What Isn't and Came to Be

Chapter 24: Cat fights

"He needs help," Ma Cherie urged, tugging uselessly at his coat, attempting to drag him towards the door out of the examination room. "We have to call someone. He's hurt! Crowley, come on!" She yanked harder.

All her excess drama was beginning to annoy him.

"—No one here understands me! Please, you need to call someone to help him. He's unconscious, hurt! I should have thought—"

With an annoyed huff, Crowley snapped his fingers and sent her back to the penthouse.

That was better. Now he could think.

Crowley ambled over to the doctor's desk and picked up the file folders containing the children's patient records, jostled them, ordering their contents and secreted them away in his inner coat-pocket. He was just pondering the doctor's computer when a sound distracted him.

He turned his head to see the prophet's son, still on the examination table, curled in on himself, whimpering.

Ah, yes. As annoying as the child was, it wouldn't do to leave the lad behind. If he did, he'd never hear the end of it from the mother.

With another snap of his fingers, he sent the boy back to the penthouse to reunite with his mother and the spawn of Satan. Then returned his attention back to the doctor's computer with a low sigh of boredom and jiggled the mouse.

Marvellous! the device wasn't locked, nor were its contents password protected. A few clicks with the mouse, and he'd opened Doctor Khan's scheduling application and deleted all records of the current appointment.

Satisfied with covering those more obvious tracks, Crowley turned and allowed his focus to fall onto the individual in question. Doctor Arif Khan laid sprawled out on the floor. Still, and very much unconscious.

In Crowley's adroit opinion, it was a trifle disappointing the nephilim hadn't killed the paediatrician outright, the same way it had offed Mary Winchester, back in North Cove. But the doctor's current, irritatingly alive state did indicate a capacity to moderate responses, and that could be counted as encouraging.

With a hum, he ambled over and nudged the man with his foot. Then, crouching down, grabbed the doctor by the back of his white coat and flipped him over, to perform a cursory physical examination of his own.
A few fractured ribs, a concussion, and one buggered up hand. The good doctor Khan would probably live, if Crowley just buggered off and left the man for some nurse Betty to find. — But, of course, if he simply left, the man could potentially talk. And loose lips had a way of sinking ships. In the age of the internet, the tale of an infant who could toss a full-grown man across the room using some hither-to undescribed force, would get out. Then, the wrong ears would be bound to hear. And angels were stupid, but Crowley doubted they were that stupid.

If questions were asked, he might have to move his little family elsewhere. And he had to admit, he'd been enjoying Dubai. The penthouse was clean, light, and airy. A much more comfortable hideout than he usually afforded himself—with a swimming pool, no less. And high rise living had certain security advantages he'd never previously pondered. It was s-o very easy to corral a recalcitrant prophet 94 stories up, saving the need to resort to all the unpleasantness of constant staffing.

On the floor, the good doctor twitched slightly, letting out a muted groan.
The man was starting to come to.

"Sorry mate, you know what they say. Never work with children or animals. It's hardly my fault you didn't listen."

With a little precision-focused demonic power, Crowley pinched off the blood flow to the man's brain for a few minutes; just long enough to stop Doctor Khan's tongue wagging, permanently. But not long enough to kill him outright.

He'd tell Ma Cherie the paediatrician died of his injuries and thus begin the next stage of his plans. She'd finally understand how much of a danger Lucifer's son presented and agree to perform the grace extraction. And once Lucifer's son was neutered and powerless, it would be safe to start laying down the law with his little family. After they all understood how things were going to go, he'd be a little more hands off with the banality of child rearing, and focus on retaking hell—before one of the blasted hierarchy prats got too comfortable on his bloody throne.

Once the child was trained up for his future role in Hell's kingdom, the grace could be returned to him. And Crowley would finally have himself a worthy, competent second in command. One with whom nothing in heaven, hell or earth would dare to tangle. And if Lucifer ever did manage to crawl his way out of that bombed out apocalypse world, back to where he wasn't wanted, Jack would be capable and willing to dispose of him… to protect his King and the only family he'd ever known, like a good, well train little guard-dog.

Dusting off his hands, Crowley straightened with a scowl for the annoying niggle in his lower back, no doubt caused by Burjeel Hospital's ridiculously uncomfortable waiting-room seating.

A few minor staging adjustments to the good doctor and the examination room, along with some demonic pyrotechnics, and he'd made it appear Doctor Khan had tried fishing around in an electrical outlet, with the hypodermic now melted into his palm; and had thus, rather stupidly, electrocuted himself.

Job done, it occurred, that it wouldn't hurt to postpone his return to the penthouse in favour of a visit to his favourite masseuse, to sort out the niggling little crick in his back. But first, he did believe he might just visit the Burjeel Hospital's blood bank and make a significant withdrawal. He'd call it compensation for the pain and suffering said hospital's seating had caused him.

…ooo0ooo…

Michele realised she was pacing.
When the children were up, she'd had a focus, a way to avoid thinking about anything but them and their needs. That was the way she had gotten through dinner, bath and story-time, on a kind of autopilot. But now they were both asleep, she was on her own. Despite how emotionally and physically exhausted she felt, the idea of laying down, being still or trying to sleep was inconceivable.

Trapped, she felt trapped and powerless, like a bug in a jar.

Her skin felt too tight, and her nerves stretched to their limit. All she wanted to do was scream or hit out. Every worry, fear and self-recrimination were so very, very loud inside her head. Made worse by the juxtapositional quiet of the nighttime apartment.

She couldn't escape the image of the paediatrician laying crumpled on the floor, couldn't stop wondering what had happened to him. Asked herself repeatedly if he'd had a wife, children and how they would be feeling at that moment. She highly doubted his loved ones would be sleeping.

She wanted to yell at Crowley. Wanted to blame him for everything that had happened at the hospital, and start a fight over it. Wanted to make the demon understand that you couldn't treat people like pawns in some game.

She needed to get the blood off her own hands by wiping it on Crowley's conscience.

But Crowley wasn't there to argue with, or blame, and even if he was, she wasn't sure he'd be able to understand the horror of it all.

So, her guilt and anger had turned inwards, like it so often did. Making her want to punch the wall, scream, or do something reckless, foolish and regrettable, just to stop the spiralling thoughts in her head. The guilt and self-recriminations were like fingernails down a blackboard.

How could she not have realised? How could she not have seen the game Crowley was playing? How could she have been so woefully negligent?

It was like a pressure inside her head that had built and built since tucking the children into bed.

She'd needed to move, had gone into the bathroom to put Johnny's toothbrush away and collect the damp towels from the children's bath to add to the load of laundry; and caught her own reflection in the mirror. Seen that gold Lord of the Rings ring strung there around her neck. And remembered Crowley's mocking smile as he flashed her a taunting view of its mate, seated there on the second finger of his left hand.

She had tried to take the necklace and the ring on it, off then; and realised she couldn't find the clasp. Found that the chain was now a seamless circle, too short to come over her head, too strong and thick to break by tugging.

She'd yanked and yanked fruitlessly, harder and harder, feeling increasingly more frantic, until her neck was red, sore and abraded. Half choked herself in the process.

What did you call something around your neck you couldn't get off?

A collar, you called that thing a collar.

Crowley had put a collar on her, like she was his pet (Pet, how often did he call her that instead of her actual name?) and she hadn't even realised. He'd tricked her into wearing a ring around her neck that matched the one he now wore, so tauntingly, on his wedding finger (and made people think she was his wife). And all he'd needed to do was string it alongside an anti-possession sigil, angel warding and a fancy cross, and she'd believed, naively, that he'd been trying to protect or reassure her.

She hadn't seen the necklace for what it was, yet another signal that the demon thought of her as property, or his pet. Something he could dress up in stupid, impractical dresses and a sparkly collar.

That thought had made her lose it a little.

She'd rushed into the kitchen in a frantic search for some way of cutting the chain off. Completely ruined a steak knife in her hyperventilation driven panic. Cut her hand in the process of trying to saw through that heavy gold chain. But nothing had worked. Now it was around her neck; her golden collar wouldn't come off—Just another thing to be furious over—on top of what had happened to the paediatrician.

The sight of her cut hand. The shocking scarlet of her blood, surrounded by the pristine white of all the kitchen surfaces, had only made her feel more trapped and out of control. It had reminded her of her own death, and Johnny's deal. Of Crowley and his needles. Of how he'd threatened her parents. Of how he kept using her blood to get high, like some kind of disgusting drug. And how he'd strong-armed her into stabbing Johnny's finger.

Everything kept spinning out of control whenever she thought she understood the situation.

Whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the doctor lying unconscious on the floor, with his hand a twisted, melted mess.

She had wrapped her cut hand in a tea towel to hide the blood; then fled from the kitchen into the living room and buried her face in a sofa cushion. Screamed into it like some mad person; until her throat ached, and she couldn't breathe, so she wouldn't wake the children.

Still, her brain wouldn't shut up, and kept buzzing round and round in circles, running into walls, like a bug trapped in a jar.

She'd needed to move. So she had gotten herself up, cleaned the kitchen, and finished her nightly chores.

Then, found herself pacing.
Circling back every few minutes to glance furtively into Crowley's door was open, and every time she walked past, she could see that the room was empty. Just like the kitchen, the master bedroom, the lounge, and all the rooms the demon habitually inhabited.

Still, restless energy kept her circling, putting one foot in front of the other. Pacing the spaces she felt more and more trapped inside.

She hated that Crowley wasn't there! It made no sense and infuriated her yet more to realise she felt that way.

Why hadn't she seen what he was doing?

Why did she keep trusting him, only to discover, too late, that she'd been played?

Thinking about it, Michele sped her steps as if she could outrun the thoughts by going in circles.

As time ticked by, her worries over the doctor's injuries had slowly been overtaken by another related worry.

Where the heck was he? Why hadn't Crowley returned?

Ever since she realised, Johnny's contract would probably revert to Hell's purview if the demon died; not knowing where Crowley was gave her low-grade anxiety.

There was a clatter.
Without thinking, her feet took her to follow the sound into the Master bedroom. Where she stopped dead in horror.

There was a smeared scarlet handprint on the wall and a trail of gory splatters leading across the plush white carpet. Splatters which could only be blood.

Another small sound further in and a rising feeling of dread drove her to follow that bloody trail. To push through the walk-in closet and into the Master bathroom.

Fluorescent light, white marble, gold fixtures. A man in a torn black shirt and pants, his coat discarded on the floor like a dying animal — and blood, so much blood.

A small sound of shock fell from her mouth, and Crowley swung towards her, eyes wide, a glinting silver spike in his fist.

For one moment it seemed he didn't recognise her: something bright, desperate and feral in his eyes, and she feared he would lunge at her with the blade.

Then he blinked and turned, letting the angel blade drop onto the marble vanity unit with a clang. And went back to rooting through a plastic box. Other hand clutched at his stomach. Blood dripping steadily through his fingers onto the white marble between his feet.

The sight of all that blood washed her previous thoughts and feelings aside in a monsoon of not-memories and worry.

"What happened?" she demanded, stepping closer. Driven by an almost Pavlovian need to help and fix the hurt.

Crowley flinched at her voice. Side-eyed her as though he'd forgotten she was there in the intervening moments.

"Can't a man get some privacy in his own house?"

Then the plastic box tipped sideways in his clumsy grasp and scattered its contents across the vanity, into the basin and across the floor. The box was a medical field kit of some kind, its contents: plastic wrapped dressings, sutures and forceps scattered helter-skelter, loud in the bathroom's confined space.

Staring at the mess, Crowley made a low sound in the back of his throat, part growl, part whine. An impotent rumble of threat from a trapped animal, promising to bite if approached.

Gulping down nerves, Michele crouched and gathered up the fallen items off the floor. Held them out like a peace offering as she edged closer, eyeing the spreading puddle of gore gathering drop by drop, at his feet.

"You're always telling me you're not a man," she breathed. "And I don't think privacy is what you need right now. You're hurt. Let me help you, please?"

She saw his shoulders tense at that, and his half-hidden wince in response as he attempted to straighten.

What the heck had happened at the hospital after he sent her and the boys away? There was so much blood! How much blood could he lose and still be okay?

The smell of that blood seemed to fill up the bathroom; copper underlaid by the bitter tang of struck matches, filling her mouth and nose and making her throat ache with it in an uncomfortable facsimile of grief.

Michele pushed herself closer, even as her heart drummed erratically with nervous adrenaline. Laid a hand on his hand, which still fumbled with the first aid supplies.

"Let me help you, please?" she repeated softly.

His mouth and jaw hardened, and she was sure he was going to yell and shove her away, but then he wobbled, and clutched at the vanity with a low hissing breath.

Allowed her to tuck herself against his side and lead him over to the toilet.

Flipping the toilet lid closed, she urged him to sit before he fell.

"Good, that's good. Okay, first things first." She grabbed a clean white towel from a rack by the tub and knelt by his side. "—Let's see what we're dealing with and put some pressure on it, huh?"

Quickly she undid the few remaining buttons on his shirt and pulled his hand away from the wound, to glimpse the slice across his lower abdomen.

It was deep, through both the skin and fatty tissue and into muscle. The sight of it made her wince in sympathy, but at least no intestines or organs were poking out.

That was a relief. She didn't know if she could handle something like that.

Gingerly, she pressed the towel to the gash, trying to push the lips of the wound closed as gently as possible.

"Okay, so, we're going to apply pressure for a couple of minutes and try to slow that bleeding a bit. You know, you were just at a hospital, right? There were actual doctors and nurses there who are trained to deal with stuff like this." She was babbling, she knew she was babbling.

Crowley made a sound in the back of his throat, and she looked up, meeting his eyes.

"That cut needs stitches," she said. Her mouth filled with saliva at the thought, like she might vomit, but she swallowed it down. "I—It's fantastic you have a well-stocked first aid kit, with sutures and everything… but you can't do this for yourself and the only stitches I've ever done have been into fabric."

"Trust me, darling, it's really not that different." Crowley was trying for unconcerned nonchalance, but the gravelled rumble of his voice had a rasp underlying it that she felt as much as heard; with her palms resting against the rapidly reddening towel.

"Besides, isn't this our thing?"

"Our thing?" she repeated incredulously. "How could this possibly be anyone's th—"

"It's just like owning a tomcat," he gruffed nonsensically. "I disappear off, get in trouble, then come back, filthy and or bleeding—and you, do your Florence Nightingale routine."

She stared at him, their faces a foot apart.

"Tomcat—Thomas Katz," he prompted, raising an eyebrow for emphasis, lips twisted to one side in a small rueful smile. There was something vulnerable and hopeful in that look and the way he was trying to forge meaning and connection from her throwaway words. The shadow of a small Scottish boy trying desperately to please a mother who refused to care.

She dropped her gaze helplessly to the reddening towel.

"How did this happen?" she asked instead of responding.

Crowley rubbed bloody fingers over the stubble beside his mouth and looked away. "The paediatrician died on the operating table."

Michele bit her lip and sucked a breath to keep herself from crying, a burning lump forming in her throat.

"I had just received word when a pair of angels turned up looking for Lucifer junior; I suppose they tracked his little outburst. Pointed words, and other less pleasant things, were exchanged. That particular cat fight ended with two dead angels and one ruined suit."

"We shouldn't have gone there. I don't care if you're the toughest Tom in town, this…" She pressed the towel onto his wound a little harder, "—is not okay."

Crowley smirked down at her smarmily. "Darling, it almost sounds like you care."

"Of course, I care! You die, my son goes to hell, there's nothing I care about more!"

Crowley's smile slipped off like a mask.

"I also care that innocent people got killed for your game! You knew—"

"I never!"

"So, your sadistic little experiments, sticking needles in me and Johnny, just happened to coincide with you developing an interest in Jack's vaccination status? Because now I think about it, it seems pretty damn suspicious! You knew what you were doing," she accused. "You used that poor man, and now he's dead. Because you needed to experiment!"

"I didn't use anyone. I thought you'd done your job!"

"My job?! And what's that, exactly? Doing what a 300-year-old demon, the King of Hell himself, can't do? Yeah, because that's a reasonable expectation! You keep pretending like I have choices here, that I asked for this, and signed up for a job I know nothing about—I was supposed to be dead!"

"And I was supposed to go waltzing through that bloody rip and bury an angel blade in my gut, is that it? You're the reason that little abomination is alive to begin with. If it wasn't for you, none of this would be happening. Mz. Kline and her god forsaken child would have died in that bathtub! Lucifer would still be in the stocks, and your favourite flannel clad heroes would be lopping off vampire heads and marinading in their parental issues. You want to blame someone for all the carnage? Go take a good hard look in the mirror, Missy!"

That stung like a slap and filled her vision with angry tears.

"I didn't start this! You were the one who stopped the Winchesters putting Lucifer back in the cage. I'm only here because you cheated! And you're scared of a baby!"

"Well, you're too bloody stupid to be!" he snarled back. "When will you get it through your fluffy little head? This isn't a hallmark movie. God made rules about the spawn of angels and humans for a reason. You're upset about one dead paediatrician, really? Nephilim are chaos incarnate, there's going to be collateral damage, left and right, until you do your bloody job; shove a needle in that creature's neck, and drain its grace, like Sam and Dean Winchester planned."

"Then what?"

He glared at her with beetled brows and narrowed eyes.

"—Will you cancel the contract on Johnny's soul and let the three of us go?"

Crowley spat a bark of laughter in her face.

"Let you go? Where are you going to go, darling? Chuck cut you loose. He doesn't care. Everyone on earth but me thinks you're dead. Everyone in heaven wants you dead, just on bloody principal; because you're their dirty little secret. I'm all you've got, and you know it. It's you and me, kitten; and without me, you're nothing!" With a snap, he called the angel blade to his fist and waved it under her nose. "Take it. You want out? End the story the way you wanted. Stick me with the pointy end! But don't pretend none of this is your doing!"

Horrified by the vitriol and his words, she batted at his hand, knocking the angel-blade away. It spun from his grasp, clanged to the marble tiles, and rolled away.

They glared at each other, proximity too intimate, faces too close together.

She wanted to scream at him. She wanted to storm out and leave him there to try and stitch the wound by himself. But something told her he'd be happy if she did. It would make him a victim and her the villain, and play out a sick pattern he was comfortable with. She wouldn't give him that satisfaction.

Glaring up at him from where she knelt, holding the wound in his stomach closed, Michele blinked furiously. Lungs full with the choking scent of blood and brimstone; she forbid herself to cry or be the useless emotional woman Crowley had written her off as. Bit down on her lip and used the pain to force her shrieking emotions into some semblance of submission.

"We're not doing this, Crowley; we're not fighting while you bleed out all over me," she hissed through gritted teeth. "You're hurt, I'm upset—and scared."

She grabbed his balled fists and pressed them flat over the towel. "Hold that there!" she ordered, getting to her feet. Strode to the medkit and gained herself some breathing room by taking stock and working out what to do with the contents.

"What we are going to do—" she said over her shoulder, "is unskilled suturing, before the rest of your blood goes on the floor. This place looks like the children's hospital meme. And it serves you right! White is the world's most impractical colour!" Snippy diatribe delivered. Knees still trembling, Michele turned herself and piled all the towels she could find on top of the box and carried it into the master bedroom. Where she stripped the comforter off the bed and laid down the towels.

When she returned to the bathroom Crowley was still sitting on his porcelain throne, an unreadable look on his pallid, sweat beaded face.

"I need you on the bed with your shirt off," she told him woodenly.

Crowley pushed himself to his feet on his own and wobbled a bit.

"That's a little forward, pet. You haven't even bought me a drink yet."

With a repressed sigh, she slid herself under his arm, supporting and steadying him.

"I'm not your pet, Crowley, and seriously. Just please stop talking. You're making me want to stitch your mouth shut, along with that cut."

Crowley huffed against her hair and smirked down at her."Darling, how do you justify being such a tease?"

She ignored his off-colour comments and focused on the blood-soaked towel she was holding to his stomach.

He leant heavily on her shoulder, awkwardly shrugging off his shirt with a cluster of gritted-out pants.

Tried to hide how badly it hurt with a slimy leer. "Sure, you don't want my trousers off too, pet?"

"Yeah." She gave him a withering look. "I'll pass on seeing what you got swindled out of your soul for."

He sniffed. "Your loss."

"No, Crowley, it was yours." That finally shut him up for a moment, so she kept talking. "You're barely on your feet and if you fall, I can't pick you up again, your Highness. While it might be easier to mop blood off the bathroom floor, you're more than halfway to shock already, and that marble is cold."

"Your concern is touching."

"—There's no lidocaine in that box, and no blood units."

"Don't need them. Just get me scotch and keep it coming."

"Yeah, that's a no. This is way worse than the bullet wounds. Your pupils are dilated, your lips are blue, and you're clammy. You don't give alcohol to people who're in shock!"

Crowley scoffed. "You're forgetting yourself, darling. I'm not people."

"Yeah, well, until you can walk across the room without my help, I'll keep treating you like people. If you don't like it, call an ambulance and a licensed-medical-professional, or a veterinarian, to patch you up."

"And miss the chance to critique your needlework? Wouldn't dream of it."

She scoffed by way of return. "When I read the Supernatural books, I thought you were smarter."

They made it the last couple of steps to the bed.

"And when I read your fanfiction—" Crowley broke off whatever witty comeback he had lined up with a drunken wobble and a thick swallow, his eyes worryingly glazed.

"—Hey, save your breath. You can critique everything you want after we stop that bleeding, okay? Easy does it. Let's get you down on the bed. I promise I'll try and get this over as quick as possible."

He was down, half sitting on the bed, mouth open, obviously intending to finish his abrasively witty or inappropriate come back, when his eyes rolled back in his skull and he collapsed the rest of the way, nearly dragging her with him.

There was a moment of pure terror, until she found his pulse, felt his breath, and saw his chest rise and fall.

Reassured he was still whatever passed for alive and had simply fainted; Michele arranged Crowley's unwieldy bulk to lie flat on the bed. Then used a stack of pillows to raise his legs higher than his heart, encouraging the blood to go where it was needed and combat shock.

Staring down at the medkit in trepidation, she gritted her teeth and picked it up. Told herself things could be worse.

With Crowley unconscious, he wouldn't have to feel any extra pain, and she wouldn't have to endure him critiquing her amateur attempts at suturing.