Chapter VIII — An Unconventional Angel
Crowley had all of three seconds to enjoy his friend's return before Aziraphale quickly broke him out of his reverie: "What are you waiting for you great fool!? Stop time!" the angel practically shrieked.
"Oh right, I can do that," Crowley realized, blinking his eyes open. With a great pull on his infernal energies, he threw his hands up in the air, fingers outstretched, then pulled them back down, and everything barring he, Aziraphale, Sam, Jack, and Castiel froze in its place. Which of course meant that Michael wasn't trying to kill him at the moment, instead halted halfway through drawing his hand away from his face, probably to resume that whole trying to kill him thing.
Sam, Jack, and Cas fell from where they'd been pinned against the wall, feet hitting the ground with loud smacks, followed by gasps of relief. The warm celestial light faded, and Aziraphale came pounding down the stairs.
"What on earth were you thinking, Crowley! Going toe-to-toe with an Archangel! Why didn't you stop time earlier?"
Crowley spluttered. "B—wh—well I was under a bit of pressure, wasn't I!? Fighting to save everyone and whatnot and be the big bloody hero? And it's not exactly the easiest thing in the world! Oh, excuse me sir, just realized I forgot to put my socks on this morning, let me just CHRONOKINETICALLY FREEZE THE INEVITABLE MARCH OF TIME—" Crowley spread out his arms, offended. He then quickly snapped his injured arm back. Ooh, that stung. "And me! What about you! Let there be light? Really?"
"Hush, it was the first thing that came to mind. And it worked, didn't it?" Aziraphale arrived at his side and quickly started fussing over him. His hands hovered over Crowley's ripped open shoulder, eyes widening in distress. "Oh, my dear, you're hurt. Badly." He gently spread apart the tattered remnants of Crowley's v-neck and jacket, trying to get a better look at the bloody wound. Crowley was grateful, especially because he was so distracted by the angel touching him that he almost forgot about the screaming pain entirely.(1)
"Healing's your thing, angel," Crowley said, watching Aziraphale's face and feeling as though it had been much longer than just a day since he last saw him. To think they used to go decades, even centuries without contact...but, well, once you shack up with someone, that bit changes, doesn't it? You get used to them, their presence, their laugh, their smile, their smell, the way their eyes light up when they look at you and you've kind of dismissed it for several centuries because they're an ANGEL and they love EVERYTHING, but the way they look at you is just different enough to make you think maybe—okay maybe that was only situationally relevant to the two of them.
"This...what is this?" Aziraphale murmured, peering closer. "I can't heal it."
"Archangel blade," Cas explained roughly. "It's incredibly difficult to heal wounds inflicted by them. They channel pure, concentrated celestial energy—not helped by the fact that Crowley is a demon."
Aziraphale blinked rapidly, seeming to really look at the others for the first time.
"I'm guessing this is your angel friend?" Sam asked, brow scrunched.
"Oh, oh yes, terribly sorry, where are my manners?" Aziraphale withdrew from Crowley, granting Sam, Cas, and Jack with a deep bow. "I am the Principality Aziraphale. And you are?"
"Castiel," Cas introduced himself, "Angel of Thursday."
"The angel of greeting cards was busy," Crowley quipped.
"I'm Sam Winchester, this is Jack Kline." Sam gestured at Dean-slash-Michael. "That's my brother Dean, but—well, you already put together what's inside of him."
"Inside of him?" Aziraphale looked aghast. "Surely not...? Any human would explode under the duress of that much raw power."
"Not my brother," Sam said gravely. "Dean was meant to be Michael's vessel."
"Vessel?" Aziraphale repeated, befuddled.
Crowley groaned loudly, throwing his hands up and once more forgetting his injury. "Fuck—ow!—fuck! We don't have time for a lore dump, I can't hold this for bloody ever! We need a plan!"
"If you're strong enough to stop time, aren't you strong enough to kill Michael?" Jack asked, staring at Dean's frozen self with a great deal of fear. "Or—or at least to make him leave Dean?"
"Aziraphale and I are strong, but we're not strong enough to kill an Arch, in our universe or yours. Trust me, if I could, I'd have already turned Gabriel into a nice pair of shoes back home," Crowley told the Nephilim.
Jack shook his head, a wave of emotion rolling off of him—black anger, bitterness. Crowley was good at picking up the Bad Things humans (and human adjacent creatures) felt, just as Aziraphale was so uniquely attuned to love and kindness and all such other sod. "If I still had my powers—"
"It's out of the question, Jack," Castiel cut across him. "You can't burn off your soul. Dean would never want that."
"Dean can't want anything if Dean is dead!" Jack shot back, whirling on the angel. Ooh. Family drama. Crowley shrank closer to Aziraphale, wishing once more that they could just miracle themselves out of here. Which, technically they could do, but, in for a penny, in for a pound.
Crowley cleared his throat. "I really, really don't want to know the answer to this, but—what exactly are you all fretting about with his soul? A Nephilim should have a reservoir of celestial energy to do whatever it is they want to do. No soul burning involved."
"It's a long story, but Jack got his Grace drained by his father," Sam said.
Jack began to pace like a man possessed.
Crowley shot a narrow-eyed look at Castiel. "And...why did you do that?"
Cas took a deep breath. "Me being Jack's father is...not as literal as we implied."(2)
"IMMENSE EXERTION OF POWER. SLOWLY WASTING AWAY INTO AN ADMITTEDLY WELL-DRESSED HUSK," Crowley loudly reminded the room at large. The room at large, which, he noted with some concern, was starting to spin around him. Aziraphale noticed his disorientation with concern. "Can we speed this up?"
"Jack's Lucifer's son," Sam said in a rush, sensing the urgency of the situation. "Lucifer took his Grace, it threw Jack off balance, we had to work some bizarre soul magic to keep him alive. But before, when he had his powers—"
"I could do anything," Jack cut in, and Crowley saw a flash of gold in his eyes. "I could have killed Michael."
"Another Antichrist," Aziraphale breathed from beside him. "Seems we attract them, don't we?"
"So what your saying is all we have to do is jump start him, and he can fix this?" Crowley asked, legs trembling underneath him. Aziraphale surprised him by wrapping a steadying arm around his waist.
"We gave him a vial of Gabriel's Grace and it did nothing," Cas said with a grimace.
"Well good thing the two of us have more than a vial," Crowley countered. He indicated Dean. "Can we bind him?"
"Between the angel cuffs we had you in and a ring of holy fire, yeah," Sam replied.
Crowley scooped his sunglasses off from where they rested on the ground and placed them snugly back on his face. "Then let's bloody do it and we'll go from there."
Crowley was using Aziraphale entirely for support by the time the 'angel cuffs' were clamped around Dean Winchester's wrists, and a ring of 'holy fire' burned around him.(3)
"Crowley?" Aziraphale watched the side of the demon's face with growing fear, not sure whether the drain on his energies or the blood loss was the more urgent problem with him at the moment.
"'M fine, angel."
"Okay, okay, you can let it go, Crowley," Sam backed away from the holy fire circle, eyes fixed on his brother. Aziraphale could sense the incredible love in Sam Winchester. That aura of his was undeniably wretched in more than a few ways, but the vibrant, complete love he radiated, not just for Dean, but for Jack and Castiel as well, it was immense and unconditional. Some of the strongest Aziraphale had ever felt from a human.
Crowley had fallen into good hands, hadn't he? Luck of the devil, that.
Crowley snapped his fingers with a shuddering breath, leaning on Aziraphale. Time resumed its usual course, and Dean/Michael's hand fell away from shielding his face. He looked around wildly for a moment, offkilter. "What?" he growled. His eyes fixed on Crowley and Aziraphale after a moment. "Cute parlor trick. Stopping time. But it won't stop me."
"Yeah, well, you look pretty damn well stopped to me, you feathered ballbag," Crowley hissed at the Archangel.
"I'll get out of here," Michael said lowly. "I will. And we'll see if it works a second time."
The fear on Crowley's face told Aziraphale that it wouldn't.
"Cas. Watch him," Sam ordered, setting his hand on Jack's shoulder. With a pointed look to Crowley and Aziraphale, he nodded towards the hallway adjacent to the foyer they currently stood in.
The four set off. Crowley could walk on his own, now, but he clutched at his wounded shoulder as they moved, blood seeping through the gaps in his long fingers.
"We need to at least bind your wound," Aziraphale told the demon worriedly. "I don't know if you can discorporate from blood loss, but we really mustn't test that theory."
"Problems for later, Aziraphale," Crowley replied, strained.
Aziraphale rather thought it was a problem for now.
Sam took them into a room that was filled to the brim with boxes of well organized, alphabetically labeled files, and then beyond, what Aziraphale could only describe as a torture dungeon. He halted before entering, holding a hand out to bar Crowley as Sam and Jack filtered inside the tiny, devil-trapped room.
Crowley immediately sensed his apprehension. "Relax. Devil traps don't hold me. At least not the ones here."
Aziraphale still didn't love what they were walking into, but Crowley seemed totally unconcerned, so Aziraphale trusted his judgement. They walked in side-by-side.
"Michael broke the warding on the rest of the bunker, but not in here," Sam explained. "And hopefully it'll keep him from figuring out what we're doing."
"Why does it matter if he knows?" Crowley asked. "He's gonna figure it out when we try to burn him up, isn't he?"
"If he senses Jack powering up, he—I think he might try to destroy Dean from the inside. He knows Jack's strong enough to get rid of him. Killing Dean on the way out...that seems like the kind of thing he'd do, and we can't risk that," Sam said, voice tight. "Are you two sure about this?"
"Not even remotely, but it's worth a shot," Crowley replied. He flicked his shaded gaze to Aziraphale. "What do you say, angel?"
"It's rare we can't accomplish something when we both put our heads together," Aziraphale said, overflowing with fondness for his demonic friend in that moment. Crowley could have fled this strange underground bunker with its even stranger inhabitants long before trouble began to brew, but he'd stayed. He'd fought for them, to save them, risking himself.
He didn't know why he was so surprised. Perhaps some of that old prejudice rearing its head underneath all he'd learned of late; it really was high time to do away with it entirely, those antiquated notions of good and evil. Just names, really. That Crowley had done this should come at no shock—far more often than not, he was beginning to realize, Crowley knew the right thing and did it, all before Aziraphale even knew what the proper right thing was.
"Come here, Jack," Crowley said, beckoning him with a crooked finger.
The Nephilim approached, apprehensive. "How do we do this?"
Crowley glanced at Aziraphale. "Same as last time?"
It took Aziraphale a moment to understand what Crowley was getting at. He nodded.
Crowley took Jack's right hand in his left, smearing no small amount of blood on Jack in the process. Aziraphale stepped closer, grasping Jack's left hand.
Crowley snorted. "Here we go again. At least it's not Satan this time."
Aziraphale allowed himself an anxious smile. "Small mercies."
"You ready, angel?" Crowley asked, looking at him past Jack.
Another nod from Aziraphale.
Sam waited with crossed arms, standing in the threshold of the dungeon and for all intents and purposes looking as though he was going to be sick. "I hope to God this works," Sam said quietly.
"Hope to our God, not yours—yours kind of seems like a bastard, and not the good kind," Crowley told him, then took in a very, very deep breath. Aziraphale mirrored him on Jack's other side.
Aziraphale felt Crowley's aura flare dramatically next to him, pulling on deep reservoirs within himself, just as Aziraphale was. They both closed their eyes at the same time, and beneath their eyelids danced blue and gold. As one, they reached out to the stuttering remnant of Grace left in Jack's chest, mutated and burnt, affixed poorly to a human soul.
They met in the middle, grazing against one another.
"On three, then?" Aziraphale asked, strained, to Crowley.
"Everything we've got, angel," the demon reminded him.
"Of course, my dear."
"One. Two. Three," Crowley hissed.
Cas could feel Jack coming back down the hallway. He straightened up—it had been months since he'd felt Jack's Grace in such a potent way. Like electricity sparking through the air, like every living thing in Creation was bowing, ever so slightly, to its master.
Michael tilted his head back, seeming to sense Jack at the same time as Cas. "Well. Would you look at that."
Jack stepped into the foyer. His eyes were gold. Flanking him were Aziraphale and Crowley, both looking like they were barely standing. Sam followed up the rear, hopeful but terrified.
"It worked," Cas realized.
"And then some," Crowley said. "Not as strong as our Antichrist, but I wouldn't want to go rounds with him."
"Strong enough to end this," Aziraphale tacked on.
"End this? End me?" Michael turned to look at the four, untroubled to a degree that it sowed apprehension in the pit of Castiel's stomach. "Go ahead and try."
Jack stalked forward, taking it as a challenge.
"But if you end me," Michael continued loudly, stopping Jack in his tracks. "You'll end Dean, too. I'll make sure of it. Do you know how easily I could extinguish his soul? I don't need him alive to possess him. Castiel here is proof in practice of that. I've kept that tortured soul of his swaddled each time I took him expressly for this—for leverage. And if there's one thing I know about you, you Winchesters, it's that you will always choose one another over everything. The fate of the world very much included." He cracked a smile with Dean's mouth, and Cas's blood boiled. "So go ahead, Jack. Kill me. And kill Dean."
Jack froze, mouth falling open. He was at a loss. Cas saw the same thing reflected in Sam's eyes.
"Oh for fuck's ssssssake," Crowley groaned. "Meeting, back in the sex torture dungeon, now!"
Cas decided that for the time being, Michael could be left alone, as long it was only for a few minutes. Between the cuffs and the holy fire, he wouldn't be getting out. He followed after the others, back to Room 7B.
Crowley collapsed overdramatically in the chair that had once held their Crowley for so long, throwing both legs up over the side. "So. What do we do?"
"We can't kill Michael if he's in Dean," Sam began. "Jack, do you think you could rip Michael out?"
"I probably could, but there's no telling what he'd do to Dean on the way out," Jack replied dismally. "I—I don't know what to do."
Cas clasped Jack's shoulder, squeezing. "It's okay, Jack."
"It's not okay. I should be able to do something."
"You can," Sam reassured him. "We just...we have to find a way to protect Dean." An idea seemed to hit the younger Winchester. "Wait. Wait, Crowley, you're a demon."
"Thanks so much for noticing."
"I mean, you can possess Dean."
Crowley nodded slowly. "And...and that will help...how, exactly?"
"You can get Dean to fight back control, and protect him from Michael until he does," Castiel said, catching onto Sam's line of thinking. "Together, you can kick Michael out."
"That uh, well that all sounds great in theory—"
"In execution. Our Crowley saved me from Gadreel. You can save Dean from Michael," Sam insisted.
"If Michael doesn't burn my incorporeal form into nothingness, yes, I s'pect I could—"
"Let me," Aziraphale interjected suddenly, stepping between Sam and Crowley. "I can inhabit Dean and spur him to take back control. It will be far less of a risk to me than it would be to Crowley. Michael is strong, undoubtedly so, but it would take something even stronger to simply smite me out of existence." Cas thought he heard a silent I hope at the end of the other angel's statement.
So strange to see another angel, to see one that wasn't broken, or evil, or both. On the higher planes, Aziraphale's swan-like pearlescent wings stretched out on either side of him, proud and beautiful. He radiated a warm light that reminded Cas dimly of that eternal Tuesday afternoon he had once sought out in Heaven when in need of organizing his thoughts, before he had ruined that like he had ruined so much else in Paradise.
Aziraphale felt like Heaven. What Heaven originally was, before it had all gone so wrong. It left an ache of nostalgia and wistfulness in Cas's chest, something hard to wrap his head around and analyze, harder still to ignore.
"Not happening, angel," Crowley said immediately, sitting up ramrod straight in his chair.
"I am a celestial being—"
"This doesn't bear talking about. You can't get into Dean without permission," Castiel interrupted.
Aziraphale swung around and stared at Castiel with furrowed brows. "My dear brother, I don't need permission to inhabit a human. What decorum dictates and what is actual reality are not the same thing."
Castiel tried to remember the last time an angel had called him 'brother' with anything but disdain. Was it Gabriel? Or Hannah? He wasn't sure.
"In this universe, angels must acquire the consent of their vessel," Castiel informed Aziraphale.
Aziraphale looked at Crowley. The demon shrugged. "It's a weird universe."
"Surely that wouldn't apply to me if I were to try? I've never been limited like that before."
"Only one way to find out," Sam said. Cas looked sharply at him. The hunter held up his hands. "If it gives Dean a better chance, we should do it. Or at least try."
"And how exactly is he supposed to just kick an Archangel out?" Crowley asked, launching up from the chair.
Aziraphale arched an eyebrow at Crowley, hands clasped behind his back. "Well pray tell, what you were intending to do, once inside?"
Crowley gaped wordlessly for a few moments before mumbling, "Was just gonna play it by ear."
The angel gave Crowley a serious look. "Flawless plan."
Jack frowned. "Won't Michael burn out Dean as soon as he sees what we're trying to do?"
Cas shook his head. "No, I don't think so. He's overconfident enough that he'll think he can stop Aziraphale. He knows that if he kills Dean now, we'll kill him. He's using Dean as leverage to buy time until he can escape."
"Stop Aziraphale? Wait, I don't remember agreeing to this," Crowley put in, flustered.
"It's his choice," Castiel replied with an air of finality.
"I'll do it," Aziraphale said decisively. "How hard can it be? Not like I haven't stood against an Archangel before." The angel's words trembled just enough that Cas could tell he wasn't nearly as sure of himself as he was trying to make them all believe. "Just business as usual, really."
Crowley hovered behind Aziraphale, doing absolutely nothing to hide his panic. "Aziraphale, this could go bad, really bad—"
Aziraphale turned to Crowley. "It'll be alright, my dear. Just..." Aziraphale tried and failed to smile. "Just have a little faith."
Castiel watched on with bemusement. Crowley looked terrified, mouth working uselessly and staring at Aziraphale as if his entire world was predicated upon the angel's continued existence. Whatever these two were—allies, roommates—it became eminently clear to Cas that they were far closer than he'd imagined. They were friends.
"You know if anyone else asked that of me, I'd laugh in their face," the demon said at length.
"But it's not anyone else. It's me. So what do you say? Do you trust me?" Aziraphale set pleading eyes on the demon, and Crowley broke.
"Only you, angel."
More than friends, then. Family.(4)
"If we're doing this, we need to do it now," Sam said, breaking the moment between the angel and demon.
Aziraphale nodded, but his eyes were still on Crowley. "You'll need to strike when the moment is opportune, Jack. I'll give you a signal."
"What signal?" Jack asked.
"I suspect you'll know it when you see it."
With that, they returned to Michael, who looked just as smug and murderous as he had before. "So disappointing that I had to miss the team meeting," he drawled. "What half-assed, doomed-to-fail plan did you come up with?"
"That would be me," Aziraphale said promptly, watching Michael with utter unease.
Jack waved a hand, and enough of the holy fire parted to allow Aziraphale to walk inside the circle. Michael made a move to break for it, but Jack had already let the flames connect and become whole once more as soon as Aziraphale was through.
Aziraphale stood toe-to-toe with Michael. It was ridiculous, from an outside point of view—Dean, leather, denim, flannel, sharp jaw and green eyes near black with anger, a towering presence, against the far shorter, soft, English professor-esque man with wispy blond curls and at the moment, a fearful, quivering lip.
"So, you're their best move?" Michael asked, peering down at Aziraphale. "It doesn't matter what universe you're from. I'm stronger than you."
"Yes, well." Aziraphale adjusted his vest. "I've found that often times, strength isn't everything."
The angel lunged in a surprisingly fast movement, clamping hands on either side of Dean's face. They both went down to their knees. "Oh, just—just mind the fire now—!" Aziraphale managed, straining. Aziraphale closed his eyes, and Michael's stolen lids fell shut as well.
They both collapsed to the side like that, Aziraphale loosely gripping Dean's face, the fire just inches away from the angel's hair. He could sense Aziraphale's being had left his body entirely; now waging war against Michael within Dean.
Crowley sank down just outside the ring of fire, legs out in front of him, gripping his destroyed shoulder. He stared dejectedly into the flames.
"Please, angel," the demon whispered, and if Cas didn't know any better, he would have called it a prayer. "Don't fuck this up."
1. Though Crowley and Aziraphale were too caught up in one another to notice, in the background, Sam softly whispered, "what the fuck."
2. Crowley rather felt like he was in an episode of paranormal Maury at the moment.
3. The idea of angel cuffs seemed absurd on its face to Aziraphale, and holy fire was a concept entirely foreign to him. There was Hellfire, which could kill angels, but holy fire? Why would something holy hurt angels? The flames on the sword that had once been his weren't even holy; it was just fire. Really more for the aesthetic than anything else.
4. Sam was making wildly different and far less pure assumptions about Crowley and Aziraphale at this point.