XXIII — An Unplanned Surgery
"What the hell happened!?"
Anthony's flat was in shambles; all the light fixtures had been blown out, and Crowley's over-sensitive nose wrinkled at the scent of mercury. The windows too were shattered, leaving the floor a minefield of glass. Glass, and holy oil, and blood. Oh yes, there was a great deal of that too, splattered on the counter, the gaudy throne that Crowley privately envied but would never say as much aloud, and in pools on the floor. There were pots and pans everywhere, and Crowley couldn't even guess at the reason why.
Among the wreckage lay the Archangel blade, crimson-slicked. A steak knife, too, which looked like it had been used for equally stabby activities.
"We've been gone not fifteen minutes!" Rowena burst out from his side. She looked as stunned by the state of the flat as Crowley was.
Pepper peeked around Rowena. "Is...is that blood?"
Crowley and Rowena shared a brief meeting of the eyes, and Rowena turned, making to usher the Them into the hallway. If only she'd been so protective over him as a child. He couldn't count how many times he'd walked in on her exsanguinating cattle.
"Did someone die?" asked Brian, but Rowena shushed him.
"Are Mr. Crowley and Mr. Aziraphale okay? What about Newt and Anathema?" demanded Adam.
"Everything's fine, dearheart, hush now, just wait here for a moment, hmm? Name your new pup, she needs a good name..." Rowena's voice faded to a muffle as she pointedly closed the door to the flat behind her, leaving Crowley and Beatrice alone in the chaos.
Crowley stooped down, scooping two fingers through one of the largest pools of blood. He stuck it in his mouth, tasting for a clue.
"Angel," he muttered to himself. "But which one?"
Beatrice had gone to the other puddle, and growled when she sniffed it. Which meant the lion's share of the gore in the room came from an angel. They must have gone through with their plan to summon Gabriel, but why not wait? And this much blood...he'd be dead, surely, if they'd used the Archangel blade. And that would nullify their deal with Naomi.
He rose back to his feet. Where had they all gone? Not a body in sight...
"Mother," he called. "Get back in here."
He heard the Them arguing over names for Pepper's new dog outside. Rowena took the opportunity to slip back into the flat. "A scene like this doesn't bode well," she commented.
"Yes, I also have eyes," he snapped. He pointed at the blood pools. "Can you find out who these came from? Angelic to be sure, but I don't know what angel."
She looked at the first, larger puddle, then the second. "The first is the posh angel. The second, I've no idea."
"How can you tell it's Aziraphale's?"
She gave him an almost disappointed look. "Really, now, Fer—Crowley. You say you have eyes, but you're not using your real ones."
He rolled said eyes, but did flash them to Crossroads red, taking a closer look at the blood. Indeed, one had the gold-and-blue lightness of Aziraphale's aura, while the other radiated a deep, rich purple.
"Light and fluffy. Surely he's not the only angel flavored that way."
"Perhaps not, but he was in the room when we left. What more proof do you need?" she asked thinly, crossing her arms. "Or are you just hoping that it isn't his?"
"No one wants to see their favorite characters disemboweled," Crowley replied distantly. "Kill your darlings, I know...but, well. Always had a soft spot for the dumb bird, at least on page."
Of course he had. An angel who had bucked the forces of Heaven, favoring humanity, and more specifically, an unusual demon with a love for the creature comforts of the modern world. He liked Aziraphale for the same reason he liked Castiel, not that he would ever deign it necessary to tell Castiel that. Wouldn't want a jealous Winchester after him.
"We need to find him," Crowley said, brushing his thoughts aside. "If he walked out of here, he must still be alive."
"Or his body was carried out."
"And thank you for that dash of cold water," Crowley retorted. He knelt once more next to the puddle. "It was still warm..." He whistled to Beatrice, and the hellpuppy doddered over. He looked her in the eye. "Alright, pup. Take a sniff, hmm?" He tapped the floor.
She did as she was bid.
"Good girl. Now can you take me to him?"
She barked, and turned for the door. Crowley allowed himself a brief, satisfied smirk. He scooped the Archangel blade up off of the floor. He extracted a handkerchief from his breast pocket and cleaned it off. Discarding the now red-stained handkerchief to the side, he stored the sword up his sleeve where he would usually keep his own angel blade, were it not still somewhere in this universe's Hell.
"Field trip?" he arched an eyebrow at his mother.
"It better not be far. These heels are not made for long distances," she told him.
"Obviously the biggest of our problems right now is your footwear." He opened the door to find the Them still debating names.
"If you want a strong woman, why not name her after Margaret Thatcher? They called her the Iron Lady," Wensleydale said.
"Margaret Thatcher was a WAR CRIMINAL, do you have ANY IDEA what she did in Northern Ireland—!" Pepper began with no small deal of spirit, but Crowley cut in.(1)
"We're going for a walk. Keep close to us." He headed down the stairs with Rowena, Beatrice in the lead, and the Them tracked in their wake.
"Are you going to tell us what happened now?" Adam asked from behind Crowley. "Something bad went on in there. I can feel it."
"I don't know what happened," Crowley told the boy honestly. "That's what we're trying to figure out."
"Are Crowley and Aziraphale dead?"
He saw little point in trying to lie to the son of Satan himself. "They could be. We'll know soon enough. Now shut it before you scare your friends."
Adam looked over at the rest of the Them, Wensleydale and Brian's wide eyes, and Pepper's sudden and uncharacteristic silence, no doubt wondering and fearing what 'something bad' might have occurred.
Crowley, too, was wondering.
And Crowley, too, was fearing.
"Where are you taking me?"
"Shut it."
Crowley drug Gabriel by the collar down the irritatingly long, sterile hallway of the alternate Heaven, leaving a bloody streak in his wake. He had not stopped moving once, treading onward with a single-minded determination.
He had to get back to Aziraphale.
"A different universe," Gabriel coughed, sickeningly pale. "What, wrecking one wasn't enough? You wanted to go on a streak?"
"I didn't wreck anything, you arse-licking tosser. Aziraphale and me, we saved the Earth, not that you give a damn about that—and we saved this one too. Because apocalypses are stupid. Pre-destined ends are stupid. I—j—just ends in general are stupid!"
"This is what you get," Gabriel spat back. "This is what you get for messing with divine plans, for bucking the natural order. You're lucky God didn't strike you both down as soon as you tried to interfere—"
"And you?" Crowley turned on a heel, pulling up Gabriel so they were nearly nose-to-nose. "Your big reward for being a company man is spending the rest of eternity in a cell in a different universe. That's where I'm taking you. This Heaven is all out of angels—we told them we could fix that for them, oh yeah, had the perfect angel for the job. If your divine plan is so bloody great, if it's what She wanted, why is She letting this happen to you?" Crowley smiled nastily. "But, then again, it's all ineffable, isn't it?"
Gabriel didn't seem to love the idea of eternal imprisonment. "You think you can trap me?"
"Doesn't matter if I can. But these angels, I think they can, and they will. It's either lock you down, or the lights go out. Good motivation to never let you see the other side of the bars ever again."
Crowley returned to his march, trailing the Archangel behind him. He couldn't waste time taunting him.
"We can talk about this," Gabriel said, changing his tactics. "I can—look, if you take me back now, maybe I can do something for Aziraphale."
"Bite me. You can't heal yourself, let alone him."
"He's going to die. I could do something. Maybe—maybe petition Her."
Crowley just shook his head. "If I wanted to get a lecture from the Metatron, I'd call him myself. God won't help you. Won't help me." A pause, a swallow. "Won't help any of us."
"That's blasphemy," Gabriel pointed out with little feeling.
"Yeah, well. Wouldn't be my first time," Crowley muttered. Finally, he found the elevator that would lead them to Heaven's prison. He dragged Gabriel inside, leaning him in the corner and hitting the button for the basement floor—Heaven's basement, hardy har har. Insert something philosophical here.
The elevator trundled downwards. The only sound in the confined space was Gabriel's harsh breathing.
"You can't really love him."
Crowley let his eyes slide to Gabriel, again letting himself consider killing him, deal be damned. Not that he had the means, anymore. "I never told them I'd bring you in with a tongue."
"Demons can't love," Gabriel insisted, undeterred. "For Heaven's sake—angels can't. Not like that. It's disgusting. We're supposed to be better than that."
"Just because you can't doesn't mean Aziraphale can't. Doesn't mean I can't."
"I'll accept faulty wiring for Aziraphale—but you? You Fell. Anything good got burned out of you in Hell. So what are you getting out of this? Out of him? What do you want? Power? Control? Or just to sow as much chaos as possible, and pissing off Heaven wasn't enough? You don't know when to stob rebelling."
Maybe he didn't. But as long as there was something worth rebelling for, why ever stop? But Gabriel would never understand that, and he'd never felt the need to explain himself to anyone.
"What we wanted," Crowley hissed. "Was to be left alone. So much for that."
"You take me, you'll never be left alone. There's still time to turn back," Gabriel pressed. "You don't have to do this."
"No, I don't. But I want to."
"Why?"
The elevator doors dinged open. Crowley grabbed Gabriel again.
"Because," Crowley replied. "It'll make you miserable—and oh, that'll keep me warm at night, knowing you're rotting in here, forever and ever and ever."
Castiel and Naomi sat in her office.
It had been an uncomfortable few hours. She had left Heaven's Prison, citing work to do, and Cas had accomponied her, not wanting her out of his sight until Jack was released. If left alone, Naomi could scheme, which Cas would and could not abide. This meant returning to the office where he had been tortured for—well, in Heaven, time was immeasurable, but Cas was confident that Dean would deem the period of time Naomi had been peeling back layers of his being to scrape at the underneath as a "damn long time"—and Cas believed that to be an accurate description.
There were clocks on the walls. The hands never moved. Naomi had discovered minimalist office aesthetics in the late 80s, and never looked back.
"Why do you still work in here?"
Naomi was reading over something, prayer read-outs from Earth, most likely. She looked up, disinterested. "Why wouldn't I?"
"Because you were almost killed here. Most people would find having their brain drilled into a traumatic experience," Cas said mildly.
Naomi sighed. "That's where you've always stumbled, isn't it, Castiel? We're not people. We're angels. We're a different species. Trauma? It doesn't even register."
"Do you just view your life as a series of events, some pleasant and some unpleasant, with no greater meaning? No lasting effects?"
"There were lasting effects. But not emotional. Because I'm not emotional. Most angels aren't. At least those of us who haven't Fallen," she responded pointedly.
"Angels are as susceptible to folly as humans. The Fall should have proven that much to you."
"The Fall which...you caused, if I remember correctly."
Cas didn't have a response to that. Naomi returned to her paperwork.
Time, or the nearest Heavenly equivalent, crept by.
"Do you ever grow tired of this?" Cas eventually broached.
He could feel Naomi's irritation at being interrupted again. "No. I am fulfilling the purpose for which I was created."
"But God doesn't care if you continue fulfilling that purpose. Do you realize that? I met God. God...He doesn't care, Naomi. He hasn't cared in a long time."
"And if I don't do this?" she snapped. "There's no one else fit to lead. If not this, then what would I do?"
"You could do what the other angels did. What I did. Walk among humans. Know them. Protect them. Be a shepherd."
"Forgive me if I'm wrong, Castiel, but I think there were only two humans you were ever terribly interested in protecting," she reponded.
"I care for more than Sam and Dean."
"Yes. You care for Lucifer's son as well. And a witch. And the King of Hell. Your standards for company leave something to be desired."
"Jesus kept strange bedfellows."
"You're comparing yourself to Jesus now?"
"That's not what I meant."
"I see."
Mercifully, Naomi received a call on angel radio at that moment—Duma informing them that Crowley had arrived with Gabriel. Cas sagged in relief. Crowley and Aziraphale had held up their end of the bargain, and Jack would be freed. Also, he wouldn't have to be stuck in a small room with Naomi anymore, and that sounded very nice.
Castiel knew something had gone wrong the second he saw Crowley.
"What happened?" he asked quickly.
Crowley radiated panic. He didn't have his sunglasses on, and his unnervingly reptilian eyes were blatantly distraught. He was smeared with blood, his hands, his shirt sleeves, everywhere.
And Aziraphale wasn't with him.
"I'll explain on the way. We need to hurry. Things went bad." Crowley deposited a disgruntled Gabriel at Naomi's feet. "Open up the cell."
Crowley and Aziraphale's Gabriel was as diametrically opposed to the Gabriel that Cas knew as was physically possible. He was cashmere and fine suits, hard jaw and cold eyes—purple eyes? Bizarre.
Gabriel began begging Naomi immediately. "Come on, I'm an angel, we're on the same side—what are you doing working with demons?"(2)
"I'm doing what I have to. I imagine you would do the same in your own world, if your Heaven is anything like ours," Naomi said, as pitiless as Cas expected.
Jack pressed his face to the bars, clearly picking up on how troubled Crowley was, just as Cas had. "Crowley? Is Aziraphale okay?"
"On the way," Crowley repeated with a hiss. "Let him out."
Naomi hesitated, and Castiel wasn't surprised. It wasn't in the other angel's nature to sacrifice such a powerful game-piece on the board. Gabriel was no small power source, but even he would pale in comparison to Jack.
Crowley noticed as well, and would not have it. He inserted himself into the angel's personal space, baring his teeth.
"Let. Him. Out. Or we're going to have a problem. A very big one, right now."
Castiel stepped next to Crowley, standing side-by-side with the demon in a show of solidarity. Naomi's eyes darted back and forth between the two of them, considering her options.
"Let me out of these cuffs!" Gabriel insisted. "We can take them, come on."
Naomi looked down at Gabriel, unimpressed by his current state. "I doubt you could stand, much less fight." With a resigned frown, she removed a key from her pocket, and unlocked the door to Jack's cell. Jack stepped out quickly, moving to embrace Castiel as soon as he was freed. Cas let out a long breath of relief, clutching the back of Jack's jacket.
"Yes, yes, very sweet—can we speed this up?" Crowley said, pacing furiously around the two of them.
Duma and Naomi seized Gabriel, dragging him into the cell Jack had just vacated.
"No—listen—you're making a mistake!"
"I've made plenty of mistakes," Naomi said, slamming the cell door shut on Gabriel. With key in hand, she relocked the door. "I don't think this is one of them. There's hope for Heaven now. We have a future." Naomi looked to Cas, Jack, and Crowley. "Go, now. Before I change my mind. And I would prefer not to see any of you in Heaven again."
Cas decided not to mention that he would most likely be coming back through Heaven to return home when all was said and done. A problem for later. "Fine." He considered Naomi for a moment. "Thank you...for keeping up your end."
"I'm not above reason, Castiel."
"Come on!" Crowley growled, winding his hand into Cas's trenchcoat and yanking him back towards the elevator. "We're on a time-table, here!"
However, contradicting his own words, Crowley grounded to a stop, turning to Naomi. "The books," Crowley said suddenly. "The books Aziraphale had when you took us—where are they?"
Naomi blinked. "What?"
"The books!" Crowley repeated, louder. "We had a big stack, all bound up. What did you do with them?"
A look of understanding passed over Naomi's face, and she waved a hand. The stack appeared on the ground in front of Crowley. "These? I didn't do anything with them. We have no use for the Men of Letters' antiques."
The demon grabbed up the books immediately. "Good, right...Aziraphale, he'll—he'll want these to read. When he's better."
Then Crowley turned again, and tore off. It was all Castiel and Jack could do to keep up.
Things happened very quickly once they were in the ER of—well, whatever hospital Crowley had miracled them to.
Dean scooped up Aziraphale, and with a quick order of "Legs! Grab his legs, lift 'em up, it'll slow down the bleeding—" to Sam, Aziraphale was held horizontal between the two of them, Sam elevating Aziraphale on his end. Next, Dean barked out, "You! String-bean! Shirt, now!"
"Sh-shirt—? Oh, yes, the bleeding, right, got it, yeah—" Anathema helped Newt work out of his sweater, and once he was free of it, Anathema balled it up and pressed it to Aziraphale's grieviously bleeding wound. It began soaking Newt's sweater almost immediately.
Activity buzzed around them, so much so they'd been thus far mostly unnoticed, except by a nearby security guard.
"Does he need to be seen?" asked the guard in a thick northern accent.
"What do you think?" Dean snapped. "Where do we take him?"
"Here, follow me, check-in desk, right this way."
They followed the guard through the milling crowd in the ER waiting room. The woman behind the desk glanced up at them over the tops of her cat-eye glasses. "Do you need to be seen?"
"YES," Dean said emphatically. "Right the fuck NOW."
"He'll have to be triaged. Has he been here before?"
"Doubt it," Sam answered.
"What's his date of birth?"
"No idea," Dean replied.
"Approximate age?"
Dean, Sam, Anathema, and Newt all answered simultaneously.
"Forty-eight," said Dean.
"Forty-two," said Sam.
"Fifty," said Newt.
"Forty-six," said Anathema.
The ER clerk stared at them. "I'll just put unknown then. Name?"
"A. Z. Fell," provided Anathema. Must've been Aziraphale's human name, or whatever, like AJ's 'Anthony J. Crowley' gimmick.
"And the A. Z. stands for?"
They all blanked on a response.
"Aziraphale," Sam spoke up at length.
"And the Z?"
Sam's mouth moved wordlessly.
"Ziraphale?" Newt put in faintly.
A strange look from the clerk. "Aziraphale Ziraphale Fell?"
"It's religious—can we speed this up?" Dean groused. "We need a doctor out here, now!"
"What happened to him?" she asked, long nails clacking on her computer keyboard.
"Stabbed. He was stabbed. Does that warrant you calling someone?" Anathema pressed.
The clerk finally went from unflappable to flapped. "Stabbed? He's a crime victim?"
"It depends on your definition of crime but, well, yes," put in Newt.
Dean's eyes went to Newt's sweater, where Anathema was pressing it into Aziraphale's stomach. It was already drenched, clearly doing fuck-all good. "Shit. He's bleeding out, fast."
The clerk reached for the phone, quickly dialed an extension. "Yes, switchboard—I need a rapid response in the ER."
Barely twenty seconds passed (and the clerk's hopeless question of, "Who's his primary care physician?") before a voice blared over the hospital PA.
ATTENTION. ALL PERSONNEL. RAPID RESPONSE, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT.
ATTENTION. ALL PERSONNEL. RAPID RESPONSE, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT.
ATTENTION. ALL PERSONNEL. RAPID RESPONSE, EMERGENCY DEPARTMENT.
Seconds later, they were swarmed by an army of people in scrubs. The doors to the emergency room proper opened, and a bed was rolled out by a rush of nurses. Aziraphale left Dean and Sam's hands in an instant, moved onto the bed. Wristband on, and then questions, dozens of them, by a nurse herding them away from Aziraphale as he was rushed down the opposite hallway, obscured by the rapid response team.
"How long ago was he stabbed?" the nurse asked them.
"Five, ten minutes? Not long," Dean said. "Can we go with him?"
"Not right now. Just looking at him, he's probably already gone into hemolytic shock. They'll transfuse fresh blood into him while the surgery team scrubs up, and then they'll get to work. Does he have any allergies to medication that you're aware of?"
"No," Anathema said definitively. "No allergies to anything."
"History of arrhythmia?" questioned the nurse.
"None." Anathema seemed to have taken the reigns, and none of the three men had any reason to try to stop her. Newt looked like he needed to be seen himself, with how pale he'd turned, and Dean and Sam were both preoccupied thinking of ways to get to Aziraphale without being hauled away by security.
"Any prior medical conditions—"
"Absolutely none whatsoever," Anathema interrupted her. "He's been...blessed...with perfect health his whole life."
And then the other nurse was off, promising to update them when she knew more. They all watched her go, and Dean had never felt more useless. Moreso than even when they'd been forced to take Jack to the hospital over the winter, because at least then, there'd still been some hope for supernatural remedies. But they didn't have a magic fix for this. Aziraphale's life was well and truly in the hands of the strangers who had just taken him.
And Dean didn't like that.
"We've only known him for a few days," Dean said dimly.
"I know," Sam acknowledged, clapping him on the shoulder and squeezing. "But...he's our friend anyway."
"Crowley will want to see him when he gets back. I don't think they'll be able to stop him," Newt pointed out, and Dean noted he was shaking.
"No, they probably won't," Dean agreed. "Come on, let's sit down. There ain't nothing for us to do, not right now."
"If you don't mind," Anathema said as they found chairs to take as their own in the waiting room, "I'd like to hear what happened to them in your universe."
Dean took a deep breath, settling his hands on his knees. "It's a long story..."
Jack didn't like what he saw when they arrived in Crowley and Aziraphale's universe, but he didn't have a lot of time to let his eyes wander over the disastrous state of the apartment they'd stepped into, because mere seconds after they arrived, Crowley grabbed he and Cas by the wrists—and in the next blink, they were standing in front of the ER entrance of an enormous hospital.
Crowley immediately made for the doors, but Jack halted. "Wait..."
"What is it, Jack?" Cas asked, turning to him.
"Nothing worth waiting for!" Crowley burst out, waving aggressively for them to follow him.
Jack didn't move. "No...I—I feel...something like me?"
A kindred energy. Massive and powerful, touching everything around them with its presence, not necessarily changing anything, but, maybe ever-so-slightly molding it to a more pleasing shape. It wasn't malicious, no. Not anything pure, either. Something ambivalent, changing by the second, adapting, learning, growing. It reminded him of how he'd felt when he'd first been born, still learning to understand the world. Curious. Feeling things out.
A dog rounded the corner of the hospital and made a bee-line for Jack. It came right to him, pawing at his knee and looking up at him with eyes that begged for pets.
Jack bent over, confused. "Hello...?" He scratched the dog's head, and that seemed to be what it was going for.
"Dog! Come back!"
From the same alley that the dog had emerged came a troupe of children, followed behind closely by Rowena and her son, and two other dogs, a bull terrier and a corgi.
Jack's eyes landed on one of the boys, golden haired and blue eyed. Not so different looking from him.
As soon as their eyes met, the boy stopped cold, too. Jack's hand stilled on the dog, who whined impatiently.
"Do we really have to have a meeting of the Antichrists moment?" Crowley groaned from behind Jack.
"Lovely. Someone to catch us up," called the King of Hell. "What on God's steadily-growing-less-green-Earth happened in your flat?"
"Aziraphale's dying. There, you've caught up," Crowley said. "And the last best hope he's got is the fact that we're friends with two Antichrists."
The boy came to Jack. Jack stared at the boy, and the boy stared back.
"Who're you?" asked the boy, reaching down to scoop the dog up in his arms. "And why does Dog like you so much?"
"My name's Jack Kline," Jack replied quietly, still in awe of seeing someone who didn't seem so...so alien, in comparison to him. "What's yours?"
"Adam. Adam Young." Adam seemed just as caught off-guard by Jack as Jack was by him. "You're...like me."
"I think I am," Jack agreed tentatively. "You're...?"
"Yeah. His kid. But not really. He was a bad dad. Never around. My real dad's loads better."
"Mine tried, but. He wasn't very good, even when he was around." Jack allowed himself a cautious smile. "I—I think my real dads are better, too."
"You have more than one dad? Cool!" said one of the other boys. "Wish I had more than one."
Crowley screamed in frustration behind them.
"I think we have to help Aziraphale," Jack told Adam.
"Okay," Adam nodded. "Dunno how, though."
"We'll figure that out as we go." Jack turned to Crowley. "Lead the way."
AJ didn't waste time with pleasantries once he found Newt, Anathema, and the Winchesters.
"Where is he?" AJ demanded.
"Everything went fine in our Heaven," Castiel provided from behind AJ when he saw Dean's questioning look.
"Yeah, I got that," Dean said when he saw Jack, a group of kids—presumably Adam and his friends—with Crowley and Rowena bringing up the rear, filtering through the ER entrance.(3)"He's in surgery."
AJ apparently didn't like that answer. "Not anymore. We've got two Antichrists. They've got to be able to do something."
"What happened to Aziraphale?" Adam demanded.
"I hope someone here's got a PG version of this, 'cause I sure as hell don't," Dean said, not sure whether to direct his pleading gaze towards Sam or Anathema.
Anathema knelt down in front of Adam. "Aziraphale got into a fight with the other angel you met at the airfield—Gabriel. He got hurt. The doctors are taking care of him, okay? You don't need to worry."
"Oh, he needs to worry. We all need to worry," Crowley insisted, practically vibrating with agitation, anger, fear. Every bad thing, all at once, and Dean understood. He'd been there. God, how many times had he been there? With Sam, with Cas, with Jack. With everyone.
"Archangel blade is an archangel blade. There ain't nothing we can do but—" Dean began, but AJ cut him off.
"If you say pray, I swear to Somebody—"
"I was gonna say wait," Dean interrupted.
"THAT'S WORSE," AJ's voice was steadily getting louder. "I am not waiting out here while a bunch of humans take tiny pointy things to him and mess him up even more—"
"Do we need to do some deep breathing exercises?" Rowena asked cheerfully from Crowley's side.
"Alright, I don't know if you've noticed, but me and Sam are a 'bunch of humans', and we've done okay for ourselves—"
"Okay!" AJ raged. "Since the second that mad ginger witch dragged me into your universe—a universe that somehow manages to have a God even more capricious than the one in this universe—let's see, we fought an Archangel, almost died, got tricked into a field-trip to a dimension of pure nothingness, almost died, got trapped in your Heaven, almost imprisoned for eternity, got back here, fought Gabriel, almost died—so what, EXACTLY, is your definition of OKAY!?"
"We could've let you rot up there!" Dean shot back, getting in Crowley's face. Yeah, so they'd dragged Az and AJ into their mess. They had that effect on people, but the two of them could've walked away at any time. They chose to help. They chose to get mixed up in their bullshit. Dean wasn't about to take the blame for all of it. "We could have let you two sit in there for eternity, but instead we risked Jack and Cas to get you out, so how about you—"
"Enough." Sam pushed them apart. "This doesn't help anyone. It sure as hell doesn't help Aziraphale."
AJ growled, then made to stalk away. "I'm going to him."
"W-Wait, Crowley," Newt called him back. "My mum had her gallbladder out here a few years ago. There's an observation gallery for surgeries. It's ah, it's supposed to be for other doctors, families aren't supposed to go back, but my dad snuck in there. You—you probably could too."
"I'm not observing anything. I'm stopping it," AJ said fiercely. "You two," he pointed at Adam and Jack. "You're coming with me."
"Okay," Adam agreed readily. Jack frowned, hesitant, but nodded all the same.
"You're not seriously going to interrupt a life-saving surgery in the vague hope that these two will be able to do something?" Crowley said, finally breaking his silence, as he'd seem content to watch AJ and Dean go ten rounds from a distance. "Love blinds, I know, but be realistic. There's things even Antichrists can't do."
"He's right, this isn't wise," Cas agreed.
"I don't give one blessed shit about wise," AJ snapped back.
"I want to help Aziraphale," Adam put in.
"Can we come?" asked one of Adam's friends excitedly.
"No!" came a chorus from every adult in the waiting room.
"Mother," Crowley sighed. "Take the children to the vending machines, would you?"
"Oh, I'm the baby-sitter now, am I?"
"Making up for your hundreds of years being a terrible parent in every imaginable way," Crowley replied lightly.
Rowena grumbled, but she disappeared with the Them all the same.
AJ was off, apparently not inclined to listen to any of them any longer. Adam followed after without question, but Jack hesitated. He turned to Dean, Sam, Cas, and Crowley.
"What should I do?" Jack asked, anxiety plain on his face. "Is this the right thing?"
"What do you think the right thing is?" Cas questioned.
"I don't know, that's why I'm asking you," Jack replied tersely.
"I think you if go and bust in on that surgery, Aziraphale's dead for sure," Dean said, not in any mood for teaching Jack a life lesson.
"But Crowley's going to do that with or without Jack," Sam pointed out.
"So I need to be there if things go wrong," Jack said slowly.
"Whatever you're going to do," Crowley said, "I suggest you do it quickly."
Jack seemed to make some kind of decision—what it was, Dean didn't know, but before he could ask, Jack chased after AJ and Adam.
"I don't like this," Anathema said. "Adam shouldn't be mixed up in all this. He's just a kid."
"Yes, well, the world would be a better place if children didn't have adult circumstances thrust upon them, but neither of our universes work like that," Crowley told her.
Newt grabbed Anathema's hand and squeezed. She squeezed back, shoulders rigid with tension.
"Now what?" Newt asked.
"Now..." Dean ran his hands over his face, feeling exhausted down to his bones. "Now, we wait."
Crowley and Adam found the observation gallery quickly enough. He'd put the security guard on watch outside the OR to sleep with a snap of his fingers. He planned to do the same thing with the surgery staff.
He could barely make out Aziraphale through the scrubs, through the glaring lights, through the blood. But when an elbow moved, he saw a glimpse of blond curls, closed eyes. His heart pounded painfully in his chest. He usually kept it beating just for realism's sake, but he had no control over this. It slammed over and over again at his ribs, and he felt his hands clench at his side.
"Hope you've enough of your not-father left in you to do this," Crowley told Adam.
"It's not his power. It's mine," Adam said, not necessarily arguing, just stating a fact.
The door to the observation gallery slammed open behind them, and in came Jack.
"Crowley—"
"I wouldn't try to stop me right now, if I were you," Crowley warned, not bothering to turn around. He raised a hand, ready to knock out the surgery staff.
Jack grabbed his wrist.
Crowley's head snapped to the side with unnerving speed. "Let go of me," he hissed. "I'm not scared of Lucifer, and I'm not scared of you."(4)
"Just look, Crowley," Jack begged him. Jack gestured down at the operating room. "That monitor there—those are his vital signs. They've got him on all kinds of IVs, stuff that's helping to save him. They're stitching him up from the inside."
"And if they screw up, Aziraphale's dead!"
"He's been in there for a half an hour at this point. If something was going to go wrong, it probably would've happened already," Jack reasoned.
"Probably," Crowley scoffed. "Let me go."
"He's right," Adam spoke up unexpectedly.
Crowley looked down at him. "Pick a side, would you?"
"Why'd you try to save the world?" Adam challenged Crowley. "You thought humans were worth something, right? And the angels and the demons and everybody didn't really think like that. But people can be clever, and kind, and wicked smart. Surgeons go to school for a long long time and they save people every day, and I reckon loads of 'em are worse off than Aziraphale is."
Crowley shook his head. "I'm getting a lecture from an eleven year old."
"Sometimes adults are thick," Adam deadpanned. "Even demon adults."
"He doesn't need to be saved, Crowley," Jack said, grip still iron and unyielding on Crowley's wrist. "He's already been saved. See? They're stitching him up."
A glance down to Aziraphale, prone on the table, chest bared, and indeed, they'd knitted up the wound in his stomach, evidently finished up with his insides, and now just cinching up the outside.
Slowly, slowly, Crowley's heart began to settle.
"Something could still go wrong," he said faintly. He blinked, starting to come back to his senses, at least somewhat. "Guess they are sort of brilliant, aren't they? I dunno what half the things down there do. And humans just, came up with all that. Made anesthesia and scalpels and big brights lights and...just made everything they needed. Don't even think Aziraphale had anything to do with any of this, no divine spark. They just...did it."
Crowley and Jack exchanged a look. Jack hesitated for a moment, but he released Crowley's hand.
"They might let you see him in the PACU," Jack told him softly. "You should go back to the waiting room, talk to the charge nurse. Say you're Aziraphale's husband."(5)
"...Husband?" Crowley repeated, not really registering the word.
"Or partner," Adam put in. "That's what my mum calls you, partners."
Because of course Adam's parents assumed he and Aziraphale were a couple.
With another thud in his chest—as if his heart just wanted to remind him that it was there—he realized that, yes. They were a couple. They were partners.
And Crowley wanted to see his partner. Now.
1. Thanks to further tutelage from Anathema, Pepper could recite in detail all of Margaret Thatcher's war crimes—in chronological order, no less.
2. The Archangel Gabriel does not have a spectacular grasp of the concept of irony.
3. Beatrice, Dog, and Pepper's so far unnamed Corgi were politely asked to stay outside by Crowley, and were busy romping around on the hospital lawn, leashes miracled onto them and tied to a bus stop sign outside of the hospital.
4. This was a blatant lie, of course. Crowley was patently terrified of Lucifer, because he knew all too well what kind of damage the bastard could do when it tickled him. But, fake it till you make it, as they say.
5. Jack binge-watched the entirety of House when he was sick. Dean had repeatedly questioned the choice, but Jack had found it comforting in an odd way; dying of Grace depletion wasn't pleasant, but it could be worse.