XVIII — An Unaccommodating Negotiation
"Do I at least get a tip?"
"Cut the cute, this is serious."
The King of Hell rolled his eyes in Dean's general direction. "Always is, isn't it?" He'd been back for less than a day, and here he was, mired in Heavenly melodrama already. He didn't have the energy for any of this at the moment; and honestly, what a bore. How many times had they been here before?
The four of them walked together to the playground, leaving the Impala behind. Crowley had just teleported the entire car with them, knowing full-well that Squirrel would have had a conniption over the mere notion of having to leave his mobile phallus on the side of a rural highway somewhere.
Before they could even reach the Gate, they were met by Naomi, and another angel Crowley recognized only from the dossiers he'd had his people create for the remainder of the angels left in Heaven; Duma, the Angel of the Silence of Death.
Cheery.
"Come no further," Naomi commanded.
Crowley tilted his head at the sight of her. "So sorry darling, but aren't you supposed to be dead?"
Naomi didn't so much as blink. "Aren't you?"
"Mm. Touche."
Duma dropped an angel blade from her sleeve. "Haven't you destroyed Heaven enough, Castiel? You really want to take back the only thing that could save us? I know what happens up there doesn't matter to you, but the fact that the Earth will be overrunning with the spirits of the dead if Heaven falls should."
"We don't want Heaven to fall," Cas insisted, stepping forward. Crowley didn't necessarily agree wholeheartedly with that statement—he rather thought watching the last of the cloudhoppers sputter and die, along with their Paradise, would be delightful—but he could admit that billions of ghosts haunting the mortal plane was a less than ideal scenario. "But Aziraphale and Crowley mean well. They don't deserve to be imprisoned for the rest of their lives."
"Mean well? The angel tried to masquerade as God, and then sneak that...Serpent...into Heaven," Naomi countered. "Excuse me if I don't believe their intentions were pure."
"They just want to go home," Sam said, voice hard.
"And I want to save mine," Naomi shot back. "Would you hold that against me?"
"Doing it this way, yes," Cas replied adamantly. "There has to be another solution. Crowley and Aziraphale may have some ideas—if you'll let me see them. Speak to them."
"When has it ever gone well, you coming to Heaven?" Naomi asked.
"Yeah, well, we're asking ourselves that too," Dean said, drawing Michael's pilfered Archangel blade from where it was sheathed at his side. "But, what we're not asking is permission. You're gonna let Cas through. We're trying to do this the diplomatic way, or whatever. But we're real good at being undiplomatic."
Naomi drew her blade as well. She and Duma both tensed, clearly ready for a scrap.
Crowley moved so that he stood at an even distance between the two angels and the merry band of morons. "Now now, let's take a moment and think about this, shall we?" Crowley turned on his heel to glance at Naomi. "Exactly...how many times, has someone been able to successfully kill a Winchester? Or Castiel? And how many times have they failed to kill someone who got in their way?"
"You're living proof," Naomi pointed out coolly.
"The only living proof, and not so living until very recently, I might add," Crowley replied, bouncing his eyebrows. "Exception that proves the rule. Everything that gets in the way of these lumbering oafs dies, and usually quite promptly...so, tell me, does it really make sense not to give them what they want, when they'll just take it anyway?"
Naomi and Duma both glared at him, but he could sense their indecisiveness.
"It'll end bloody," he continued, "always does. And how many more angels can Heaven afford to lose?"
Naomi looked incensed, but she did lower her blade. "If we allow Castiel to come to Heaven, the three of you will remain here with Duma. If Castiel tries anything, I will warn her over angel radio—and yes, it will be bloody, but if you move against us, I'm willing to take my chances."
With little else to do, Aziraphale had settled down in a corner of the cell with Good Omens, Crowley curled in his lap. He'd had the book in the inner pocket of his coat, rather compact as it was, so it was currently the only form of entertainment they had. Unlike Crowley, Aziraphale had started from the beginning, like someone actually intending to read the entire thing, and even with the words swimming together before him thanks to his jostled brain, he was thoroughly enjoying the story so far. It was not entirely accurate, but very close in most respects.
He was surprised when Crowley, without warning, returned to his human form. Unprepared, he toppled over backwards with the demon on top of him, letting out a little yelp.
"Sorry—getting to be too comfortable," Crowley apologized, eyes at half-mast, pupils uneven once more, face miserable. "'Fraid if I fall asleep might go unconscious. Need to stay awake."
Aziraphale's brow creased in concern. He set a hand on the side of Crowley's face, brushing a thumb over his cheek bone. "I do hate to see you in pain."
Crowley leaned his forehead against Aziraphale's. "I've had worse, angel."
Cautiously, Aziraphale placed a chaste kiss on his lips. "We need to get out of this wretched place so you can heal."
"Agreed." Crowley pulled back from him, allowing Aziraphale to sit up again. The demon got shakily to his feet, and began to pace in slow, messy figure eights around their cell. Soon enough, he did stop to retrieve his sunglasses, placing them back on his face. Aziraphale tried not to stare at all the blood matted in his hair.
Aziraphale returned to Good Omens, but kept a careful eye on Crowley all the same, noting that the demon was rubbing the shoulder that Michael had ripped open with his blade. Aziraphale suspected that Crowley had deadened the nerves via miracle to dispense with the annoyance, but now, stripped of their powers for the time being, the pain had returned.
As he continued to read, he was more and more surprised to find that it was a comedy, of all things. Aziraphale hadn't taken the past eleven years to be particularly amusing, considering how dire the whole Armageddon business was, and how he and Crowley had so valiantly tried to derail Judgment Day only to fail very, very miserably—and then succeed in the eleventh hour. Surely all that qualified as a drama?
It wasn't a love story either; rather sexless and fraternal, the literary versions of them appeared, but to be fair, in their world, they had at least outwardly maintained that, even if both of them felt very different inwardly. And furthermore, a quick check of the publishing date confirmed that a story like that wouldn't have been in the cards at all, not at the time.(1)
Aziraphale looked up from the book, then at Crowley, a thought occurring to him.
"Would it have…" the angel, started, but then stopped to rephrase, "does it...cheapen it, somewhat? That I waited until after the End of the World, to tell you how I felt about you?"
Crowley stilled his pacing, turning his attention to Aziraphale. "Don't we have more important things to focus on at the moment?"
"Oh, surely. There is ever so much for us to do while we wait in this cell for Castiel to come negotiate for our freedom," Aziraphale replied dryly.
Crowley rolled his eyes. "Cheek." Aziraphale could tell he was processing his question, however. Albeit a bit slower than usual. "Had bigger things to worry about then, too. No point in saying anything if we were both going to die."
"I rather think that would have been exactly the point in saying something."
"Well, I didn't say anything either. So." Crowley blew out his cheeks. "Yeah."
Eloquent as always. "I don't want you to think I'm a coward. Though I suppose I am one, for waiting as long as I did. I don't—I don't want you to think that I'm just now telling you because now it's...easy. Without Up or Down keeping an eye on us any longer."
Crowley looked at him with no small measure of unease, swaying on his unsteady feet. "Is this you now, then? The one who talks about things? Not very English of you."
"It's the cornerstone of a healthy relationship!" Aziraphale protested. He had read enough to understand what was ideal, so far as romance went. And their previous 6000 years of very militantly not talking about things, well...there was some damage to be undone.
Crowley groaned miserably. "I'll go mad if I have to stay in here with you when you're like this."
"Like what?"
"Thinking!" the demon said loudly, but then winced, putting a hand to his head, regretting the volume. "Can we just enjoy this?"
"Being locked in a cell?"
"Being—being a thing," Crowley threw up his other hand to emphasize the point. "Can we at least get through the honeymoon period before we dredge up the six millennia of, you know, whatever."
"But—"
"Look, angel, I don't care why you waited. Doesn't matter, 'cause we're not waiting anymore, are we?" the demon, with stilted and careful movements, dropped down next to him. The smile he wore was strained, but still suitably wicked. Crowley leaned forward and pressed his lips to Aziraphale's, and the angel felt a surge of gratitude that he didn't need his heart to continue his existence, because Crowley's attentions seemed to send it sputtering out of rhythm.
"Still," Aziraphale said, pulling back just enough to speak. "I don't love you for the convenience, dear boy. I need you to know that."
Crowley grimaced. "Hope I'm not convenient. Not very demonic, is it, convenience?"
"You don't have to concern yourself with being demonic anymore."
"Aziraphale. I have an image to maintain."
"You're impossible."
"I make an effort to be. I'm the Demon fucking Crowley." He sat back on his heels, still very close to Aziraphale. "Impossible, inconvenient annoyance to those Above, Below, and humanity at large. Something I can hang my hat on at the end of the day." A thought seemed to hit him at that moment, and he went rigid.
"What is it?" Aziraphale asked immediately. "Are you alright?"
A grin spread slowly on Crowley's face. "Oh. Oh."
"What?" Aziraphale demanded impatiently.
Crowley's laugh was, dare he say, maniacal? "I'm a genius. You're in love with a genius, angel."
"Could you perhaps stop basking in your own glory and just tell me what you've thought up?"
Still giddy, Crowley cupped Aziraphale's face in his hands. "We need to swap in somebody who'll be as much of a power source as the two of us. Something that can keep this version of Heaven up and running. And who do we know in our universe that we'd just love to get rid of?"
Aziraphale's eyes widened. "You can't possibly mean—"
"I do possibly mean, and then some."
"Gabriel—"
"D'y'know how good it's going to feel to see his smug arse sitting in here?" Crowley swiftly kissed Aziraphale again before jumping back up. "Just gotta get Castiel to convince Naomi to let us out so we can go get him."
"You can't just get an Archangel."
"So we trick him! Not like it'll be hard, angels are dense sorts. No offense."
"Offense taken," Aziraphale bristled.
"Look, look, listen, angel—just pretend you've had a change of heart and you want back into Heaven's good graces. Say you're offering me up or something, tie me up—" Crowley bounced his eyebrows, "that could be fun. And then we just, wam-bam, grab him, take him back here, give him to Naomi. He's out of our hair, and we fix Heaven, home in time for afternoon tea." The demon did jazz hands. "It's a good idea. You can't tell me it's not."
"I think that the rub comes with everything that could go horribly sideways between Point A and Point B—"
"Like we've ever bothered worrying about that before." Crowley wouldn't stop grinning. "What could possibly go wrong?"
"There is nothing you can say to get me to let them out of this cell."
Castiel sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. He was in Heaven's Prison, having a dead-end conversation with Naomi, with Crowley and Aziraphale watching on, hands wrapped around the bars of their cell and looking for the world like they were so far unimpressed with Castiel's ability to negotiate. Cas noted that both angel and demon looked like they'd been bashed over the head with something, and Crowley was swaying on his feet, Aziraphale occasionally placing a hand on the small of his back to steady him. Naomi had not been gentle when she'd captured them.
"Naomi, you can't just trap them here—"
"Without them, Heaven will collapse. I'm thinking of the greater good, Castiel. The greater good of both Heaven and humanity," Naomi responded tersely.
"What if we gave you someone even stronger than us?" Crowley offered, face pressed between the bars. "An Archangel. Better than a demon and a Principality, eh? Plus, you'd like him. Loves a nice pantsuit, our Gabriel."
"If your Gabriel is anything like the one in this universe, he simply wouldn't be worth the trouble," Naomi replied coolly, barely casting a glance in Crowley's direction.
"He isn't," Crowley said, clearly remembering Gabriel from the Supernatural books. "Not even a bit. Easiest guy in the world to get along with. Definitely won't try to break out of his cell and slaughter all of you. Will understand the...importance, of keeping Heaven alive."
Cas had a very distinct impression that Crowley was lying.
"And why should I believe the word of a demon?" Aziraphale opened his mouth to speak, but Naomi cut across him with, "or an angel that consorts with demons?"
"If you won't listen to them, then listen to me," Castiel said, drawing Naomi's attention back to him. "If you'll let them go to their universe to get their version of Gabriel and capture him, I'll stand prisoner in their place. I'm at least strong enough to help keep the lights on."
"Hardly a fair trade." Naomi's eyes narrowed ever-so-slightly.
"Then I'll stay too," Crowley offered in a rush. "You'll have me and Castiel, that's enough, isn't it? Let Aziraphale go."
Aziraphale railed against the idea immediately. "Absolutely not!"
Crowley's attention snapped to the angel. "Shut it! I won't let you rot in here!"
"And you think that I could allow you to offer yourself up in my place—!?"
"I love you, you great idiot. Let me do this," Crowley said, lowering his voice, even though there was no dream of Naomi and Castiel not overhearing.
Cas blinked several times, surprised by the demon's offer. Aziraphale had said Crowley was good—insisted he was, even moreso than himself, but he'd had difficulty wrapping his head around it. He assumed that the Serpent was good in the same way their own Crowley was. Conditionally, and occasionally. Even his love for Aziraphale couldn't truly undue an innate infernal nature...could it?
But here was. Offering himself up as the sacrificial lamb, with no guarantee Heaven would ever let him go. He hadn't even thought twice.
"I won't," Aziraphale said fiercely. "Out of the question."
"I wouldn't take that deal anyway," Naomi interrupted, clearly not interested in the lover's spat occurring in front of her. "Though...the Nephil might suffice."
"No. You don't get Jack," Cas said immediately. If he took Jack to Heaven, he feared the angels would never let him go, and if he wanted to leave, he would have to cut them all down to do so, which, though he was loathe to admit it, Duma was right on that account: the fall of Heaven would spell doom on Earth, undeniably.
It didn't mean he wouldn't do it for Jack. There was very little he wouldn't do for Jack. But the consequences had to be taken into consideration.
Naomi was nonplussed. "Then they stay. Forever."
Aziraphale and Crowley were both watching Castiel with pleading expressions that didn't even begin to border on subtle, their argument already forgotten.
"Jack owessss ussss," Crowley hissed vehemently.
"This isn't about what's owed and what isn't it. Heaven will never let him go if he comes here," Castiel insisted.
"We did last time," Naomi reminded Cas.
"He was dead last time—and the Shadow presented a far more pressing issue," Castiel replied. He frowned, watching Naomi. "You would really let Jack go? If we gave you their Gabriel?"
"An Arch wouldn't be as powerful as a Nephil, but it would do," Naomi said, not seeming pleased by the bargain, but at seemingly willing to make it. At least, on the surface. "And to be frank with you, if we were to hold Jack here, I'm not sure it would be worth the trouble that would come with it."
"Trouble?" Cas repeated, brow furrowed.
Naomi gave him a dry look. "You and the Winchesters do not excel at letting the people you care for go."
He was almost surprised at the observation. Then again, Heaven had seen far too many times the amount of damage a motivated Winchester could do, and he would agree on this point: he, Dean, and Sam would not rest until Jack was back with them, regardless of the cost Heaven would suffer.
"...It's up to Jack to decide," Cas decided at length. "He's his own person. I'm not his keeper."
"You are, but...fine. Return if he agrees. If not, these two are ours until we find a better solution," Naomi said primly.
"Make sure he agrees," Crowley insisted through the bars.
"Crowley," Aziraphale chided him. "This is a huge risk, it would be wrong to force Jack to take it were he not totally willing."
"I'm sorry, do you remember less than a day ago when he failed to tell us he wanted us to help him kill an unkillable pre-God entity and then we all almost DIED? Because I remember! Vividly!"
"I'll return shortly," Cas said, trying to ignore Crowley's ranting.
"We saved all your arses!" Crowley yelled after him. "Time to pay back the bloody favor!"
Sam, Dean, and Crowley occupied the playground's swing set, all three alternating between impatience, and hoping that no one would question three grown men in a children's playground at ten o'clock in the morning on a Sunday.
"What do we do if Cas doesn't come back?" Sam asked hesitantly, breaching the tense silence that had beset the three of them, only occasionally interrupted by a half-hearted joke from Crowley. Even he wasn't in his usual talkative spirits(2); Sam suspected it had a great deal to do with seeing his mother earlier that morning. He thought of broaching the subject, but didn't have the energy to deal with the guaranteed rage-monologue it would earn him from the demon.
"He'll come back," Dean said.
"What if they take him too? More power for Heaven," Sam pointed out.
"He'd fight his way out."
"We should've given him the Archangel blade."
Dean glanced down at the sword, still dangling from his belt. "Maybe you're right. But still. Cas has gotten himself out of way worse than this."
"If by gotten himself out of, you mean died, then sure," Crowley drawled, "a regular old escape artist, our Kitten."
"Look, I'm trying to be glass half-full, for fucking once," Dean snapped irritably.
"Yeah, but we're on a good luck streak," Sam worried. "That's never a good sign."
"Disgusted as I am to admit it, I agree with Moose," Crowley said.
Before they could discuss the matter further, the sandbox shot out a beam of Heavenly light, and Cas was returned to them, looking none the worse for wear. Sam and Dean were up in a moment—Crowley remained in his swing, idly swishing from side to side, legs dangling.
"Well? What went down?" Dean asked, wasting no time.
Cas looked grim, but unharmed, and Sam counted that as a win. "Naomi is reluctant to let them go," he began.
"But there's a but, right?" Dean pressed.
Cas sighed deeply. "Crowley and Aziraphale have offered to go capture their universe's Gabriel, and exchange him for their freedom. Naomi doesn't trust them enough to let them walk without collateral, however. I volunteered to stay in their place, but she insisted that if she's to let Crowley and Aziraphale ago, she wants Jack. Not me."
Dread sunk into Sam fast and heavy. "No. That's not happening. They've wanted Jack since he was born, and if we give him over to Naomi, we'll never see him again."
"She was insistent that if Crowley and Aziraphale delivered Gabriel to her, she'd be willing to release Jack."
"And you buy that?" Dean asked. "You really, honest-to-God buy that? Can we take a second to remember all the shit she's pulled?"
Cas's eyes flashed. "Well, given all the torture and brainwashing, my memories aren't what they used to be, but I vividly remember being forced to kill you thousands and thousands of times. So yes, Dean, I'm intimately aware of the 'shit she's pulled'," Cas said tersely, with liberal use of air quotes. "But it's not my choice, or yours, or Sam's. None of ours. It's Jack's choice."
"He's two!" Sam spoke up immediately. "You can't put something like this on him!"
"Jack emerged into the world exactly what he needed to be to survive it. It's in his nature. He's an adult. Adult enough to make decisions for himself."(3)
"You know he'll offer himself up, he's too much like us not too," Sam argued. "Cas, this isn't fair to put on him. This is too big of a risk."
"And what, pray tell," Crowley cut in, abandoning the swings, "is our other option? Other than kill all the angels in Heaven, which would take approximately ten minutes?"
Sam, Dean, and Cas fell silent.
"Ah, but there's the rub, isn't it? Cas has himself another little massacre in Heaven, things go very south very quickly, we end up turning the entire Earth into a haunted house. Or, alternatively, we leave our dear Anthony and his beloved to rot in Heaven's Prison for all eternity. Which," Crowley made a face, "is definitely a possibility. Still...does call into question what kind of utter bastards that makes us, after all they've done for our mutual benefit in the past few days."
Sam ran a hand through his hair, shaking his head. It would be so easy to just leave Crowley and Aziraphale behind, right the natural order in Heaven, and try to forget about them—try to say that it was an ends justifies the means situation. But he knew that no matter how he tried to rationalize it, it wouldn't sit right with him, or Dean and Cas. They owed Crowley and Aziraphale more than that. They owed them Dean's life, and Cas's too.
They couldn't just leave them behind. And they couldn't wipe out Heaven, not without opening a can of worms that there was no hope of them handling.
"I hate this," Sam said quietly, looking to his brother. "But...do we have any other choice?"
"There's always another choice," Dean shot back harshly. "Whenever someone tells us 'pick A or B' we always pick or, why change that now?"
"Because there is no or, not this time," Cas replied, all the energy seeming to have drained from him. "I stand by what I said. This is Jack's choice."
Dean scratched at the back of his neck, shaking his head. "I don't like this, Cas. Not one damn bit."
"Neither do I. But unless you have another idea in mind...we need to speak to Jack."
Sam wished, desperately, that he had a better plan than this.
But he didn't. And judging by Dean's silence, he didn't, either.
"Are we in agreement, then?" Cas asked tiredly.
Dean looked at Sam, then back at Cas. "He's just a kid."
"We were kids once too," Sam reminded Dean softly. "But that...it didn't spare us from anything."
"Yeah, well, maybe I want to give Jack what we didn't have!" Dean burst out, frustrated. "Maybe I want to do better than Dad did. Maybe I think he deserves a—I don't know, a childhood. 'Cause God knows we never got one. I had to grow up at four. And you, you never...you never even stood a chance, Sammy."
"That's the thing, Dean. Dad decided for us that we were going to be hunters. We never got a choice—but we've always given Jack a choice. And he chose to hunt. He chose to fight alongside us. So he deserves a choice now."
Sam hated this—more than he could explain. But he knew that the three of them, they weren't Dad. They would never force Jack to do anything he didn't want to do. But if he decided for himself that he was willing to take this risk for Crowley and Aziraphale, that was his right.
And like Cas said. There was no or this time. Not one that he could see.
"Fine, fine." Dean scowled. "But I'm against this. Put it on the record—I'm fucking against this."
"Duly noted," Crowley said, only seeming half-interested. "So, shall we pile back in the testament to toxic masculinity on wheels?"
"We only have two hours before the portal back to Crowley and Aziraphale's world closes, so we'll need to go faster than that—can you take us to Jack?" Cas asked, directing his attention to Crowley.
Crowley just looked at Castiel, chin lifted expectantly.
Cas sighed with his entire body, and added, with massive impatience, "Please?"
"Depends. Will my mother be there?" Sam grimaced, and that gave away the game immediately. "Oh! She is! Lovely. In that case, you all can kindly go to Hell. Not interested. I'll not be playing your chauffeur today."
"Come on, Crowley," Sam said, trying to find a middle ground between exasperated and pleading. "Just tell her you don't want to talk to her. You have to face her eventually."
"I went three hundred plus years without a word of contact, you think I can't go three hundred more?"
"You can go that long without her," Dean agreed, "but...you can't go that long without us, and she seems hellbent on staying until you show up again."
"Go back to my old life where you three weren't an excessive pain in my neck? Oh, what an unimaginable tragedy."
"Oh, admit it, Crowley, you know you love us. You wouldn't have done what you did in Apocalypse World if you didn't."
"Has it occurred to you that I just hated Lucifer that much?" Crowley retorted, but Dean had clearly flustered him with his use of the L word. "Love. Please. I'd sooner burn you all alive."
Dean stepped into Crowley's personal space. "No...you wouldn't. Look, you little dickhead, you're back, and you're part of the family now whether you like it or not. So, take us to the bunker, avoid Mommy Dearest if you want, but...either way, you're stuck with us, now."
Crowley glared up at Dean unflinchingly. "I detest you."
"Yeah, yeah." Dean looked at the demon expectantly. "Can we go now?"
Crowley rolled his eyes and growled. "For the love of...fine. But I'm not speaking to her."
"Whatever, dude. Your mommy issues, that's your...thing." Dean made a vague gesture in Crowley's general direction. "Let's go."
Crowley looked skyward, as if to ask, God, why me?
The next moment, he had Dean's wrist in hand. Sam grabbed Dean's shoulder, and Cas grabbed Sam's.
A heartbeat later, they were gone.
1. And Good Lord, was he happy that Warlock's birthday party hadn't gone so disastrously in their own timeline. Children with guns. Never a thought one wanted to entertain.
2. All jokes aside, Crowley really did love the sound of his own voice. It had been instrumental in choosing his particular vessel. That, and the downstairs equipment—he wasn't about to downsize after selling his soul to add a few inches to the damned thing.
3. But not adult enough to escape a grounding—or being told to go to his room.