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thethingsunsaid: You're welcome! :D And yeah, those were my feelings exactly. XD Glad you like, and thanks for your review!

CerberAsta: Hah, yeah, it took some canon-wrangling, but that's one of my favourite disciplines. ;) SPN...yeeeeeeah, it helps if you watch it with other people so you can rant at the screen together. I like the characters and the central themes, but the storyline is a MESS after season 5!

Chapter 14: Battle Without Honour (But Lots of Humanity)

"Lalala! I am absolutely defenceless! Oh no! If someone came and attacked me now that would be really really bad!"

A warehouse not far from where they had been this morning seemed currently less like a warehouse and more like a poor building abused for what could be classified as community theatre.

"I sure hope demons won't show up, like, right now!"

With Crowley as its one single, terrible actor.

"Especially dukes of hell! No sirree, sure wouldn't want that!"

The man-shaped being in a suit was currently standing in the centre of the empty warehouse, and dramatically proclaiming more lines that seemed to have escaped from a universe populated entirely by exposition fairies. Right now, he was also adding gestures, which consisted covering his eyes with the back of his hand dramatically, before then immediately sneaking a surreptitious glance from underneath. All in all, the warehouse probably had turned into a cartoon at some point.

"Can you tell him to take this more seriously?!" a hiss in a voice that was unmistakeably Dean's finally interrupted the melodrama, and Crowley immediately looked offended.

"Hey! I didn't volunteer for this gig!" the demon hissed back and was immediately shushed by all three of his companions trying unsuccessfully to hide behind a few empty cardboard boxes. Sam privately wondered whether he'd ever been part of a more unprofessional monster hunt and whether or not this was currently even worse than working with the ghostfacers.

"Okay, this is officially the worst plan ev-"

"Wait. I think I can feel Hastur ascending," Aziraphale interrupted the younger Winchester and immediately everyone went quiet. And wished there was still someone they could pray to for their desperate strategy to be a success.

xxx

The earth started to tremble. The walls started to shake. Bits and pieces of plaster and stone rained down around them, the windows dancing in their frames like ballet artists in a panic. The three people behind the behind the cardboard boxes immediately quieted down and edged somewhat closer together and even Crowley had stopped his theatrics.

"That...doesn't sound like a normal demon," said Dean, his voice hoarse.

"It's not," Aziraphale replied quietly.

Sam thought the floor didn't look right anymore. It was...shifting.

Crowley took a step back.

Black smoke had started to emanate from between the cracks in the floor now. It wasn't erupting from the ground like the demonified human souls Sam and Dean were used to, but came rather slowly, like a poisonous fog seeping out, snatching at their ankles. The air in the warehouse had turned cold.

"Should we...?" Sam began, but stopped himself as the smoke then suddenly began to rise dramatically, forming a column in the centre of the hall, billowing and turning akin the funnel of a whirlwind. The air was stirring in the room now, beginning to lift up scraps of paper and dust, tugging at their hair and clothes like insistent, ghostly cold fingers. Dean gripped the handle of his weapon more tightly.

And Hastur appeared like a shadow grown from the ground, for a moment as surreal and as vast and as terrifying as a nightmare, before his form then seemed to collapse into something that was more or less human shaped, - except that when you looked at him, a part of your brain still told you that he really, really wasn't.

"Hello, boys."

And like a disease following a flooding, Alastair stepped out right from behind them, wearing his usual form and giving them all a brown-toothed grin. "Finally realized that running is useless, yes? That's a first for the Winchesters..."

"Shut up," Dean grunted through gritted teeth, eyes darting from the human demon they knew to the Fallen called Hastur, now ascended in what Crowley had said would represent his true essence best here on Earth.

At first glance, his chosen form didn't even look that ungainly, certainly not like some of the monsters the Winchesters had seen more than their fair share of. The body he was wearing mainly seemed gaunt, dusty and leathery, thinning, dark oily hair a contrast to the yellowish, sulphur-like tinge of his skin stretched taut over thin cheekbones and wrinkly fingers. His dark brown coat and pants, beige shirt and brown waistcoat were of equally aged appearance, the entire demon looking like he would store his body, just like his clothes, folded neatly in a suitcase in a damp cellar somewhere when he wasn't using it. Not something one would necessarily feel intimidated by, but...there was also something about Hastur that simply felt...heavier. It let your eyes water if you stared at it too long, but there seemed to be a pull around him, something that just slightly distorted the air, warped the light, suggested that there was more, oh, so much more lurking in the shadows just behind him, and it let the man seem like a person-shaped hole on this plane of reality.

And then, of course, there were his eyes.

They weren't black like Alastair's, of course, not even white like Lillith's (if they had but known her at the time), they also weren't red like a crossroad demon's, no, not exactly...looking into Hastur's gaze was like staring straight into hell.

And now, those eyes started to frown as they actually beheld their surroundings and their audience.

"Wait, what?" Hastur asked, staring at Sam and Dean. "What are you doing here?" He turned to Alastair. "I thought we would have to hunt them down later. Why do these two keep showing up?"

The human demon gave his partner a long-suffering stare. "Believe me, that question has been asked by a lot of demons and angels over the past six years."

"Is that so." Hastur's frown deepened. "I thought they had been created with a bit more self-preservation instinct." Then he shrugged. "Well, no matter. They'll be no bother one way or the other."

And he waved a hand that threw both Sam and Dean against the wall of the warehouse with a force enough to potentially break ribs. Another flick of his wrist let their arms fly out to the sides, their faces screwed up like they were in pain, their bodies straining against what appeared to be invisible bonds securing their wrists against the wall, letting them hang in the air helplessly, exchanging wide-eyed glances with each other. Hastur threw a glance at Alastair. "There. Your reward for your services, little worth though they were. Torture them, take them apart, or...eat them, or do whatever it is your kind do. I care lit-."

"No!"

It was Crowley who had shouted the word and interrupted Hastur, the demon having rushed forward (and now seemed almost equally surprised by his own action like everyone else). He stared at Hastur, hard.

"...leave them out of this. You're after me and no one else."

Hastur raised an eye brow.

"What are you, compassionate now, Crawly?" he asked, briefly showing some discoloured teeth in a snarl. "You always were the most incompetent Fallen I knew."

"And look how I much care," Crowley replied coolly, before throwing a glance over his shoulder. "Aziraphale. Let them down."

"Uh. Right," the angel said, at first almost seeming startled at the address, but then hurriedly turned and waved a hand, which let the Winchester brothers drop to the floor again. Dean caught himself alright, but Sam stumbled with a gasp, which let the older hunter stare at the demons with utter murder in his eyes.

"You're going to pay for this," he hissed, before turning on the advancing Alastair, grabbing his younger brother's knife and positioning himself protectively between him and Sam. "Don't take even a step further."

And Hastur saw all this...and laughed.

"Oh, Crawly! Crawly, Crawly, Crawly," he drawled, "What is this? Such a little demon against a duke of hell? With nothing but an aged, near obsolete traitor angel at your side?" he spread his fingers, a grin spreading on his face like a tear in sack cloth as he stepped closer. "But you never were that smart, were you? Let me show you what a real Fallen can do before I erase your miserable existence!"

The building shook as Hastur screamed the last sentence, his voice gaining a distinctly inhuman quality at the same time that the lights they had brought began to flicker like candles in a thunderstorm. Even Alastair and the Winchesters stopped trying to gain a tactical advantage on each other and simply stared. The shadows at the edges of the light were growing now, seemingly drawn to the figure of Hastur in their midst as if he were a magnet for darkness, and they were growing thicker as he spoke, gaining substance, joining at his back to rise, casting the entire room into a deeper darkness as Crowley in front of him paled and took a step back. Dean's face communicated that he obviously didn't think that a great sign, and then Hastur's form simply seemed to explode, bright, searingly white wings erupting from his back and they were burning with hellfire. They bathed the place in darkness, seemingly giving off an inverted version of firelight, sucking in what sources of brightness remained in the room like the burning event horizon of two pinion-shaped black holes. Sparks erupted from all over-charged electric devices and cables in the entire warehouse, and Dean and Sam's eyes widened as they had never felt that sort of power before short of coming head to head with Lucifer himself. Hastur swiped a claw-like hand forwards, curling his fingers into his palm as if he were crushing something, and Crowley reacted immediately, falling to his knees with a choked cry, clutching at his throat. Hastur snorted.

"Honestly, I thought you better than this," he said, "Even bringing your ridiculous, puny human pets..."

"They're...not pets," Crowley gasped, and then, even if he barely seemed to be getting enough air to speak, raised his head with what actually seemed to be a definite start of a smirk. "They're hunters."

And it was at this point that Dean fired his shot gun and hit Hastur straight into the chest.

"Aaaaaaaaaaagh!"

Crowley leapt to his feet again the second Hastur flailed and stumbled, actual blood spurting from the wound. Dean managed to fire two more rounds into him before an enraged Alastair forced him to stop, launching himself at the Winchesters with a scream, ready to presumably fling them into another wall, this time more permanently, but was blocked by Aziraphale interrupting his gesture with a protective movement of his own.

"You will do nothing of the sort!"

"What...what in the world did you do to those bullets?!" Hastur shouted meanwhile, clutching at the holes in his chest that wouldn't stop bleeding, "That hurt!"

"They should," Dean smirked as he replied, "They have Devil's traps carved into them and were blessed by the angel over here."

"Listen, his Grace just wants the goddamn snake," Alastair snarled at Dean from where Aziraphale was still preventing him from getting a clear shot at lifting the hunter into the air and unravelling his organs like a freaking Christmas present, "And if you prevent him from getting his little revenge on that miserable excuse for a demon, nobody of us is going to be very happy about it. So how about you two just beat it and let the adults talk things out, hmm?"

"So you can hunt us down separetely later, right?" Dean asked, still trying to aim his gun at Hastur again while Crowley was scrambling to get out of firing range. "Let me think about it." he glanced down the barrel of the colt. "No."

"You wretched, pathetic dirt monkey, how dare you-!" Hastur began, but then was interrupted for the second time.

"Sorry," said Sam who, while all the chattering had been going on had easily snuck up behind the Duke and was now raising the knife. "But wasting demons is kind of our gig." And he rammed the blade straight between the shoulder blades.

Hastur screamed. It was a far cry from how his earlier howl had sounded – that one had been enraged, but this one was pure agony. His wings flared up like someone had poured gasoline into their flames, shooting out and going rigid toward the ceiling, Sam barely avoiding being hit by them as he stumbled backwards. Light shot out the duke's eyes and mouth, head thrown back like they had seen so many times before as his skeleton lit up inside his body as if made of St Elm's fire.

"Did...did that...?" Aziraphale began to stammer, almost at the same time as Alastair gave a frustrated "No!" but then both of them were drowned out by an even louder noise from Hastur, and this time, it definitely sounded enraged.

"YOU! CRAWLY!"

"Eeep," the addressed demon managed.

"You...all of you blessed vermin...!" Hastur hissed, and now his movements were jerky, as if his body wasn't quite under his control anymore and perhaps half-dead, but still kept alive by sheer iron will and fury, "I will...end you...!" the duke rasped, uprighting himself again while his wings kept flaring up and twitching, like appendages connected to a broken live wire, the shadows dancing across his face as a result letting him appear even madder than before.

"No one has ever dared to raise a grubby hand against me, and I will make sure that no one ever will again," he snarled, his gaze darting from Sam, to Crowley, to the little group of three consisting of Alastair, Aziraphale and Dean, "I will fill your innards with hellfire and keep you alive while you burn, I will cook your eyeballs in your own tears until they resemble boiled eggs, I will pull out your intestines through your navel with a rusty spoon-!"

"Oh for fuck's sake, not this again," Alastair muttered. "Listen, it's exactly villainous speeches like this that let your plans fail every time! I told you, you need to act like a human!" he shouted at Hastur. "Just for once, think outside the box! Like this!"

And then there was a bang! as Alastair drew a gun and shot Sam straight in the head. The hunter collapsed without so much as a cry, only staring at his brother for a single moment in amazement, as if he hadn't even noticed yet he was dead.

Dean screamed like a wounded animal as his brother fell.

"SAMMY!"

"Eager to join him?" Alastair's eyes turned black as he pointed the gun at Dean and spread his other arm wide in a mock-inviting gesture. "Then come home, righteous man."

"No! I might still be able to heal him!" Aziraphale called, surging forward with surprising quickness for the appearance of his vessel, but Hastur cut his way off with a swipe of hellfire blazing up in front of him.

"Oh no. Hell forbid, no," the duke said, "If you think I'd let the only one of you who even stands a smidgen of a chance against my power anywhere close to me, you've got another thing coming," he snarled, regarding the blonde angel with narrowed eyes. He beat his wings once, twice, rolling his shoulders and letting the knife slide neatly out of his body and kicking it away from him carelessly. "If sneaking up on me was your brilliant plan then it has failed spectacularly," Hastur smirked, his eyes roving from an axiously hovering Aziraphale still trying to get to Sam over to Dean who looked like he was either about to fall apart or tear into him at a moment's notice, the older hunter's gaze fixed on his brother's body bleeding out at the demon's feet.

"You're going to pay for thiss," Crowley hissed, picking up the knife from the floor, preparing to fling it at the duke, "Dean, are you-?" he began to ask, but the older Winchester brother had seemingly already broken down, shoved Alastair out of the way heedlessly and was now charging at Hastur while firing his shot gun like a man gone mad. But this time the duke only laughed, swatting first the bullets and then Dean away like suicidal flies.

"No! Sam!" Dean shouted, trying to get back onto his knees from where Alastair had flung him onto the floor only a body's length away from his brother, desperately reaching out a hand toward the still form on the floor and the ever increasing blood stain below, but then gasped as obviously something had grasped him around the neck like Crowley before, keeping him on his knees, while his fingers were scrabbling at his throat.

"This is slightly underwhelming, Alastair," Hastur stated, regarding the display in front of his feet with a raised eye brow. "You led me to believe these two were actually a challenge."

"One of them did manage to knife you, and then I was the one who had to shoot him," Alastair pointed out in irritation. "And now you can barely manage to keep one angel in check, while – aaah!"

"Aziraphale! Now!" Crowley shouted, straight after having flung the knife at Alastair and having scored a hit on the other demon's arm, not enough to excorcise him, but apparently enough to injure. "I will distract Hastur and you can heal-!"

"Oh can he, though?" Alastair cut through Crowley's directions with a voice like acid, clutching at his injured arm. "Because, just to let you know, I've studied up on angels since the last time I had a run in with those pests – and I did learn a trick or two. Your grace?"

"My pleasure," Hastur replied smoothly – and then pulled forth a bottle of something that was golden, viscous and shimmering in a flask, and before anybody could say anything, had flung the contests all over Aziraphale, who immediately cried out.

"What-?!" Even Dean, who was still in Hastur's force choke hold managed a sound, as he and Crowley both stared at the display uncomprehendingly for a second before Hastur's voice broke the silence.

"It's holy oil," he said smoothly. "An inescapable trap for angels...and now, just to see what happens, I'm going to set it on fire."

He flicked a finger and the warehouse was suddenly lit as bright as day, the centre of the blaze one incredibly surprised, wide- and blue-eyed angel, tattered wings bursting forth from his back like birds trying to escape a burning tree. The angel screamed.

And the look on Crowley's face could only be described as utter horror.

"AZIRAPHALE!"

Hastur grinned at him as his eyes shone from the reflected fire. "Watch your winged love burn, Crawly..."

"No..." Crowley's voice was strangled, barely a whisper, even as the body of his friend finally fell over, the flames beginning to slowly recede, leaving behind something that was mercifully hidden in the darkness.

Their numbers had already been halved. The battle had gone horrifically wrong. Aziraphale was dead. Sam soon would be. Dean was still struggling in Hastur's choke hold with no hope to escape, and Crowley was standing in the middle of all this carnage, paralyzed.

"And look what I brought for you," Alastair said sweetly, stepping closer to the shell-shocked demon in the black suit, "You know, I'm the chief torturer down there, you might have heard of me, so my professional pride would have demanded something else, something that draws this out more, but..." and here the human demon gave a shrug, and then pulled out another gun from his belt, but this one was a water pistol. "Duke's orders."

"Huh," said Crowley, almost not even managing that, simply blinking at the in any other scenario ridiculous-looking green and yellow plastic gun aimed at him. His face was absolutely ashen, as if any energy he had had had been burned out of him the moment the angel went up in flames.

"It's been blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury," Alastair informed him cheerfully. "Would be pretty painful for me if I got a drop of this on my fine skin, but for you, my friend..." he sucked a breath of air through his teeth. "Well." He smiled. "This might not go against my professional pride after all."

He pointed the pistol at the demon who still hadn't moved an inch. Crowley closed his eyes. Alastair's finger tightened.

"Hastur asks you to say hello to Ligur from him."

The stream hit Crowley straight in the chest and the demon dropped to the floor like he had been shot. Hastur looked like he was listening to music as Crowley was the third one that started screaming, curling in on himself as he was hiding his melting face in his arms, writhing on the floor.

"N-no...!" Dean was still pathetically struggling, his voice a mere rasping as he could barely get enough air even for that. His finger's twitched, still trying to reach Sam who was only a metre away from him, eyes of the younger man glazing over as the rest of his life was leaving his body.

"The 'righteous man', is it?" Hastur asked with a raised eye brow as he looked down at Dean, slowly coming to stand between him and his brother. "What a disappointment. This was hardly more than a...I believe the modern term is 'curd-stomp battle'?" He frowned. "It was something to with dairy, I think."

"...almost, your Grace." Alastair said, also stepping over from Crowley, whose movements had almost stilled on the floor. "But yeah. It's amazing what you can accomplish if you just learn from previous mistakes, eh, boys? Well," he added with a cruel grin, looking down at Dean and Sam. "I guess I should say 'boy' now, shouldn't I?"

"C...Cas..." Dean managed to gasp, struggling to turn his head to the door.

"Oh, waiting for him, are you?" Alastair asked, looking at his nails. "Well, so are we. Mainly because..."

And it was at this moment, that finally the doors of the warehouse crashed open and Castiel burst through them so very much too late.

"DEAN-!"

"So I can do this," Alastair said, and then twisted Dean's neck with one smooth movement right in front of the newly arrived angel. The hunter's body sagged lifelessly to the floor, coming to lie right next to his dead brother's.

And if Alastair had been able to, he would have gotten the look on the angel's face right now fucking framed.

"Too late, your pets are dead...along with your caregiver and his demon whore," the chief torturer finally stepped forward, leaving Hastur framed by the two dead bodies behind him, Crowley's and Aziraphale's corpses lying further away on the edges, giving the entire scene the morbid symmetry of a graveyard. Alastair spread his hands in front of it like an artist. "Well, angel? What do you say?!"

Castiel stared at him for a moment, his face expressionless.

Then:

"Well, that's fairly easy. One, you're both the biggest suckers on this planet," he said, his face bizarrely still an utter deadpan, before it then transformed into a complete shite-eating grin, which, of course, looked even more out of place on Castiel's face, "And two, you really shouldn't have let yourself get distracted by me."

"What?" Alastair frowned.

"Yeah. I resent the 'demon whore' bit, by the way." Dead Aziraphale raised a finger.

"What?!" Hastur whirled around.

"Wanna know what is more powerful than an excorcism by an angel?" Castiel in the door asked, now leaning against the frame almost casually, arms crossed. "Answer's real easy."

By now both Hastur and Alastair had resorted to simple uncomprehending staring at him and at Aziraphale (who seemed to have gone back to being dead), so Castiel simply rolled his eyes. "Fine. Show him, guys."

And then, there was a very definite yelp from Alastair, because now both dead!Sam and dead!Dean (the latter somewhat gingerly cracking his head back into place) sat up, and then simultaneously grabbed onto Hastur's sides.

"The only thing more powerful, than an excorcism performed by an angel," began Sam as he rose with an utterly serene smile,

"is an excorcism performed by two," Dean finished, and in contrast to Sam, his face was utterly expressionless, but his eyes were glowing blue like the brightest sky.

"N-No! Get-!"

Hastur was just beginning to struggle, but by then, both hunters had already laid their hands on his head, took a breath and-

"Exorcizo te, omnis spiritus immunde -"

"-in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis!"

And despite all the fires they had already seen this night, the excorcism of one duke of hell still glowed the brightest of all.

"Emergency excorcism," Crowley, sitting (slightly wet) on the floor gave Castiel in the door a smug grin. "Told ya it would come in handy."

"What?! NO!" Alastair shouted, looking at the now lifeless body of Hastur aghast, stumbling a few steps backwards. "How-? Why-?!"

His back hit something. When he turned around, it was the ash-and-soot covered body of Aziraphale, the only non-black patch on his face two wickedly blue eyes and a grin of pearly white teeth.

"Sucker," Arziraphale whispered cheerfully and then rammed the knife right into Alastair's back. The demon collapsed to his knees with barely a scream from torn lungs. It didn't kill him, yet, but he was obviously struggling to even compute anything now.

"You know, I've always been rather fond of human methods," Aziraphale continued conversationally, as Dean and Sam hurried over. "And you, kid, would need to have been created 5000 years earlier to get the drop on me."

"You...traitor..." Alastair struggled to get the words out, trying to glare at the blonde man even as the two hunters were already there, pressing him onto his knees as their hands settled on his head.

"Please," said Aziraphale, and then he favoured the demon on his knees with a grin that would have screamed for sunglasses, "Call me Crowley."

To be continued...

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