Chapter IX — An Unheavenly Creature
The first thing Aziraphale saw was a creek. About twenty feet wide and maybe, at its center, about four feet deep. Sundapple glinted off the water's cheerfully burbling surface, and he could make out the flitting shadows of small fish, minnows and the like. It was a warm, late spring day, the protective covering of canopy overhead a verdant, newborn green. The air smelled of life.
"Hungry?"
Aziraphale snapped his attention off of the peaceful surroundings and onto the voice; a blond American woman who looked to be in her thirties passed by him, paying him no notice whatsoever. She was honed in on a man standing further down the muddy little beach with a fishing pole. She was armed with two plastic-wrapped sandwiches.
When the man turned his head, Aziraphale identified him as Dean Winchester. He reeled in his line and gently rested his pole against a nearby river birch. "Oh hell yeah. I'm starving. PB&J?"
The woman handed him one of the sandwiches with a smile. "Like I know how to make anything else."
"Winchester Surprise," said Dean.
"I think you and your father are the only people who ever thought that counted as edible food."
Dean tore a large bite out of the sandwich, chewing with his mouth open. "Hey, don't talk shit on Winchester Surprise."
"I would never dare."
Aziraphale took in more details as the two quietly chatted and ate their sandwiches. Further down the stream he spotted Jack on a rock outcropping, brow furrowed in concentration. Further down still he made out the distant shapes of Sam and Castiel, Castiel perched on a large tackle box, watching Sam wrangle with a trout.
This could only be some kind of placating illusion designed by Michael to keep Dean sedate. The question was, how to break it?
The woman finished her sandwich and took the remaining plastic wrap from Dean, stowing it in the pocket of her windbreaker. "Fill the void?"
"Definitely. Thanks Mom. And, uh—can you go check in on Jack? Watching the kid put worms on the hook like that is giving me an aneurysm. His fingers are gonna look like chip-chopped ham by the time we're done today."
Mom? Surely not. They looked the same age, even with Dean perhaps being on the older side. Was this an idealized, younger version of his mother?
"I'm on it." She departed, leaving Aziraphale alone with Dean, who had not noticed him. Likely a side effect of this ruse of Michael's.
Aziraphale approached cautiously, a hand raised. "Dean Winchester?"
Dean squinted and tilted his head, like he had heard something, but then quickly dismissed it, picking up his fishing pole again.
"Dean," he said, a bit louder, "Your family's sent me."
That same squint. He cast his line out.
"DEAN WINCHESTER," Aziraphale all but shouted.
Dean glanced down the shore at the rest of his compatriots, but no other reaction was yielded.
"Oh, bugger." Aziraphale rounded Dean until he stood in front of him. Dean stared straight through him. "I do hate to do this to a human, but, desperate times..."
Aziraphale forewent his usual appearance, allowing his true form to shine through.
"What the absolute FUCK—"
"So sorry," Aziraphale apologized, snapping back to his typical body as soon as he had Dean's attention. Dean, who was now on the ground, scrambled back against a tree, fishing pole abandoned off to the side, half in the shallows. He whipped out a pistol and pointed it directly at Aziraphale's head.
"WHAT. ARE. YOU."
"An angel, dear boy—and that was my true form. Not the most...aesthetically pleasing sight in the world, admittedly, but it did serve me properly in getting your attention."
"Wh-why were there so many eyes?" Dean asked faintly, gun still held tight in his hand.
"The Almighty was very proud of certain things in the Beginning. Eyes. Wings. Lions. Especially eyes though. She went, ah—one could say overboard, with the eyes."(1)
Dean flipped the safety off on his weapon. "You better start explaining."
Aziraphale noted that the others had all vanished from the creek. Good. Dean was starting to see through the cracks. "My name is Aziraphale, and you're trapped inside your own mind," Aziraphale began without dallying. "The Archangel Michael has suppressed your conscience and taken control of your body. Your family has sent me in to alert you to this so you can take back what is yours and properly toss him out." Aziraphale smiled pleasantly at Dean. "So, ah...just..." he made a vague gesture with his hand. "Give him what for, I suppose!"
"Michael's gone. He left me. He couldn't have jumped my bones again without consent," Dean insisted.
"Apparently a backdoor of sorts was left open."
"Doesn't explain how the hell you're in here. I know I didn't tell some random angel they could hang out in my brain. And I know all the angels that are left, and you ain't one of them."
"Not in this universe, no."
Dean's eyes widened ever-so-slightly. "Wait a minute. Aziraphale. You're AJ's angel butt-buddy?"
Aziraphale was not prepared to unpack that sentence, and they were dreadfully short on time, so he just said, "...Yes?"
"I still don't get how you got in me," Dean said, but he did cautiously lower (but not holster) his pistol.
"The notion that a human can deny an angel anything is strictly a feature of your universe, I'm afraid."
The human's stomach seemed to turn at that. He pushed himself up off of the ground, still keeping a suspicious eye on Aziraphale. "That's pretty fucked up."
"I believe some would argue that's the state of your entire universe, my dear fellow."
"Shut up." Dean looked around wildly. "Okay, so where is the bastard?"
"I...I'm not sure. To be honest, I'd expected him to show up by now."
"I thought I'd watch the show, first."
Aziraphale could almost feel Dean's blood run cold. Aziraphale turned, and Michael was frighteningly close behind him, still wearing Dean's face, but dressed in an outfit far more befitting the late 30s than 20...well 20-whatever-it-happened-to-be-in-their-current-universe.
Aziraphale backed away quickly with a barely stifled gasp, nearly slipping in the mud as he aligned himself side-by-side with Dean.
Michael clucked his tongue, eyes never leaving Dean. "Dean, Dean, Dean. Did you really think for one second that I would just, what? Let you go? Out of the..." he scoffed under his breath, "the kindness of my heart?"
"Go fuck yourself, douchebag. Get. Out."
Michael did not fuck himself, nor did he get out.
"Get out of my head!" Dean said, more forcefully.
"The power of positive thinking is not enough to defeat an Archangel." Michael stalked forward. "Nor is a Principality without a drop of combat experience in his body." He looked pointedly at Aziraphale. "You can go now."
Aziraphale felt an overwhelming sensation grip him, like a great hand had reached down from the sky and grabbed him by the back of the neck, like a mother hauling its newborn kitten to a better place to rest. Aziraphale resisted, but he wasn't sure how long he could hold out. "Dean, this is your mind, your imagination. You are in control."
Michael's cheek twitched in subdued anger, no doubt incensed that he couldn't eject Aziraphale from Dean's mind with just a thought. "I knew that these idiots were, well, idiots, but sending you in to face me—that's stupid even for them."
"Stupid, is it?" Aziraphale was pooling almost all of his power into staying exactly where he was. "And yet, you can't force me out."
The anger unsubdued itself. "Oh, can't I?"
Aziraphale let out a shrill exclamation when the Archangel surged forward and grabbed him by the collar, slamming him bodily into the ground.
Oh, oh no no, no no no. He'd be the first to admit that fighting was very far out of his area of expertise. Yes, he'd gone through the training, just like any other Principality, but that had been 6,000 years ago, and such lessons tend to accrue cobwebs over time, especially if not refreshed upon...never mind the fact that he had, maybe, perhaps, not attended the drills as frequently as was expected of him, preferring to stay in Eden with Adam and Eve. Their company had been a great deal less maudlin than that of his brothers and sisters, so enamored with the world and their home as they were.
Aziraphale mulled on past missteps as Michael jawed him so hard he saw stars. Goodness, he could count on one hand the amount of times he'd been hit about the face in his life, and that was without contest the hardest.(2) Pain was different here, not registering on a physical level, but very much on an ethereal one. The second punch, aimed at his mouth, was doubly excruciating.
Thankfully, Dean chose that moment to tackle Michael to the side, the two of them rolling into the shallows, exchanging punches. Aziraphale wiped a shaking hand across his face, and it came back bloody. He stared, feeling the beginnings of panic. He couldn't remember the last time he'd seen his own blood.
With a great splash, Dean was thrown head over heels into the creek. Michael stood, soaked, eyes alight with malice. His gaze fell on Aziraphale.
"You never learned how to fight. I hope you learned how to swim."
"He's been in there too long. Something's gone wrong."
"I thought you said you trusted him?" Sam said, pacing the foyer like a caged animal. This rather irritated Crowley, who wanted to pace himself, but thought it would be weird if he and the hunter paced simultaneously.
"It's not about trusssst," Crowley hissed, still sitting on the floor just outside the ring of fire and clutching his shoulder, staring at Aziraphale's expressionless face, his closed eyes. All tension and anxiety absent from the familiar lines and curves of the angel's corporeal form. Like he was just taking a very pleasant nap. If only. "It's about—well, how do we know what's going on in there? We don't."
"He can't kill him," Castiel pointed out from where he stood at Jack's side. Jack, who had been incredibly silent, watching Aziraphale and Dean's motionless forms with just as much intensity as Crowley, though for entirely different reasons, he was sure.
"You hope!" Crowley snapped back at the angel, then shriveled somewhat and added, "I hope."
His heart skipped several beats when Dean twitched, face falling into an expression that greatly resembled pain. Dean shuddered, and Crowley hoped that meant the job had been done, but neither angel nor human woke.
"If Michael was capable of killing Aziraphale, he would have done it the second he stepped inside the circle," Cas continued, catching onto Crowley's fear, "We can only assume—"
"I'm not assuming one blessed thing! This is Aziraphale's life we're talking about!"
"And Dean's," Sam put in, stopping his efforts to dig a rut in the bunker floor and rounding on Crowley. "You're not the only one risking—risking everything, okay? That's my brother in there."
An idea hit Crowley. "Not...everything."
Sam just stared. "What?"
"You said Dean's a—a Heavenly vessel or some codswallop like that? Can handle a lot of welcome and/or unwelcomed guests in his body?"
Cas stepped away from Jack, narrowing his eyes at Crowley. "What are you trying to say?"
Crowley rose on unsteady legs. Whether from blood loss or overexertion, he didn't know, and at the moment, really didn't bloody care. "I'm saying that if you're saying he's not gonna explode, I'm going in."
Crowley made for the circle of fire.
"Crowley, you can't pass the—" Jack began, but Crowley waved him off with an unconcerned hand.
"I won't burn." He glared at the flames pointedly as he said this, as if to say, don't you DARE think of so much as singeing a FIBER of these skinny jeans.
Crowley sauntered through the fire without issue and knelt down next to Aziraphale and Dean.
"Haven't done this in a long time," he murmured, placing two fingers just underneath Dean's right ear. "Here goes."
The snake tattoo below Crowley's ear slid to Dean's, and Crowley collapsed.
Nobody could ever accuse Michael of not being able to multitask. He could, quite effectively, drown Aziraphale and Dean at the same time. One hand on the back of each of their heads. And the bitch of being drowned inside a fantasy in your own head, was that you couldn't die, you were just drowned, perpetually. Went without saying, it sucked pretty fucking hard, and judging by Aziraphale's thrashing and water-muted screams, he felt very much the same about their current situation.
Dean was trying his damnedest to take back control, but that was a hell of a lot easier said than done. Especially considering that as of right now, he didn't have an ounce of control.
The hand on the back of his head loosened, ever-so-slightly, and Dean used the opportunity to burst out of the surface of the water and suck in a near orgasmic breath of oxygen. He made to strike at Michael, but was interrupted by—
"The fuck?"
Crowley, appearing out of literally nowhere, and with something that sounded like a poor imitation of a battle cry, drop-kicked Michael in the back of the head. Michael went under with Crowley falling gracelessly on his back, scrabbling for purchase as his sunglasses slid off his face and he too went under the waves. Aziraphale's head broke the surface, finally free, and his face was a mask of pure terror, his blond curls plastered against his forehead. The angel vomited creek water, struggling back to the shore, and Dean was right behind him.
"Oh—oh dear God," Aziraphale managed, hands white-knuckled in the sand.
All Dean heard behind him was splashing. Crowley and Michael tussling underwater.
Dean watched in dim amazement as the creek vanished, leaving only the dry bed in its wake.
"Did you do that?" Aziraphale coughed hoarsely.
"No," Dean replied immediately.
Aziraphale, to Dean's surprise, grinned. "Crowley."
Dean swung his head over his shoulder to look at Crowley and Michael. Crowley was standing over Michael in the creek bed, huffing. "Yeah, that's right. Not so tough now, are you?" Crowley stooped down and collected his sunglasses from where they rested in the now dry, cracked earth. "You're not the only one who can shake things up in here."
Michael got to his feet, pure fucking murder in his eyes. "Are they just going to keep cramming more things down his throat until someone manages to break my hold? Should I be expecting Castiel, next?"
"Wait, wait, how is he moving stuff around in my head when I can't?" Dean asked Aziraphale urgently.
Aziraphale was beaming at the demon. "He has quite the imagination."
Crowley held his sunglasses aloft, but didn't put them back on his face. "No, I'm last in. See, the angel's tougher than he looks, but he's not scary."
"So you're here to...what?" Michael scoffed. "Put the fear of God in me?"
Dean watched as Crowley's eyes lost their faint touch of humanness, and amber filled his sclera, erasing any hint that there'd once been defined irises. "Something a bit lower, actually."
"What do I have to fear from a demon as soft as you?" Michael growled.
Crowley grabbed Michael by the collar and dragged him up so they were nearly nose-to-nose. "You believe that act I fed the Winchesters? Thought you were smarter in this universe. Guess not."
An immediate thrill of alarm shot through Dean; act? I knew we couldn't get this lucky. Find something powerful that actually doesn't want to fuck our shit up.
"And in your universe?" the Archangel countered. "I'm sure you cowered before me there, too."
"You're already dead," Crowley replied with an unaffected shrug of one shoulder. "All the Archs are...except me."
"An Archangel?" Dean repeated under his breath. Was he bluffing, or for real? It would explain the devil's trap and demon bombs not working, but the angel cuffs at least dampening his powers. But Crowley had just seemed so...not Archangel-y.
Michael tried to jerk away, but Crowley held fast. Just how much control did he have?
If he can take it back, why can't I?
Raven-black wings spread out on either side of Crowley, a wingspan of nearly fourteen feet in total.
Michael swallowed visibly. "Demons don't have wings."
Crowley just raised one eyebrow. "I'm not a demon." Lunging, he slammed Michael down on his back, hand still tight on his throat. "Sam Winchester had the right of it the first time."
Michael gritted his teeth, still struggling to gain back control. "Lucifer?"
Out of the corner of his eye, Dean noted that Aziraphale seemed more delighted than disturbed by all of this. Was the angel full of it too? Was he even an angel? Dean's mind flashed back to the...thing...Aziraphale had originally appeared to him as. If that was an angel in their universe, he didn't want to know what a demon's true form looked like.
"I'd say the one and only, but apparently multiverses are a thing."
"You can't be. The angel, he isn't Fallen."
Crowley looked bored, flicking his serpentine attention briefly to Aziraphale. "Just a pet, really. Thought he was pretty. Shame to kill all the angels. Some still have their uses."
Aziraphale let out an indignant huff beside Dean, but said nothing.
"You're no Lucifer," Michael spat, straining against Crowley's hold. "He's my brother. I would know."
"Would you?" Crowley finally tightened his hand enough to cut off Michael's airway, tilting his head in a distinctly inhuman way. Dean had yet to see the demon(3) blink. "We're both a long way from our universes, mate. I don't know you from Adam, but I know a stuffed-up bird when I see one. And the real rub here is that I already know I can beat you. I beat you before. I beat them all—in my world, the apocalypse is done and over with, and I won. Hell won." Crowley let out a half-mad laugh and let his eyes glow just that much brighter. "And now the devil reigns. The old king is dead, long live the king. So really, this is just all a big bloody waste of time, isn't it? We both know how this ends."
That's when Dean saw it in Michael's eyes, eyes that were his but colder, emptier.
Fear.
Crowley turned his head, and his gaze met Dean's. Do it.
Dean shoved himself back to his feet, took a deep breath, and roared:
"GET—THE HELL—OUT OF ME!"
1. Aziraphale's never bothered to count just how many eyes, but goodness, there was something to be said for moderation.
2. In descending order from least painful to most:
—The time Crowley had gotten the two of them into a bar fight in Meknes sometime in the 11th century. Crowley had swung spectacularly at a trader he'd insulted (and was too piss-drunk to miracle away) but the lithe man had ducked just in time for Crowley's fist to collide unspectacularly with Aziraphale's cheek. The three had fallen in a heap to the floor. Aziraphale had not been cross about the accidental punch, but very cross about his djellaba getting ruined in the process.
—Aziraphale had once made the mistake of suggesting to Emperor Nero that the great statue erected in his honor could stand to be, perhaps, less than twelve stories tall.
—In 1916, Aziraphale had attempted to break up a bizarre, sadistic sex cult in Russia. As it turns out, Grigori Rasputin has a mean right hook.
3. Or whatever the fuck he was. Dean was usually halfway decent at spotting a bluff, but the personality Crowley had portrayed over the past day was almost as unbelievable as him being Satan.