XV — An Unsurprising Union

A/N: This chapter wasn't supposed to take this long or be this long but these motherfuckers won't shut up. We cool? We cool.

Aziraphale woke before Crowley.

He had no means of telling what time it was, given there were no windows in the bunker. He couldn't deny his disorientation, as after they'd...consummated their heartfelt confessions...they'd both fallen soundly asleep, and it had not yet even been noon.

It had been quite the morning. To say the very least of it.

Aziraphale tightened his arm around Crowley's middle, feeling no small sense of wonder at the feel of their bare bodies slotted together. To have carefully crafted so many boundaries and barriers over the millennia, certain ways of acting, certain ways of touching that could be called 'acceptable' while never venturing into anything more, anything dangerous...only to shatter it within the span of just a few hours.

He wasn't complaining. In awe, more like.

One moment of bravery was all he had needed, and thank God—or Whomever was responsible—he'd found it when he most needed it.

He nosed at the back of Crowley's neck, cataloging that sensation just as he had carefully recorded every other brush of lips and hands. Filed away to a part of his mind labeled with the demon's name. He kissed Crowley's nape and filed it away similarly.

Wondrous.

But he was restless, and there was no telling how long Crowley would sleep. Unfettered, the demon could go on for years. Not that Aziraphale could possibly let him do that now. He was having difficulty restraining himself from waking the demon up presently, to further explore what they had begun earlier. He rather thought he'd like to do a great deal of that in the very near future.

Comforting, wasn't it, that they could still surprise each other. And the thrilling slash of Crowley's hip bones under his fingertips was indeed a surprise, just as each new faucet of him Aziraphale ghosted his hands over was. He had seen and even inhabited Crowley's corporeal form, but to touch, to hold, to feel...so entirely different. So...

He had to roll away from the demon. Crowley needed to sleep off the excitement of the past few days. Undeniably. Aziraphale felt somewhat back to normal, after his dealings with the Shadow, but Crowley might need longer. Over-stimulation frequently drove the demon into the embrace of sleep, and Aziraphale wouldn't interrupt him until such a time that they needed to depart for their own universe.

He really did need to find out what time it was.

He extricated himself carefully from the bed, even though the risk of waking Crowley was relatively low.(1) He dressed himself(2), trying and mostly failing to distance his mind from memories of when Crowley had undressed him—at first reluctantly, then anything but.

A few minutes later, Aziraphale set out from the room, fully-clothed, in search of a clock.

He found the next best thing; Castiel in the foyer, staring half-interested at the screen of a laptop, the lights in the room dimmed.

"Hello brother," Aziraphale greeted him warmly. "I don't suppose you have the time?"

Castiel looked up in dim surprise, jarred from whatever he was watching, something with women in orange jumpsuits. "It's just past midnight."

Good Lord. Had they really slept that long? And that left them about twelve more hours before they would need to return through the portal, lest Anathema close it and leave them thoroughly stuck in the Winchesters' universe. Aziraphale would like to avoid that eventuality at all costs, even though the temptation to stay and read his way through troves of new literature was indeed an enchanting thought, if not dwelt upon for too long.

Castiel seemed as though he wanted to say something, but was struggling to phrase it properly..."Are you...well, Aziraphale?"

Rather more than I ever think I've been, actually. "Feeling much better. Where is everyone else?"

"I think Crowley is drinking his way through Sam and Dean's liquor cabinet. The boys and Jack went to bed already."

"And you?"

Castiel smiled. "The new season of Orange is the New Black. I do enjoy some human things. Netflix being one of them."

"I never did find television half so charming as most," Aziraphale admitted. "Though I suppose I'll come 'round to it eventually."(3)

"I had an...illness, several years ago, that left me bedridden for some time. It was the only thing that kept me losing my mind from boredom," Castiel explained before gently closing the laptop. "Aziraphale...I want to apologize for what Jack did. For tricking you and Crowley. It wasn't right, and he realizes that now. You have to understand, he's still—"

"Learning," Aziraphale filled in. "You may find this hard to believe, but I've spent the past several years helping to raise a child. I know that there are always missteps on the path to learning the difference between right and wrong. Still, young Jack's heart was in the right place, and while Crowley would remind me what the road to Hell is paved with, it is my opinion that good intentions should count for something."

"I would tend to agree, but still. He put you two at great risk. In spite of that, though, I...owe you my thanks. My life, really. Jack wasn't wrong. I think if you hadn't done what you did, the Shadow would have come for me, and soon. I've been trying my hardest to be anything but content since I made that deal, but..."

"Contentedness tends to work its way in when one least expects it," Aziraphale said with a sympathetic nod. "In spite of the undeniably awful experience, I'm glad at the result. No one should live in fear of constant reprisal for every small moment of happiness. That would make for an indescribably bleak existence, I would imagine."

Cas nodded gravely. "I agree. I have to say, I feel…"

Aziraphale smiled knowingly. "Free?"

"Yes. Free. For...maybe the first time."

He knew that feeling all too well himself. "I'm glad for you, Castiel. For all I wouldn't want to return to the Empty, now or ever, it was worth it for what's come of it."

"I suppose Crowley and myself should both count ourselves lucky."

Aziraphale hummed, clasping his hands behind his back. "An interesting sort, your Crowley. A bit...harder than my own, but I see their similarities, certainly."

Castiel leaned back in his chair, contemplative. "Crowley told Dean he's planning on closing the gates of Hell. Giving up the throne. Normally, I wouldn't trust Crowley, but given everything that's happened...I think that he truly means it. I hope that after the gates are locked, he finds...something. Like Crowley found you." A small, sad smile. "Love redeems. Or so I've been told."

Aziraphale blinked. "Love?"

"I…" the other angel shifted, clearly uncomfortable. "You...you two, I…"

"Oh." Well he supposed that the assumption wasn't so faulty anymore, was it? "Well. Yes. But, Crowley, he didn't...how to put it?" So odd to speak of such things after keeping tight-lipped for hundreds upon hundreds of years. "He didn't need redemption."

Cas's eyes narrowed in confusion. "He's a demon."

"I've found species doesn't count for much, in all reality. If anything, he…" Aziraphale nervously drummed his fingertips on the back of his other hand. "Crowley always knew the score from the start. Knew that Heaven and Hell, Good and Evil...they were just names. Nothing more. Arbitrary lines. He was always good, in his own way. Perhaps it even comes more easily to him than myself—if only because it's in his nature to question. To decide for himself the difference between right and wrong. He was the one who taught the humans to do it, after all. Me, I—" a flash of a grimace, "well me, I just gave them War."

"What do you mean?"

"A sword...my sword. Gave it to Adam to protect himself and Eve. And every drop of blood spilled in battle thereafter could—I suppose you could say it's on my hands. In a fashion."

"And God? What did He—She—do? You didn't Fall," Cas said, indicating with a tilt of his head Aziraphale's very clearly still white wings, hidden away out of human sight.

"She, ah... She didn't do anything, as it so happens." Aziraphale tried to suppress the tangible loss rising like a tide in his chest. "She asked me about it, once. And that...well, that was the last time She ever spoke to me, actually." He unclasped his hands in favor of fiddling with his waistcoat. "I, well, frankly I sometimes wonder if She kept me down on Earth as...a kind of punishment. Like I wasn't trusted enough to return to Heaven. Turned out in my favor, of course—I do so vastly prefer Earth—but, nonetheless. Makes one wonder what She's really planning."

He had rebelled, taken the side of humanity, tumbled into bed with a demon—and still, he hadn't joined the Fallen.

It would beg the question, was this always what She had intended?

"I ask myself almost every day what our God is planning, and the best answer I've come up with is...He isn't," Castiel sighed. He looked eager to skirt by that subject. "So you're saying Crowley was always...this way? From the start?"

"Yes. It wasn't he who needed to change to save the world—it was me. Crowley has always done quite a good job of two things: listening to his heart above all else, and pretending very much so that he doesn't have a heart to listen to. I...made the mistake of confusing obedience for goodness. Not one and the same. Or, if they are, then I suppose being good isn't all it's cracked up to be. I don't see much good in the end of everything."

A brief smile from the other angel. "I never did, either."

Aziraphale returned the smile. "Great minds, dear brother." Aziraphale exhaled wistfully. "It is a shame Crowley and I have to leave so soon—but perhaps we can engineer a way to visit again, or at least a method of communication so if something goes sideways on either end, we could..."

"Work together?"

"We all have undeniably unique skill sets. Applicable to...unpleasant scenarios."

He was fairly sure Crowley was right about the Big One still yet coming to them; to have the Winchesters and their companions on their side would be an immense comfort. Jack alone could turn the tide in a global conflict between Heaven and Hell.

Oh, he hated to think like this. Hope suited him much better—the hope that maybe this was just the Ineffable Plan all along, and that their story was over, at least the exciting part.

He'd rather had enough excitement for the next century, he decided.

"After this, it's the least we owe you," Castiel agreed readily. "We can figure some method of communication out—Crowley may have an idea. If not him, then his mother."

"We are not," echoed a voice from the shadows, "calling my mother."

Aziraphale and Castiel both jumped as Crowley stepped into the room, glass of scotch in hand.

"Crowley," Castiel acknowledged with no small deal of caution.

"Staying up late, talking about boys, painting each other's nails...and you didn't even invite me. I'm hurt."

"That's not what we were doing," Castiel said flatly.

"Sharing fee-fees nonetheless." Crowley seated himself in the chair next to Castiel, throwing his feet up on the table, all easy and careless grace. Aziraphale still had no idea what to make of the demon king. His relationship with the Winchesters and Castiel seemed tense, complicated, beyond knowing for one who had just fallen into their lives mere days ago. There was some kind of care, there, some kind of complex affection Aziraphale didn't fully grasp.

But the demon seemed unquestionably lonely, and once more, Aziraphale couldn't help but compare him to his own Crowley. Couldn't help but wonder what his Crowley would be like, if they hadn't had each other over the millennia.

Every lonely monster needs a companion.

"Do take a picture, Aziraphale; it will last longer."

He realized he'd been staring and hurriedly looked away. "Apologies, Mr. Crowley," he took care to use the proper pronunciation. "How are you feeling, post-resurrection?"

"Like I have a bloody migraine and have to go wrangle back an entire plane of existence under my control just so I can lock the damned thing up," Crowley groused, sipping at his scotch. "But, also: alive. So." He raised his glass, then downed the rest of it. A snap of his fingers, and it was full again.

"You're drunk," Castiel observed mildly.

"Everyone has their coping mechanisms, Kitten," Crowley shot back without a great deal of energy. Crowley slid his eyes to Aziraphale. "Where's your demon?"

"Ah, quite thoroughly asleep at the moment. I didn't want to wake him."

"Should say not, sounded like you put him through his paces earlier."

Aziraphale blushed so brilliantly he feared he may have been glowing. Oh Good Lord, they heard.

"Crowley," Castiel chastised. "Leave him be."

"Oh, I'm not criticizing. About time somebody got shagged in this fetid pit. And you and Dean both seem as repressed as you once were, so someone had to step up to the plate." Crowley took a deep, long-suffering breath. "Now what is it you think you need my mother for?"

"A method of communication between realities."

Crowley rolled his eyes with spectacular exaggeration. "Of course you lot couldn't want something simple. How long before you'll need it?"

Aziraphale realized Crowley was wordlessly offering his help. "Oh! Yes, well, my Crowley and I must be off by the morning. Our portal back closes at noon tomorrow."

Castiel's brow furrowed. "You're planning on going back through the portal in Heaven?"

"Well, of course. How else would we get back to our own world?"

Castiel's eyes turned urgent. "Aziraphale, you can't take Crowley through Heaven."

"I think they'll let us pass, given their current, erm, faith in me—"

"Demons can't go through Heaven. Not in this universe," Crowley cut in. "Our dear Anthony, if his subatomic makeup is anything even remotely equivalent to a demonic entity here, will be incinerated the second he steps through the gate that leads to Heaven. Same goes for still-living humans."

Aziraphale put a hand to his chest, disturbed by the mere thought. "But surely if Crowley could withstand Heaven in our universe..."

"Different universes," Crowley chimed. "You could be right—he could be fine. Lucifer was a fallen angel, and he could still bumble his way Upwards. But, somehow I doubt you're willing to take that risk."

The demon king was more than right on that account. "Oh dear."

"Now, I know a few things about pumping up demonic vessels," Crowley gestured down at himself, "making them stronger than they have any right to be. Comes with being King of Hell—need somewhere to put all those tasty, tasty Hell souls. I can do a little...work, on Anthony. So to speak. I can't make guarantees, but I can shore up his body."

Aziraphale felt sick to his stomach. "But he could still—?"

"I strongly recommend having him stick a hand through first to make sure he's not going to implode the second you go Upstairs."

Implode. He didn't like the sound of that one bit. "And this...shoring up...would consist of, what, exactly?"

"A great deal of me carving into him with a knife. High pain tolerance, I hope? I know he has that line about sauntering vaguely downwards, but surely Falling toughened him up a bit, yeah?"

"I—" Aziraphale frowned, shaking his head. "That will have to be up to him. I'll wake him; I'm afraid we have no time to waste, now."

Crowley woke to the feel of Aziraphale's breath on his face. "My dear?" the angel murmured hesitantly.

Crowley hazily opened his eyes, the room blurred before sliding into view. Aziraphale was knelt down at the side of the bed, face incredibly close to Crowley's, and his eyes wide with recognizable concern. Now, granted, Aziraphale's resting expression was one of faint concern, but this seemed a tad more urgent.

"What's—" recollections from earlier in the day hit him in a rush. "Oh, we—oh." Crowley swallowed. "That was real, was it?"

The memory of Aziraphale's weight bearing down on him, both of them breathless and taken with one another, seemed real enough, but he'd be the first to admit he had a very vivid imagination.

"Very much so," Aziraphale said, and his face softened into a surprising display of open affection before kissing him lightly on the lips. "Every second. All real," Aziraphale said against his mouth, "but I'm afraid we haven't time to bask in the afterglow."

Crowley withdrew enough to look Aziraphale in his eyes, pretending not to be totally dazed by just that bare lip contact. "How d'you mean?"

"I didn't realize—in this universe, demons can't step foot in Heaven without being incinerated."

Crowley pulled away from the angel and flopped back on the bed, flat on his back. "You've got to be kidding me."

"I do wish I was. The Winchesters' Crowley may have a solution, though it sounds...unpleasant."

"'Course." Crowley looked at his clothes, disheveled in heaps on the floor. "S'pose this means I've got to get dressed, then?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And means we can't go for round two just yet?"

Aziraphale's cheeks reddened. "Focus, Crowley."

"Oh, you've buggered any shot of that for the next century, angel," Crowley said, smiling in spite of himself. Reluctantly, he snapped himself back into his clothes, smoothing out non-existent wrinkles in his shirt. "Alright. So, what've I got to do?"

"I think...carving, is required. Into your," Aziraphale indicated Crowley's chest with a raise of his eyebrows. "Well, your everything, I believe."

Crowley groaned. "Great. Just what I want to wake up to—oh good morning dear, care to get kebab'd by the King of Hell?"

"Nothing so dramatic. No impaling, certainly."

"Small mercies."

The King of Hell wasted no time once Aziraphale had deposited a bleary-eyed Anthony in front of him.

"Strip," Crowley ordered, sharpening one of the Winchesters' thinner blades. They stood in Room 7B, or more specifically, Crowley's old haunting ground behind it, his own little piece of Hell. They'd scooted out the chair, leaving room for Anthony to stand, and for Crowley to circle while he carved in the proper Enochian into him to strengthen his body—hopefully enough to hold against the celestial bombardment of Heaven.

Anthony rolled his eyes, snapped his fingers, and he was down to his boxers. And sunglasses. Of course. "You're not getting full-frontal. Sorry."

"Such tragedy that I'll have to limit myself to artist's renderings," Crowley sniped, inspecting the blade.

"Just get on with it," Anthony complained. "Not as if we even need this. If I can go into Heaven at home, I can go into Heaven here. Devil's traps didn't work on me there, and quite obviously," he noted the devil's trap he currently stood in, "don't do a fat lot of good here, either."

"Yes, well, better safe than sorry—at least your dearly beloved seemed to think so."(4)

Anthony didn't seem to have a response to that. Crowley drew a nick through the devil's trap, so he could step inside. Once he did so, he orbited the other demon, mostly scoping out the canvas, but with a reasonable percentage of less than clean thoughts as well. Not that you could really call any of his thoughts clean, per se.

The other demons crossed his arms, glaring at him. "Don't objectify me."

Crowley barked out a laugh. Perceptive, this one. "Forgive me. Seeing you in the flesh—bizarre. But well-made flesh, inarguably."

"Taken, mate."

"Believe me, I know. Now hold still." Crowley stopped behind Anthony, facing the fallen angel's back. Crowley positioned the blade carefully between Anthony's shoulder blades. "Might sting."

"Look, I'm pretty used to—oi, fuck!" the serpent hissed loudly when Crowley dug in the point. "Strictly necessary to go that deep?"

"I should be going deeper, consider yourself lucky," Crowley replied, placing his free hand on the other demon's shoulder, to better steady him.

Anthony sighed. "How d'you people live like this? Just one problem to the next. Been here three days and it's driven me half-mad."

Crowley let a bitter little smile twist his lips. "God only knows," he said cryptically. "We play our parts. We do the song and dance. We live, we die, we love, we bleed, Chuck laughs with a bowl of popcorn in his lap."

"And you?"

"And me?" Crowley parroted back. "I do the bleeding part a lot—the dying on occasion too, or at least fake-deaths and half-deaths, save for the last. Fair warning, darling. The Winchesters usually don't keep friends for long. Use people up till their husks, or stop being useful. Whichever comes first."

"Then why bother hanging around them?" retorted the other demon irritably, as Crowley continued to carve into his back.

Crowley didn't know how to answer that to himself, much less somebody else. "No idea."

"Look, I don't know about you—but in my world, we don't go palling 'round much with humans. They don't live long. They're messy. There's a few I've liked well enough—"

"Freddie?" Crowley cut in. "Always assumed there was a story there."

Anthony completely and intentionally ignored him, pushing on: "—but not the kind to die for. Even if they are...whatever the Winchesters are." Crowley didn't respond immediately, so Anthony filled the silence himself. "Something about your tetchy aura? 'Bout that science experiment you mentioned?"

"Don't come to me for a recap. Not worth retreading," Crowley answered.

"Sensitive?" Crowley dug in the blade a little deeper, and the other demon hissed. "Bloody hell!"

"The Winchesters reignited my soul. A bit. Made me...want things. That I'd known better than to even think to want before."

"Like?"

"This is not the time to have a heart-to-heart."

"Why not? Seems like you need one. Can smell the booze on you," Anthony said, tasting the air with his tongue—or scenting it, rather. Crowley was still blurry on how physiologically snake-like Anthony was.

Crowley's mouth twisted. He wasn't nearly drunk enough to have this conversation. "I'm not like you."

"Funny, but general consensus seems to be that you are, because your own mother thought I was you for a bit when she first pulled me here—"

"My mother is an evil cow. Best to ignore her entirely," Crowley interrupted. He didn't have the mental real estate for Rowena at the moment, much less the concept of her trying to save him. He'd been much happier when they'd been in a state of comfortable, mellow hatred. Burned hot enough to keep them both warm, but not so vicious as to make it so they couldn't work together should the time come.

"I hate you, because if I didn't hate you, I'd love you."

No. Not thinking about that now.

He had drank a lot, hadn't he?

"We're not alike," Crowley reiterated again. "You're...soft."

"Am not!" Anthony raged. "I'm a demon just as much as you—and older, I'd bet, so—so respect your elders! Calling me soft, where do you get off!"

"I read your little book, darling. I know all about you. And I know that you get impulses to rearrange signboards and steal the radios out of sports cars. You glue change to the sidewalk so you can laugh when people bend down to pick it up. You built the M25. Probably your most heinous offense."

"What, now you're going to lecture me about how I should be corrupting priests, or something? Thought you were a big picture type." Anthony seemed almost disappointed.

"Oh, I am. But you and I painted very different pictures."

"What could you have done that's so bad? How many times have you helped the Winchesters save everyone and everything?"

"Doesn't cancel out the several hundred years when I was doing decidedly not that."

"Only a few hundred years, eh? I knew you were a baby."

"I am not. A baby," Crowley growled.

"Well you're acting like a baby, so that makes you a baby."

"Turn around."

"Why?"

"So I can punch you in the face—why do you think? Out of space back here."

Anthony turned with no small amount of grumbling. Crowley restarted on the demon's front, beginning at his sternum. "Is this your thing, then? Guilt complex? What is it with you people? All of you so caught up in the—the man angst. Doesn't it get boring?"

"More than you can imagine." Crowley pursed his lips. "It's always been easy for you. Being...not evil. Not all the way good, sure. No one's all the way good. You've drowned a few ducks. It happens."

"What? I never drowned any ducks. I like ducks."

"Hmm. Well, can't expect the book to be dead-on. Writing's a great deal like driving through the dark and the fog with one headlight. Anyways, point is, you don't get the urge to murder and desecrate, take and destroy."

Anthony was surprisingly quiet, for almost thirty seconds. Blissful until he inevitably spoke again: "You do?"

"Mmm."

"A lot?"

"Never stops."

"...Even...after you...?"

"Yes, even after my soul burst back to life—only now I get to feel guilty about it all. An endless delight."

"Sounds terrible."

"And how."

It was at that moment that Dean trundled into the dungeon, clad in bathrobe and boxers, wiping sleep from his eyes. Anthony turned his head to look at him over his shoulder. Crowley shot him a finger-wave.

Dean just stared, eyelids at half-mast. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then opened it once more, to say: "You know what, I...I don't wanna know."

The Winchester disappeared without another word.

"But you helped the Winchesters before your soul thing happened. I did read those bloody awful books," Anthony continued, untroubled by Dean's brief cameo in their—oh sweet hell, we are having a heart-to-heart, aren't we?

"The world weeps for you. And yes, I did."

"So there must've been something not totally wickedly evil about you, right? To want to save the world?"

"No, I didn't want the apocalypse because I'm not an idiot. You can be smart and still be evil."

"But you healed, uhhhhh, what's-his-name—Bobby. Healed his legs up. Didn't have to do that, but you did."

"Are you trying to convince me that I really had a heart all along?" Crowley muttered, going down to his knees to work at the area around the bottom of Anthony's ribs. The other demon had stopped twitching ages ago, either having chosen to deaden his own nerve endings, or just having grown used to the pain. "I had my moments. But I knew what I was, and I was pleased with it."

"So you miss it?"

"Every damn day."

"But...can't you...I dunno. Feel things, now? Better things?"

"Worse things. So much worse. But...I suppose better too, when I'm lucky." Crowley grimaced. "And I so very rarely am lucky. Can thank the Winchesters for that."

Speaking of the Winchesters, Squirrel returned, week old cold pizza in his hand, eyes just slightly more open. "Okay," he said, mouth full. "I'll bite. What the hell creepy ass demon thing are you two doing?"

"Trying to make it so your new friend can go home. The portal back is in Heaven."

Dean blinked. "Oh, shit, I didn't even think of that."

"You? Not considering consequences? Doesn't sound like you," Crowley said sarcastically. He withdrew from Anthony, rising to his feet. He extracted a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped down the blade. "And now..." He handed Dean the blade, then set two of his fingertips on the other demon's forehead. He began chanting low and fluently in Enochian.

The sigils on Anthony began to glow a hot, infernal red, and the demon threw his head back, hissing. Deadened nerve endings could only do so much—this was something cosmic.

After about a minute, Crowley finished the incantation, and the glow faded, the sigils right after it, as if they'd never been there at all.

Anthony shook out his arms. "Am I...good?"

"As good as it gets, darling. But if you burst into flames, don't say I didn't warn you."

"Wow, way to psych him up, Crowley." Dean finished off his pizza by fitting the entire crust in his mouth. "We could just try to do what we did before. Shake me down for what's left of Michael's Grace."

"Yeah, well, if I come back here tomorrow down a hand then that's what we'll have to do," Anthony muttered, snapping himself back into his clothes. He lifted his head, suddenly seeming to notice something. "Wait a minute...Aziraphale's not in the bunker. Where's he gone?"

"He left?" Dean's brow furrowed.

The demon tasted the air again. "Castiel, too."

Crowley sighed heavily. "Dra-ma."

"Are you quite sure this is a good idea?" Aziraphale asked.

"We need her help now. You leave in just a few hours. Rowena will be able to work faster than Crowley because she can create the enchantment herself. Crowley isn't a novice when it comes to witchcraft, but Rowena might be the most powerful witch that's ever lived. If anyone can forge a stable connection between two worlds, it's her."

Cas and Aziraphale stood outside the door of a fashionable apartment in New York that Aziraphale had miracled them to per Cas's request. Rowena had safehouses all across the world, but Castiel knew she'd been using this one most frequently since Lucifer had attempted to kill her just before Jack was born. If she was anywhere he knew about, it would be here.

Though admittedly, the witch didn't seem to want to be found, if the fact that she'd ignored all of Cas's calls over the past two days was any indication.

Aziraphale seemed doubtful. "Witches aren't particularly powerful, in my experience. At least not in the sense that they'd be capable of something an angel couldn't do."(5)

"This is a different world. Rowena is a force to be reckoned with." Cas knocked his fist four times against the door. "Rowena? It's Castiel. I need to speak to you."

Silence.

Cas tried again. "Rowena, it's urgent, will you please just—"

Rowena opened the door.

Looked at them.

"No," she said simply, then slammed the door in their faces.

1. Crowley had once literally slept through a battle—having taken up in a cot on the Japanese light carrier Shōhō, he had, somehow, managed to sleep soundly until the ship sunk. The swim to shore had been deeply unpleasant. He could have miracled himself to dry land, of course, but imagine having to explain that to Home Office. His pride couldn't take it.

2. He wasn't sure when his clothes had gone from their neatly stacked pile on the dresser to a heap on the floor intermingled with Crowley's signature blacks and reds...then again, come to think of it, he and Crowley had caused no small amount of shaking in their endeavors.

3. Crowley hadn't managed to convince Aziraphale to so much as step into a cinema until the early nineties, so it would likely be a great deal of time before Aziraphale came 'round to much of anything at all when it came to streaming TV.

4. Crowley, at that moment, was sincerely wishing said 'dearly beloved' was with him in the Winchesters' weird sex torture dungeon—but he'd been tugged away to 'help' Castiel with something that Castiel had failed to elaborate upon, at least to Crowley.

5. With one Nice and Accurate exception.