AN:
Hello hello, friends! Tiny CW for blood, non-graphic description of injury, and references to Crowley's previous self-harm. Read with your self-care in mind!
Crowley bounced one knee as he scowled at the sigils hovering over Muriel's shoulder. Far be it from him to give Upstairs—and Sandalphon, in particular—any sort of credit, but the bastard's runework really was incredibly clever. The sacred power stored in the wards of the Heavenly Embassy—of which there was a not-insignificant amount—lanced into and through a demon, yes, but also twined around the threads of infernal defence like a cancer. Crowley had not only been struck with the furious Intent of a vengeful archangel, but he'd been forced to battle his own demonic strength as it was burned away, his very essence sanctified by something foreign, ethereal.
A bloody Prince of Hell wouldn't have survived that onslaught. If Muriel hadn't yanked the Divine out of him when they did, he would be facing eternity Downstairs, begging for a mercy they didn't possess.
Crowley shuddered.
Pushing his glasses up into his hair, he scrubbed his hands over his face. "You can stop, Muriel."
The blazing images vanished.
Sandalphon had hidden his work exceptionally well; it was only able to be drawn out of the walls by another one of the Host, and if Crowley didn't despise him so much, he might have felt a grudging respect. As it was, the desire to rend and rip and tear and maim roiled under his skin. For fuck's sake, Muriel had to expend themselves almost to a breaking point just to look at the shop's protections. They'd obviously been placed without any thought to the angel inside—the angel who was currently sagged against Nina, breathless and pink in the face from holding so much power—and with the clear intention of being completely unalterable.
Wasn't Heaven going to be in for a surprise?
Nina, gently rubbing Muriel's hunched back, glanced at Crowley. "Find what you need?"
"Unfortunately." He slid his lenses back into place and slumped back in his chair, staring up at the skylight for a lengthy, silent moment. "Take a seat, Scrivener. Rest up. You're going to need it."
Crowley wasn't sure how long they sat, the quiet pregnant and weighty, before Muriel spoke, but their voice startled him when they did. "Mr. Crowley?" They waited until he directed his gaze down, lip caught between their teeth and hands clenched together in their lap. "I– I don't know if I can do this."
"You're more capable than you think you are, kitty cat," he found himself saying. Ugh, he was being encouraging. Crowley stared at the ceiling again. "And the truth is, there's no one else, so you have to do this. Even if you feel like you can't."
Their voice was small. "What if I do it wrong?"
He tried for a nonchalant smile, a man unconcerned with his own death. "Then I get shipped off back to Hell, this whole… bond… thing… gets broken, and either way, all your problems are solved!" He made a show of brushing off his hands. Muriel looked the opposite of enthusiastic. Crowley sighed and forced himself to sit normally on the chair, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees. "But that's okay, because you're not going to do it wrong, yeah?"
"And I'm here for you too, Muriel." Nina leaned against the pillar to Muriel's left, and their dark eyes, wide and damp, darted to her. She smiled, more gently than Crowley had ever seen. "We've got you, okay?"
Muriel straightened, if not confidently, then at least having accepted their duty. "How do we start?"
Crowley tried not to let the dread show on his face as he pulled at each finger of his gloves in short, practised jerks. He dropped them to the floor between his feet and presented his palms.
Muriel gasped; Nina made a gurgling sound deep in her throat.
His left hand, the one that had taken the brunt of A.Z. Fell & Co.'s purifying warning—and Muriel's subsequent withdrawal of it—was swollen and blistered, and a long, deep gash ran diagonally from forefinger to wrist, occasionally seeping dark ichor. His right hand was pockmarked, evidence of his experiments with holy water, every finger cracked and red, the lacerations caught in a cycle of closing and reopening as he tortured himself anew.
Muriel looked up into his face, aghast. Crowley cut them off before they could speak. "I'm not going to talk about it." He jabbed a finger at them, glowering seriously. "And you're not going to heal it, either." Knowing brown eyes skipped over his clothed arm, pausing on the places Crowley was well aware were oozing under his shirt. Biting back a growl, he flexed his hands and sat them on his thighs. "Can we get on with it?"
"So I just–" Muriel shifted uncomfortably, unsure.
"Don't look with your eyes." Crowley let his own unfocus, until the bright, shining links practically glowed, rattling enough to feel it in his ribs. "When you see it, just follow it all the way down." A hint of gold spiked near Muriel's fingers, swirled slowly down the line. "There you are. Like sucking poison out of a snake bite, yeah?"
"That's really the worst thing you can do for a snake bite," Nina muttered from her post at Muriel's shoulder.
Crowley shot her a withering glare. "Not. Helpful." The blessed, scalding clamp quaked hard enough to pull a grunt out of him. He turned a baleful eye back to Muriel. "Once you start this, don't you dare stop."
Muriel nodded, took a deep breath, and gave a metaphysical push.
The first hot tingle of Muriel's Presence was akin to a slow pour of boiling water; painful, certainly, but nothing he couldn't grit his teeth and bear. He was vibrating down to the marrow of his bones, deeper, in a form he hadn't bared for more than six millenia. His entire face twitched as Muriel cautiously, curiously explored their connection point, spiritually pressing around the edges as if they were testing the split skin of a wound.
Surviving in Hell meant that he reflexively lashed out when vulnerable, protected his soft underbelly with teeth and talons and raw, Fallen power; it was taking everything in him now not to give into that instinct, to meet the angelic threat that had closed in to a truly dangerous proximity with his own, formidable offensive.
"Come on now, kitten," Crowley growled, locking his forearms against the chair and planting his feet. "Show me those claws. Really get in there and pull."
Muriel's touch, a streak of ivory-gold, barreled into his chest with a force that drove the unnecessary breath from his lungs. Crowley wheezed, doubled over, as it sought the sanctity consuming him from the inside out. If he hadn't spent months, desolate, unmoving—unloved—in his flat, the hallowed tendrils might not have had time to run rampant, might not have crept so deeply into the fractures of damnation and curled, possessive as only holiness could be, around the parts of a demon that everyone knew couldn't exist. Even from without, Crowley could see the twisted, gnarled lines of energy had burrowed into his soul like roots of a great oak, and it was only Muriel's leftover Grace that had protected him from complete discorporation.
"This is going to hurt, Mr. Crowley," they said softly, hands trembling where their fingers were digging into their skirt. "I'm sorry. "
And bless it, didn't they sound sincere.
"Yep." He settled himself a little more firmly and rolled out his neck. "Do it, Scrivener."
Crowley knew pain.
He had Fallen. He had been tossed away, thrown into the dark and the cold, away from Her Light, Her Love. His ethereal essence had been scorched to nothingness when he had risen, like a black phoenix, from a pool of sulphur, the last prayer of his long, long life dying on his lips.
He had experienced the most innovative tortures Hell could devise. He had suffered at the hands of angels and demons alike. He had been ripped apart, mind, body, and soul, time and time again. He had carelessly handled his heart, the one piece of himself he had so jealously guarded, the piece that contained oceans of feeling, and had watched it shatter against the rocks of indifference.
He thought he was prepared.
He was wrong.
Pure magma shot through his veins. He couldn't blink. He couldn't breathe. Muriel reached into the celestial firmament with a confidence he hadn't thought them capable of, and pulled, exactly as he'd instructed. The high, sharp heat ate at his insides, pushing his infernal Presence aside to get to the core of him. Crowley tasted blood, an iron tang shot through with stardust, and even though every muscle was seizing, he must have bitten himself because ichor seeped between his lips. He couldn't move his eyes to look, but he could feel pulses of liquid spill down his chin, and he could barely spare a thought as to how utterly undignified this was going to be before the next wave of torment began.
Eighty years he'd been trapped, where time moved only as quickly as it wanted to, and Hell had never quite broken him.
If they'd had this at their disposal, Crowley would have begged for destruction within a day.
Muriel had shaken some of the smaller branches loose, drawing them into one large, central cluster. As it was yanked clear, so was the remaining air trapped in Crowley's lungs, punched free with the remaining ichor under his tongue, and a scream that had been three months in the making. He was distantly aware of voices, but nothing mattered except that something was thrashing on that unseeable plane, where a radiant, blinding Light was charring his scales, his fangs, his fucking—
His wings beat into existence, throwing him to hands and knees on the carpet with another shout that rattled glass and sent books hurtling to the ground. Crowley scored his fingers, red and black and lengthened at the tips, into the rug, panting through the agony in a futile effort to stay atop it. Fangs ripped through his lower lip just as his claws had burst from his hands, and a slow ripple of crimson and onyx swept up his throat, his jaw, around eyes gone blurry. His tongue, still bleeding, was long and serpentine between his teeth, the pained hiss that escaped with the forked tip doubling as a threat.
Nina, who obviously thought she was safely hidden, scrabbled frantically through her pockets. "Fucking– shit. I'm gonna say this is where things have gone tits up."
When he could focus his blown-wide eyes, he saw an Enemy standing on a chair, blazing porcelain wings spread, one shaking hand extended. Crowley grinned past the ichor on his lips and shoved himself onto his knees. He'd survived a strike from an archangel, from Sandalphon—secondhand, perhaps, but still not a feat every demon could boast—and this little nothing of an angel thought they could frighten him with a zap?
Foolish.
Brave, but foolish.
To their credit, the angel—Muriel, a faint part of him recognized, the last sliver of his brain not compelling him to defend, fight, kill—didn't flinch when he shuffled closer, or when he wrapped his taloned hands around their ankles. "Don't. You. Dare," he hissed, infusing profane Intent into every syllable. Only Muriel's aura of Grace shielded them, and even then they shuddered under the reverberations.
Nina shifted further behind the protection of their wings with a noise that drew Crowley's eye with a mantra of prey, prey, prey. Muriel puffed their feathers, a motion of their hand pulling his attention back. Their stance had become more sure, more commanding.
They would make a fantastic Adversary, power difference be blessed.
"Don't I what?" they demanded.
Crowley growled, his fingers tightening on Muriel's feet. "Don't you leave me like this." The last few bonds, the largest and thickest, were almost slack enough to rip free at the root; surely he could hold his worst nature at bay for another minute.
Surely.
In a gesture perhaps meant to convince himself of that, Crowley moved his hands to the arms of the chair, squeezing until the antique wood groaned under the pressure. His missing glasses, having vanished about the same time he'd snapped his wings closed against his back, allowed his pure-gold gaze to meet Muriel's dark eyes unimpeded: do it, and do it now.
The hand hovering over him turned palm-up, crystalline fire seeming to dance between their fingers.
"I'm sorry about this, Mr. Crowley." Muriel looked truly apologetic.
Before Crowley could wonder what they were sorry about, his world went black.
And then White.
"–tly did you say he'd be coming 'round?"
"Oh, anytime now! He's much too strong for me to do that for long!"
"Well, that's… okay, I can't lie. That's not comforting, Muriel." That wasn't the voice he was expecting; Nina must have traded places with Maggie, perhaps accurately deducing that an unconscious demon was a hazard to no one but himself.
Which was great, really. Maggie didn't deserve to have the piss scared out of her.
Despite his eyes still being closed, Crowley flinched away from the sun pouring in through the skylight above. Everything was sore in a way that he'd previously only acquired under much more enjoyable circumstances. The grit under his eyelids and the pounding in his head, however, were reminiscent of that time a few decades ago he'd forgotten to eject the alcohol from his system before sleeping for a week, and he could have easily done without that reminder.
At least his corporation appeared to be human-seeming again. His fingernails were short and keratin-brittle, and he couldn't feel the weight or strain of extra appendages. Through one of the many tears in his shirt, he could feel only flesh against flesh against his cheek, and his tongue—dry, and sticking cloyingly to the roof of his mouth—was small and whole and pink.
He dragged one leaden arm up high enough to bury his face in it, grunting at the rub of carpet on skin. "Oi, Scrivener?" Satan, he sounded like his vocal chords had leapt from his throat to crawl over razor wire.
"Mr. Crowley! You're awake!" A scrambling sound from further in the shop.
He waited until Muriel crouched down to his level to raise his head, gathering his swiftly-waning strength so that his glower would be at full effect. "Did you fucking smite me?"
Muriel looked stunned for a moment, then offended. "I would never!" They didn't sound the least little bit like Aziraphale, but the righteous indignation was the same, and it made his lip curl. "I just… removed your consciousness."
Crowley blinked at them slowly. "You knocked me out," he said, languid, as if there had been a terrible misunderstanding. Muriel nodded vigorously. "Why in Heaven would you do that?"
They glanced down at where their fingers were tangled together in the universal gesture of a nervous angel. "You were suffering," they said quietly. "The last pieces… They weren't coming out, and I didn't want to hear you make that sound again."
Muriel's soulful brown eyes were too heartfelt for Crowley, scooped out and raw as he was. He dropped his head back into the crook of his elbow, finding it much much easier just to speak to the floor. "And this had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I turned into a totally unhinged attack demon on you?"
He didn't hear Muriel scoff—Muriel didn't seem the type to even know what a scoff was—but the sentiment was plain when they replied, "I trust you, Mr. Crowley."
"Yeah, well, you shouldn't." He went through the effort of moving his head again, meeting Muriel's gaze, who looked a little shocked at the sharpness in his words. "I would have attacked you, kitten. You and Nina both. If you hadn't done what you did, I wouldn't have been able to stop myself." And fuck if that didn't validate every time Aziraphale had spurned him.
I'm an angel. You're a demon.
The bad guys.
Muriel cocked their head thoughtfully. "I'm not sure that's true."
Crowley studied them through one slitted eye. They just blinked back serenely. "Hnnmph." No use arguing, he supposed. He had better things to expend his energy on.
Like getting upright.
In a few minutes.
Maybe.
Groaning, Crowley shifted only enough to take stock of the damage. His clothing was the biggest casualty, shredded from his writhing and hanging down in tatters. The cool air against his back was a good indication that his wings had burst onto the Material instead of reality carefully bending around them, and his long sleeves had been nearly stripped away in what he assumed had been an effort to claw the cinders out of his blood. A sable puddle was drying, thick and viscous, beneath him, but he couldn't seem to find the source.
In fact—
"Muriel," he purred, as he stretched his forearm out for a better look. Either they didn't recognize the warning, or didn't care, and either way refocused on his face with a smile from where they'd perched on the edge of their chair. He grinned back, cutting and full of teeth, and waggled his left arm as much as he could manage. "What the fuck did we talk about?"
They straightened primly under his glare. "I didn't heal anything there, just as you said."
"It doesn't hurt now," he responded through gritted teeth. True, none of the wounds had new scabs, and he couldn't see a difference in the pinkening skin, but the ever-present, hallowed pain was gone, and he wanted it back.
"Well, obviously!" Muriel was so proud of themselves, and Crowley was going to throttle them. "They're just normal burns now! They'll be fixed in no time!"
Crowley just gaped. The bloody angel had stolen the divinity out of his injuries, and he had no idea where to start explaining that he couldn't believe their fucking audacity.
"That's great news, right, Mr. Crowley?"
Fuck. He'd forgotten all about Maggie.
"Fantastic," he muttered. Heaven help him, Hell save him, Someone pull his immortal soul off this planet. He knew what she was going to say even before he finished his sentence.
"Now that you're here, I was hoping we could… talk."
Crowley exhaled noisily at the four-letter word. Talk. It was worse than good or nice or kind. And it was sprung on him when he was drained and defenceless, weak as a human and his supernatural powers fizzled. He, an almost literally captive audience, and they, vultures to carrion.
With an embarrassing amount of exertion and no few indelicate sounds, Crowley managed to roll onto his side. Maggie, leaning against one of the western pillars, was staring at him with an unsettling blend of nerves and hope. Muriel, bent into a pretzel in the chair to better look between them, folded their hands in their lap; the pose was demure, but excitement emanated from them like radiation from a nuclear warhead.
A long moment of concentration, a shaking snap of his fingers, and he was redressed in clothing that wouldn't get him admitted to a nightclub, or arrested for indecency.
With both vitality and bellicosity thus exhausted, Crowley let his hand fall back to the floor with a gusty sigh. "Yeah, alright. Let's talk."
Summary:
Muriel, tasked with pulling the remaining holy power out of Crowley, accidentally pushes him into a demonic transformation as an instinctual response to not only the pain, but Crowley allowing an angel into his essence. Muriel knocks him out to make the last, most difficult pieces, easier to bear, and when Crowley awakens, Maggie is there to oversee his recovery and asks him to Talk.