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Long, long, long, but I didn't want to end on another cliffie. Also, though everyone gets a bit of a showing, it sort of turned into the Lucifer-Crowley-Gabriel show. Heh. My apologies.
Title: Big Damn Heroes
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity: Follows straight from Temptations 2
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Aziraphale, Crowley, Gabriel, Lucifer. A little Anansi. Dean/Cas, Zira/Crowley, Sam/Gabe. And also, perhaps, a hint of Lucifer/Gabriel, because Luci is a bastard
Summary: The boys go get their demon back, Luci and Gabe have a showdown, Crowley loses the plot slightly. Big damn heroes all round.
Wordcount: 5668 (!!!)
Warnings/Spoilers: Um. Gabriel is not treated well this chapter. At all. Ouchie.
Disclaimer: Not mine. SO not mine.
Anyway. They gathered in the garage. Cas to wait for word. Dean and Sam to pick up the gear from the Impala. Aziraphale ...
There was another car parked next to theirs. A very old, mint condition Bentley, if Dean wasn't mistaken, and presumably Crowley's, since Aziraphale didn't seem the motoring type. While Dean, Sam and Cas had gathered around the trunk of the Impala, Aziraphale had, completely silently, moved past them, opened the driver door of the Bentley, climbed in carefully, rested both hands on the wheel, his forehead on his hands, and proceeded to quietly cry his eyes out.
They had stared at his shaking shoulders in stunned silence for a full minute, completely at a loss. And then, because there was fuck all else they could do, they'd gone back to arming up and making plans.
Quietly.
Castiel got Gabriel's bulletin about a second later. They noticed this because the poor bastard almost keeled over. Apparently, archangels yelled.
"Cas?" Dean grabbed his shoulder, propping him up against the Impala. "Cas? You okay?"
His angel blinked like someone had just hit him between the eyes, but nodded.
"Yes," he rasped. "Gabriel has sent me ... what we need. He ... I believe he would like us to hurry, but we must be ... careful."
"Careful?" Sam asked, suspiciously. "Why? Aside from the obvious, I mean."
Castiel blinked slowly, expression going grim. "Lucifer does not appear to realise anyone is coming for Crowley. However, he does seem to have formed a temporary base around him. Gabriel does not know why. But there are ... many demons in residence."
Dean grimaced. "How many is many?"
Castiel tilted his head, looking faintly apologetic. "Gabriel did not specify. In excess of twenty, I think. And Gabriel ... he says he can distract Lucifer. Keep him from interfering. But that is all he can do. We must deal with those demons and retrieve Crowley ourselves."
For a second, Dean wanted to complain about that. For a second, his brain jumped straight to 'fucking angels, making us do all the work again'. Then, thankfully before he'd actually opened his mouth, a somewhat quieter voice in the back of his head pointed out that it was the Devil Gabriel was going to distract. His brother. And while it didn't make Dean any more sympathetic towards the bastard, it was starting to dawn on him that Gabriel not wanting to kill his brother was not exactly something Dean had any right to yell at him for.
Besides. Given the thing his brother seemed to have going on with the archangel, Sam would have yelled at him.
"Alright," he sighed. "So we gotta storm hell on earth to get us back a demon. No problem."
For some reason, Castiel smiled. "At least it is not Hell itself. Once was enough, in that regard."
Dean blinked at him. They both did. Somehow, with everything else that had been going on, with everything that Cas had become to them, to him ... They'd sort of forgotten that. Well, not forgotten, as such. Just ... not thought about it much. Or at all. Hell wasn't something Dean went out of his way to remember, after all, and Cas back then ... Cas hadn't been Cas, back then. Or wasn't that Cas now. That's what he told himself. Except, looking at him now ... Dean thought maybe he sort of was. Maybe Cas was still that angel, in some ways. And that meant ... That meant they had an angel on their side who had once stormed Hell. Literally.
Suddenly, Dean felt just that little bit more hopeful.
"Okay," he said, reaching back into the trunk, pulling out a shotgun. Not much permanent good against demons, perhaps, but enough to keep them off his back until his weaponised angel could step in. And it should be disturbing, how he counted on that without even thinking about it, but really, by now? It kinda wasn't. "Okay. Let's do this, then. Sam, you got the knife?"
Sam nodded grimly, slipping it out. "Always." Dean grinned at him.
"Cas? You got ...?" He stopped, as his angel shifted his shoulders to nudge something in his sleeve. The angel-killer slipped down into his hand. Dean stared at it. "Um. Cas? I thought that thing was for angels. Didn't work on demons?"
Cas nodded. "It did not."
Dean blinked some more. "So ...?"
His angel smirked. A very smug, darkly satisfied little smile. "It didn't. But since I was captured by Lucifer the last time, I have been ... preparing. It will work on them now." He hefted it, smiling a little. "It will work on many things, now. I may not have the access to my Grace that I once had, but I am not yet useless, Dean."
Dean stared at him, swallowing. Cas didn't know. Cas couldn't know. Couldn't know what he echoed in that moment. "I mean Dean, I'm all but useless." Right before he marched himself in to die on Dean's orders. And Dean had been thinking about other things at the time, things like getting back to the present, like seeing the Devil wearing his brother's face, like kicking Zach's ass ... And now he had to wonder. Had to wonder when it started, that the first thing Cas would say was 'I'm useless'. That he'd walk into Hell for Dean, into Death, and all he'd think about was whether or not doing so would be any fucking use.
He wondered when Cas had started thinking like he was Dean's soldier first, and anything else after. He wondered when he'd started letting him.
"You're not useless," he rasped, reaching out, grabbing Cas' wrist while the angel blinked at him. "No matter what. I don't care if you can't do a damn thing! You're not useless, Cas. You're not. Okay? You're not." He caught Castiel's eye, held it, trying to bore the meaning into the angel's skull, trying to make him understand.
Cas looked back in confusion, but nodded. "I know. Dean. I know."
"Uh, guys?" Sam chose that moment to interrupt, and Dean almost growled at him, but when he looked over there was an expression on Sam's face. Not impatience. Worry, sick and twisting, and Dean abruptly remembered that there was more to worry about here than just the three of them. "Happy as I am that you two are talking about your issues ... Gabriel said hurry. And given what he's up against ... could we listen to him sometime soon?"
They blinked, and nodded, shame faced. Yeah. Time and place, and all that.
Dean looked around, locked and loaded, as it were, and caught sight of their other problem. He flinched a little, internally. "Guys?"
They followed his gaze to the Bentley, and the angel inside it. Aziraphale hadn't looked up yet.
"Should we ..." Sam started, uneasy. "He doesn't really look up to much. Do you think we should ...?"
Castiel shook his head immediately. "He needs to come. If it was one of yours, you would need the same." And yeah. Couldn't argue with that. So Dean picked up what courage he had, and went to fill the crying angel in.
He tapped Aziraphale on the shoulder, leaning into the car. The angel startled slightly, raising his head, and Dean did his best not to flinch at the red eyes. Look, he didn't know what to do with that, alright? But Aziraphale, catching the expression on his face and the gun in the crook of his arm ... Aziraphale switched on. Or off. Dean wasn't quite sure how to describe it. The angel's face went blank and grim, locked off, remote, and it took Dean a second to recognise the look. It took him a second to remember.
Aziraphale looked the way Cas used to, back when he was saying shit like 'smite the town'. Back when he had to be something he wasn't, deep down. It wasn't blank like 'I'm in shock and don't know what I'm doing'. It was blank like 'I've just switched off every emotion that might stop me from doing what I need to do, and mercy and fear were the first to go'.
It was a fucking scary expression, in short.
"Are we ready?" Aziraphale asked, very quietly. Dean nodded mutely, and filled him in. When he was done, Aziraphale just sat for a second, as if thinking, and then ...
"That gun won't help you. You need something else. Hang on a second ..."
Dean blinked at him. A lot. But the angel ignored him completely, serene and untouchable as he climbed out around Dean, and reached back into the car to pull something else out after him. He handed it to Dean without a word.
Dean stared. "Um. This is ... This is a tire iron," he said. Blankly, because the hell? What was he supposed to do with that, against a base full of demons? But Aziraphale, for the first time since they'd gotten the news, smiled.
"Yes. It is." He smiled down at it, touching it lightly. "When Crowley and I faced the Devil in the last apocalypse, it was all he had to hand. Not that it would have done him much good, though thankfully we never had to find out. And afterwards, with Heaven and Hell hunting us ... well. We decided, if we were going to make him a weapon, what better thing to use? It won't help against a Fallen, or he couldn't use it, but for lesser demons it works just fine." He paused, his eyes going a little distant. "He'll want it back, after ... after. But I'm sure he won't mind you using it in the interim. Not in such a worthy cause."
Dean blinked at him some more. "Um. So, what? I just ... clobber people with it? And it gets rid of demons?"
Aziraphale smirked. Just faintly. "That usually works, yes. Usually."
Dean glared at him. Not too much, because he was mostly relieved that the angel was acting slightly more normal. Then he propped the thing up over his shoulder, fell into place beside the sword-wielding angel, and looked back at the other two. Sam and Cas blinked back at him, shrugging.
"Alright, people," he said, hooking his arm around Cas and letting Sam do the same for Aziraphale. Flying angel-air, here we come. "Let's get this show on the road, yeah? Got us a demon to rescue." And maybe that would never not sound weird, but hey! This was life as a Winchester.
They nodded at him, and two seconds later the garage was empty.
Then his brain caught up with his mouth, and he took a moment to virulently curse himself, all angels, and most especially Aziraphale, because this had to be all that bastard's fault! It had to be! Because Crowley was all shaken up, and hurt, and uncertain, and six thousand years and two apocalypses hanging around the bugger had obviously conditioned him to suicidal bravado under pressure. Yes. It was all Aziraphale's fault. Obviously.
Didn't help the fact that he had just said it, mind. Didn't help the fact that the Devil in question had just frozen, liquid fury poured over ravaged features. Didn't help the fact that caged in holy fire, there was no place for Crowley to run, and nothing he could do to defend himself. Didn't help the fact that he was about to get smited into the next century if he was lucky. And looking at Lucifer's face ... he didn't feel all that lucky.
"I hate you, angel," he whispered softly, as the Devil raised his hand. "I really, really hate you, you know that?"
Wherever he was, Aziraphale didn't answer.
But someone else did.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you, brother," a familiar voice drawled, clear above the rush of wings as Gabriel appeared at the other end of the room. The archangel grinned cheerily at them, arms crossed and tutting. "Trust me. His boyfriend has excellent aim with a cup of tea. Not someone you want to annoy, you know?"
Lucifer lowered his hand slowly, looking somewhere between confused, homicidal and calculating.
Crowley, on the other hand, out and out staring at the archangel, was torn between relief and a strong desire to curse the bastard sixteen ways til Sunday. Mostly because the first thought that popped into his head, after 'thank Someone I'm saved', was 'you idiot, only one of us needs to die here!'. And that was just way too undemonic for him to be feeling good about it, and consequently he wanted Gabriel to piss off and stop making him think shit like that.
Um. Possibly after dousing the holy oil, at least. Because that wasn't too risky for anyone, and Crowley could do a lot with a running start ...
"Gabriel," Lucifer said, slowly. Testing the name out. "Is that you?"
Gabriel rolled his eyes expressively. If it weren't for over a millennium of reading that face, Crowley might have thought him completely at his ease. "Why is everyone asking me that lately? Don't I look like myself?"
Lucifer tilted his head, smiling darkly. "You look more than a little ... pagan, brother. I'd heard the rumours, since I came up here, of course, but I must admit I never actually believed ... What have you done to yourself, Gabriel?"
The archangel shrugged casually, wandering a little closer, studying the empty basement like it fascinated him. "Oh, you know how it is. Archangel on the run, there aren't a lot of choices, are there?" He looked over at Lucifer, caught the flicker of real interest, capricious calculation, and smirked faintly. Crowley almost groaned.
"Since you mention it," the Devil murmured, turning in place to follow Gabriel's movements warily. "I've ... had some problems that way myself." A self-depreciating gesture at the rotting remnants of the human he'd hijacked. Like humility was actually something he might understand.
"So I see," Gabriel said, quietly, stopping close to his brother. Close to Crowley. But Lucifer, whether by accident or -far more likely- on purpose, had kept himself between them. The Devil smiled.
"Care to help me remedy that, brother?" he asked, sweet as rotting, sickly. Power flickered on the edges of Crowley's senses. A warning. Or a threat. Lucifer smiled at the other archangel, and Crowley flinched. It had been bad when the bastard was still a couple of miles down and about to punch the surface. Standing next to him was making him come out in scales just breathing the same air.
Gabriel, though, didn't seem all that impressed. And that was weird, because Gabriel was usually the sensible archangel in any bunch. But there was something flickering under the Trickster's amiable exterior. Something angry. Something Crowley hadn't seen in a long, long time, and hadn't really missed.
"Give you Sam Winchester, you mean?" Gabriel asked casually, looking down at the ground and casting a sly look back up at Lucifer. "Give you your real vessel, and pick a side in this little prize-fight you and Mikey have got going?" He smiled innocently, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, ignoring the tightening of the Devil's features, the lust that crept forward towards him, the power.
"Something like that, yes," Lucifer rasped, inching closer to Gabriel almost instinctively, ripe with suspicion and desire. Crowley watched him go, watched the gap between the Devil and himself widen, and cursed Gabriel under his breath.
There had best be more to this plan that just talking at the Devil and hoping it distracted him long enough. There had best be more to this plan that Gabriel luring Lucifer off to try and fight him. There had better be.
"Hmmm." The archangel backed up, bouncing on his toes, smirking. He ignored the waves of power rolling off a rather pissed off Satan, not even looking at him, head tilted as if thinking about it. About giving Sam over. Or about throwing a punch. Or about grabbing himself a Snickers bar. Who the hell knew? But he backed up, and the Devil followed.
For about two steps, before stopping, expression flashing with comprehension, with anger and subtle amusement.
"Gabriel," he said, gently. Disappointedly. "Gabriel, what are you doing?"
The archangel stopped bouncing, making a little moue of disappointment. He sighed. "Well, can't blame a guy for trying. Sorry, bro. But I promised the demon's boyfriend I'd get him home by midnight, and, well ... "
Lucifer narrowed his eyes, frowning curiously. "What does Michael want with a demon?"
Crowley choked on a cough, spluttering helplessly, because that thought? So, sooo not pretty. So not pretty. Gabriel, apparently, agreed, a series of expressions crossing his face in very rapid succession, the end result of which was "Ew! Bro, no! Not Michael. Jeeze! I know you've been knocking around perversion central for a while, but seriously. Yeesh!"
Lucifer tilted his head, prowling closer to Gabriel again. Still, Crowley noted, moving away from him. The Devil looked his brother up and down slowly. Consideringly. "Not for Michael, then. You're not on his side?"
Gabriel froze, expression abruptly serious. Suddenly deadly. "No," he whispered. Rasped. "No, Luci. I remember all too well what happened the last time I got between the two of you, the last time I picked a side. I remember. And it was the last time. The last time." There was a beat, a sudden fluttering presence of wings, tier upon tier, and the look in the archangel's eyes was terrible. "I remember what it's like to bear the brunt of your little feud, and I will not. Suffer. Again. Not for either of you. Not for any of you. Not again."
For a second, Crowley swore he saw something that looked almost like shame in the Devil's eyes. Which did no wonders for his faith in his current mental state, let him tell you.
"I was not ... myself, that day, Gabriel," Lucifer said softly. "You know that. You know I didn't mean ..."
There was a rustle of matter, a flicker of power to match the anger in Gabriel's eyes, and the look on the archangel's face was fearsome as he winched two of his wings up into the visible plane, separated them from their brethren to pull them up into view. So that Lucifer and Crowley could see. See the thick, twisted mass of scar tissue among the feathers, see the mangled lines of badly-healed bone and Grace. See the ruin.
Crowley's stomach turned over, his hand clutched against his belly as he worked out how long it would have taken to cause that damage. How much it must have hurt. Two wings out of six hundred, practically speaking it wasn't much of an injury, much of a loss, but the sight of it, the mere thought of enduring what it must have felt like ... Crowley was a demon, and he felt sick to his stomach.
"Oh, I think you meant it alright," Gabriel said, mouth twisted bitterly. "I think you did, brother. It wasn't even my message! It wasn't even my fault! But you never did pay much attention to the whole 'don't shoot the messenger' idea, did you? And, really, why bother to say 'fuck you' in words, when you can tear your little brother up to achieve the same effect? It's all perfectly sensible, looked at like that!"
He stopped, panting, struggling to pull himself back under control, and Crowley stared at him, feeling painfully, ridiculously protective of the bastard, of an archangel, of a creature who could smush him like a bug on a bad day. Suddenly, stupidly, he felt the decidedly undemonic urge to get between them. To step into the middle of the Clash of the fucking Titans, all because something in his withered heart was feeling sorry for someone who'd tried to smite him two seconds after meeting him.
When this was done, if any of them survived this, he was going to take a long, long holiday away from any and all angels. Obviously the buggers were far more bloody contagious that he'd thought.
"Gabriel ..." Lucifer said, still with that strange, almost-there look of shame. Of pain. Gabriel shook his head violently.
"No," he spat, raising a hand to cut the Devil off, to stop. "No. Never mind. That's not ... that's not important. That's not ... what I'm here for." He paused, sucked in a deep, calming breath. Put back on his carefree, Trickster face, mobile features slipping fluidly into the mask, only a glimmer in the eyes remaining of old pain. He shunted his wings back into the ethereal plane, wincing as crumpled bone faded away.
Lucifer stared at him. He said nothing.
"You should ... you should listen to Crowley, you know," Gabriel said at last, pulling himself together. Crowley tried not to blink at him. "This isn't ... this isn't about who did what to who, and when, Lucifer. This isn't about who was right or wrong. Not anymore. Michael ... Heaven ... Dad checked out a while back, He's not here, there's no fucking destiny anymore! There's no reason for this, Lucifer! Brother. No reason for any of us to have to ... to have to kill each other ..."
He stopped, as Lucifer's face shifted, as shame and pity fell away and something cold took their place. Something hard and immovable and bitter. Gabriel saw it, and stopped.
"Don't," he whispered, heartbroken. "Lucifer, don't. Don't do this. Don't make me ... don't make me have to hurt you. Please. Don't make me hurt you."
Lucifer smiled at him, very gently, power gathering slowly behind him, slow and cold and hateful. He smiled at Gabriel, and there was nothing in it that even resembled love. Though there might have been pity.
"You won't," the Devil said, very quietly.
Then, just when Crowley had decided to shit himself, just when it looked like Gabriel was going to get himself creamed all over again ... something arrived on the outskirts of the factory with the angelic equivalent of a sonic boom, and a pulse of some really massive Grace knocked the lot of them sideways. Not power. Whoever it was, they weren't powerful, not archangel level or anything, but their Grace burned. Not power but faith, the kind of faith that once parted whole fucking seas, wrapped down tight and shoved straight into Wrath. An old-school, biblical angel come a-knocking.
And Crowley thought, wow, someone's gone and made Aziraphale angry.
Lucifer straightened, bewildered, furious, looking out past wards and walls to where demons had just started screaming, and the expression on his face was fucking priceless. Truly priceless, and even as Crowley started snickering helplessly, Gabriel crossed his arms with a vicious smirk, the fear of a second earlier completely gone.
Though Crowley could have sworn he heard the archangel mutter 'About damn time!' under his breath.
"What have you done?" Lucifer hissed, turning back to his brother, hands curling into rotten claws as his face cracked wetly around his snarl. "Gabriel. What have you done?"
Gabriel smirked, a little. "Me? I haven't done anything. But you know how I said Daddy buggered off? You know how you planned on that? On Heaven slowly falling apart, on Michael and the others being too damn depressed to stand up to you, on angels actually taking your side? You know how nobody truly has the faith to stand up to you anymore?" He grinned fiercely, tilting his head towards the oncoming Grace. "Yeah. About that. Meet the last angel in creation with faith, bro. Not your knock-off, faith-in-the-mission brand. Not Heaven's little placebo they've been handing around. The original, right from the Garden through to the Apocalypse. Not tainted, watered-down, misplaced. Faith."
He smiled, rich and deadly. "What you are feeling right now, brother, is the last angel in creation drawing power straight from the Source. The last angel in existence Dad has his hand directly over. And you've gone and stolen his boyfriend. You've gone and pissed him off." He laughed, wiping a fake tear from his eye mockingly. "Oh, Luci, Luci, Luci. Daddy's come a-knocking. Want to say hello?"
There was a second, there, as Lucifer's face worked, as he stared in helpless shock and fury, as Gabriel laughed in his face, as somewhere outside and approaching steadily, his angel's Grace boomed across his senses and four weapons smashed demons left and right ... there was a moment when Crowley actually started to hope. Actually started to think they might get out of this. Not that he believed Aziraphale, or Gabriel for that matter, actually had a chance of beating the Devil in an actual fight, of course, but if they managed to make him run for it, run cost-benefit and come up with the right frikking answer ...
Then Lucifer roared incoherently, and flashed himself right up into Gabriel's face, hands curling into claws to reach behind the other archangel and plunge through planes into his wings. Gabriel screamed, and Crowley knew the fucking bastard had hit the damaged ones, had hit straight into those ancient wounds. The Devil's face twisted with fury, with raw, molten hate, and something pulsed out of him, through those hands, into Gabriel, into his wings.
The archangel's knees hit the floor, dragging Lucifer down with him, and the Devil leaned in to press a rotting, hateful kiss to Gabriel's lips, to swallow his brother's rasping cries. Behind him, Crowley lunged before he thought, only checking himself a bare centimetre from the flames, yelling hoarsely. The Devil ignored him, laughing at Gabriel's pain.
"Gabriel," Lucifer whispered, viciously. "Dearest brother. You'd think you'd learn. You'd think you would learn. Little brother, your angel isn't going to get here in time. He's not going to make it."
Gabriel gasped, crying, struggling fitfully. "You can't ... you can't kill me," he gasped, cried. "No blade, you can't ... can't kill ..."
Lucifer shut him up with another kiss, as brutal as the first, and laughed at him. "I don't plan to, brother," he whispered, sweet and terrible. "In fact, I don't even plan to wait around. But you ..." He pulled his hands out of the wings, pulled them free as feathers materialised on the physical plane, as six hundred stacked tiers appeared, impossibly, in the room. Lucifer smiled darkly, and stroked his brother's face, while behind him six demons, six humans torn and twisted, crept out of the shadows. "You get to stay," he murmured. "You get to stay, Gabriel. You and your little demon. And when that angel does arrive, when he breaks down that door ... he's going to find Crowley's corpse, and your wingless husk. And only little demons with bloody knives to take it out on. Not even worth a vengeance."
He pulled back, pulled away, standing, and Gabriel tried to follow him, tried to move, but something had locked his wings in place, plastered them to the floor, and he couldn't. He couldn't move. Helpless, physical. At anyone's fucking mercy. Lucifer stepped back, and smirked at him. Turned to Crowley, turned to see the terror and helpless rage on his face, turned to see Crowley flinch back.
"I'm sorry you couldn't see reason," the Devil said to him, mildly. Crowley gagged at him, white as a fucking sheet. He didn't ... he didn't ... if there hadn't been holy fire in the fucking way, if he'd had any chance at all, no, even if he hadn't ... never in all his life had Crowley longed to do violence as much as he did in that moment. Never.
But the Devil just smiled that sickly, gentle smile, and vanished. And in his wake, six cackling, desperate demons gathered around them. No. Around Gabriel. Crowley was trapped, after all. Fucking helpless. Not concern of theirs, and it wasn't every day your average, Joe Soap demon got a chance to tear open a fucking archangel.
Gabriel looked at him, eyes bright and knowing and oddly, viciously amused. Watching them come close. Watching knives come up as they crept in around him. Gabriel looked at him, and the demons were right there, and though he could feel Aziraphale coming, could feel the angels pushing through, there was no damn way they were going to get here in time, and Gabriel knew it, and the fucking bastard was laughing. He was laughing. A Trickster's last joke.
Something snapped inside Crowley. Something old and deep and furious. Crowley'd suffered Hell in his time. He'd apparently been knocked down into the Pit by the Almighty on a fucking pretext. He'd faced death beside an angel. None of that, none of that bothered him. Not really. Not deep down, where the real, slightly sheepish angel inside the demon lived. But this, watching this ...
The demons ignored him. Trapped in holy fire, there was nothing he could do, and they knew it. They thought they were safe. But in thinking that, they ignored three very, very important things.
The first was that Crowley was not your average demon. Hell, he wasn't even your average angel. As far as he was concerned, if you had to physically trade blows with someone in order to beat them, you were doing it wrong. Crowley had an imagination.
The second was that they themselves were not true demons. They were humans, or had been, and Crowley had spent the last six fucking thousand years making humans do whatever he damn well wanted them to do.
And the third, and perhaps most important, was that Crowley had passed beyond terror, beyond restraint, all of five fucking minutes ago, and wasn't exactly all that interested in what he supposedly could and couldn't do.
His voice whipped out like a scream, laced with fury, and all but ripped their attention his way, yanked them around as if on strings until they were looking at him and only him. And then ... he vanished. The human figure inside the circle disappeared like it had never been, and what flooded in to replace it was something straight out of the nightmares of H.P Lovecraft. A mindless, limbless crawling thing that reached out towards them. And then ... then Crowley screamed. A full-on, demonic roar, a psychic barrage straight from the original depths of Hell.
It was a common misconception among lesser demons that time in Hell inured you to fear. After enduring the likes of Alastair for any length of time, what had you left to be afraid of? The worst had already happened, after all. But that ... that was a lie. Hell inured you to many things, to pain, to guilt, to shame, but fear? No. Fear was something else. Fear was something uniquely, terribly human, an immovable part of the psyche. And Crowley was the Serpent of Eden. The first demon humanity ever met. The only reason they had primal fears was because he'd put them there.
His body may be stuck, his hands tied, his Grace bound, but his mind was something else. His mind poured out, clawed into them, crawled over them. Ripped them open, shredding consciousness and plunging into the lurid depths of the subconscious. Pressing, with extreme fucking prejudice, the big red button marked 'TERROR'.
Six demons screamed in his wake. Six demons fell to their knees and screamed. Scrambling away, mindless with fear, on hands and knees, and four of them smashed themselves into the walls trying to escape. Trying to run. Two of them stove their own skulls in trying to get away. And then outside the room, outside the basement, spreading out to the demons menacing his angel, Castiel, the humans, because hey! Why stop with just his own problems?
Crowley was a nice guy. He was a really nice fucking guy. But he'd had just about enough. What demons survived the assault -and there weren't many, what with a pair of somewhat stunned angels finishing them off as they went past- what demons were left fled the factory like a someone had turned over their beehive. Every last one of them fled.
Something moved behind him. Right on the edge of the circle, right at his unprotected back. Something unhuman, something unaffected, and Crowley spun, exhausted, already slumping back into his usual form, already slumping beneath it, into the most base form he had, crumpling in sheer, unadulterated exhaustion. He spun, but already serpentine coils had replaced his hands, and there was nothing he could do. From the floor, he looked up.
And met Anansi's bewildered stare. The god had his son under one arm, and a piece of webbing in the other, and was looking more that a little stunned.
"I was going to drop this on the oil and let you out to fight the old-fashioned way," the god said faintly, shooting a slightly fearful look over at an equally incredulous Gabriel. The archangel stared back, jaw on the floor, and didn't seem inclined to butt in, so the Trickster looked back down at Crowley. "But ... I guess that works equally well?"
At which point Aziraphale, near frantic with worry and apparently having lost all patience, decided not to bother bashing the door down and just cut fucking through it instead, sword incandescent with flame. Two angels and two rather queasy looking humans fell into the room, and Crowley abruptly decided they could take care of things. Of everything. So, not even bothering to answer the god's question, not even bothering to look at them, he curled into himself, tucked his head into his coils, and told the world to fuck off.
But he didn't let go, not completely, not all the way, until he felt soft, familiar hands wrap around him, until he was lifted to slump across familiar shoulders, until familiar feathers tickled his scales. Not until he felt the whispering touch of his angel's Grace.
Not until then.
Contd: Grace
Title: Big Damn Heroes
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Good Omens, Supernatural
Continuity: Follows straight from Temptations 2
Characters/Pairings: Dean, Castiel, Sam, Aziraphale, Crowley, Gabriel, Lucifer. A little Anansi. Dean/Cas, Zira/Crowley, Sam/Gabe. And also, perhaps, a hint of Lucifer/Gabriel, because Luci is a bastard
Summary: The boys go get their demon back, Luci and Gabe have a showdown, Crowley loses the plot slightly. Big damn heroes all round.
Wordcount: 5668 (!!!)
Warnings/Spoilers: Um. Gabriel is not treated well this chapter. At all. Ouchie.
Disclaimer: Not mine. SO not mine.
Big Damn Heroes
They reconvened in the garage, after Gabriel left. Well, four of them did. Anansi had slunk away as soon as the archangel whooshed out, apparently considering his job done once the message was delivered. Which, okay, Dean maybe couldn't blame him for, but it was kinda getting old all these powerful creatures leaving them in the damn lurch all the time.Anyway. They gathered in the garage. Cas to wait for word. Dean and Sam to pick up the gear from the Impala. Aziraphale ...
There was another car parked next to theirs. A very old, mint condition Bentley, if Dean wasn't mistaken, and presumably Crowley's, since Aziraphale didn't seem the motoring type. While Dean, Sam and Cas had gathered around the trunk of the Impala, Aziraphale had, completely silently, moved past them, opened the driver door of the Bentley, climbed in carefully, rested both hands on the wheel, his forehead on his hands, and proceeded to quietly cry his eyes out.
They had stared at his shaking shoulders in stunned silence for a full minute, completely at a loss. And then, because there was fuck all else they could do, they'd gone back to arming up and making plans.
Quietly.
Castiel got Gabriel's bulletin about a second later. They noticed this because the poor bastard almost keeled over. Apparently, archangels yelled.
"Cas?" Dean grabbed his shoulder, propping him up against the Impala. "Cas? You okay?"
His angel blinked like someone had just hit him between the eyes, but nodded.
"Yes," he rasped. "Gabriel has sent me ... what we need. He ... I believe he would like us to hurry, but we must be ... careful."
"Careful?" Sam asked, suspiciously. "Why? Aside from the obvious, I mean."
Castiel blinked slowly, expression going grim. "Lucifer does not appear to realise anyone is coming for Crowley. However, he does seem to have formed a temporary base around him. Gabriel does not know why. But there are ... many demons in residence."
Dean grimaced. "How many is many?"
Castiel tilted his head, looking faintly apologetic. "Gabriel did not specify. In excess of twenty, I think. And Gabriel ... he says he can distract Lucifer. Keep him from interfering. But that is all he can do. We must deal with those demons and retrieve Crowley ourselves."
For a second, Dean wanted to complain about that. For a second, his brain jumped straight to 'fucking angels, making us do all the work again'. Then, thankfully before he'd actually opened his mouth, a somewhat quieter voice in the back of his head pointed out that it was the Devil Gabriel was going to distract. His brother. And while it didn't make Dean any more sympathetic towards the bastard, it was starting to dawn on him that Gabriel not wanting to kill his brother was not exactly something Dean had any right to yell at him for.
Besides. Given the thing his brother seemed to have going on with the archangel, Sam would have yelled at him.
"Alright," he sighed. "So we gotta storm hell on earth to get us back a demon. No problem."
For some reason, Castiel smiled. "At least it is not Hell itself. Once was enough, in that regard."
Dean blinked at him. They both did. Somehow, with everything else that had been going on, with everything that Cas had become to them, to him ... They'd sort of forgotten that. Well, not forgotten, as such. Just ... not thought about it much. Or at all. Hell wasn't something Dean went out of his way to remember, after all, and Cas back then ... Cas hadn't been Cas, back then. Or wasn't that Cas now. That's what he told himself. Except, looking at him now ... Dean thought maybe he sort of was. Maybe Cas was still that angel, in some ways. And that meant ... That meant they had an angel on their side who had once stormed Hell. Literally.
Suddenly, Dean felt just that little bit more hopeful.
"Okay," he said, reaching back into the trunk, pulling out a shotgun. Not much permanent good against demons, perhaps, but enough to keep them off his back until his weaponised angel could step in. And it should be disturbing, how he counted on that without even thinking about it, but really, by now? It kinda wasn't. "Okay. Let's do this, then. Sam, you got the knife?"
Sam nodded grimly, slipping it out. "Always." Dean grinned at him.
"Cas? You got ...?" He stopped, as his angel shifted his shoulders to nudge something in his sleeve. The angel-killer slipped down into his hand. Dean stared at it. "Um. Cas? I thought that thing was for angels. Didn't work on demons?"
Cas nodded. "It did not."
Dean blinked some more. "So ...?"
His angel smirked. A very smug, darkly satisfied little smile. "It didn't. But since I was captured by Lucifer the last time, I have been ... preparing. It will work on them now." He hefted it, smiling a little. "It will work on many things, now. I may not have the access to my Grace that I once had, but I am not yet useless, Dean."
Dean stared at him, swallowing. Cas didn't know. Cas couldn't know. Couldn't know what he echoed in that moment. "I mean Dean, I'm all but useless." Right before he marched himself in to die on Dean's orders. And Dean had been thinking about other things at the time, things like getting back to the present, like seeing the Devil wearing his brother's face, like kicking Zach's ass ... And now he had to wonder. Had to wonder when it started, that the first thing Cas would say was 'I'm useless'. That he'd walk into Hell for Dean, into Death, and all he'd think about was whether or not doing so would be any fucking use.
He wondered when Cas had started thinking like he was Dean's soldier first, and anything else after. He wondered when he'd started letting him.
"You're not useless," he rasped, reaching out, grabbing Cas' wrist while the angel blinked at him. "No matter what. I don't care if you can't do a damn thing! You're not useless, Cas. You're not. Okay? You're not." He caught Castiel's eye, held it, trying to bore the meaning into the angel's skull, trying to make him understand.
Cas looked back in confusion, but nodded. "I know. Dean. I know."
"Uh, guys?" Sam chose that moment to interrupt, and Dean almost growled at him, but when he looked over there was an expression on Sam's face. Not impatience. Worry, sick and twisting, and Dean abruptly remembered that there was more to worry about here than just the three of them. "Happy as I am that you two are talking about your issues ... Gabriel said hurry. And given what he's up against ... could we listen to him sometime soon?"
They blinked, and nodded, shame faced. Yeah. Time and place, and all that.
Dean looked around, locked and loaded, as it were, and caught sight of their other problem. He flinched a little, internally. "Guys?"
They followed his gaze to the Bentley, and the angel inside it. Aziraphale hadn't looked up yet.
"Should we ..." Sam started, uneasy. "He doesn't really look up to much. Do you think we should ...?"
Castiel shook his head immediately. "He needs to come. If it was one of yours, you would need the same." And yeah. Couldn't argue with that. So Dean picked up what courage he had, and went to fill the crying angel in.
He tapped Aziraphale on the shoulder, leaning into the car. The angel startled slightly, raising his head, and Dean did his best not to flinch at the red eyes. Look, he didn't know what to do with that, alright? But Aziraphale, catching the expression on his face and the gun in the crook of his arm ... Aziraphale switched on. Or off. Dean wasn't quite sure how to describe it. The angel's face went blank and grim, locked off, remote, and it took Dean a second to recognise the look. It took him a second to remember.
Aziraphale looked the way Cas used to, back when he was saying shit like 'smite the town'. Back when he had to be something he wasn't, deep down. It wasn't blank like 'I'm in shock and don't know what I'm doing'. It was blank like 'I've just switched off every emotion that might stop me from doing what I need to do, and mercy and fear were the first to go'.
It was a fucking scary expression, in short.
"Are we ready?" Aziraphale asked, very quietly. Dean nodded mutely, and filled him in. When he was done, Aziraphale just sat for a second, as if thinking, and then ...
"That gun won't help you. You need something else. Hang on a second ..."
Dean blinked at him. A lot. But the angel ignored him completely, serene and untouchable as he climbed out around Dean, and reached back into the car to pull something else out after him. He handed it to Dean without a word.
Dean stared. "Um. This is ... This is a tire iron," he said. Blankly, because the hell? What was he supposed to do with that, against a base full of demons? But Aziraphale, for the first time since they'd gotten the news, smiled.
"Yes. It is." He smiled down at it, touching it lightly. "When Crowley and I faced the Devil in the last apocalypse, it was all he had to hand. Not that it would have done him much good, though thankfully we never had to find out. And afterwards, with Heaven and Hell hunting us ... well. We decided, if we were going to make him a weapon, what better thing to use? It won't help against a Fallen, or he couldn't use it, but for lesser demons it works just fine." He paused, his eyes going a little distant. "He'll want it back, after ... after. But I'm sure he won't mind you using it in the interim. Not in such a worthy cause."
Dean blinked at him some more. "Um. So, what? I just ... clobber people with it? And it gets rid of demons?"
Aziraphale smirked. Just faintly. "That usually works, yes. Usually."
Dean glared at him. Not too much, because he was mostly relieved that the angel was acting slightly more normal. Then he propped the thing up over his shoulder, fell into place beside the sword-wielding angel, and looked back at the other two. Sam and Cas blinked back at him, shrugging.
"Alright, people," he said, hooking his arm around Cas and letting Sam do the same for Aziraphale. Flying angel-air, here we come. "Let's get this show on the road, yeah? Got us a demon to rescue." And maybe that would never not sound weird, but hey! This was life as a Winchester.
They nodded at him, and two seconds later the garage was empty.
***
For a second, Crowley didn't actually register what had just come out of his mouth. Mostly because telling the Devil to go fuck himself? While he has you in his power? What kind of suicidal moron would do a thing like that?Then his brain caught up with his mouth, and he took a moment to virulently curse himself, all angels, and most especially Aziraphale, because this had to be all that bastard's fault! It had to be! Because Crowley was all shaken up, and hurt, and uncertain, and six thousand years and two apocalypses hanging around the bugger had obviously conditioned him to suicidal bravado under pressure. Yes. It was all Aziraphale's fault. Obviously.
Didn't help the fact that he had just said it, mind. Didn't help the fact that the Devil in question had just frozen, liquid fury poured over ravaged features. Didn't help the fact that caged in holy fire, there was no place for Crowley to run, and nothing he could do to defend himself. Didn't help the fact that he was about to get smited into the next century if he was lucky. And looking at Lucifer's face ... he didn't feel all that lucky.
"I hate you, angel," he whispered softly, as the Devil raised his hand. "I really, really hate you, you know that?"
Wherever he was, Aziraphale didn't answer.
But someone else did.
"I wouldn't do that, if I were you, brother," a familiar voice drawled, clear above the rush of wings as Gabriel appeared at the other end of the room. The archangel grinned cheerily at them, arms crossed and tutting. "Trust me. His boyfriend has excellent aim with a cup of tea. Not someone you want to annoy, you know?"
Lucifer lowered his hand slowly, looking somewhere between confused, homicidal and calculating.
Crowley, on the other hand, out and out staring at the archangel, was torn between relief and a strong desire to curse the bastard sixteen ways til Sunday. Mostly because the first thought that popped into his head, after 'thank Someone I'm saved', was 'you idiot, only one of us needs to die here!'. And that was just way too undemonic for him to be feeling good about it, and consequently he wanted Gabriel to piss off and stop making him think shit like that.
Um. Possibly after dousing the holy oil, at least. Because that wasn't too risky for anyone, and Crowley could do a lot with a running start ...
"Gabriel," Lucifer said, slowly. Testing the name out. "Is that you?"
Gabriel rolled his eyes expressively. If it weren't for over a millennium of reading that face, Crowley might have thought him completely at his ease. "Why is everyone asking me that lately? Don't I look like myself?"
Lucifer tilted his head, smiling darkly. "You look more than a little ... pagan, brother. I'd heard the rumours, since I came up here, of course, but I must admit I never actually believed ... What have you done to yourself, Gabriel?"
The archangel shrugged casually, wandering a little closer, studying the empty basement like it fascinated him. "Oh, you know how it is. Archangel on the run, there aren't a lot of choices, are there?" He looked over at Lucifer, caught the flicker of real interest, capricious calculation, and smirked faintly. Crowley almost groaned.
"Since you mention it," the Devil murmured, turning in place to follow Gabriel's movements warily. "I've ... had some problems that way myself." A self-depreciating gesture at the rotting remnants of the human he'd hijacked. Like humility was actually something he might understand.
"So I see," Gabriel said, quietly, stopping close to his brother. Close to Crowley. But Lucifer, whether by accident or -far more likely- on purpose, had kept himself between them. The Devil smiled.
"Care to help me remedy that, brother?" he asked, sweet as rotting, sickly. Power flickered on the edges of Crowley's senses. A warning. Or a threat. Lucifer smiled at the other archangel, and Crowley flinched. It had been bad when the bastard was still a couple of miles down and about to punch the surface. Standing next to him was making him come out in scales just breathing the same air.
Gabriel, though, didn't seem all that impressed. And that was weird, because Gabriel was usually the sensible archangel in any bunch. But there was something flickering under the Trickster's amiable exterior. Something angry. Something Crowley hadn't seen in a long, long time, and hadn't really missed.
"Give you Sam Winchester, you mean?" Gabriel asked casually, looking down at the ground and casting a sly look back up at Lucifer. "Give you your real vessel, and pick a side in this little prize-fight you and Mikey have got going?" He smiled innocently, rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, ignoring the tightening of the Devil's features, the lust that crept forward towards him, the power.
"Something like that, yes," Lucifer rasped, inching closer to Gabriel almost instinctively, ripe with suspicion and desire. Crowley watched him go, watched the gap between the Devil and himself widen, and cursed Gabriel under his breath.
There had best be more to this plan that just talking at the Devil and hoping it distracted him long enough. There had best be more to this plan that Gabriel luring Lucifer off to try and fight him. There had better be.
"Hmmm." The archangel backed up, bouncing on his toes, smirking. He ignored the waves of power rolling off a rather pissed off Satan, not even looking at him, head tilted as if thinking about it. About giving Sam over. Or about throwing a punch. Or about grabbing himself a Snickers bar. Who the hell knew? But he backed up, and the Devil followed.
For about two steps, before stopping, expression flashing with comprehension, with anger and subtle amusement.
"Gabriel," he said, gently. Disappointedly. "Gabriel, what are you doing?"
The archangel stopped bouncing, making a little moue of disappointment. He sighed. "Well, can't blame a guy for trying. Sorry, bro. But I promised the demon's boyfriend I'd get him home by midnight, and, well ... "
Lucifer narrowed his eyes, frowning curiously. "What does Michael want with a demon?"
Crowley choked on a cough, spluttering helplessly, because that thought? So, sooo not pretty. So not pretty. Gabriel, apparently, agreed, a series of expressions crossing his face in very rapid succession, the end result of which was "Ew! Bro, no! Not Michael. Jeeze! I know you've been knocking around perversion central for a while, but seriously. Yeesh!"
Lucifer tilted his head, prowling closer to Gabriel again. Still, Crowley noted, moving away from him. The Devil looked his brother up and down slowly. Consideringly. "Not for Michael, then. You're not on his side?"
Gabriel froze, expression abruptly serious. Suddenly deadly. "No," he whispered. Rasped. "No, Luci. I remember all too well what happened the last time I got between the two of you, the last time I picked a side. I remember. And it was the last time. The last time." There was a beat, a sudden fluttering presence of wings, tier upon tier, and the look in the archangel's eyes was terrible. "I remember what it's like to bear the brunt of your little feud, and I will not. Suffer. Again. Not for either of you. Not for any of you. Not again."
For a second, Crowley swore he saw something that looked almost like shame in the Devil's eyes. Which did no wonders for his faith in his current mental state, let him tell you.
"I was not ... myself, that day, Gabriel," Lucifer said softly. "You know that. You know I didn't mean ..."
There was a rustle of matter, a flicker of power to match the anger in Gabriel's eyes, and the look on the archangel's face was fearsome as he winched two of his wings up into the visible plane, separated them from their brethren to pull them up into view. So that Lucifer and Crowley could see. See the thick, twisted mass of scar tissue among the feathers, see the mangled lines of badly-healed bone and Grace. See the ruin.
Crowley's stomach turned over, his hand clutched against his belly as he worked out how long it would have taken to cause that damage. How much it must have hurt. Two wings out of six hundred, practically speaking it wasn't much of an injury, much of a loss, but the sight of it, the mere thought of enduring what it must have felt like ... Crowley was a demon, and he felt sick to his stomach.
"Oh, I think you meant it alright," Gabriel said, mouth twisted bitterly. "I think you did, brother. It wasn't even my message! It wasn't even my fault! But you never did pay much attention to the whole 'don't shoot the messenger' idea, did you? And, really, why bother to say 'fuck you' in words, when you can tear your little brother up to achieve the same effect? It's all perfectly sensible, looked at like that!"
He stopped, panting, struggling to pull himself back under control, and Crowley stared at him, feeling painfully, ridiculously protective of the bastard, of an archangel, of a creature who could smush him like a bug on a bad day. Suddenly, stupidly, he felt the decidedly undemonic urge to get between them. To step into the middle of the Clash of the fucking Titans, all because something in his withered heart was feeling sorry for someone who'd tried to smite him two seconds after meeting him.
When this was done, if any of them survived this, he was going to take a long, long holiday away from any and all angels. Obviously the buggers were far more bloody contagious that he'd thought.
"Gabriel ..." Lucifer said, still with that strange, almost-there look of shame. Of pain. Gabriel shook his head violently.
"No," he spat, raising a hand to cut the Devil off, to stop. "No. Never mind. That's not ... that's not important. That's not ... what I'm here for." He paused, sucked in a deep, calming breath. Put back on his carefree, Trickster face, mobile features slipping fluidly into the mask, only a glimmer in the eyes remaining of old pain. He shunted his wings back into the ethereal plane, wincing as crumpled bone faded away.
Lucifer stared at him. He said nothing.
"You should ... you should listen to Crowley, you know," Gabriel said at last, pulling himself together. Crowley tried not to blink at him. "This isn't ... this isn't about who did what to who, and when, Lucifer. This isn't about who was right or wrong. Not anymore. Michael ... Heaven ... Dad checked out a while back, He's not here, there's no fucking destiny anymore! There's no reason for this, Lucifer! Brother. No reason for any of us to have to ... to have to kill each other ..."
He stopped, as Lucifer's face shifted, as shame and pity fell away and something cold took their place. Something hard and immovable and bitter. Gabriel saw it, and stopped.
"Don't," he whispered, heartbroken. "Lucifer, don't. Don't do this. Don't make me ... don't make me have to hurt you. Please. Don't make me hurt you."
Lucifer smiled at him, very gently, power gathering slowly behind him, slow and cold and hateful. He smiled at Gabriel, and there was nothing in it that even resembled love. Though there might have been pity.
"You won't," the Devil said, very quietly.
Then, just when Crowley had decided to shit himself, just when it looked like Gabriel was going to get himself creamed all over again ... something arrived on the outskirts of the factory with the angelic equivalent of a sonic boom, and a pulse of some really massive Grace knocked the lot of them sideways. Not power. Whoever it was, they weren't powerful, not archangel level or anything, but their Grace burned. Not power but faith, the kind of faith that once parted whole fucking seas, wrapped down tight and shoved straight into Wrath. An old-school, biblical angel come a-knocking.
And Crowley thought, wow, someone's gone and made Aziraphale angry.
Lucifer straightened, bewildered, furious, looking out past wards and walls to where demons had just started screaming, and the expression on his face was fucking priceless. Truly priceless, and even as Crowley started snickering helplessly, Gabriel crossed his arms with a vicious smirk, the fear of a second earlier completely gone.
Though Crowley could have sworn he heard the archangel mutter 'About damn time!' under his breath.
"What have you done?" Lucifer hissed, turning back to his brother, hands curling into rotten claws as his face cracked wetly around his snarl. "Gabriel. What have you done?"
Gabriel smirked, a little. "Me? I haven't done anything. But you know how I said Daddy buggered off? You know how you planned on that? On Heaven slowly falling apart, on Michael and the others being too damn depressed to stand up to you, on angels actually taking your side? You know how nobody truly has the faith to stand up to you anymore?" He grinned fiercely, tilting his head towards the oncoming Grace. "Yeah. About that. Meet the last angel in creation with faith, bro. Not your knock-off, faith-in-the-mission brand. Not Heaven's little placebo they've been handing around. The original, right from the Garden through to the Apocalypse. Not tainted, watered-down, misplaced. Faith."
He smiled, rich and deadly. "What you are feeling right now, brother, is the last angel in creation drawing power straight from the Source. The last angel in existence Dad has his hand directly over. And you've gone and stolen his boyfriend. You've gone and pissed him off." He laughed, wiping a fake tear from his eye mockingly. "Oh, Luci, Luci, Luci. Daddy's come a-knocking. Want to say hello?"
There was a second, there, as Lucifer's face worked, as he stared in helpless shock and fury, as Gabriel laughed in his face, as somewhere outside and approaching steadily, his angel's Grace boomed across his senses and four weapons smashed demons left and right ... there was a moment when Crowley actually started to hope. Actually started to think they might get out of this. Not that he believed Aziraphale, or Gabriel for that matter, actually had a chance of beating the Devil in an actual fight, of course, but if they managed to make him run for it, run cost-benefit and come up with the right frikking answer ...
Then Lucifer roared incoherently, and flashed himself right up into Gabriel's face, hands curling into claws to reach behind the other archangel and plunge through planes into his wings. Gabriel screamed, and Crowley knew the fucking bastard had hit the damaged ones, had hit straight into those ancient wounds. The Devil's face twisted with fury, with raw, molten hate, and something pulsed out of him, through those hands, into Gabriel, into his wings.
The archangel's knees hit the floor, dragging Lucifer down with him, and the Devil leaned in to press a rotting, hateful kiss to Gabriel's lips, to swallow his brother's rasping cries. Behind him, Crowley lunged before he thought, only checking himself a bare centimetre from the flames, yelling hoarsely. The Devil ignored him, laughing at Gabriel's pain.
"Gabriel," Lucifer whispered, viciously. "Dearest brother. You'd think you'd learn. You'd think you would learn. Little brother, your angel isn't going to get here in time. He's not going to make it."
Gabriel gasped, crying, struggling fitfully. "You can't ... you can't kill me," he gasped, cried. "No blade, you can't ... can't kill ..."
Lucifer shut him up with another kiss, as brutal as the first, and laughed at him. "I don't plan to, brother," he whispered, sweet and terrible. "In fact, I don't even plan to wait around. But you ..." He pulled his hands out of the wings, pulled them free as feathers materialised on the physical plane, as six hundred stacked tiers appeared, impossibly, in the room. Lucifer smiled darkly, and stroked his brother's face, while behind him six demons, six humans torn and twisted, crept out of the shadows. "You get to stay," he murmured. "You get to stay, Gabriel. You and your little demon. And when that angel does arrive, when he breaks down that door ... he's going to find Crowley's corpse, and your wingless husk. And only little demons with bloody knives to take it out on. Not even worth a vengeance."
He pulled back, pulled away, standing, and Gabriel tried to follow him, tried to move, but something had locked his wings in place, plastered them to the floor, and he couldn't. He couldn't move. Helpless, physical. At anyone's fucking mercy. Lucifer stepped back, and smirked at him. Turned to Crowley, turned to see the terror and helpless rage on his face, turned to see Crowley flinch back.
"I'm sorry you couldn't see reason," the Devil said to him, mildly. Crowley gagged at him, white as a fucking sheet. He didn't ... he didn't ... if there hadn't been holy fire in the fucking way, if he'd had any chance at all, no, even if he hadn't ... never in all his life had Crowley longed to do violence as much as he did in that moment. Never.
But the Devil just smiled that sickly, gentle smile, and vanished. And in his wake, six cackling, desperate demons gathered around them. No. Around Gabriel. Crowley was trapped, after all. Fucking helpless. Not concern of theirs, and it wasn't every day your average, Joe Soap demon got a chance to tear open a fucking archangel.
Gabriel looked at him, eyes bright and knowing and oddly, viciously amused. Watching them come close. Watching knives come up as they crept in around him. Gabriel looked at him, and the demons were right there, and though he could feel Aziraphale coming, could feel the angels pushing through, there was no damn way they were going to get here in time, and Gabriel knew it, and the fucking bastard was laughing. He was laughing. A Trickster's last joke.
Something snapped inside Crowley. Something old and deep and furious. Crowley'd suffered Hell in his time. He'd apparently been knocked down into the Pit by the Almighty on a fucking pretext. He'd faced death beside an angel. None of that, none of that bothered him. Not really. Not deep down, where the real, slightly sheepish angel inside the demon lived. But this, watching this ...
The demons ignored him. Trapped in holy fire, there was nothing he could do, and they knew it. They thought they were safe. But in thinking that, they ignored three very, very important things.
The first was that Crowley was not your average demon. Hell, he wasn't even your average angel. As far as he was concerned, if you had to physically trade blows with someone in order to beat them, you were doing it wrong. Crowley had an imagination.
The second was that they themselves were not true demons. They were humans, or had been, and Crowley had spent the last six fucking thousand years making humans do whatever he damn well wanted them to do.
And the third, and perhaps most important, was that Crowley had passed beyond terror, beyond restraint, all of five fucking minutes ago, and wasn't exactly all that interested in what he supposedly could and couldn't do.
His voice whipped out like a scream, laced with fury, and all but ripped their attention his way, yanked them around as if on strings until they were looking at him and only him. And then ... he vanished. The human figure inside the circle disappeared like it had never been, and what flooded in to replace it was something straight out of the nightmares of H.P Lovecraft. A mindless, limbless crawling thing that reached out towards them. And then ... then Crowley screamed. A full-on, demonic roar, a psychic barrage straight from the original depths of Hell.
It was a common misconception among lesser demons that time in Hell inured you to fear. After enduring the likes of Alastair for any length of time, what had you left to be afraid of? The worst had already happened, after all. But that ... that was a lie. Hell inured you to many things, to pain, to guilt, to shame, but fear? No. Fear was something else. Fear was something uniquely, terribly human, an immovable part of the psyche. And Crowley was the Serpent of Eden. The first demon humanity ever met. The only reason they had primal fears was because he'd put them there.
His body may be stuck, his hands tied, his Grace bound, but his mind was something else. His mind poured out, clawed into them, crawled over them. Ripped them open, shredding consciousness and plunging into the lurid depths of the subconscious. Pressing, with extreme fucking prejudice, the big red button marked 'TERROR'.
Six demons screamed in his wake. Six demons fell to their knees and screamed. Scrambling away, mindless with fear, on hands and knees, and four of them smashed themselves into the walls trying to escape. Trying to run. Two of them stove their own skulls in trying to get away. And then outside the room, outside the basement, spreading out to the demons menacing his angel, Castiel, the humans, because hey! Why stop with just his own problems?
Crowley was a nice guy. He was a really nice fucking guy. But he'd had just about enough. What demons survived the assault -and there weren't many, what with a pair of somewhat stunned angels finishing them off as they went past- what demons were left fled the factory like a someone had turned over their beehive. Every last one of them fled.
Something moved behind him. Right on the edge of the circle, right at his unprotected back. Something unhuman, something unaffected, and Crowley spun, exhausted, already slumping back into his usual form, already slumping beneath it, into the most base form he had, crumpling in sheer, unadulterated exhaustion. He spun, but already serpentine coils had replaced his hands, and there was nothing he could do. From the floor, he looked up.
And met Anansi's bewildered stare. The god had his son under one arm, and a piece of webbing in the other, and was looking more that a little stunned.
"I was going to drop this on the oil and let you out to fight the old-fashioned way," the god said faintly, shooting a slightly fearful look over at an equally incredulous Gabriel. The archangel stared back, jaw on the floor, and didn't seem inclined to butt in, so the Trickster looked back down at Crowley. "But ... I guess that works equally well?"
At which point Aziraphale, near frantic with worry and apparently having lost all patience, decided not to bother bashing the door down and just cut fucking through it instead, sword incandescent with flame. Two angels and two rather queasy looking humans fell into the room, and Crowley abruptly decided they could take care of things. Of everything. So, not even bothering to answer the god's question, not even bothering to look at them, he curled into himself, tucked his head into his coils, and told the world to fuck off.
But he didn't let go, not completely, not all the way, until he felt soft, familiar hands wrap around him, until he was lifted to slump across familiar shoulders, until familiar feathers tickled his scales. Not until he felt the whispering touch of his angel's Grace.
Not until then.
Contd: Grace
