rising, grimacing all the way, but at least vaguely interested in this particular volume, as it was when Castiel came into play. "Oh," the demon said with sudden realization. "Oh. That's why you're so tetchy. You've been to Hell. For awhile, too."
The human only offered a noncommittal grunt. Crowley watched as he refilled his glass tumbler for the fifth time that night, slowly draining away at a bottle of Jameson. Crowley eyed the liquor, deciding it was a bloody good idea. Not Jameson, of course, that was swill—but he could certainly miracle up his own—
No, no he couldn't. Damn cuffs. He still had enough energy he could squeak out to save his own life with a burst of adrenaline, but the likeliness of him being able to conjure up his own brand to drink, unlikely. So he snatched the bottle from Dean and took a deep draught.
Dean didn't seem pleased. "Dude. Germs."
"I'm a DEMON, idiot. I don't have germs." Crowley swallowed the gasoline-esque whisky with a deep scowl. To be home again, he thought wistfully. With his angel and his good booze. "How long were you in Hell?"
"Keep reading."
"I know you were in there for four months, but time works differently in Hell, at least for human souls." Crowley leaned forward a bit, hand still gripped around the bottleneck. "How long?"
Dean's jaw tightened. "Forty years," he replied at length, tone clipped and formal. "Happy?"
"Not even a little." He drank from the bottle again. Forty years Downstairs was an eternity for a human. How Dean Winchester was walking, talking, and feeding himself was beyond Crowley. Then again, in this barmy universe where God was a He and humans became demons and demons and angels could be killed willy-nilly, he supposed anything was possible.
"And the angel," Crowley continued, trying to lighten the dire mood, "that's how you met him? When he pulled you out of Hell?"
Dean nodded. "Yeah." No bite back that time.
"Romantic."
"He was following orders."
Crowley looked at Dean, really looked at him, on the higher planes. His aura was a great mess. Dark and light and weird stains. Very bright soul. Undeniably bright soul, but looked like it had been rode hard and put away wet. Hell had left a mark on him, but so had something Celestial, and then...something so remarkably Other that he couldn't quite put his finger on what it was. Ancient. Older than him, and that was bloody rare.
"How long do these books cover?" Crowley inquired, peering at Dean over the top of his sunglasses.
"Five years."
"And they stop in 2011."
"Yeah."
"Can't imagine what's happened to you since, with your luck."
Dean looked up from his laptop, seeming to think for a moment. "Well, Raphael tried to end the world. Then Cas, kinda. Then the Leviathan. Then Crowley, kinda. Then...uh well there was Abaddon and Metatron, then the Darkness, then Lucifer again, then more Lucifer, and now Michael."
Crowley blinked at him, something Crowley rare did. "And I thought our God was flaky," he muttered.
"Yeah, well, our God was a pretty shit father figure. Then he came back long enough to help with the Darkness, almost died, then fucked off with her to...somewhere. Been incommunicado since."
Crowley reeled back, shooting Dean a look of absolute confusion. "What?"
"The Darkness, God's sister. There at the beginning with him. She got released and tried to end, like, everything." Dean made a wide encompassing gesture with his hands.
"...What?"
"Look, she was trapped in this demonic tramp stamp thing I had, okay, and then when I killed Death—"
"WHAT!?"
Dean just shook his head, giving up. "Never mind. Not important. I mean, it's important, but not to this."
What the hell kind of universe had that ginger witch summoned him to? He suddenly felt immense amounts of gratitude to Her, for the first time in a very long time, for at least not shitting on their world to the degree this world had been shat on. Dealt the worst hand possible, of all hands, and left in the care of two deeply damaged humans and a collection of supernatural entities that seemed to die around them at an alarming rate.
For Hell's sake. He just wanted to be back in his flat with his angel.
Crowley returned his eyes to the laptop, deciding he really didn't want to know the more intimate details. "Sounds fake, but okay."
Dean went to retire to bed at 4am. Crowley was trying not to fall asleep during The Rapture. The only thing keeping his eyes open was the fact that it was, admittedly, mildly intriguing that angels had to take a human vessel in this universe. Seemed ill thought out on the Almighty's part, but still. And only certain humans could hold angels without exploding? Bizarre. Aziraphale would be fascinated by that.
"Okay, I gotta get some shut eye," Dean said with a loud yawn, snapping shut one of the texts he'd been using to translate some of Rowena's scribbles. "Everything's blurring together." He directed tired green eyes to Castiel. "Watch him?"
Castiel nodded, nose deep in a notebook. "Yes. I'll make breakfast in the morning."
Dean grimaced at the thought. "Cas, no offense, but the last time you tried to—"
Castiel pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and waved it. "I found a video on the YouTube, with instructions. An angry British man who shows you how to make scrambled eggs."
Crowley barely managed to stifle a drunken laugh.(3)
After an exasperated mutter of "the YouTube" under his breath, Dean just held up his hands. "Just don't burn the place down." With that, he departed the room, leaving Crowley and Castiel alone.
"Must be an angel thing. Dreadful cooks," Crowley commented idly, taking his thumbs and pointer fingers to try to force his eyes to stay open.
"What are you doing?" asked the angel, casting a confused glance at Crowley.
"Trying to stay awake through this tripe."
"You're a demon. You don't sleep."
"Just means I don't need to sleep, doesn't mean I don't like to sleep."
"But why do you like to sleep? You could be up...doing whatever it is that you do, instead," Castiel argued, the picture of confusion.
"I don't do a whole lot, mate. I've been going out of my way to not do a whole lot for 6,000 years," Crowley replied, finally giving up and slamming the laptop shut. "D'you have a bed or something? Or any horizontal surface not entirely comprised of bees, really. I'll catch a few hours and finish this in the morning. I'm bored rigid."
"If you sleep, I'll have to watch you."
Crowley resisted the urge to head-desk again. But then, an idea occurred to him.
"I'm going to show you why you don't need to watch me," Crowley said, a wicked grin sliding across his face.
"What are you—"
He vanished.
Well, not vanished, really. He was on the floor. He slipped out of the cuffs with ease.
Castiel was up in an instant. "Crowley!" he yelled, and at least the angel managed to say his name right.
With absolute mad glee, he slid up the angel's pant leg.
The angel yelled loudly, stumbling backwards and flipping over one of the chairs in the process, slamming his head back against the hard floor. He scrambled backwards, staring at Crowley in disbelief. Crowley reared up, smiling. Insomuch as a snake is capable of smiling, which is to say, not at all—but he was sure the angel got the idea.
"Ssssssee?" Crowley hissed. "Ssss'not a problem for me to just ssssssslither away. If I wanted to be up to ssssssomething, I'd be up to ssssssomething. So how about a little free will, Casssssstiel? Issssssn't that what you lot are all about?"
Castiel jumped to his feet, drawling his sword that Crowley could sense was some kind of consecrated, Heavenly weapon. He pointed it at Crowley, panic in his eyes. "T-Turn back into your human form," he ordered.
Crowley laughed. Or rather made a sound that, for a snake, was a loose approximation to laughter. "Ssssscared of ssssssnakes, are we?"
"NOW, CROWLEY."
"Fine. You're no fun." Crowley reared back further and melted back into his corporeal form, snake mouth and fangs transforming into the shit-eating grin of his usual body. "So. How about we skip the cuffs, skip the watching-me-sleep, and I just go on and find somewhere to take a nap?"
Castiel didn't sheathe his sword, but did issue a stiff nod of his head. "Fine, just...don't do that again."
Crowley barked out a laugh. "Whatever you say." He sashayed past Castiel, in the general direction of where he believed the bunker's living quarters to be. "See you in the morning, sunshine."
He heard the distinct sound of Castiel muttering murderously under his breath as he walked away. He couldn't stop smiling.
Dean woke the next morning to find four pans full of burnt scrambled eggs in the sink, along with the refuse of some bacon attempts. Jack and Sam sat at the kitchen table with bowls of cereal. Cas looked incensed.
Dean clapped Cas companionably on the back. "Good try, buddy. You'll get there eventually." Dean glanced around. "Where's Sir Hiss hanging out at?"
"Sir Hiss—?" Metatron's pop-culture knowledge implanted in his brain seemed to come back to Cas in a rush, and he nodded, "Oh, yes. From the version of Robin Hood with the animals. Crowley is...well, he's sleeping."
Dean stared at Cas, feeling a tide of irritation rise up in him. "Cas...you had one job..."
"He can turn into a snake," Cas cut him off with a level look. "He slipped the cuffs to prove that essentially, he can do whatever he wants, and we can't stop him. He just wanted to take a nap, supposedly. I've checked on him several times since you went to bed, and he does appear to be sleeping."
"Why the hell does a demon need to sleep?"
"Haven't you ever," yawned a voice from behind him, "heard of beauty sleep?"
A ruffled Crowley stood in the threshold of the kitchen, leaning there in just his v-neck, his suit-jacket slung over one arm. His sunglasses were back on. Dean did immediately think him a douchebag for wearing sunglasses inside, but was grateful not to have to stare into those insane eyes of his any more than he had to.
"If you sleep, do you dream?" Jack asked curiously, mouth half-full of Reese's Puffs.
Crowley shrugged one shoulder. "If I want to."(4)
Sam watched Crowley warily. "I take it you won't put the cuffs back on?"
"I think we can all agree there isn't much point in that," Crowley said with a small smirk.
Sam shook his head, resigned. He met Dean's eyes, and they exchanged a look that said what they both were thinking: this was not a good situation, but there was nothing they could do about it, short of getting Crowley the hell out of this universe as fast as possible.
"I have an idea," Sam announced to the room at large. "We're not getting anywhere with Rowena's notes. I think the ritual really was just some inter-dimensional fluke. So, we need to use what we already know about travelling from universe to universe to deal with this."
"Cool. Great. Too bad we don't have any Archangel Grace—" Dean started, but Sam gave him a pointed bitch-face to silence him.
"When you were running around with Crowley, after you guys got Gadreel out of me...we tried to use what was left of Gadreel's Grace in my body to make a tracking spell. It didn't work, but Cas did manage to extract some of Gadreel's Grace. Which, applying that logic..."
"I've got Archangel Grace in me," Dean surmised, feeling his skin crawl. The fact that there were still...parts...of Michael left behind. He hated it. Extracting them, hell, that would be welcome. "Okay. We'll do it."
"Dean, I should warn you that it'll be painful," Cas broached carefully. "It was excruciating for Sam, and it did trigger...memories, that may have otherwise stayed buried in his subconscious."
Dean just crossed his arms. "I ain't a stranger to pain, or bad memories. If it'll work, let's do it."
Crowley snorted from the doorway.
"Something funny?" Dean glared at the demon.
"Nothing. You're just...well you're just very much the action hero type, aren't you? All machismo and self-sacrifice." Crowley waved his hand in Dean's general direction. "I can just feel the broodiness rolling off of you."
"AJ?" Dean asked, making the concerted effort not to say the automatic, shut up, Crowley! poised on his tongue. All too easy to confuse this demon with the King of Hell when he was being a dick, and confusing this Crowley with their Crowley was asking for trouble. They knew their Crowley; they were running on nothing but hope and prayers with this guy.
"Yes?"
"Shut up."
"Shut up," Crowley mocked Dean's voice.
Dean's left eye twitched. "ANYWAY," he said loudly. "We'll gather up all the other shit we need for the spell—we've still got leftovers from our last trip to Apocalypse World(5), so we shouldn't have to run for much. Then we'll...we'll do the thing."
Dean sensed the others (sans Crowley) watching him with concern.
"Are you sure about this?" Jack asked quietly.
Dean nodded, jaw tight. "Yeah. I'm sure."
Crowley clapped his hands together cheerily. "Great. Let's get this over with then, shall we?"
1. Crowley had noticed by this point that Dean's jaw, and Dean in general, were perpetually angry.
2. Crowley had always preferred comedies to dramas, a point of constant contention between he and Aziraphale—surely the angel would be all aflutter over the perpetual boy melodrama between Sam and Dean in the Supernatural books.
3. Crowley had begun playing a game, wherein every time the Winchesters had an emotionally overwrought conversation in or around the Impala, he would do a shot of the terrible whiskey Dean insisted on drinking. He was near plastered already.
4. To dream as a demon was more to pick a memory and let it play as a slideshow through one's groggy mind. Sometimes he would think back to days in the sunshine with Aziraphale at St. James's Park, or the time the two of them had taken to the rooftops of Santorini to gaze at the stars and pass a wineskin back and forth, smell of the sea on the breeze, salt crusting against skin bared by the more revealing outfits of the time.
5. It was at this point that Crowley was far too overcome by trepidation to ask what Apocalypse World was, when he most assuredly seemed to already BE in Apocalypse World.