Chapter VII — An Unforeseen Consequence
Dean sat in a chair in the foyer, restlessly tapping his fingers on the arms.
Sam watched nearby, arms crossed, trying not to show how concerned he was for his brother. This trip down memory lane wasn't going to be pretty, and Dean's psyche wasn't amazing on the best of days. God only knew what reruns of his time as Michael would do to upset the ever-precarious mental balance that was Dean Winchester.
"Stop looking at me like I'm gonna explode," Dean requested, flicking his eyes briefly to Sam with a flash of annoyance. "And don't say that ain't how you're looking at me because you've looked at me like that before when I was literally about to explode, so I got a good point of reference."
Beside Sam, Jack's head tilted at the mention of exploding. Oh yeah, they hadn't told him that story, had they?
Sam sighed heavily. "Fine, fine. But I think I'm pretty well within my rights to be concerned about this."
"Yeah, well, concern or not, this is happening." Dean tilted his head up to look at Cas, grimacing. "Alright, let's get the shitshow on the road."
"I'm on the edge of my seat," said Crowley, who was perched on the table, swinging his feet about and looking for all the world like this was just so tedious and he couldn't wait to get home. Sam couldn't help but find it funny that any demon in their universe would give their right arm (or someone's right arm, at least) to get access to the Men of Letters bunker, but Crowley wanted nothing more than to get out as fast as possible.
Cas bound Dean's wrists to the chair. Dean looked on with no small deal of unease. "At least take me out to dinner first, Cas."
"I thought you already ate?" Cas asked, tilting his head to the side.
"No, Cas—" Dean rolled his eyes, "I mean, what's with the ropes?"
"In case you flail. I warned you this would be painful, and if the needle snaps off in your neck—"
"Enough, enough, I get it," Dean said quickly, wincing. Cas finished his deft work binding Dean, then drew back. The two locked eyes for a moment, both radiating the dread that Sam felt. Dean experimentally pulled against the restraints. No give. "Well, you get a merit badge for knot tying."
Cas retrieved the uncomfortably large extraction syringe.
"That's disturbing," Crowley commented lightly.
"Welcome to our world. Everything's disturbing." Dean leaned back against the chair, closing his eyes and bracing himself. "Okay. Do it."
Cas nodded. "It'll be over soon," he said, in an attempt to put Dean at ease, but Sam knew there was nothing any of them could say right now to make Dean feel better. He would only feel better when the last drop of Michael's Grace was out of him.
Cas leaned forward with the syringe.
The lights overhead flickered.
Sam craned his neck immediately. "Something's up."
A high-pitched whining filled the air.
"The warding," Cas said, rising sharply. "It's being interfered with—someone's trying to break it."
"Who?" Jack asked, glancing around wildly.
Crowley, to Sam's surprise, jumped off the table with a wide, wolfish grin. "Haha! About bloody time." He straightened his lapels. "You can call off the Grace-drain, boys. My ride's here."
"Your—what?" Sam was baffled.
The lights flickered once, twice more—and then the bunker's siren sounded, and everything went dark red.
"You may as well just open the door for him," Crowley said happily. "He'll get in one way or another. Very determined sort, Aziraphale."
"This is your angel?" Sam asked. He noted distractedly that Dean had gone strangely silent, but they had bigger problems to deal with at the moment.
"How is it that he's strong enough to blow through the bunker's warding? We're supposed to be kept safe from all but Archangels," Cas reasoned, not seeming remotely content with Crowley's explanation.
Dean wrapped his hand around Cas's wrist.
Cas looked at him. Sam looked at him. Jack looked at him. Crowley looked at him. Dean sat very, very still.
"That angel's strong," Dean said, voice strangely absent any tone. "I can feel him. But he's not strong enough to break into the bunker."
Cas stared blankly at Dean's hand locked around his wrist. Dean's knuckles were white.
"Dean, what..." Cas's brow drew down in befuddlement.
Crowley froze beside Sam. "His aura."
Sam turned his attention to the demon. "What about it?"
"It's—very not good."
"What do you mean?"
"You were right about one thing, Castiel," Dean continued, "it would take an Archangel to break through the warding."
Horror dawned on Sam and Cas simultaneously.
The whining of celestial energy in the room around them quadrupled. Dean's eyes glowed a bright, unnatural blue. "Long time no see."
"Warded!" Aziraphale raged in the passenger seat of the pick-up truck. "I cannot believe—oh, this is really such a bother."
The human(1) he had compelled to drive him, Earl, watched on, unconcerned and vacant.
Aziraphale hopped out of the vehicle with a frown, closing the door behind him. He rounded to the driver's side and leaned in the window. "My dear fellow, thank you so much for your help—go home and give your wife a kiss on the cheek, and hug your children. They don't blame you for taking the overtime at the shop, but they do miss you so. Remind them how much you love them."
Earl smiled, a look of confusion crossing his face.
Aziraphale waved a hand. "You decided to take a soothing drive in the country to calm your nerves. It was quite pleasant."
Earl nodded, and drove off, not casting a single look in Aziraphale's direction.
Aziraphale turned to his current Problem. A bunker. An underground bunker with a very large, very locked, very warded door. The entirety of the building was warded, actually, but the door in particular.
Everything since Crowley disappeared had been a Problem, but this was easily the most irritating yet. It went without question that Crowley was being held within; that was only the explanation as to how Aziraphale had been unable to sense him down to the exact location. But now the question was, how in the Hell was he supposed to get in? Enochian warding was usually nothing more than a light hindrance to him, limiting the amount and power of his miracles. He couldn't remember the last time he'd actually been barred from entry somewhere. It had been 5,000 years, at least!
With a pout, Aziraphale resigned himself to circling the bunker and trying to find an alternative entry point. As if to add insult to injury, it began to pour down rain. Aziraphale miracled himself an umbrella, scowling all the way, muttering about Murphy's Law under his breath.
The thought briefly crossed his mind that perhaps he could slowly chip away at the warding over time, but discarded the idea upon realizing that would take far longer than the now forty-six hours he had set about before him to bring Crowley home. He needed to expedite his entry. There was also the possibility of waiting outside for Crowley's captors to depart again, and slip in during their exit, but there was a large margin for error in that plan, especially given that he wasn't entirely sure that either of the two men were human, given those bombastic, unnerving auras of theirs.
Whatever he did, it would need to work. This was Crowley. How many times had the demon swooped in to save him over the millennia? Countless times. Surely Aziraphale could manage it just the once.
Aziraphale stopped cold when he'd reached a small glade a short distance from the bunker. Something was...buzzing. The ground shook, almost unnoticeable, underneath him. Aziraphale could sense the warding stretching, stretching...
With a snap like a rubber band, it broke. The resulting shock wave was enough to send him down to one knee. "Oh goodness." Such an incredible amount of power, and now...yes. Yes, his awareness extended easily into the bunker, no longer defended. He detected the source of the enormous angelic radiance, the strange black-outlined aura of the man named Sam, something that reeked distinctly of Nephilim(2), a weak, flickering signal of Grace that indicated another one of this universe's broken angels, and then...
Yes. Vibrant. Gold. Serpentine. Crowley.
Aziraphale made for the bunker door without delay.
In quick succession, Dean snapped Cas's wrist, blasted him across the room with a thought, and ripped his hands out of the ropes like they were made of parcel string. Cas let out a howl of pain before colliding bodily into the far wall, sliding down to the floor, blue eyes dazed. Dean rose from the chair with a slowly spreading smiling. He cracked his neck.
Sam pulled his gun immediately, pointing it at Dean. "Michael."
Crowley looked wildly at the pistol. "You really think that's gonna stop him!?"
With a flick of a finger, Sam's weapon went flying out of his hand and skidding across the bunker floor. With another gesture, Sam was thrown back against the wall, pinned there several inches above the ground. The same happened to Jack the second he tried to draw his angel blade.
Crowley was rapidly thinking running might be his best plan here.
"This shouldn't be possible," Sam said, straining against his invisible bonds. "Dean would never say yes to you again."
Dean—well, Michael, apparently—just snorted. "You really think I would just leave your brother? Please. Some things are too good to pass up. So, I left myself a backdoor, for when the time came...and here I am." Michael drew Dean's angel blade and spun it between his fingers. "If you'd actually succeeded in extracting my Grace, you would've closed that backdoor, and I can't have that."
Jack growled, leaning his head back against the wall. Crowley detected energy radiating off of him, but Sam yelled, "Jack, don't!" and the Nephilim ceased trying to break free. "It's not worth burning off your soul."
Crowley didn't even want to fathom what the Heaven that meant.
"A soul isn't much use when you're dead. I think I'll keep Lucifer's spawn alive, however. He could still be useful." Michael flicked his gaze to Crowley. "Perhaps you could be as well. I haven't decided yet."
"Me? Useful? No, no no. Not, not particularly useful, me. So, s'pose I best just be getting on now, I'll leave you lot to ah, work out your personal issues...don't really want to intrude..." Crowley began slowly backing up towards the door.
"Crowley, do something!" Sam shouted. "You can fight him!"
"He can't do anything," Michael dismissed Sam. He made a flicking gesture with his hand, eyes drilling into Crowley.
Nothing happened.
Crowley let out a nervous laugh. "Fancy that."
Michael finally seemed on the back foot. He tried again. Crowley felt a hint of a breeze. He didn't budge. Oh. Immunity to getting tossed around like a rag doll. He wasn't opposed to that, but running was still awfully tempting.
However, one look at Sam and Jack—and Cas as well, who was no struggling back to his feet—he knew he couldn't in good conscience leave them to die.
Crowley looked Heavenward, as if to ask, why me? "Well, I guess this is gonna be a thing, then...bollocks..." He lifted his fists experimentally. He couldn't remember the last time he'd fought somebody. There had definitely been some bar fights in his time, and a few times he'd even been actually bladdered enough to do something other than snap the other person into unconsciousness and leave with a smug smile, but going toe-to-toe with an Archangel? This was entirely out of his league.
"You're going to take me on?" Michael sneered in derision, prowling towards him. "I thought you were a lover, not a fighter."
"You know, you're an even bigger git here than you are in my universe," Crowley pointed out, hopping backwards as Michael encroached. He supposed he needed a weapon, didn't he? Not that anything would do a great deal of good against an Archangel, but he could at least fend him off until he thought of a better idea.
"Your universe, right..." Michael smirked. "Once I'm done leveling this planet, I'll move onto yours, I think."
"Oh, come on!" Crowley snapped. "I just saved the whole bloody mess, I don't want to have to do it again!"
Michael swung at him with his angel blade. Crowley sucked in his stomach and shifted back on his heels just in time to avoid getting disembowled. Fuck. Here came the fighting part.
Crowley summoned the first thing to his hand he could think of: the strange, crude blade that had been hanging from the wall in Dean's room.(3) He brought it up just in time to block another strike from Michael.
Cas was back up now, rushing towards Michael with his angel blade held aloft in his hand. Before Cas could even reach him, Michael blasted him backwards again, and he ended up pinned against the wall in a neat little row with Jack and Sam. Michael didn't look away from Crowley once.
"I don't know what you are, but I know I'm stronger than you, no matter what universe spat you out," Michael said, circling Crowley. Crowley danced, trying to anticipate Michael's next move. He hadn't been in a sword fight in pushing a thousand years, and even when he had been trundling around England as the Black Knight, he hadn't done a whole lot of actual battling. Usually just miracled a few illusions into the minds of the rest of his party, and stayed back at the nearest lord's keep, half-swimming in their wineskins until everyone returned with memories in their mind of him being quite the ruthless, unparalleled warrior.(4)
"Yeah, well," Crowley flailed for a comeback. "Pfft. You're—you're—"
He didn't have a chance to finish his retort, because Michael lunged suddenly. Crowley turned in time to not get speared in the chest, but the angel blade found itself buried up to the hilt in the meat of Crowley's left shoulder.
"Fuck!" the demon screamed. When Michael yanked the blade out, he dropped to his knees, vision nearly whiting out from the pain, like thousands of tiny, tiny bolts of lightning arcing up and down the length of his arm. The reek of sulfurous blood tickled his nose, and the room spun around him. Oh. Not good. Very bad.
He passed the Purgatory blade from his dominant hand to his right hand, and raised it just in time to stop the oncoming angel blade from sailing through his neck. He didn't want to know what would happen if he got discorporated in this universe. Would he come back at all? Doubtful. Even if he got discorporated in his own universe, it was unlikely Hell would give him a new body to waltz around in, they didn't just pass them out like candy, there was always loads of paperwork, and, well, Crowley wasn't exactly in Hell's good books at the moment—not that they really had any good books to begin with.
A new resolve blazed within Crowley; that was the thing of it though, wasn't it? No matter how much Michael wanted to kill him, Crowley most certainly wanted to live more than Michael wanted him dead. Personally invested as he was, and everything.
Crowley jumped back to his feet, practically on his tiptoes. He pointed the crude blade at Michael. "En garde, you feathered wanker." Forgoing the defense, he pressed the offense, backing Michael up against the table in the foyer until he was forced to vanish and remanifest behind Crowley. Crowley ducked and rolled, avoiding getting beheaded. He whirled around to catch another strike from Michael, who he could tell was getting more and more frustrated by Crowley's continued survival.
Michael landed blow after blow against the edge of Crowley's blade, never hitting home, but now it was Crowley getting backed into a corner. "Why won't you die?"
"Fallen angelssss. Hard to perissssh," Crowley hissed through gritted teeth, straining to hold the angel blade back from his throat. Michael caught him off-guard by landing a punch square to Crowley's draw, sending his sunglasses flying and dazing him. The next move Michael made was to disarm Crowley entirely.
It was at this point, that if Crowley was focused on anything other than staying alive, he would have heard the bunker door open and the pitter-patter of panicked feet heading their way.
Michael made to bring the angel blade down in a way so as to rent Crowley completely in half.
He swung—
"Let there be light!"
A blinding, brilliant, warm light filled the expanse of the foyer. Michael backed away, shielding his eyes with a groan.
Crowley just closed his eyes, letting it wash over him, grinning like an idiot. "Hey Aziraphale."
1. Through a bit of mental investigation, Aziraphale had learned that the man's name was Earl. He was a CNC machinist with two daughters and a wife of twenty years, next April. He needed to be getting home with the parts he'd picked up from the hardware store to fix their riding lawnmower, so the yard could look proper for when his mother-in-law came to visit.
2. Aziraphale personally thought that Nephilim were too harshly judged in his own universe. The Almighty was none too pleased about the union of Angel and Man, especially once they started growing to thirty cubits in height, but you know what, standing on a city wall, having an eye level chat with them, they really weren't so bad.
3. Better than a tire iron, at least.
4. It just so happens Aziraphale did the same exact thing. Neither angel nor demon had really enjoyed the Middle Ages much.