Chapter 23: Warfare

From the Journal of Bobby Winchester

With little Gabriel around, it seemed like I could prolong this gap in violence forever. How, my subconscious brain asked, could someone, even someone as loathsome as Zeus, attack a place that had my Gabey Baby in it? But, of course, I could not prolong it into perpetuity, and regardless to how infectious Gabe's laughter was. It was the middle of the night when it happened.

Crowley and I were in our room, I was lying with my head on his chest, listening to his heart thump in my ear. I wasn't exactly asleep, I had found I needed less and less of it, most of my nights spent in quite respite without ever actually sleeping. But this was a ritual neither of us wanted to do away with. It was a comfort to sit in the dark with him. Sometimes we spoke, mostly we didn't. Once in awhile he told me stories, stories of the old days on Earth and in Hell. Sometimes we told each other about things we had done while we had been apart during the day. It was creating an odd effect where things did not seem entirely real until I had relayed them to him and he had given his, mostly rude and sarcastic, opinions.

That night, though, we weren't talking, his chest was warm and he pulled his fingers through my lengthening hair, freeing it of tangles one by one. From the window, a noise echoed in from across the fields of Hell, a deep, resonant thudding. I knew what it was but didn't want it. I wanted to stay here with Crowley and listen to him disparage the idiocy of his underlings. In rejection of the noise, I pulled my face closer to Crowley's chest.

"Was that you?" I asked, although it clearly wasn't. I was hoping he would say that it was, that he had learned to manipulate and alter Hell nearly as well as I could and he had just constructed a mountainous statue of himself in Hell's exact center. I asked him as much.

He looked down at me and tilted up an eyebrow, "You would let me build a mountainous statue of myself?"

I laughed and remained another moment on his chest, "You're asking for permission now? Is that kingly?"

He tugged a lock of my hair, "You must not have met my queen, she is a force to be considered."

I sat up, "So then, it was a war starting?"

"Yes, kitten, it was a war starting, are you ready?"

I ignored the question and frowned at him, "You're not fighting, yeah?"

"Do you want me to?"

I shook my head, "You're no good at fighting. Do something you're good at."

He smirked, "Then you go and distract him and I'll win the war."

I got up to put on my armor. Crowley pulled his legs around the other side and rose with me.

I desperately wanted this war to not be here yet. As much as I had been excited for the adrenaline throttling of this war, I had so enjoyed the purposeful peace. I had begun to love my tiny family. We had started having dinners together, almost every night. That had been grand, mostly Crowley and I watching in stunned silence as Gabriel devoured platefuls of food. Crowley not so much held my hand sometimes and would meaningfully allow our fingers to touch. It brought more comfort that I would have anticipated. Sometimes they would get into what they would call arguments, which warmed me to watch. Gabe never relented and Crowley was never out of things to say.

Days ago we were sitting at that little table, Crowley looking over at Gabriel as he worked his way through a potpie.

Gabe took a momentary break, his cheeks packed with food to say, "Cah ah ve mer?"

"Don't talk with your mouth full, vagabond little monster." Crowley said with not a little affection.

Gabey swallowed massively and said more clearly, "Can I have armor? I mean, armor for me? Like Seph's?" Seph being what he called me.

"Why do you need armor? Who will you be fighting, Zeus's Kindergarten Killers?"

Gabe ruffled his wings in confusion, "Huh?"

Crowley sighed, "No." But he kept watching Gabriel, eyes narrowed with what I recognized as curiosity.

Gabe let out an enormous squeal of indignation, "Please!"

Crowley chided him, "Don't beg, it's pathetic and beneath you. Tell me why I should go out of my way to make you armor."

Gabriel looked for a long time at him, then went back to eating, slowly this time, brow pulled together tightly. Finally he looked back up and said, "Ok, so like…I mean… ok so I'm little now and not helpful but I have to learn right? So I mean if you give me armor then I can get good at having armor and then when I'm bigger and useful I'll be extra useful and I can do stuff like if there is another war then like I can be there and help. And um… watch Seph's back and yeah."

I have to admit it was not eloquent.

Crowley laughed, "Very good. Ok, you're almost there. Convince me that you're doing me a favor by letting me provide you with armor."

Gabriel screwed up his face again and went back to eating. His wings twitched and moved as he thought. Then, more slowly that the first time and with much more care he said, "Hades, every moment I am in your kingdom without access to armor you are squandering valuable time for me to train into the warrior I will become. If you delay any longer I might be forced to leave and find a patron more willing to give me armor and training. Then the next war you fight might be against me. That isn't an outcome you want."

Crowley laughed so hard he was breathless, "Excellent! I particularly like the threat at the end. Be careful though, because I know as well as you do that you won't leave Hell just to get better military training, so why should I be afraid of you?"

Gabe hit his little fist on the table and unfurled his wings to their biggest, "I don't know!"

Crowley gave a small tug at one of his wings, "I'll get you your armor. But next time you'll have to negotiate better than that."

In culmination of all of the years I have walked on the earth and beneath it, this is still one of my favorite memories, sitting beside Crowley as he taught my little Gabe to negotiate. It's this that I was thinking of as I strapped myself into my armor.

I had again become responsible for a little life. And I was taking it to war. Hadn't I learned? I had begun to dream, when I slept, terrible images of Gabriel being ripped apart, his little wings being torn from his body, his chest being sliced open. I always woke with the taste of blood.

There was a heavy knocking on the door. "Come in." I called.

My two captains came in, both of them armored and out of breath, wildness in one of their eyes, determination in the other.

"M'lady, they're here." The taller of them said.

"Yeah, yeah, I heard, help me with my armor?"

They, Gilgash and Enkit that is, helped me clip and tether the metal to me.

Fully armored I turned my back on my captains and looked at Crowley, he was draped in his finest robes, in case he came up against Zeus, I supposed. I walked over to him and straightened them, my fingers lingering for a moment too long. "Be careful, Crowley." I whispered, too softly for my captains to hear.

"You too, Bobby." He murmured back

"I have a deal for you," I whispered, "If you live, I will too."

He smiled gently, "Deal."

I scoffed, barely audible, "Is that how you seal your deals?" Before he could respond I seized him by the robes and kissed him desperately. Then, before I could lose my nerve, I turned from him and marched to my captains, who had looked away.

I led Gilgash and Enkit out through the palace and out its double doors. The army came up in ranks behind me as I walked toward the wall, we had prepared for just this sort of thing, they too knew what the noise meant and were ready to defend. I wondered if any of them had left someone behind in relative safety. I wondered if they were as frightened as I was. Crowley was not beside me for this, he probably didn't even really know what I was doing, but then, I didn't really know what he was doing.

I apologize that I keep doing this, breaking the narrative, but as the First and the Eldest Queen of Hell, I do believe I can break the narrative whenever I like. You see Crowley, don't despair, there are a few ways you have influenced me. In that first battle, it was the first time since I had found him that I had to do something frightening alone. And it was the first time that I realized that he went off and did things that I had never considered before. Probably important things. Probably things that I would be no good at.

I have been told, or deciphered, or engrained, from stories that were love stories but not so much stories about people who loved each other, that this is not how it is supposed to go. Didn't star crossed loves of the ages do their things together? Did they not move their every breath in tandem? Did not our very separability circumscribe us with second class affection? I used to wonder about that a lot. These days I am too old to care much about those things. That was a part of the way were to each other that lasted the millennia. We really did very few important things side by side. Although I do think that was appropriated each other's strengths as though they were our own. There are still days where I think I have an ace in the hole when I am asked to negotiate, I don't of course, I am hopeless at negotiation. Of course, he is hopeless in armor.

He was not the entire world. That was reciprocal. But we were inseverably tethered. The world, rather than be crafted of him, orbited us as a team in an ellipse with a double center.

So I marched off to battle alone, at the head of the Army of Hell. The wall welcomed us and with my contingent, we arrived at the top of it, looking down across Hell's sloping pits. The hellhounds gnashed their teeth and stalked along its perimeter. This offered me some comfort. The gnashing of Hellhounds still comforts me, sorry dad. Beneath us were Zeus' armies.

I have to admit, I had not been so frightened since I had been cornered by the Hellions.

Zeus had mighty and shining armies. They spanned my entire field of vision and glinted of gold and silver and pearl. My people armored in Hell's dark metal inlaid with gold did not seem so impressive.

Dad, I wanted to badly to run. For the first time since I had been tiny I wanted to run all the way to the bunker and I wanted you to be waiting and, Dad, I wanted you to spin your gun and fight them for me. But I was the only Winchester on that wall and Winchesters don't run from a fight. So I tucked my chin up high and tried not to tremble.

Zeus was carried forward on a grand litter, sitting with wide spread legs on a thick and daunting golden throne. He too, was armored. White and golden armor with a tall and shining helmet, sparking lighting sheathed at his hip. He stood and stepped off the litter, stalking to the ground and tilting his head back up, looking to me.

"Hades." He boomed, "I am giving you one chance to surrender before I rend your wall to pieces, consider it a generosity."

For a moment I wondered how far away he was that he thought I was Crowley. We stood about the same height, I supposed, but I was slimmer by half, and…you know…a woman. I lifted my helmet and was glad, for the first time, that I had allowed my hair to grow long again, it spilled with swaying femininity from my spiked metal helmet and across my dark metal shoulders. I smiled down at him and I hope he could see the kind eyes I radiated. "Thank you for your generosity, Sky Lord, but to rend my wall you would first have to reach it."

I said these things laced in sweetness, then lowered my helmet. He snarled and raised a bolt to hurl but beneath him, the ground shuddered. I had meant it as a threat for the sake of threats, but before the bolt let his meaty hand, Crowley made his first play. The earth, should I say earth? Hell beneath Zeus' army cracked open in a deep chasm around the walls, a moat of dark growling. It was the crack he had made when he added his blood to mine in Hell's makeup. But deeper and longer and much more menacing.

Zeus stumbled back, falling to the ground and crawling desperately onto safer ground. For this, I really did want Crowley next to me, if not to hear whatever he had to say about the King of Gods falling on his ass and crawling like a horror movie harlot. Laughter sparkled through my armies. Hounds, thousands of them, clawed up the moat and faced the gleaming army. As though on command, actually, probably on Crowley's command, they ripped into them. Those Hellhounds could hardly be stopped, flesh and metal shrieked and split. It was into this tumult that we charged.

Leading the charge I leapt from the wall. Small, foot sized pieces of stone flew up from the chasm to meet my every step, allowing me to run downwards at the fleeing army. My own army following me closely. We came up behind the hellhounds and struck with our spears and our swords, cutting down the soldiers the hounds had missed. Zeus was long gone when we reached the ground.

Only long after did I feel the weight of the blood I spilled. It was heavy. But in my armor, my blood high, spear singing, I felt only the sparse weight of my metal bearing me down. I could leap farther than a living man, cleave through torsos, spin like a swallow in flight. It was like a dance and I was so alive. I hooted and laughed and fell in love with how I fought. In a different life, where I might have spent my adolescence napping in the back of Dad's Impala, a life where I knew a sawed off shotgun better than I knew a spear and the call of a hellhound, I would have been a good hunter. Would I have been a good hunter?

The hellhounds leading the way, Hell slipping beneath the enemy and sure beneath us, we were routing them. They did not stand a chance.

I laughed into the air as I spun around a golden arrow, and dipped beneath the next one. I turned to the archer and saw perhaps the most beautiful man I had ever born witness to. His shining golden hair fell in waves and curls about his angular face, lips small and, at the moment, turned down. He raised his bow again, looking down his arrow at me with luminescent blue eyes.

In a lyric voice he raged, "I do not miss!"

I charged straight toward him, deflecting the arrow with a spinning spear. "What was that?" I yelled as I bore down on him, running my spear through his shoulder, he screamed an almighty scream as I turned away, "I MISSED IT!"

Horror crossed his face and, shuddering, he looked down at his shoulder, golden liquid pouring from it. His blood, I thought, ichor when its coming out of a god.

Having now made myself giggle in the middle of a battle, I leapt over him and continued my rampage through Zeus' troops. They began to fall back, led by the golden Apollo, shoulder still bleeding where I had wounded him. This is where I made my mistake. It was my first battle, I felt untouchable. They were retreating, clearly defeated. I forgot myself. I gave chase. Hellhounds raced behind me and, in recollection, I probably cut quite the figure, dripping blood, clad in blackened armor inlaid with golden flowers, spear high, hellhounds pouring around me and snarling circuits, chasing down the army of Zeus.

I did not see the lightning bolt until I was on the ground, shuddering and gasping, my body outside of my control. I convulsed on the ground, electricity arcing across the jagged edges of my armor. Before I could recover strong arms lifted my and gripped me in vices. I swung around the best I could, my helmet had become crooked while I shook on the ground and my muscles were still in the process of betraying me, but I could see a snatch of the man who had me in so unbreakable a hold. Sun darkened skin and a ferocious black beard. He smelled of old blood. I kicked out and thrashed, he just lifted me and it was like a child squirming in her father's arms. I am not sure he even noticed the fight I was putting up.

Zeus approached me and removed my helmet, dropping it the ground. There was a long and spiking crown that came up from it in uneven tines, one of them broke off in the tumble, weakened, no doubt, by its acquaintance with the lighting. Zeus was smiling, it was a genial smile, would have been friendly if it had made it all the way to his eyes.

I grimaced at him and he took a piece of my hair and let it run through his squared fingers, "You aren't as pretty as I would have hoped, you'd think the King of the Underworld could do better."

I spit at him and I expected him to hit me with the back of his hand, but he did not. He straightened, wiped the spit from his armor and touched a lightning bolt on his hip delicately, a caress. He raised his hand to me, blue arcs lighting glinting malevolently on his teeth and touched my face.

I would like to report that I took that bravely, that I did not flinch, that I kept eye contact with my assailant and stood Winchestarianly strong. I did not. I screamed and tried to pull away, the amperage ricocheting down my body like knives. Zeus was still talking but I couldn't understand through the ringing in my ears.

"Show them what we've got." Zeus said with a smile. The man holding me turned me around to face the wall. My army was there, hanging back now, spears at their sides, watching their mighty queen scream like a little girl. Even the Hellhounds were still.

"You tell Hades," Zeus boomed toward the wall, "That he may exchange this blood soaked kingdom at any time for his crowned whore."

I laughed, doing my best to channel the little bravery I had left, "You don't know Hades well enough, Zeus," my voice was cracked, "He doesn't like me enough to give up Hell."

He ran a finger down the side of my face, letting it caress down the side of my body and stopping at my hip. Through my armor I nearly couldn't feel it, but it inspired an entirely new sort of fear. "Oh," he said in a low and gravely tone, "You had better hope that isn't true."

There was only one source of motion on the field, all of them too unwilling to continued to advance while I was captive. Except for a little winged body wearing a tiny set of armor that he still couldn't fly properly with, he kept stumbling and having to take a few earth bound steps. I could hear his little tiny voice, "SEPH SEPH NO!" I saw him snap his fingers like Crowley and a spear wavered into existence in his hand. He threw it mightily. It fell to the ground more than twenty yards from Zeus.

Too far, thankfully, for Zeus to take note, and, praise be my Captains, Gilgash and Enkit had seized him by the struggling arms and pulled him back. Little Gabriel, struggling toward me, fear lacing his eyes, was the last I saw of my Hell before I was pulled away.

The man behind me wrenched me into a chariot and tethered me down. I finally got a good look at him, dark gray eyes with no life in them, bloody red lips. His muscles were thick and my god, he stank. He had sort of a menacing beauty and I thought that might mean he was a god, managing to be beautiful through all that. His jaw was certainly firm and he was flawlessly symmetrical.

I could only see the inside of the chariot. But what I would have given for another look toward my wall, what I would have given to see Crowley on top of it, or in armor of his own, fighting his way toward me. I don't know if, before I was captured, I would have liked the thought wanting to be saved so badly. But I wanted to be saved so badly. I was so afraid, I shook in my armor and was so close to crying.

We left Hell shortly and began to ascend. I don't' have much to say about the trip to Olympus, I couldn't see any of it, which was probably the point of shoving me on the floor of a chariot, turned so I couldn't see out the back.

The last part, or perhaps most of it, I'm not sure, I spent unconscious via crazy eyes, Ares, I thought, kicking me in the head.

So I awoke, head hurting from the metal wrapped kicking and body hurting from Holy Lighting. Ares hauled me up, holding me by the wrists. My shoulders were nearly dislocated before I found my feet. Olympus was grand and as filled with gold filigree and marble as I expected, less grand, I am happy to write, than Hell was. Have a drink Crowley, we beat Zeus.

Ares took me to one of the most beautiful prisons I could imagine. Of course, the only one I had ever seen was in Bobby Singer's decrepit broken panic room, so this was not a high bar.

There were no walls, just a smallish, flat plateau of marble raised slightly from the Olympus around it. Atop it, waiting for me, was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. Its body was covered with a hundred eyes which raced and peered in every direction, its slathering mouth open and drooling. Ares untied me and threw me onto the platform. The dog smelled worse than he did. Rancid.

I pushed myself up and faced him, he looked down at me and I rose, feet planted firmly. He regarded me with his dark eyes and spoke, "Fought well."

"You too."

He seemed to appreciate that, and looked like he was going to say something else. But Zeus's chariot, gold, with lightning etched upon the side, racketed up next to him and the King God stepped down, silencing Ares. Zeus was smiling at me, a ravenous smile.

Ares gave me a rather pitying expression and turned his back, leaving me alone with Zeus.

AN: There it is, my lovely readers! Update soon, I think. Let me know what you think!