Disclaimer

Supernatural is a television series, created by Eric Kripke, produced by Kripke Enterprises, Wonderland Sound and Vision and Warner Bros. Television, distributed by Warner Bros. Television

I'm writing this for fun and I'm not making any money from this. The lines quoted from the show are in Italics.

Bridge over time

Crowley made a swift recap of the evening news: Gabriel, the MIA archangel had been alive all along, what's more Crowley himself had run into him more than once in his guise as the Trickster, and now that he could have been useful, was actually dead. Fucking great!

"We have to help them," Naomi said.

When Crowley looked at her he saw her eyes sparkling with tears like sapphire in the moonlight. Hmm… his special angel had a past. He was narcissist enough to dismiss her past and enjoy the fact that her present use of the plural meant the two of them. Useful as the late archangel might have been, he was dead now. Dead like so many other powerful beings. While Crowley was still standing. In the shadows for the moment, but still standing.

They set up the plan that night.

Crowley saw Naomi accept the price that should never be acceptable for an angel. If he had his soul, he might have been inclined to point it out. She was trading Lucifer's imprisonment for two human souls: Bobby Singer and Sam Winchester.

For the first time, he saw her as the guard dog of heaven when she agreed to his key pressure points.

For the first time, Crowley truly appreciated Naomi's angelic background, not just for her encyclopedic knowledge of… everything. He saw the guardian angel in her when she suggested soft touches he could use – when he used Bobby's soul to find Death, he should also grant him the use of his legs again. It was so useful and so perverse, that Crowley was smiling like the Cheshire cat. He saw the intelligence officer in her when she gave him the idea of how to use flip Brady's loyalty. He knew it got to her when he rolled off his tongue the phrase "lovers in league against Satan". In a way, that was what the two of them were. Who would have believed it? Crowley and Naomi lovers in league against Satan. Well… not lovers, but the point still stood.

"This is just plan B," she said. "The best option is for Michael to incarnate. If Dean Winchester accepts him, all this… doesn't have to happen."

He heard in her voice that she was trying to soothe her conscience. Not conscience, actually. Angel had no souls, so instead of conscience they had… programming?

"Have you met Dean Winchester?" Crowley asked mockingly.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"He's not going to accept Michael. I would wager my soul on that."

She looked at him furious. Not only he had burst her bubble of hope that she hadn't just doomed two souls, but he had reminded her about his own soul. The night was full of first times: for the first time, Naomi grabbed the collar of his jacket with her right hand and pushed him against the wall. She extended her left arm and something that looked like a grey cloud with lightning sparkling through it appeared on her palm. Before he could think of reacting, she put the palm on his chest, pressing the dirty light into him. Crowley heard her voice through the excruciating pain.

"You little being have no idea what I had to do for this! How it affected me! How it still affects me! You better prove that you are special and imprison the creator of your miserable race or I will come after you. I am not as quick as you, but I have millennia of experience. I can do things you cannot even imagine, with your mere three hundred years."

She wasn't sparkling, on the verge of smiting him. It was a colder, deeper kind of rage and while he teleported away from her, Crowley promised himself that it would be the last time he runs away from her.

Months passed. Then years. It felt like ages. Like long, mad, dark ages.

Their plan worked, Lucifer was caged, and as a bonus, so was Michael. Castiel became God, then gave it up as a bad job, but not before dispatching of the last archangel, Raphael. All these things were happening at an alarming pace, Crowley's fortune rose and fell with Castiel and the Winchesters, but never, neither in his darkest moments, nor when his star was rising, never did Crowley go back to "Mesopotamia".

He was sure that she was keeping tabs on him. So, he started keeping tabs on her. It took him a while, but he managed to turn one of her most trusted agents, Ion. And, despite knowing in his bones that she was watching him, Crowley researched ways to get rid of his soul. And, despite finding out how to do it, he kept his word to her.

In his research, Crowley found about the deep bond that tied them together. Crowley learned that Castiel was tied to the Winchesters not just by circumstance, and common purposes – of friendship as they called it, but by the fact that he had got both of them out of hell. They weren't really aware that it was more than friendship or gratitude. They were bound together. And so were he and Naomi.

Crowley took a page out of the Winchesters' book and decided to ignore it. He told himself that he gathered information about her from Ion because she was a threat, and it was the truth. He always told the truth. It was important. It was essential. But it didn't have to be all the truth.

His disastrous collaboration with Castiel brought Naomi vividly into his mind. Naomi hadn't betrayed him. Naomi went to hell for him. Naomi saw his greatness, not just his usefulness. He had to force himself not to probe Castiel for news of her.

Events were developing madly. Leviathans, God 2.0 aka Castiel, angels fighting angels. Crowley expected to hear about her. Expected her to rise to the rule of heaven. Expected her to transform Heaven into another version of his Hell. Order and quiet.

Nothing. Not a whisper.

But when word of the tablets surfaced, Ion started really earning his money. He was so troubled by news about Naomi manipulating poor messed up Castiel that his attention slipped and that bitch "Meg" stabbed him. In a way, that was lucky, because it helped him from play cool and amused when Naomi appeared.

The tone of her voice when she inquired, a little more than politely, about his shoulder made him wonder what would be like if she came to him and healed him with that angelic power the winged smug bastards had.

As he had promised himself, he hadn't been the one to vanish. She had been the one to blink.

They met again when he tried to keep Bobby Singer's soul in hell. Crowley tried to be snarky, tried to be the tough guy in front of the Winchesters, but his heart wasn't in it. When he and Naomi would finally settle their issue, it would be in private, no living or ethereal hunters hanging around.

He let her win, enjoying the sensation of yet another lovers' spat. Crowley allowed himself to hope that things were getting back to some sense of sanity. When the two of them were talking again. Soon enough, there would appear a reason for them to work together.

They squabbled like teenagers over the tablets. He even got the satisfaction of shooting at her a bullet made out of an angel sword. He was so pleased to see her glowing and disappearing. The balance of power was definitely changing in his favour.

Crowley figured out Metatron's plan when it was too late to act. All he had left was to go to Mesopotamia. When she didn't appear next to him in a matter of minutes, he did the unthinkable. He prayed for her.

"Why?"

He opened his eyes and raised his head at the sound of her voice. He felt like making a joke. He felt like telling her that she made his prayers come true. But time was getting unbearably insufficient. He could live without having her in his life, but alive, somewhere in her cold Heaven.

"The scribe is dangerous. The prophet kept saying that there are notes on the tablets."

"Why did you call me?" she asked.

Her voice was maddeningly calm. Her patience was driving him insane. His temper flared and he yelled at her an acceptable version of the truth.

"Because you're in danger!"

"Times are dangerous. It's that sort of universe these days," she quoted the words he had said to Castiel.

"I know you, Naomi! You're going to stick your nose into that mind of his. This is a two bit angel who managed to stay cloaked from all of you and all of us for so long. This is an angel who understands the word of God! Don't underestimate him!"

He grabbed her wrists and looked into her eyes while he yelled at her in a tone that had no trace of humour. His palms burned again, the same sensation of acid on skin as all those years ago.

"Your concern is touching," she said, without irony, and went on before he could interrupt her, "and you are right. That is exactly what I'm going to do. I have to try to stop him."

Naomi freed her right hand from his grip and touched the side of his face softly. It didn't burn as he expected. Even in such a moment of tension and worry, a part of his mind observed the anomaly. If he was touching her, in anger, in a manner meant to restrain her, the skin to skin contact was burning. When she was touching him, with… affection? there was no pain. He decided to make an experiment, now that his left hand was no longer holing her right.

Slowly, almost shyly, he touched her forehead and her temple with his fingers. No pain. Just that thrill of electricity sparkling. He dared more. Slid his hand through her hair. No pain. He cupped the back of her head and pulled her gently toward him. His right hand was still gripping tightly her left wrist, and there was still pain there. But when their lips touched, there was no pain. Just tingling. He whispered, his lips brushing hers.

"Don't get killed."

She smiled, and her lips brushed his as she answered him.

"No deal."

With that, as it kept happening lately, she vanished.