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Title: Operation Apocalypse
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity: Set immediately after Faith
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Dean, Castiel, Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale. Mostly gen, this part
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale have a plan. And an ultimatum
Wordcount: 3945
Warnings/Spoilers: mentions of past violence, maybe?
Disclaimer: Still not mine
A/N: Um. Possibly as a result of last night's ep, this ... went a little more serious than usual
One of these days, someone was going to have to sit that angel down and explain to him certain rules humans had about touching. Seriously.
In the meantime, though, someone probably needed to speak up, here. Get things moving again. Stop the long, endless, really, really uncomfortable silence ...
Sam would. He really would. But he was still sort of caught up with staring at Gabriel while the archangel looked pointedly anywhere else but at him. He was still sort of wondering where the hell the whole scoop-the-demon-boy-up-and-hug-him thing came from. More to the point, he was wondering why Gabriel had seemed so desperate about it. So ... hurt ...
"Ahem." And that was Crowley, apparently deciding that if no-one else was going to man up, he'd have to. "Anyway. End of the world, folks! How about we get back to that ...?"
"Right!" Dean agreed, immediately, clearing his throat and not meeting anyone's eyes. "Apocalypse. Yeah. Let's get back to that."
Sam wondered how many other groups of people in the world could find the very real, very imminent End of Days a more comfortable topic of conversation that the fact that they cared about each other. To a kind of scary degree, admittedly, but still ...
"I assume you have some sort of plan?" Castiel growled, leaning forward over the table to glare at Crowley. And Aziraphale. Because Cas, as usual, could switch from sort-of-happy to doom-and-gloom in under a second, and wasn't at all shy about it.
"Not exactly," Aziraphale murmured placidly. "But we do have a few ideas, as it happens."
"Yeah," Crowley grinned, leaning back in his chair, apparently feeling a lot better now that the mushy part of his evening was over. "Because, I hate to point this out, but everyone's being really stupid about this so far. Heaven and Hell absolutely included ..."
"Not that it's all that surprising," Aziraphale interrupted cheerfully.
"True, true," the demon agreed. "Anyway. Nobody's being very smart about this, and that may, may just give us a little bit of an advantage. The home-field advantage, to be precise."
He paused, beaming proudly around the room as if waiting for the congratulations, and Dean looked over at Cas. "You want to hit him, or should I?"
Castiel smiled coldly, not shifting his gaze from Crowley. "I'm sure I can handle it, Dean," he said softly. Crowley looked briefly nervous, and Gabriel, at the other end of the table, finally smiled a little bit. Sam bit his lip.
"Anyway!" Crowley went on hurriedly. "Home-field advantage! Because everybody playing this game seems to have forgotten exactly where it's being played. Not Heaven, or Hell. The Apocalypse is happening on Earth. Where angels are bound by certain very useful rules ..."
There was a pause as Castiel perked up, leaning forward with a curious frown, and Gabriel actually sat up and started paying attention again. Sam looked over at Dean, who didn't seem to be any more enlightened than he was, and shrugged, looking back at the demon. Who was grinning again now that he had his captive audience.
"What did you have in mind?" Gabriel asked, pretending nonchalance, but leaning a little too far forward for it to be believable. Crowley shot him a sly look.
"I was thinking about the fact that for angels to be effective here on earth, they have to manifest inside human bodies," he drawled, smirking. "I was thinking about the fact that aside from me and the angel here, none of you lot can get those bodies for free, which makes them something of an important commodity. And I was thinking about graffiti, mass media, Enochian sigils, and the fact that only so many of the Host can manifest themselves at a time, and all of them inside our reach ..."
"And on the demon side," Aziraphale added in, "I was thinking about the fact that there are any number of human organisations on Earth that have made it their mission in life to eradicate hellspawn. I was thinking that since Crowley here has spent so much of his time amassing a truly ungodly amount of wealth, that he might be inclined to perhaps fund a joint venture among these organisations. I was thinking about what humanity, when armed with the right knowledge and given the right tools, can do ..."
"We've been playing this old school," Crowley went on. "Not even fourteenth century style. We've been playing this like we were back in the Bronze Age. All this crap about picking champions and one-to-one combat ... this is the age of technology, of mass production, mass media, mass destruction ..."
"So, what? You want us to nuke them?" Dean cut in, incredulous, but there was a look on his face, the kind of half-hidden glee that Sam remembered from the old days, the days when things were simpler, when faith and destiny had nothing to do with it, and all you had to do to make Dean happy was hand him a saw-off shotgun and point him at the bad guy.
Not that Sam didn't kinda wish for those days himself right now ...
"Certainly not!" Aziraphale sounded shocked at the suggestion, and for a moment Dean's face fell. Then ... "Nuclear weapons would only affect humanity, not angels or demons, and besides. You do want to be able to live here afterwards, don't you? No. We were thinking something more ... subtle. Something ... quieter. And much more civilised."
"Civilised?" Gabriel drawled, leaning back in his chair with an inscrutable expression. "You want to fight a civilised war? Have you seen what our brothers are doing out there? And I'm not just talking about Lucifer ..." Scorn all but dripped from the words, but they didn't even make a dent in Aziraphale.
"I rather think we've seen more of it than most," the angel said, very quietly. "After six thousand years, I rather think we've seen more of everything than most, don't you?"
Gabriel stared back at him, opening his mouth, but something in Aziraphale's expression kept him from saying whatever sarcastic thing had come to mind.
"Anyway! We can drive them back," Crowley cut in hurriedly. "Heaven and Hell, they're working on a timetable. They've only got as long as Lucifer's body lasts, because an angel in free-form on earth only lasts a certain amount of time before Heaven yanks him back up like a yo-yo, and if that happens Lucifer is in Heaven, and outnumbered, and they've got a whole other range of problems. If we can banish them en masse, if we can trap them, seal them, run them around ... so long as we keep the archangels from getting their proper vessels, and keep the rest of them run off their feet until Lucifer gives up the ghost ... And we can do that. We've got six billion humans out there, and six thousand years worth of technology and connections to work with."
"Not to mention that all the angels with any real experience on Earth are in this room," Aziraphale pointed out. "Crowley and I have been here from the start, of course, and you've had your millennium ... The only one who hasn't is Castiel, and he seems to be taking to Earth combat like a duck to water." He shot Castiel a proud smile, which caused Castiel to frown at him in confusion. Probably more about the duck thing than the reference to his fighting skills, Sam thought.
"And while the Brothers Grimm over there might be a little slow on the uptake," Crowley nodded in their direction, "they have access to any number of people who aren't. Humanity hasn't been playing that much of a role so far, except as game chips, but that doesn't mean they can't. This is their planet, after all."
"Really, there's no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't be able to win this thing," Aziraphale finished, beaming encouragingly at everyone.
There was a long, long, long pause, during which everyone in the room stared at the two of them. Stared at them enough for them to start fidgeting worriedly.
"What?" Crowley said, at last, obviously trying his hardest not to inch away from everyone. "What?"
"You've ... put a lot of thought into this, then?" Gabriel said, dry as dust, staring at something invisible over Aziraphale's head. They looked at each other.
"Well, yes," Aziraphale muttered, defensively. "It's our job. Or was, at any rate. How to fight the war on Earth. And we may have been ... lenient ... these last few centuries, because it was only each other we'd be hurting, in the end, but ... well, the war is here, now. And we like humanity, and we know how to work down here, and ..."
"You lot may have been happy up in Heaven, only swinging down here to kick the shit out of each other every millennium or so, but we've been stuck down here!" Crowley continued, with some heat. "We've had to fight down here from the start, we've had to work our way around humanity, had to figure out what would kill us or save us down here ... This is our life, boys and girls! Don't blame us for trying to figure out how to bloody keep it ..."
"We don't!" Sam spoke up, deciding this might be a good point to cut in on. He looked over at Dean, saw the agreement there. Then he looked at Castiel and Gabriel, at the way they were both frowning, and stopped a little. "Well. The humans in the room don't, anyway ..."
Castiel took a moment from staring at them to grant Sam a slightly guilty look, but it didn't stop the frown he was directing at Aziraphale. "You are talking about ... driving the angels from Earth. All the angels. You're talking about ... giving humans weapons against angels, about betraying Heaven, on such a scale ..."
"Hello!" Crowley growled, incredulously. "Heaven is trying to destroy the world! This world. Our world. Not just the humans'. Ours. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but it's about the only one that will have any of us, after this."
"I know," Cas looked shaken. "But ... to drive them from the earth ..."
"I know," Aziraphale said, very gently. "I know. But it's better than killing them, isn't it? It's better than letting them destroy humanity, and each other, as they seem determined to do?"
Gabriel made a sort of strangled sound, shoving himself back from the table and staring off to one side, viciously refusing to look at any of them. Sam found himself reaching out towards him before he caught himself, found himself half out of his seat, hand outstretched, before he even realised what he was doing. Gabriel's head came back around in shock, staring at him. He flushed, lowering his hand.
"If we do this," Castiel was saying, doubtful, almost afraid. "If we do this, even if we manage it, if it works ... Heaven will not forgive. If we do this, we may bring Heaven down on us, on humanity. It's ... a very big risk. If we try, and we fail ..."
"We won't," Aziraphale said, and it was so hard, so cold, that everyone in the room looked at him in shock. Even Gabriel. The plump angel stood from his seat, very slowly, and there was suddenly nothing kindly at all in his expression, nothing soft, nothing friendly.
"Er ..." Dean shifted closer to Castiel, who was meeting Aziraphale's dark stare with an uncertain, but very determined one of his own. Sam almost joined him, because he remembered the warehouse very, very clearly, enough to know that look on Aziraphale's face was not one you wanted one of your friends to be trying to face down.
Castiel, for his part, was completely undeterred. Possibly he'd just gotten way, way too used to facing down enemies bigger than he was, and there was a part of Sam that wondered if that was the kind of effect they had on everyone they knew. Come join the Winchesters! We'll take you from sensible to suicidal in under a year, guaranteed! When had this become their life?
"If we bring the humans into this war, they will have to pay the price," their angel said, quietly. "If we involve more of them ... I have seen the costs a human pays for fighting wars with angels." He looked at them, looked at Sam, and then at Dean, and his expression hit them like a punch to the gut, full of pained, guilty knowledge and a desperate kind of love. Sam clenched his fists, aching, while Dean grabbed hold of Cas' hand and held on fiercely.
"They're already involved," Crowley spoke up, very, very gently. "And not even just these two. Who do you think is dying out there, even as we speak? Who do you think Lucifer is killing? Not to mention the demons, mortal and otherwise, that he's brought up with him?" He shook his head, their very own demon. "I've seen Hell. I've lived in Hell, and now that he's free, now that Heaven has let him free, he's brought all that up here. And I have to tell you, that wasn't something I ever, ever wanted to see. I like Earth. I like it better than anything Hell or Heaven could come up with, and I'm not really all that interested in letting them wipe out chunks of it in this little game of theirs, you know? It's not about Heaven vs Hell, not anymore, not for us. It's about Earth, about humanity, and about whether or not we're gonna let them get slaughtered without ever even knowing what hit them ..."
"I've seen it," Aziraphale said, quietly, soft hands clenched trembling around the edge of the table. "I've seen it before. I've been on this Earth since the beginning. I've seen ... I knelt in the al-Aqsa Mosque during the First Crusade, and watched innocents be slaughtered in cold blood in the name of my Father. I sat with them in the camps during the second world war, and watched them be led to the slaughter in the name of purity. I've heard this before, heard this justification Heaven thinks is good enough for the sacrifice of a world. I've heard it. I've watched it, watched humans enact it time and again, and I promise you, I will die before I let Heaven do the same. I will die, cheerfully, before I watch all that is good in my Father's creation be twisted by those lies. I will die!"
Crowley reached for him, caught his shaking hand, pulled him close. Aziraphale went silently, more silent than any of them had ever seen him, pale and trembling, and his demon caught him, held him close, and looked at them over his angel's shaking shoulders.
"I don't know about you," he said, not even reproachfully, not even angry. Just tired and determined. "I don't know what you want, what you're willing to do. But me and the angel here ... we've nothing left, except this Earth. We made our choice twenty years ago, the first time around, and now ... whatever happens, whatever way this goes from this point on, we're staying here. Dying here, if that's what it comes to. I'm taking oblivion, if it's a choice between that and Hell for all eternity. Me and him ... this is it, for us. If the world ends now, so do we. No Heaven, no Hell, no afterlife, no nothing. This is all we have. So ... excuse us for wanting to fight for it first, won't you? And do ... do let us know if you plan to help, because that would be nice."
No-one said anything, after that. No-one said anything for long enough that Crowley closed his eyes in something like despair, and tilted his face to hide it in his angel's hair, to wrap his arms tight around Aziraphale and just cling. They said nothing. Mostly, for Sam anyway, because what the hell could you say, after that? What the hell were you supposed to say?
They hadn't thought. He hadn't thought. Hadn't thought that there might be other people in this, people with their own reasons to fight, people outside their little family. People for whom the Apocalypse wasn't about being forced to be a vessel, or being made to choose something other than the orders you've followed all your life. People for whom Team Free Will was just another faction, another side.
Aziraphale and Crowley ... they'd been amusing allies. The stuffy angel and his repentant demon. They'd been funny, and friendly, and someone to play tricks on and watch play tricks on each other, someone to enjoy pastry with and steal alcohol off. He hadn't thought. Hadn't thought of why they were doing this, why they were helping, what it meant to them. He'd thought they were joining his side, Team Free Will's side.
He'd never thought they might be looking for someone to join theirs.
How many others were there, like these two? How many others out there, knowing what was happening, seeing it, being hurt by it, wanting someone to help them, to give them a chance to fight back, to just protect what was theirs? He found himself looking at Gabriel, looking at the archangel sitting alone on his side of the table, watching Crowley with a pained look in his eyes. Gabriel, who just wanted to keep his family alive past the end of the world. Who just wanted to keep them from killing each other, and saw joining this venture as his only way to manage it. Was that so wrong? Was that so very different from what Sam wanted, and Dean wanted, and Cas wanted?
"Cas ..." Dean said, suddenly, beside him. Sam looked at him, a little stunned to see the sheer pain in his brother's face, to hear the roughness in his voice. Dean wasn't looking at Castiel. He was looking at Aziraphale, at Crowley, and Sam knew from his expression that Dean had been thinking a lot of the same things he'd been. "Cas. This plan of theirs ... could it work? Could we do it?"
Aziraphale and Crowley slowly lifted their heads, turned to look at them. The hope on their faces was painful.
Castiel looked away, tilting his head in thought, his fingers tapping a nervous little beat against the table. He weighed his answer with that same gravitas he always did. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't have enough information, on Earth, on the means they want to use. I don't know. But ..."
"It might," Gabriel spoke up, slowly, heavily. "I've used technology myself, the way I think Crowley is suggesting. Against humans, not angels, and there are some things that I don't know how he plans to manage, but ... it could work. It could."
Castiel nodded solemnly. "There is a chance, I think. He's right that there is a limit on the time they can spend, a limit for how long we would have to fight them for. If we can find a way to fight enough of them, to distract them, if we can keep you safe long enough ... it might work. Lucifer, and Heaven by default, only have so much time."
Dean nodded slowly. Considering. He looked over, met Sam's eyes. Asked, silently, carefully. Do we do this? Do we ask who knows how many people to take up arms with us? Do we risk them? Do we think we can? Sam met his eyes, and nodded.
"It's a better plan than anything we've come up with," he said, quietly. "And they're right. People are dying anyway. This ... We can't kill the Devil. We've tried. But if we can at least stop him from taking Earth with him ... I say we try it, Dean." He smiled, a little. "It's not like anyone else has any better ideas, after all." Though they had tried. But if this was how they had to do it, well. They'd best get started, hadn't they?
Dean looked at Cas, at Gabriel, asking the same silent question, and both angels nodded at him. Slowly. More than a little reluctantly. But they nodded, and Dean looked back at the other two, at the angel and the demon who'd helped them out of nowhere, and who wanted someone to help them in return. Not even for their own sakes. But for Earth, and humanity, and six thousand years of history that Sam thought no-one, no-one anywhere on Earth, Heaven or Hell, could quite understand, except them.
"Well then," Dean said, carefully. "I think you'd best start telling us what to do then. Since you're the men with the plan, and all?" And the shaky smile on Aziraphale's face, the look of amazed and wary disbelief on Crowley's ... whether this worked or not, whether they had a hope or not, Sam thought those looks might just make this worth it after all.
"It will work," the angel promised them, shakily, hopefully. "We've been doing this ... we've been at this for a long time. I promise you, if nothing else will work, this will."
Crowley nodded vehemently. "Just a matter of the right magic in the right places, that's all! Just a matter of getting the timing down. No problem! We can ... we can do this. We can."
"Yeah well, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Gabriel muttered, but he was leaning back in, leaning forward again, and there was a gleam in his eyes, a dark, somewhat wicked gleam that was far more Trickster than archangel, and somehow more frightening for it. "We'll have to go out and get a hold of some things first. You in particular, demon, since you're the one who apparently knows where most of what we need is ..."
Crowley smirked a little, hesitantly, but game now that the ball was in his court, so to speak. "Not a problem. I've got a few big corporate types who owe me pretty much everything, and others in more than a few Earth governments. I can get you satellites, if that's what you need. And government backing, at a push, if we're talking localised efforts ..." Dean sat up at that, Sam too, because actually, that could be useful, especially with the likes of the Horsemen and their effects ...
"We may need some help with the actual sigils part of it," Aziraphale admitted, looking hopefully at Castiel and Gabriel. "We've been on Earth for rather a long time, and they don't tend to tell us ... much of anything, really, so I think we may be a little out of date ..."
Castiel smiled, faintly, and reached out to trace something with a finger on the tabletop, something that had the other three angels (well, angelic-type beings, anyway) staring at him in shock and more than a little fear for a second, before Crowley's face morphed into a vicious, anticipatory grin.
"Oh yes," the demon breathed. "Oh yes. I think we can do business, boys and girls. I think we can definitely do business."
Dean grinned a little himself, the old grin, when a hunt was on and something that went bump in the night was about to get toasted, and Sam found himself echoing it almost helplessly.
"Well then," Dean said, "let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
Contd: Falling Angel
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity: Set immediately after Faith
Characters/Pairings: Sam, Dean, Castiel, Gabriel, Crowley, Aziraphale. Mostly gen, this part
Summary: Crowley and Aziraphale have a plan. And an ultimatum
Wordcount: 3945
Warnings/Spoilers: mentions of past violence, maybe?
Disclaimer: Still not mine
A/N: Um. Possibly as a result of last night's ep, this ... went a little more serious than usual
Operation Apocalypse
There was a moment, afterwards, where they all cleared their throats and pulled away, moving gingerly and sort of stiltedly towards their seats and trying to pretend that they hadn't spent the last five minutes engaged in a six-way hug-and-crying fest. Dean, Gabriel and Crowley seemed to be the worst offenders, Sam couldn't help but notice. Aziraphale seemed to be wondering what the fuss was about, and Castiel just seemed mildly confused.One of these days, someone was going to have to sit that angel down and explain to him certain rules humans had about touching. Seriously.
In the meantime, though, someone probably needed to speak up, here. Get things moving again. Stop the long, endless, really, really uncomfortable silence ...
Sam would. He really would. But he was still sort of caught up with staring at Gabriel while the archangel looked pointedly anywhere else but at him. He was still sort of wondering where the hell the whole scoop-the-demon-boy-up-and-hug-him thing came from. More to the point, he was wondering why Gabriel had seemed so desperate about it. So ... hurt ...
"Ahem." And that was Crowley, apparently deciding that if no-one else was going to man up, he'd have to. "Anyway. End of the world, folks! How about we get back to that ...?"
"Right!" Dean agreed, immediately, clearing his throat and not meeting anyone's eyes. "Apocalypse. Yeah. Let's get back to that."
Sam wondered how many other groups of people in the world could find the very real, very imminent End of Days a more comfortable topic of conversation that the fact that they cared about each other. To a kind of scary degree, admittedly, but still ...
"I assume you have some sort of plan?" Castiel growled, leaning forward over the table to glare at Crowley. And Aziraphale. Because Cas, as usual, could switch from sort-of-happy to doom-and-gloom in under a second, and wasn't at all shy about it.
"Not exactly," Aziraphale murmured placidly. "But we do have a few ideas, as it happens."
"Yeah," Crowley grinned, leaning back in his chair, apparently feeling a lot better now that the mushy part of his evening was over. "Because, I hate to point this out, but everyone's being really stupid about this so far. Heaven and Hell absolutely included ..."
"Not that it's all that surprising," Aziraphale interrupted cheerfully.
"True, true," the demon agreed. "Anyway. Nobody's being very smart about this, and that may, may just give us a little bit of an advantage. The home-field advantage, to be precise."
He paused, beaming proudly around the room as if waiting for the congratulations, and Dean looked over at Cas. "You want to hit him, or should I?"
Castiel smiled coldly, not shifting his gaze from Crowley. "I'm sure I can handle it, Dean," he said softly. Crowley looked briefly nervous, and Gabriel, at the other end of the table, finally smiled a little bit. Sam bit his lip.
"Anyway!" Crowley went on hurriedly. "Home-field advantage! Because everybody playing this game seems to have forgotten exactly where it's being played. Not Heaven, or Hell. The Apocalypse is happening on Earth. Where angels are bound by certain very useful rules ..."
There was a pause as Castiel perked up, leaning forward with a curious frown, and Gabriel actually sat up and started paying attention again. Sam looked over at Dean, who didn't seem to be any more enlightened than he was, and shrugged, looking back at the demon. Who was grinning again now that he had his captive audience.
"What did you have in mind?" Gabriel asked, pretending nonchalance, but leaning a little too far forward for it to be believable. Crowley shot him a sly look.
"I was thinking about the fact that for angels to be effective here on earth, they have to manifest inside human bodies," he drawled, smirking. "I was thinking about the fact that aside from me and the angel here, none of you lot can get those bodies for free, which makes them something of an important commodity. And I was thinking about graffiti, mass media, Enochian sigils, and the fact that only so many of the Host can manifest themselves at a time, and all of them inside our reach ..."
"And on the demon side," Aziraphale added in, "I was thinking about the fact that there are any number of human organisations on Earth that have made it their mission in life to eradicate hellspawn. I was thinking that since Crowley here has spent so much of his time amassing a truly ungodly amount of wealth, that he might be inclined to perhaps fund a joint venture among these organisations. I was thinking about what humanity, when armed with the right knowledge and given the right tools, can do ..."
"We've been playing this old school," Crowley went on. "Not even fourteenth century style. We've been playing this like we were back in the Bronze Age. All this crap about picking champions and one-to-one combat ... this is the age of technology, of mass production, mass media, mass destruction ..."
"So, what? You want us to nuke them?" Dean cut in, incredulous, but there was a look on his face, the kind of half-hidden glee that Sam remembered from the old days, the days when things were simpler, when faith and destiny had nothing to do with it, and all you had to do to make Dean happy was hand him a saw-off shotgun and point him at the bad guy.
Not that Sam didn't kinda wish for those days himself right now ...
"Certainly not!" Aziraphale sounded shocked at the suggestion, and for a moment Dean's face fell. Then ... "Nuclear weapons would only affect humanity, not angels or demons, and besides. You do want to be able to live here afterwards, don't you? No. We were thinking something more ... subtle. Something ... quieter. And much more civilised."
"Civilised?" Gabriel drawled, leaning back in his chair with an inscrutable expression. "You want to fight a civilised war? Have you seen what our brothers are doing out there? And I'm not just talking about Lucifer ..." Scorn all but dripped from the words, but they didn't even make a dent in Aziraphale.
"I rather think we've seen more of it than most," the angel said, very quietly. "After six thousand years, I rather think we've seen more of everything than most, don't you?"
Gabriel stared back at him, opening his mouth, but something in Aziraphale's expression kept him from saying whatever sarcastic thing had come to mind.
"Anyway! We can drive them back," Crowley cut in hurriedly. "Heaven and Hell, they're working on a timetable. They've only got as long as Lucifer's body lasts, because an angel in free-form on earth only lasts a certain amount of time before Heaven yanks him back up like a yo-yo, and if that happens Lucifer is in Heaven, and outnumbered, and they've got a whole other range of problems. If we can banish them en masse, if we can trap them, seal them, run them around ... so long as we keep the archangels from getting their proper vessels, and keep the rest of them run off their feet until Lucifer gives up the ghost ... And we can do that. We've got six billion humans out there, and six thousand years worth of technology and connections to work with."
"Not to mention that all the angels with any real experience on Earth are in this room," Aziraphale pointed out. "Crowley and I have been here from the start, of course, and you've had your millennium ... The only one who hasn't is Castiel, and he seems to be taking to Earth combat like a duck to water." He shot Castiel a proud smile, which caused Castiel to frown at him in confusion. Probably more about the duck thing than the reference to his fighting skills, Sam thought.
"And while the Brothers Grimm over there might be a little slow on the uptake," Crowley nodded in their direction, "they have access to any number of people who aren't. Humanity hasn't been playing that much of a role so far, except as game chips, but that doesn't mean they can't. This is their planet, after all."
"Really, there's no reason whatsoever why we shouldn't be able to win this thing," Aziraphale finished, beaming encouragingly at everyone.
There was a long, long, long pause, during which everyone in the room stared at the two of them. Stared at them enough for them to start fidgeting worriedly.
"What?" Crowley said, at last, obviously trying his hardest not to inch away from everyone. "What?"
"You've ... put a lot of thought into this, then?" Gabriel said, dry as dust, staring at something invisible over Aziraphale's head. They looked at each other.
"Well, yes," Aziraphale muttered, defensively. "It's our job. Or was, at any rate. How to fight the war on Earth. And we may have been ... lenient ... these last few centuries, because it was only each other we'd be hurting, in the end, but ... well, the war is here, now. And we like humanity, and we know how to work down here, and ..."
"You lot may have been happy up in Heaven, only swinging down here to kick the shit out of each other every millennium or so, but we've been stuck down here!" Crowley continued, with some heat. "We've had to fight down here from the start, we've had to work our way around humanity, had to figure out what would kill us or save us down here ... This is our life, boys and girls! Don't blame us for trying to figure out how to bloody keep it ..."
"We don't!" Sam spoke up, deciding this might be a good point to cut in on. He looked over at Dean, saw the agreement there. Then he looked at Castiel and Gabriel, at the way they were both frowning, and stopped a little. "Well. The humans in the room don't, anyway ..."
Castiel took a moment from staring at them to grant Sam a slightly guilty look, but it didn't stop the frown he was directing at Aziraphale. "You are talking about ... driving the angels from Earth. All the angels. You're talking about ... giving humans weapons against angels, about betraying Heaven, on such a scale ..."
"Hello!" Crowley growled, incredulously. "Heaven is trying to destroy the world! This world. Our world. Not just the humans'. Ours. Because I don't know if you've noticed, but it's about the only one that will have any of us, after this."
"I know," Cas looked shaken. "But ... to drive them from the earth ..."
"I know," Aziraphale said, very gently. "I know. But it's better than killing them, isn't it? It's better than letting them destroy humanity, and each other, as they seem determined to do?"
Gabriel made a sort of strangled sound, shoving himself back from the table and staring off to one side, viciously refusing to look at any of them. Sam found himself reaching out towards him before he caught himself, found himself half out of his seat, hand outstretched, before he even realised what he was doing. Gabriel's head came back around in shock, staring at him. He flushed, lowering his hand.
"If we do this," Castiel was saying, doubtful, almost afraid. "If we do this, even if we manage it, if it works ... Heaven will not forgive. If we do this, we may bring Heaven down on us, on humanity. It's ... a very big risk. If we try, and we fail ..."
"We won't," Aziraphale said, and it was so hard, so cold, that everyone in the room looked at him in shock. Even Gabriel. The plump angel stood from his seat, very slowly, and there was suddenly nothing kindly at all in his expression, nothing soft, nothing friendly.
"Er ..." Dean shifted closer to Castiel, who was meeting Aziraphale's dark stare with an uncertain, but very determined one of his own. Sam almost joined him, because he remembered the warehouse very, very clearly, enough to know that look on Aziraphale's face was not one you wanted one of your friends to be trying to face down.
Castiel, for his part, was completely undeterred. Possibly he'd just gotten way, way too used to facing down enemies bigger than he was, and there was a part of Sam that wondered if that was the kind of effect they had on everyone they knew. Come join the Winchesters! We'll take you from sensible to suicidal in under a year, guaranteed! When had this become their life?
"If we bring the humans into this war, they will have to pay the price," their angel said, quietly. "If we involve more of them ... I have seen the costs a human pays for fighting wars with angels." He looked at them, looked at Sam, and then at Dean, and his expression hit them like a punch to the gut, full of pained, guilty knowledge and a desperate kind of love. Sam clenched his fists, aching, while Dean grabbed hold of Cas' hand and held on fiercely.
"They're already involved," Crowley spoke up, very, very gently. "And not even just these two. Who do you think is dying out there, even as we speak? Who do you think Lucifer is killing? Not to mention the demons, mortal and otherwise, that he's brought up with him?" He shook his head, their very own demon. "I've seen Hell. I've lived in Hell, and now that he's free, now that Heaven has let him free, he's brought all that up here. And I have to tell you, that wasn't something I ever, ever wanted to see. I like Earth. I like it better than anything Hell or Heaven could come up with, and I'm not really all that interested in letting them wipe out chunks of it in this little game of theirs, you know? It's not about Heaven vs Hell, not anymore, not for us. It's about Earth, about humanity, and about whether or not we're gonna let them get slaughtered without ever even knowing what hit them ..."
"I've seen it," Aziraphale said, quietly, soft hands clenched trembling around the edge of the table. "I've seen it before. I've been on this Earth since the beginning. I've seen ... I knelt in the al-Aqsa Mosque during the First Crusade, and watched innocents be slaughtered in cold blood in the name of my Father. I sat with them in the camps during the second world war, and watched them be led to the slaughter in the name of purity. I've heard this before, heard this justification Heaven thinks is good enough for the sacrifice of a world. I've heard it. I've watched it, watched humans enact it time and again, and I promise you, I will die before I let Heaven do the same. I will die, cheerfully, before I watch all that is good in my Father's creation be twisted by those lies. I will die!"
Crowley reached for him, caught his shaking hand, pulled him close. Aziraphale went silently, more silent than any of them had ever seen him, pale and trembling, and his demon caught him, held him close, and looked at them over his angel's shaking shoulders.
"I don't know about you," he said, not even reproachfully, not even angry. Just tired and determined. "I don't know what you want, what you're willing to do. But me and the angel here ... we've nothing left, except this Earth. We made our choice twenty years ago, the first time around, and now ... whatever happens, whatever way this goes from this point on, we're staying here. Dying here, if that's what it comes to. I'm taking oblivion, if it's a choice between that and Hell for all eternity. Me and him ... this is it, for us. If the world ends now, so do we. No Heaven, no Hell, no afterlife, no nothing. This is all we have. So ... excuse us for wanting to fight for it first, won't you? And do ... do let us know if you plan to help, because that would be nice."
No-one said anything, after that. No-one said anything for long enough that Crowley closed his eyes in something like despair, and tilted his face to hide it in his angel's hair, to wrap his arms tight around Aziraphale and just cling. They said nothing. Mostly, for Sam anyway, because what the hell could you say, after that? What the hell were you supposed to say?
They hadn't thought. He hadn't thought. Hadn't thought that there might be other people in this, people with their own reasons to fight, people outside their little family. People for whom the Apocalypse wasn't about being forced to be a vessel, or being made to choose something other than the orders you've followed all your life. People for whom Team Free Will was just another faction, another side.
Aziraphale and Crowley ... they'd been amusing allies. The stuffy angel and his repentant demon. They'd been funny, and friendly, and someone to play tricks on and watch play tricks on each other, someone to enjoy pastry with and steal alcohol off. He hadn't thought. Hadn't thought of why they were doing this, why they were helping, what it meant to them. He'd thought they were joining his side, Team Free Will's side.
He'd never thought they might be looking for someone to join theirs.
How many others were there, like these two? How many others out there, knowing what was happening, seeing it, being hurt by it, wanting someone to help them, to give them a chance to fight back, to just protect what was theirs? He found himself looking at Gabriel, looking at the archangel sitting alone on his side of the table, watching Crowley with a pained look in his eyes. Gabriel, who just wanted to keep his family alive past the end of the world. Who just wanted to keep them from killing each other, and saw joining this venture as his only way to manage it. Was that so wrong? Was that so very different from what Sam wanted, and Dean wanted, and Cas wanted?
"Cas ..." Dean said, suddenly, beside him. Sam looked at him, a little stunned to see the sheer pain in his brother's face, to hear the roughness in his voice. Dean wasn't looking at Castiel. He was looking at Aziraphale, at Crowley, and Sam knew from his expression that Dean had been thinking a lot of the same things he'd been. "Cas. This plan of theirs ... could it work? Could we do it?"
Aziraphale and Crowley slowly lifted their heads, turned to look at them. The hope on their faces was painful.
Castiel looked away, tilting his head in thought, his fingers tapping a nervous little beat against the table. He weighed his answer with that same gravitas he always did. "I don't know," he said at last. "I don't have enough information, on Earth, on the means they want to use. I don't know. But ..."
"It might," Gabriel spoke up, slowly, heavily. "I've used technology myself, the way I think Crowley is suggesting. Against humans, not angels, and there are some things that I don't know how he plans to manage, but ... it could work. It could."
Castiel nodded solemnly. "There is a chance, I think. He's right that there is a limit on the time they can spend, a limit for how long we would have to fight them for. If we can find a way to fight enough of them, to distract them, if we can keep you safe long enough ... it might work. Lucifer, and Heaven by default, only have so much time."
Dean nodded slowly. Considering. He looked over, met Sam's eyes. Asked, silently, carefully. Do we do this? Do we ask who knows how many people to take up arms with us? Do we risk them? Do we think we can? Sam met his eyes, and nodded.
"It's a better plan than anything we've come up with," he said, quietly. "And they're right. People are dying anyway. This ... We can't kill the Devil. We've tried. But if we can at least stop him from taking Earth with him ... I say we try it, Dean." He smiled, a little. "It's not like anyone else has any better ideas, after all." Though they had tried. But if this was how they had to do it, well. They'd best get started, hadn't they?
Dean looked at Cas, at Gabriel, asking the same silent question, and both angels nodded at him. Slowly. More than a little reluctantly. But they nodded, and Dean looked back at the other two, at the angel and the demon who'd helped them out of nowhere, and who wanted someone to help them in return. Not even for their own sakes. But for Earth, and humanity, and six thousand years of history that Sam thought no-one, no-one anywhere on Earth, Heaven or Hell, could quite understand, except them.
"Well then," Dean said, carefully. "I think you'd best start telling us what to do then. Since you're the men with the plan, and all?" And the shaky smile on Aziraphale's face, the look of amazed and wary disbelief on Crowley's ... whether this worked or not, whether they had a hope or not, Sam thought those looks might just make this worth it after all.
"It will work," the angel promised them, shakily, hopefully. "We've been doing this ... we've been at this for a long time. I promise you, if nothing else will work, this will."
Crowley nodded vehemently. "Just a matter of the right magic in the right places, that's all! Just a matter of getting the timing down. No problem! We can ... we can do this. We can."
"Yeah well, let's not get ahead of ourselves," Gabriel muttered, but he was leaning back in, leaning forward again, and there was a gleam in his eyes, a dark, somewhat wicked gleam that was far more Trickster than archangel, and somehow more frightening for it. "We'll have to go out and get a hold of some things first. You in particular, demon, since you're the one who apparently knows where most of what we need is ..."
Crowley smirked a little, hesitantly, but game now that the ball was in his court, so to speak. "Not a problem. I've got a few big corporate types who owe me pretty much everything, and others in more than a few Earth governments. I can get you satellites, if that's what you need. And government backing, at a push, if we're talking localised efforts ..." Dean sat up at that, Sam too, because actually, that could be useful, especially with the likes of the Horsemen and their effects ...
"We may need some help with the actual sigils part of it," Aziraphale admitted, looking hopefully at Castiel and Gabriel. "We've been on Earth for rather a long time, and they don't tend to tell us ... much of anything, really, so I think we may be a little out of date ..."
Castiel smiled, faintly, and reached out to trace something with a finger on the tabletop, something that had the other three angels (well, angelic-type beings, anyway) staring at him in shock and more than a little fear for a second, before Crowley's face morphed into a vicious, anticipatory grin.
"Oh yes," the demon breathed. "Oh yes. I think we can do business, boys and girls. I think we can definitely do business."
Dean grinned a little himself, the old grin, when a hunt was on and something that went bump in the night was about to get toasted, and Sam found himself echoing it almost helplessly.
"Well then," Dean said, "let's get this show on the road, shall we?"
Contd: Falling Angel
