What Isn't and Came To Be
Chapter 23: Anti-Vaxx
Crowley estimated odds were even, that the Nephilim would react adversely to any kind of physical threat; including being poked with a hypodermic. Such odds weren't the kind of gamble that he liked to bet high on.
The overpriced paediatrician, Doctor Arif Khan, had painstakingly checked over and vaccinated the prophet's spoiled, unruly sprog.
Checked the Nephilim over, thoroughly enough to satisfy Crowley's lingering curiosity as to whether the half devil infant could pass as human (if one fudged documentation to obscure its accelerated maturation.)
Now, the only remaining point of curiosity was whether the son of Satan would take a cue from its surrogate brother and submit to its vaccination with obedient submission. Or if it would cause some kind of Kentucky fried drama ~Assuming, it had any control over the reflex that had barbecued Mary Winchester on the day of its birth, after she gave it a poking with a fake archangel blade.
Even odds were not great odds.
True, the doctor meant nothing to him, and if the man ended up flash fried, like Mother Winchester, it would be no real skin off his nose.
But risking his prophet… he wasn't entirely sanguine over that, not after having lost her once before. It didn't sit well to put her so close to the action. Alas, some risk was unavoidable in the game he was playing and time was ticking.
The black throne of Hell had been vacant of both his and Lucifer's arses for far longer than he liked; and if the prophet were to be believed, the Nephilim was starting to show signs of more power than he was comfortable with.
A sad fact remained that performing a grace extraction on the creature without poking a hole in its hide was impossible.
So, needs must with experimentation and even-odds gambles.
Ma Cherie already had her tail fluffed and her hackles raised; oddly enough, not over the inherent risk of poking at a creature with a history of fatal retribution, (a fact which underlined to him how sublimely clueless and naïve the girl was.) Rather, she reached her boiling point upon viewing the Nephilim's fake documentation; naming both him and herself respectively as the child's natural parents. If looks could have killed, he'd have been well and truly expired when she caught sight of that forged birth certificate. Why a fake marriage of convenience got her so het-up he couldn't be bothered fathoming, but het-up it had definitely got her. All that horror and fury writ large on her girl next door face upon seeing those documents fabricating a matrimonial relationship between the two of them. It had been beyond delightful.
And how could he resist stoking her fire a little more?
He'd flashed her a glimpse of the gold band on his left ring finger matching the one strung around her own neck and seen threats of murder in her pretty green pussy cat eyes.
People like his prophet, the good guys, they lived bound up in so many pretences that made them insipid and soft. Every reaction curbed and buried behind a saccharine exterior of victim behaviours. Lowered eyes, polite societal niceties, denial of baser urges, all in favour of kowtowing to a bunch of rules dreamed up by a bunch of anally retentive priests. It made him want to gut them all and grub around in their innards, hunting for something more real, something meatier…
Yet, when he pushed her, and she allowed her temper to show, he could see hints of that something else in there, sliding around beneath her skin. Something sharper and far more fascinating than the exterior veneer of a good Christian and dutiful housewife she habitually presented to the world. He caught glimpses of it in moments where he managed to provoke her, could read it on her face; how much she wanted to hurt him, punish him, make him pay. Whenever she glared at him like that, her pussy-cat eyes slitted in fury, anger bringing a spark to her eyes and a rosy flush to her freckled cheeks. It gave him a sharp zing of pleasure and anticipation. He could see her potential; the same kind of potential Alistair had seen in Dean. Empathy was a far better informant of a client's weaknesses than psychotic brutality. Corrupted empathy became a precision tool, ferreting out inventive ways to hurt a soul that hack and pummel never could.
One day he'd push her hard enough and she wouldn't be able to deny him or what she wanted; those roiling black smoke urges to hurt and destroy that she hid away from herself and her god. The dark bloody fantasies he inspired in her deepest nether regions.
In those brief moments, where he managed to push her to the edge of an insensate furore, he was sure her pussy cat eyes held a deeper promise. Punishment and retribution that might force him to feel… something.
And in return, he'd be the one to break her free of the artificial moral restraint she wrapped herself in and put a knife in her hand. Teach her to start carving. Perhaps… even let her chain him to the rack and expend all her hungers and bloody fantasies on his borrowed flesh. Prove they were both made of the same black smoke stuff, the same twisted needs. That heaven and Hell could be an illusion.
Another warm lick of anticipation roiled lazily inside his core, thinking of it; but that day wouldn't be today.
Today, all she would give him were shuttered glances. Not in front of strangers, or the children, Darling.
What he did to her was their little secret. Still, it was a titillating intimacy made even more clandestine by how hard she strove to hide her desires from the others in the room.
In the meantime, they both played their parts as doting parents on a trip to the paediatrician. With the doctor failing to see what the bouncing baby boy in Ma Cherie's lap was. Right up until that deeply anticipated moment when the man sunk the hypodermic into the Nephilim's chubby thigh.
Perhaps part of him had entertained a hope everything would go smoothly, and the Nephilim would listen to his surrogate mother, take his licks like a champ, and they could all go out for ice-cream.
Such a hope had been well and truly dashed when Doctor Khan uncapped the plastic hypodermic, sucked the fluid out of the vaccine ampule and attempted to inject the concoction into the Nephilim…
He was blasted across the room and hit the far wall like a larch-wood log at a caber toss.
The stunned look of horrified shock on the prophet's face in response had been utterly priceless.
…ooo0ooo…
It had all been another one of Crowley's science experiments, Michele realised. He'd used her, used Johnny and used the doctor, all because she'd thought she could be clever and gain Johnny some protection by shoving that destroyed popcorn pot under his nose. The realisation hit her in a wave of slow-motion horror as she rose to her feet on autopilot, and pivoted to thrust Jack into Crowley's arms, then dashed across the room to the doctor's side.
Collapsing to her knees, Michele tried to rouse the fallen man with shaking hands and a strangled voice. Fumbled urgently for the doctor's pulse while her own pounded staccato in her ears.
"He's alive," she gasped in relief.
But Crowley wasn't listening. He stood awkwardly, rigid as a statue, holding Jack away from his body. As though the baby was a venomous snake or a case of particularly unstable explosives. The way Crowley's mouth hung open, lips skinned back over bared teeth; eyes bulging, focused on the baby in his arms in an expression of unguarded horror, all underlining what ought to have been obvious long ago.
Crowley feared Jack.
All these months, she'd never noticed how he avoided so much as brushing against him. In the moment, she couldn't remember if he'd ever touched her while she'd been holding him.
It made sense. Hadn't Jack killed Dagon, a prince of Hell, with a transferred touch between Castiel and Jack's mother while he was still in the womb? Immolated the yellow-eyed demon in a moment.
Crouching there beside the injured doctor on the floor, Michele wished it could be that simple. For a stray touch and a burst of flame to end the demon who'd swindled Johnny of his soul, abducted and held them all prisoner, and purposefully used an innocent medical practitioner as a pawn.
God, she wished the world could be rid of Crowley forever. But it wasn't that simple. Crowley's death wouldn't save Johnny, instead it would simply damn him quicker.
Besides, Jack wouldn't…
Michele snatched another glance down at the unconscious doctor and swallowed hard. The hand the man had held the syringe with was twisted and wrong. Several fingers dislocated or broken; the plastic syringe melted into a lump of blackened slag fused into his palm. Damage which would require surgery, skin grafts and months of rehab to fix, if it could be fixed at all.
The poor man mightn't be dead, but he was mutilated and unconscious. The force he'd hit the wall with could have cracked his skull, broken his neck, or caused any number of other internal injuries.
"Crowley, he needs help, we have to— "
Crowley didn't respond, or even look at her and the injured doctor. He just stood there, frozen, holding Jack gingerly as the Nephilim wailed and reached out to her with begging arms.
Lurching to her feet, Michele crossed the room again and tugged Jack out of the demon's arms, cradling him to her chest. Rocked him unconsciously to soothe his tears as she did so. Reached out and grabbed a fistful of Crowley's coat and tried to drag him towards the door.
"He needs help." She urged again. "We have to call someone, he's hurt! Crowley, come on!" She yanked harder. "No one here understands me! Please, you need to call someone to help him. He's unconscious, hurt! I should have thought—"
Johnny!
Belatedly, her brain kicked into second gear, making her look around frantically for her son. Her eyes found him curled in a ball, still on the examination table, hands over his ears, rocking back and forth.
Without meaning to, she took a stuttering step away from Crowley, towards her son.
Then hesitated, torn by conflicting needs. Johnny wasn't hurt, just scared. The doctor could well be dying. With rough, callous logic, she forced herself to turn back towards the door out into the hallway, yanking at Crowley with the hand anchored behind her fisted on his coat lapel.
There was a sharp snap from Crowley's direction. And the world lurched sideways, ripping the thick fabric of his coat from her grasp.
Dizzy and off balance, Michele found herself standing in the master bedroom of her high rise prison, still holding Jack, Crowley gone.
She'd barely recognised the familiar room with its giant four-poster bed when her heart stuttered again.
Johnny!
"No, no, no, no, no!"
A rush of panicked adrenaline later, Johnny appeared in the middle of the bed, still curled in a ball, hands clamped over his ears; heralded by a gust of displaced air.
Tears flooded her eyes as Michele clambered up onto the bed, reaching for her son.
But, at her touch, Johnny flinched and let out a frightened whine curling in on himself. Sucking a breath of self recrimination, Michele forced herself to give him space.
Jack, meanwhile, continued to hiccup thin reedy sobs, his face mashed against her breast, pudgy baby hands knotted in her hair as though begging her to keep him safe. (The same way Chris, her actual youngest child, did whenever he was scared or hurt — before Crowley had ripped her away from him to be a nursemaid for the devil's illegitimate child.)
Michele's eyes fell to rest heavily on Jack's golden curls and grasping hands and she felt a sudden twisting rush of horror and revulsion as her mind grappled with the madness of what had happened, what Jack had done to the doctor.
Cuckoo, her brain spat. He's not my child, not even the same species. He's a Cuckoo that came in and stole my baby's place.
The thoughts prompted a trapped animal impulse to scrape the Nephilim off of her. To grab her only remaining child and flee. To leave Jack in the room, alone and crying.
To punish him for swallowing up the place of her own children and being the reason she'd been dragged away from her home and family. To punish him for what he'd done to the poor doctor, an innocent man who'd just been doing his job.
One brief, white hot second of loathing for the child in her arms and what his existence had done to her life and family.
Then guilt and shame came washing in.
None of this was Jack's fault. He was just a baby.
He hadn't asked to be born. Had no control over who his father was, or the power he'd inherited. He didn't ask Crowley to kidnap them, or for the demon king to decide to use him as some kind of weapon against his enemies. Or even to be taken to the paediatrician.
Jack had simply reacted to shock and pain when the doctor jabbed him with a needle, lashed out using his natural defences.
Could she really blame him for any of it? It was no different than Slinky scratching the vet in a similar situation, or Johnny having one of his autistic meltdowns. Blaming Jack was hypocritical.
She'd been the one who hadn't prepared or protected him. She'd prompted and allowed Crowley's scheming, hadn't thought about the dangers, despite warnings and hints circumstance had waved in her face.
She'd been stupid, treated Jack like a normal everyday human child — glossing over Crowley's constant reminders about his parentage and the mounting indicators to the contrary. Forgotten what had happened to Mary Winchester in North Cove~ because she disliked and resented Sam and Dean's mother for how she'd treated her sons. Had secretly thought Mary Winchester had been tainted by her connection to Amara. That she hadn't been a real human-being, so she didn't really count.
But the doctor… him getting hurt. That had been visceral, that had been real… and her fault; her's and Crowley's, but it had to be mostly hers, because Crowley was a demon, he didn't exactly have a moral compass, people being collateral damage was ubiquitous in his existence.
"Sacrifices must be made in the name of science, mustn't they, Darling?" Crowley's mocking words whispered in her memory, making a lump rise in her throat as she realised how often Crowley had warned her of what he was, and how out of her depth she was.
Slumping further into the mattress a small distance away from Johnny, Michele rested her cheek against Jack's golden curls.
"It's okay, it's okay, you're okay," she crooned over and over, voice tight and weak with guilt and stymied adrenaline.
Rocked Jack and waited for Johnny to recover himself enough to come back to her. After a few minutes, he did.
Uncurled out of his hedgehog ball, closed that gap between them and wrapped himself around her and Jack. Allowed her to comfort him and herself by pulling him close and stroking his hair.
"It's okay, it's okay, you're okay." She murmured repeatedly, rocking both children. Unsure who she was addressing, or if her words would prove to be a string of comforting lies.
-/-/-/-/-/
Authors note: I'm not dead, just labouring under the weight of "one or more autoimmune conditions." At least now things have gotten bad enough the doctors can no longer deny that what I'm experiencing is real. "Congratulations, Honey, your immune system ate your thyroid, but unfortunately you also have a whole other bag of unexplained symptoms we will finally admit aren't just in your head. So… we are going to need more tests. Blood, blood, give us more blood. Oh, unfortunately you have a bunch of weird-ass antibodies that are cross reacting and screwing up the tests…" -Rolls eyes and sighs- it's a process. Still, I endure, and ask you humbly to comment, so that I can feel like my efforts have value.
