Chapter Three
Crowley's meatsuit had always struck Dean as pretty damn boring, when it came down to it. Of average height (unlike Winchesters), slightly pudgy (also unlike Winchesters; and probably because the most exercise he ever got was snapping his fingers), and of rather unprepossessing looks and hair (certainly unlike Winchesters). He could be sly, droll, dry, ironic, even provide comic relief—and yet there was always, always a sense of waiting about the man, an impression of power, of a subtle but unearthly charisma. Crowley was a wise old cat at a mouse hole, possessed of a sense of humor but also a terrible patience.
Lilith wore children. She'd specialized in it. Creepy, no question. But her goal was obvious, her agenda writ large.
Crowley wielded wit as his weapon to lead others astray. To misdirect, to be discounted as a threat, and to pounce upon the opening, upon the action, verbal or physical, that allowed him a way in.
Crowley nudged open doors, and exploited the resulting cracks. He did not lift a booted foot and smash them open, the way Winchesters did.
And that was why, Dean knew, the King of Hell was far more dangerous than looks might suggest.
Now he waited, as promised, within the dungeon; within the devil's trap embedded in the floor. He had dragged the chair away from the desk, positioned it precisely within the center of the ornate assemblage of iron, and sat upon it with legs casually crossed, one hand resting lightly atop the other, with that glint in his eye and that faint smile upon his mouth.
"Hallo, boys." One eyebrow lifted. "Don't dress up on my account. Is it Casual Friday?"
And Dean recalled that he himself was clad in boxers and nothing else, while his brother wore a wrinkled tee and track pants.
Neither of them ever wore pajamas. Ever. Nor had, even as kids, because John Winchester explained that if they needed to move quickly, no matter the reason; to throw meager belongings into the car to escape an angry landlord, or to track down a monster two states over, it was best to be wearing something other than footie pajamas, because they were hell to run in.
Dean supposed a grown man might be eyed askance if he raced off into the night wearing nothing but boxers, but he was in the bunker, dammit, a place warded out the wazoo.
That Crowley could enter. That Crowley had. All on his own.
Sam, halting next to his brother just inside the dungeon, dropped the F-bomb again.
"What, Moose?" Crowley asked, brows lifted high. "It's only your friendly neighborhood demon, after all. Not like an enemy, am I? Because if I were, and if I were here to do you harm, I'd have done it before assuming the position, don't you think?"
"What the hell do you want?" Dean demanded, supremely irritated as adrenaline bled away.
"In a nutshell, that," Crowley answered. "Lucifer has my playground, and I bloody well want it back."
"Why should we care whether you have hell, or not?" Sam asked. "It's not like you exactly perform good works from there, is it?"
Crowley smiled. "But wouldn't you prefer me there, rather than here? I mean, you're incapable of killing me—though you did give it a valiant try, Moose; I'll give you that—and for the most part I don't come 'round much, don't hang about drinking your beer and sneaking fast food left-overs from your fridge, do I? No. I show up now and again when you need something . . . " And the humor left his tone. " . . . like a brother brought back from the dead. " He raised a silencing finger before either spoke. "But no. This little proposal will benefit all of us. Hell regained, for me. For you?—Amara, destroyed. And the world saved, yet again, from a threat of truly, literally, Biblical proportions."
"No," Sam said. "There's more to it than that. You're dangling Amara as bait. There's more, Crowley. There's always more with you."
"Of course there is," Crowley agreed. "We should play chess sometime, Moose. It's a little above your brother's paygrade, but we could make a game of it, you and I."
He meant it to sting, Dean knew. It didn't. His game never had been chess. It was balls-to-walls pool, with the crack of an opening break that exploded the rack and dropped all of his stripes, or all of his solids, into the pockets.
"Spill," Dean said, and it wasn't an invitation. "You mentioned a Hand of God."
"A second one?" Sam blurted.
"Third," Crowley corrected. "There was a small matter of the Rod of Aaron, but I'm afraid it's now out of service. A one-off, as it were. But now that I'm familiar with the concept, I know where another is. And it will serve all of us to gather it up and clutch it to our delicate beating breasts, because it will take out Amara, as we know—and also Lucifer. Thus your world is saved, for the umpteenth time, and I get my kingdom back."
"No," Sam said.
Dean asked, "How?"
Sam stared at him incredulously. "You're asking him 'how?' After what he did to you? He got you into the whole fix with the Mark of Cain! Don't ask him 'how,' tell him to go straight to hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200!"
And in Dean's head, upon hearing those words, came a memory. A meatsuit chained to upright iron, imprisoned within a devil's trap promised to be unbreakable, sworn to it by an angel.
"But Daddy's little girl, he broke. He broke in thirty. Oh, just not the man your daddy wanted you to be, huh, Dean?"
Crowley's eyes were upon him. He couldn't know. No one was privy to that conversation with Alastair but the two in the room, and one of them was dead. Oh, Dean had told Sam what he'd done in hell, how he'd cut and sliced and carved; but had never, not once, to anyone, repeated what Alastair told him from within that devil's trap.
It was one thing to admit he'd broken, that he'd climbed off the rack to do what Alastair wanted; but entirely another to bring his father into the conversation. Not before his brother. Cas—yes. He'd let Cas in, a little, in that hospital room, because Cas knew what it was to serve a father whose example, whose expectations, could never be met.
But not to Sam. Not about Dad.
Sam didn't know. Neither did Crowley.
But Crowley knew he'd nudged open the door. And now he waited beside the mouse hole.
Sam understood his brother better than anyone else in the world. Better than himself. And he knew that expression. Hell, it was more than expression; with Dean it was a whole-body experience. He was alight with it. And Sam had always been a moth drawn to the flame.
No wonder Cas and the others had laid siege to his brother. No wonder God had found him a true and perfect weapon. Because he was.
But Sam was damn tired of losing his brother to causes. To himself.
"No, Dean." It was hard and cold and absolute. "No."
Dean flicked him a glance. "I asked a simple question, Sammy. Nothing more than that. You oughta be proud of me. Didn't shoot first, didn't kick in the door while you're fiddling with the picks . . . " He shrugged; and even in that lived power, and an unconscious grace. "Just a question."
"Well, color me thrilled all to hell," Sam shot back. "No. No."
Crowley's tone was amused. "It always such fun watching the children play."
Sam spun away from his brother and pointed at Crowley. But it wasn't a finger he used. It was a shining blade. "You shut up! Close that mouth of yours, or I'll cut a new one below the one you have."
Crowley's brows lifted. "That's not your style, Moose. That kind of action was your brother's specialty, when he dwelt among us." He smiled. "I was there, remember? They told stories of him. Made all the gossip rags. Hell's social media. What poor soul is Dean Winchester shredding today?"
Sam expected his brother to wince, to see a flicker in the eyes, an acknowledgment of the hit. But Dean didn't even look at Crowley. He stared at his brother, waiting him out.
"You don't even know what he's talking about!" Sam cried. "You don't know what it might mean. God, Dean, I get the hero complex, I get the willingness to sacrifice for the greater good, I get that Dad needed you this way, but it's got to stop. You've got to stand the hell down. The last time you listened to this man, you ended up a demon!"
"It's a simple matter, really," Crowley drawled. "You need to fetch this Hand of God. You've done it once already, haven't you, Dean?—and this wouldn't involve any kind of time travel."
"Then we're both going," Sam snapped; and inwardly grimaced that he'd just agreed to do what he'd counseled against. "I'm not staying behind this time. We're in this together, or we're not in this at all."
"You can't go, Moose," Crowley said, with a trace of faux regret in his voice. "That is to say, you could, but it might end badly for you. And that would make your brother very, very sad, and I really don't think you want a sad Dean Winchester looking for a way to commit suicide-by-monster. Because I've sorted it out even if you two children haven't: You've a pathological, dysfunctional, dreadful trainwreck of a competition going on."
It came out of their mouths at the same time, upon the same breath, in identical tones of baffled disbelief. "What?"
Crowley smoothed a nonexistent wrinkle from his slacks. "Now, in most families, you settle it in games, in sports, in arguments over the dinner table that may end up in a wrestling match in the front yard, but you Winchesters . . . oh, no. Nothing so basic. Sam leaps into the pit. Dean surrenders humanity. Which one of you can die bloodier than the other? Dead is dead, after all. Does it matter? Is it winning to die?" The eyes, just for a moment, showed red at the back of them; a brief, passing glint like a dog at night in the light. "So tell me: What's so problematical about taking a short, uneventful journey to collect a weapon that will—and I repeat; I'll make it a mantra—save the bloody world?"
"I'll go," Dean said, as he always did.
Sam thrust out a hand, as if his brother were a child about to cross a busy street. "Wait. Wait. Crowley—what do you mean, I can't go?"
Crowley said, "Lucifer. If he finds you, he'll jump your bones; and then where will you be? You were his vessel briefly; said yes, and everything. Didn't work out so well for either of you."
"He needs my consent," Sam said. "Remember? This time I said no. You were there; you saw it."
"But you'll give your consent if it's a trade-off for your brother's life." Crowley's mouth twitched. "Don't you remember, Sam? With Lucifer wearing your meatsuit at Stull Cemetery, you very nearly beat your brother to death. Castiel once nearly beat your brother to death. Do you really want to see what's left of Dean after Lucifer, wearing Castiel, uses him to leverage you? Oh, you'll say 'yes.' And you'll break sooner than thirty years."
Now, Dean winced. It was faint, but Sam felt it.
Sam stared at Crowley, narrowing his eyes. "What does Lucifer have to do with this? Why are you bringing him up?"
"The Hand of God," Crowley said, "is in a lockup. Mine. In hell. Where the second one was. I just didn't put two and two together until recently. Naturally I thought of Dean first, because he's always so willing to undertake the impossible regardless of risk. Besides, he was just there. Fetched something else for me. This'll be a milk-run. "
Dean's tone was odd. "Hell is a milk-run?"
And Sam looked at him, because he heard something he didn't like. Something he didn't recognize. Something—hidden. Shielded behind a blast-wall, as only Dean could build.
"If Moose stays here, and I go with you, yes. A milk-run."
"Then why don't you just go?" Sam demanded. "Can't the King of Hell enter his own kingdom?"
"That's the problem," Crowley replied. "It's not mine, just now, and since my escape I suspect Lucifer has set a number of very nasty traps, should I attempt to return. Well, in a form he knows. So, it will be Dean Winchester to the rescue. Again."
Dean waved the angel blade. "And I was just there. You think there won't be traps set for me?"
"Trojan horse," Crowley said. "Or maybe a Romulan cloaking device would be more apt. Or . . ." He waved a dismissive hand. "Enough with the metaphors. You won't be you, Dean. Not precisely. You'll be—well, let's just say you'll be us."
"'Us?'"
Crowley smiled. "I'll guide you down. I'll ride you down." And as they stared at him, struck into wide-eyed, appalled silence, he added, "I'll be, as you once put it so eloquently, the 'junk in your trunk.'"
~ tbc ~