Disclaimer: I own nothing

PRECIPICE

The pain always came without warning and without mercy. Her brothers' deaths. Lights going out more and more frequently.

Anna could still feel Uriel's blood on her hands.

Then there'd be a hand at her elbow, a voice in her ear, and she'd be whisked out of view and then away to wherever it was they were resting.

Neither of them called these places home.

Whiskey was one of Crowley's constants, poured into expensive cut-glass tumblers. The smell reminded Anna of the man who'd raised her and she'd called Dad. The smell had faintly lingered on him after his poker nights. Whisky and dust and fresh dirt under his fingernails. That was home as much as heaven was ever supposed to be. Sometimes, a lot more.

"You wouldn't believe the day I've had."

Crowley smiled smugly despite his words. The gaze he turned on Anna was heat and burn and silence.

"There was an accountant today. Had the gall to quote Job at me, badly. Education's going downhill in this country."

Anna's lips moved, in amusement and words of scripture, as she inspected an ornate book with a broken spine. It held hopeful familiar passages, a trail of archaic vital possibilities breadcrumbs. Another idea. Anna was surrounded by a spider's web of them. She was becoming a tarantula.

There were bottles clinking, and a remembered pain in Anna's side. Baraciel had been stabbed that morning. He had been forced out of his vessel with no destination specified. Having God absent from heaven made death more of a certainty than angels had ever known before. Anna found it hard to breathe.

Crowley held out a glass with only the faintest smirk at its contents - warm milk and honey. This was her mother – sweet words when Anna was sick and sweating, baking flour and wine, and singing to the noise of the antique radio. Such human things, Anna cradled them.

There was so much she held onto.

She could smell the age of the books, the rain pearling in Crowley's hair, his musky nearness mixed with the quail he'd eaten for lunch in a rich vinegary sauce that still lingered on his tongue.

"Your boys are causing a ruckus," Crowley commented, settling down beside her. "Couldn't find their way with a map and GPS, mind, blundering about in the dark so incompetently the dead can hear them."

"They're the best answer we have."

"Mmmm," Crowley was non-committal for only a moment. "Wouldn't get your hopes up then, darling."

Anna leaned against him. His free hand stroked in her hair, across her skin. Demons didn't consider each other family as angels did. Crowley was (more than) close enough.

Anna's wings had reformed slowly. They had lost their softness, becoming oversensitive and intricate with scar tissue. Wholeness was an impossibility now. Movement caused pain and something equally excruciating. But she could fly. The winds buoyed her, gentling the razory edge that accompanied her now as naturally as breathing. Anna could still smile into the sun.

This is the day that the Lord has made.

Crowley had lost his beautiful house; he was reduced to keeping his belly to the ground. Anna's grace gutted like a candle flame. She had nearly lost her wings. It seemed almost fair.

Her Father had created this world. She had grown up in it. There was an urgency inside her as she flew. She watched the sun's rays on the water, children in their sandboxes, trees rippling, humanity greedily spreading out.

Waiting among her books was a piece of soft rich chocolate cake.

Anna drank in his kisses. Her fingers left marks on his back. Crowley's mouth returned the favour.

"Angel," he hissed between her lips.

Her wings fought for dominance. She laughed, raw and unfinished, and drew blood.

This wasn't a fairytale.

Crowley went to help Sam and Dean. Anna visited her parents' house. It rang with heady nostalgia, papercut with pain. She slid in, a ghostly shadow, and ran her hands over the initials she'd carved into the bare boards of her bedroom. The poem her Mom had loved still hung in its frame in the kitchen, her Dad's books were stacked on the shelves. There were whispers everywhere.

She stood under the peach tree in the front yard and breathed.

The leaves flamed in fall colours under her feet. Anna had climbed the tree as a child, scraping her knees and hands. She'd feasted on its fruit until juice ran down her chin and she was too sick for dinner. She had learned about gluttony. She had wanted more.

Her Mom had made peach cobbler. Her Dad had taught her that a pit, the hard heart of every tender fruit, could actually be a new beginning. There were words carved somewhere on the trunk and higher that Anna had heard in her head, waking and sleeping, mixing with psalms and broken hosannas. Soon it could all be ash.

When Anna slept, her hand found the mark she had made on Crowley's chest. When she woke, his hand covered hers.

-the end