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*takes a deep breath* Much, much belated, I know. Believe me, I seriously had to wrestle with it. I hope the next chapter won't take near so long -_-; Also, this is the first chapter (and indeed the first of my fics, ever) to have been beta'd, so many, many thanks to the awesome ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
darkamber and everyone else who offered. Y'all are awesome!
Title: Trust
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Supernatural, Good Omens
Continuity: Follows on from Gabriel, set about two weeks later
Characters/Pairings: Crowley, Bobby, Gabriel, Aziraphale, Sam, Dean, Castiel. Aziraphale/Crowley, Sam/Gabriel, Dean/Castiel
Summary: They've gotten the preliminaries out of the way, armed the planet, gotten something to use against the Devil ... now it's time for the endgame
Wordcount: 5520
Disclaimer: Not mine
Warnings/Notes: I'm being horrible to Crowley again. Also, there is a small, throw-away cameo from another fandom in there
darkamber and everyone else who offered. Y'all are awesome!Title: Trust
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Supernatural, Good Omens
Continuity: Follows on from Gabriel, set about two weeks later
Characters/Pairings: Crowley, Bobby, Gabriel, Aziraphale, Sam, Dean, Castiel. Aziraphale/Crowley, Sam/Gabriel, Dean/Castiel
Summary: They've gotten the preliminaries out of the way, armed the planet, gotten something to use against the Devil ... now it's time for the endgame
Wordcount: 5520
Disclaimer: Not mine
Warnings/Notes: I'm being horrible to Crowley again. Also, there is a small, throw-away cameo from another fandom in there
Trust
It was a nice night, really. Crisp, clear. The sky full of stars, and all that. A nice night.
Not at all the sort of night you spent curled in the shadows on a hunter's porch while angels and humans fought it out in the house behind you, but Crowley had always been a firm believer that beggars couldn't be choosers (Aziraphale, not so much, but then the angel always had been an optimist). And given a choice between being out here, and being in there ... well. Better part of valour, and all that.
It was a shame, in some ways. Things had been going so very well, over the past two weeks. For Someone's sake, given that they were a bunch of half-arsed nobodies trying to stop an Apocalypse (again, and if they survived this he might actually have to have a word with the management about that), they weren't doing all that badly at all.
It turned out, for example, that between them, Bobby and Aziraphale were a worryingly effective pair of generals (well, not quite generals, maybe, because 'general' implied there were orders being given, when in fact it was more like a friend calling a friend of a friend to ask a favour, but ... ). The two of them had settled into Bobby's back room with a pot of coffee, another of tea, and a small army of telephones, and suddenly half the supernatural, religious and criminal populations of North America were on the move. Suddenly, Heaven and Hell had reason to be getting a little nervous.
Between that, and Gabriel's Horsemen plan, and the Banishment Loop ... well, let's just say things had been busy.
It hadn't been so bad on his end. Besides his three-continent-long argument with the kid, anyway. (Seriously! He'd been fighting, trapping and tricking angels his entire career! He knew perfectly well how to lay a sigil, thank you very much! The nerve of the little bastard ... "With respect, Crowley, anything that can be assembled by a third rate angel can be taken apart by a third rate angel. Precision is the only way to counter my brothers' experience." Third rate! Little snot!) And aside from a few creepy moments with Kali (he knew they should have had Gabriel do the asking, but the bloody archangel had ducked out on the grounds of 'complicating factors from a prior relationship', the sleazy bastard), and that sort of terrifying moment when he'd taken Castiel aside to mention the Plan to him ... Anyway. All told, not bad. For an apocalypse, that is.
It hadn't been that bad on the boys' end, either, from what he'd heard (Castiel had a tendency to check in with Dean regularly, and Aziraphale might, possibly, have checked up on him ... every six hours or so ...). Given that Pestilence had made the huge mistake of hurting Sam while Gabriel was in range, and found out really quickly what a pissed off, possessive archangel could do ... And, alright, the back-up plan with the zombie-virus was evil (whoever came up with that one must have gotten a commendation on the spot, provided of course that Down Below were still doing that sort of thing), and it had taken his angel drafting in a Knight of the Cross to help take down the warehouse to sort it, because Gabriel was busy escorting Dean to a date with Death ...
But, all in all ... a freakily effective apocalyptic campaign, if he didn't say so himself. Definitely a pat on the back job, and a finger in the general directions of the old bosses. But it lacked one thing. Something Gabriel and the Gruesome Twosome had finally noticed.
It lacked an endgame.
And now ... now they'd run through the preliminaries. Now they'd armed the planet, drawn up their defenses, and gotten themselves something to use against the Devil in the final confrontation. Now ... they were trying to figure out how to make said confrontation happen, and how to survive it ... and in Gabriel's case, how to make sure Lucifer survived it. Because ... well. That was the other thing.
It had taken them a while to notice. To be fair, him and Castiel had been in the Himalayas at the time, Gabriel had been busy staring Death in the eye (which had given Adam pause, so Crowley could easily forgive the archangel for being ... focused), and Aziraphale had been panicking about Sam and Bobby on their own with only the Knight to protect them (which Sanya had been very upset about, in an impenetrable, Russian kind of way). They were all busy at the time, so they could be forgiven for not noticing immediately.
Forgiven for not noticing that Michael, Prince of Seraphs and Heaven's General, had taken a vessel. A here-to-fore unremarked (and deceased) Winchester half-brother, and when the boys figured that one out ... that hadn't been a happy conversation, even by his standards. That hadn't been a happy conversation at all, but there was no doubt about the truth of it. Michael had taken a vessel.
Which was sort of ... more or less as planned, really, on his and his angel's part anyway, and that might be some of the reason voices were rapidly rising behind him ...
Anyway. So now they were thinking about it. The humans and their angels. Now they were thinking about how the hell they were going to manage this with only the keys to a cage and some sigils to their name. Now they were thinking about the fact that Heaven was decidedly pissed off about the successes their little Loop was having so far, and that Heaven really, really wanted this Apocalypse, and that the chances therefore of Michael letting them anywhere near his homicidal brother with a cage were slim to nil.
Now the humans were making noises about maybe saying 'yes' to their respective homicidal archangels, lure them into the trap that way, or some other completely harebrained notion, and Gabriel in particular was getting very, very jumpy, and more than a little homicidal himself. Castiel would probably have been the same, if Crowley hadn't taken him aside already and quietly mentioned an alternate, if equally harebrained, plan. Then again, maybe not. It was hard to tell with the grim-faced little bugger. But Crowley had had the feeling, the last couple of days, that knowing what they intended had relieved a little bit of the tension in those wiry shoulders ...
Sod it anyway. So here he was, then. Planning something so damn stupid it was positively heroic. Sitting in the shadows, hoping his angel could take the heat for a while, while he tried to convince himself that he could actually do this, that he was actually seriously thinking about this, that this was their actual plan ... And there was a part of him that really, truly hoped that Gabriel's rapidly skyrocketing voice would talk them out of it, that the flat, calm answers Castiel was giving, or Aziraphale's earnest wheedling, would fail to convince them ... Hah. Pathetic, yes? Some demon he was.
"You gonna sit there all night, feeling sorry for yerself?"
Crowley jumped, and strangled the squawk that wanted to come out before he could embarrass himself any further. Damned bloody ... human, sneaking up on him under the noise of Gabriel yelling, scaring him half to death ...
"What the hell do you want?" he snarled, shoving his hands down by his side to hide the shakes until he could get it under control. He gave the old hunter his best, most withering glare, all burning eyes and the suggestion of fangs, but the bloody bastard had obviously been hanging around the angel too much and never even turned a hair. Instead, Bobby ambled closer, out of the light from the windows and into Crowley's patch of shadow, and held out a bottle with a grunt, looking gruffly to one side as Crowley blinked at him and took it with hands that were mostly, mostly back under control.
"Er, thanksss?" he murmured, coughing around the first shot of something that bore too much resemblance to paint-stripper to call whiskey, but liking the warmth of whatever-it-was in his belly. Never could get warm enough, these days, short of curling around his angel. Bloody stinking apocalypse ...
"Don't mention it," Bobby murmured, waving a hand as he lowered himself down the wall with a grunt to sit next to Crowley. Who sort of blinked at him, but decided he probably shouldn't mention anything, given the fact that the old hunter was almost always armed. Bobby grinned at him sharply, and crossed his arms. "So ..."
Crowley shrugged, and looked away. "Sssso? Shouldn't you be inside, refereeing or ssomething?" Which was a legitimate concern, really, since Bobby was about the only one in the house who was relatively neutral, and also sane, and it was his house Gabriel and Cas sounded about ready to smash up a bit. But the hunter would have none of it.
"I reckon your angel can probably handle it," he said quellingly, arms still crossed and gaze still drilling a hole in the side of Crowley's head. Crowley scrunched down around his bottle, and did his best to ignore it, picking at the wax seal in stubborn silence.
"Fine tale they're telling in there," Bobby went on at last, obviously realising Crowley wasn't going to comment. "Your idea, was it? This plan of theirs?"
"Well, obviously," Crowley drawled, sliding a little further down the wall. "All the rampant idiocy it involves, all that lovely self-sacrifice and throwing myself on the trust of people who've no reason for it, not to mention the whole suicide part ... obviously that was my idea. Sounds just like something I'd come up with, doesn't it?"
Bobby's mouth twitched. "So ... that'd be a yes, then?"
Crowley grimaced, and folded his arms sulkily. "Oh, ssshut up. It'sss barely a step up from the wonder twinsss' idea, I know, but we're running out of optionss over here. It ... sounded sssaner before I'd mentioned it to anyone." Not much saner, admittedly, in the fumbling minutes in Anansi's limo, or the long intervals when he should really have been concentrating on the sigil he was supposed to be constructing, but ... It was only when he'd seen Aziraphale's face at the idea, only when he'd seen the breathless fear and pride and love in his angel's face, that he'd realised how utterly suicidal and stupid and heroic the whole thing actually was. And by then he'd told someone, and it was too damn late to take it back ...
"Bit risky, yeah," the hunter agreed, watching something invisible in the darkness beyond the porch, and sounding far too much like Castiel in a sneaky mood for Crowley's liking. "What with the whole kidnapping the archangels of heaven and hell thing. Could see why that might turn out to be a little dangerous ..."
"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" Crowley interrupted, testily. "Look, it was just ... something the Devil said ... I didn't want this, alright? It's just ... Look. We can't lose the kids, right? Anyone with eyes can see that, whatever happened between them two weeks ago, Sam's got Gabriel all shattered and broken and ... and bloody head over heels, and if we let the little idiot go through with his plan to say 'yes' for humanity's sake, then that's one more broken and possibly genocidal archangel to worry about ... and Ssssomeone help us if something happens to Dean, because that little bassstard angel of his is quite possibly more dangerous than any of them ... Honesstly, it's probably safer doing it our way, suicide and all ..."
He stopped, realising that he was babbling a little, and shutting his mouth before he could get too close to ... to the other reasons. The older reasons, or newer reasons, or whatever the hell they were. The reasons that even Aziraphale didn't really know, and probably wouldn't understand even if he did, and oh, Crowley could happily have gone a few more millennia before coming up against the choice the Devil had put in front of him in that bloody factory, the choice he was going to have to make now ...
"Oh, sure," Bobby murmured quietly, eyeing him in the dimness, human eyes seeing far, far too much for Crowley's liking. Bloody bastard had definitely been hanging around the angel too long. "I can see how the idea of luring the Devil and his brother into a trap, and trying to convince them to stop an apocalypse ... I can see how that seemed like the safer option. Piece of cake, that. No problem."
"You know, sarcasm ill becomes you," Crowley muttered, wrapping his arms around his chest and looking anywhere but at the hunter. "Besides, that's mostly Aziraphale's idea, that part. I was just going to trap 'em, and drop the rings down between them while we had 'em. Talking to them, giving 'em time to escape and wreak terrible vengeance on our heads ... that's all the angel. Trussst me."
Bobby was silent for a second, silent in a way that had Crowley looking up at him, blinking at the long, quiet stare the hunter was giving him. Curling away a little from the weight of it, before he remembered himself, remembered pride long enough to stiffen and glare back a bit in bafflement. Bobby stared at him, and then smiled. Just a little. A bit of a smirk like Crowley had seen on the bugger's face two weeks ago, when he'd been in a heap with Aziraphale on the library floor and the man had been grinning at him like he knew something Crowley didn't. It gave him the shivers, that smile. It really did.
"You know," the hunter murmured, slow and thoughtful-like. "I think I do, at that." A faint smile, gruff and uneasy as the man looked down at his feet. "Trust you, I mean. You and your angel. For all that you're the biggest pair of idjits since the Winchesters, and don't go gettin' a big head about it, or nothin' ..." He flushed, and grabbed the bottle from Crowley's limp hands without looking, concentrating on not choking on the rotgut while Crowley blinked in shock and stared at him like an idiot. Flushed darkly, and refused to look anywhere near the demon, but ... Crowley knew he was telling the truth, you couldn't lie, not to him, not unless you were really, really good at it, and Robert Singer was many things, but a liar was not one of them ...
"Um ...?" he managed, accepting the bottle again. Intelligently, but hey! It was not this demon's day, and he was entitled to a little confusion ... and no small amount of embarrassment, of course, and ... and complete and utter bafflement ...
"Don't go making anything of it," Bobby muttered, glancing sideways at his expression and flinching a little at what he saw. "Ain't nothing, demon. Just ... Just so you know, whatever stupid thing you're about to go and do ... you got someone at your back, is all. Besides that angel of yours, I mean." He huffed silently, crossing his arms defensively, and glared. "And the rest of 'em, too, once they calm down a bit. They're not totally stupid ..."
And that was more than half to break the moment, to stop Crowley staring at him in stunned amazement, but Crowley took it gratefully. "Not far off it, though," he pointed out, voice a little higher than it should have been, humour a little more forced, but Bobby was a decent chap, and didn't mention it. Mostly to avoid terminally embarrassing the both of them, but Crowley was taking his mercy where he could get it these days.
"I'll take that in the spirit it was meant, and smite you later," growled a low, shaking voice from overhead. Crowley swallowed, hard, and looked up at the porch roof, where, naturally, their resident psycho archangel had decided to perch. Dammit, he should have registered when the noise from inside had died down, but he'd been just the tiniest bit distracted. Again. Manchester, he needed to get his head together, sometime soon.
Provided he survived the next few minutes, of course. And then the few days after that, possibly including the end of the world, and almost certainly including an interview with a very annoyed ex-employer ... On second thoughts, he'd probably be better off saving his quest for sanity until afterwards, and just play it by ear for now.
"Later?" he asked, managing a frankly impressive degree of insouciance, all things considered. "Very patient of you, archangel."
Gabriel grinned sharply, swinging down onto the porch proper, for once towering over Crowley since he was still in a heap on the floor. Towering over Bobby, too, but since you couldn't intimidate the hunter with a nuke next to his ear, Crowley figured the show was mostly for his benefit. Dimly, he registered the other four, two angels and two humans, filing out onto the porch via the door. You know. The normal way.
"I'll smite you for being a prick later," Gabriel smirked. Sort of smirked. The archangel was almost buzzing, there was so much ... something ... wrapped down under that smirk and cocky stance, and Crowley had to resist the urge to try and crawl under the porch like the serpent he was. "Right now I'm trying to decide if I should smite you for being insane, and putting ideas in my brothers' heads, and, oh yeah, planning to kidnap the two most dangerous archangels in existence. So we can brainwash them, apparently. You calling me stupid can wait for later."
"Gabriel," Aziraphale murmured reproachfully from the door. Ordinarily, Crowley would expect his angel to be wringing his hands or something, nervously, but Aziraphale had obviously gotten fed up about fifteen minutes of shouting ago. "You've already agreed this is our best chance. Please stop trying to intimidate my demon." Or else, and Crowley had to blink a little at that.
"Wait, you agreed?" he stuttered, blinking up at the vibrating archangel. Trying to ignore the squirmy little curl of disappointment in his chest, because ... for a little while there, he'd been sort of hoping they wouldn't have to go through with it ... But then, the only other suggestion had involved the Lucifer wearing the love of Gabriel's life for a dress, so ... He'd never really expected that to fly.
"Not agreed, as such," Dean muttered from the sidelines, glaring at a very granite-faced Castiel. "I mean, general theory, yeah, sure, why not. Actual plan ... not so much."
"It's simple necessity, Dean," the angel stated, steady and calm and ever-so-slightly annoyed, under the ruthlessly-held veneer. He looked almost as tightly-wound as Gabriel did, and Crowley took a second to re-evaluate exactly how pissed off and scared Dean's repeated attempts to convince them to let him say yes to Heaven's general had been making Castiel. "The easiest way to get to Michael is through Zachariah. I'm perfectly capable of handling him."
More than capable, if the steely and more-than-a-little vengeful glow in those eyes was anything to go by. Oh yes. Castiel had been waiting for a chance to go for the slime-bag for most of this apocalypse, and this way he got to save Dean on top of it. From the look on his face, the hunter would have an easier time trying to convince water to run uphill than trying to talk the little bugger out of it. Which Crowley had been sort of reluctantly counting on, yes, and alright, he'd planned this stupid venture, and he could hardly blame them for agreeing to it when he'd done everything in his sneaky, demonic power to tempt them into it ...
"Yeah, and when Raphael and Michael drop down and smite your ass?" Dean growled, obviously picking up right where the argument had left off inside. "How you planning on handling that, Cas?"
"By having you and Gabriel as back-up," Aziraphale interrupted testily, glaring at the pair of them. "And more besides, once I've had a chance to make some arrangements! Honestly, Dean, I understand your concerns, but it's Castiel's right to choose to risk himself if he wants to, and he'll be in no more danger than the rest of us. And considerably less than you would have been otherwise!" Crowley blinked as his angel sniffed furiously, part concern, part fear, and about fifteen parts impending smite. Yeah, this was going down sooo well.
"Which," Gabriel interrupted, a low purr of menace that stopped the impending argument in its tracks and caused Crowley to quietly shit himself when the archangel turned to glare at him, "is what I wanted to talk to you about, demon."
Crowley gulped, scrambling to think what the problem was. It could be anything, given that his plan involved Gabriel's new family kidnapping his old one at (not inconsiderable) personal risk, but why Gabriel would want to talk to him about Dean and Cas being in danger ... "Um. Yes?"
"Yes," the archangel grinned, stalking closer to lean over Crowley, his Grace vibrating around him in the tiny space between him and Crowley and the wall until the demon could barely breathe and had to clutch white-knuckled at the bottle. Bobby shifted almost protectively beside him, glowering at the archangel, but Gabriel was in a mood. No getting out of this one by hiding behind the hunter's skirts, much as he would like to ... "I want you to explain something to me, Crowley," Gabriel murmured quietly, leaning close, face-to-face. "Something about this little plan of yours that I'm just not getting. Okay?"
Crowley nodded, pale-faced. Bugger, he didn't think the bloody archangel would take it this badly, whatever it was. He'd known Gabriel wasn't the most stable of individuals, but he'd counted on a little more sanity than this ...
"I want you to explain," the archangel murmured, "why you've arranged for half an army to go after Michael, including half of this little team of ours ... and another small army laying the traps, including most of the rest of this team ... and the only person going after Lucifer, the most dangerous, and homicidal, and pissed the hell off at you of my brothers ... is you. Just you. All by your lonesome. Because that ... that doesn't sound very sensible to me, and I always thought you were a sensible person."
Crowley blinked. A lot, opening his mouth for a second and then closing it again. Well, yes, and that was in fact the main problem with the plan, and most (okay, all) of the reason Crowley had been sort of not-so-secretly hoping they'd reject it, but ...
Oh. Yeah. But Gabriel had been there, in that factory. Gabriel had heard. Maybe not all, maybe not even all that much, depending on how long he'd been waiting for a chance to distract Lucifer, but ... Enough. Probably enough. Enough to suspect ... oh, lots of things. Enough to wonder why Crowley needed to talk to the Devil alone, enough to wonder why Crowley wanted a word with his old boss, enough to wonder if Crowley wasn't arranging this little plot in order to shop someone other than the Devil.
He swallowed, feeling his spine stiffen automatically, defiantly, as he tipped his head back to meet the archangel's stare. Given how pale he was sure he'd just gone, it probably wasn't going to do much good, but he wanted to meet Gabriel's eyes for this. He wanted the archangel to see ... A lot of things. None of them. Something.
"Because Michael has the most forces to call on, and needs most of us to deal with," he said softly. "Because no way in hell is Sam going anywhere near my old boss until I'm sure he's sane enough not to do anything stupid. Because the Devil is getting nowhere near my angel while I'm still breathing. Because you're all needed elsewhere, and because I'm the only one who has a chance of leading him on without getting killed two seconds after opening my mouth. And ..." He stopped, took a deep breath while the archangel's eyes bored into him, and finished. "And because the Devil is expecting me. Because he's probably been waiting for me for the past two weeks. Because the Devil thinks he has something I want, and he'll believe I'll do anything to get it, and because while the Devil thinks he's trapping me there's no better chance to trap him. Because I can do this, and none of the rest of you can, and I really, really don't want to, believe me, but I'm am sick to my back teeth of fucking apocalypses every time I fucking turn around, and I want this to be over!"
He stopped, struggling not to throw up, not to lean to one side and throw up, because he'd been thinking about this all night, and every night for the past two weeks, and it was suddenly real, and suddenly something he'd have to actually do, and he wasn't a fucking hero. He was a demon, and demons weren't supposed to make choices like this, and it was Aziraphale's fault, so fucking much, and Someone help him, he'd never been this terrified in all his life. Not hearing that Voice on the radio, telling him the First Apocalypse was nigh. Not standing beside his angel with a tire iron in hand, waiting to die. Not standing ringed in fire, waiting for the Devil to kill him. Because those hadn't been choices. Those hadn't been his choice, he was just doing what adrenalin and panic and love had dictated in the moment, but this ... This was a choice. This was his choice, and the ball of dread in his stomach had been getting heavier and harder and more pervasive every fucking night.
"Dearest," Aziraphale whispered, somewhere off to his right, beyond Bobby. Soft and crushed and desperately, achingly caring. Stupid bloody angel. Stupid bloody angel, taking him and making him something he was never supposed to be. Making him care, and stand up, and everything else, and dammit! It was all the angel's fault. He wasn't a fucking hero. It was all the angel's fault!
"Crowley," Gabriel murmured, and then a hand reached down from on high, oddly gentle for the temper the archangel had been vibrating with all of two seconds ago, ignoring Crowley's flinch to rest carefully on his shoulder. "Crowley ... what my brother said, what he told you ..."
"Was a trap, yes," Crowley muttered, eyes permanently fixed on his hands and the bottle clenched between them, trying to curve away from the warm, solid bulk of Bobby beside him, and the vast presence of the archangel above him. "Six thousand years serving Hell, I'm not stupid, archangel. Even if they're a complete lie, even if they're not true ... He told me for a reason. He knows I can't ... can't resist that temptation, that need. He's expecting me to come to him. Expecting me to ... to sell you all, for that chance, and as long as he believes that ... then we have a chance. Then I can string him along, and lure him in, and it's the best hope we have, now, with Michael on the field ..."
"Gabriel?" Sam, cutting in very quietly, almost nervously. Out of the corner of his eye, Crowley saw the gigantic human reach out, and stop himself. "Gabriel, what's he talking about? What ... what did Lucifer tell him?" And it figured the kid would react to that, figured that Sam of all of them would realise what the Devil's temptations could be like, and be worried about it, about Crowley being too weak or stupid or flat-out demonic to resist ...
"He's talking about his name," someone said, very, very softly, and Crowley actually looked up in shock. Because that voice ... Aziraphale looked at him, looked down at him, and his eyes were so very soft, and wet, and proud, and heartbroken ... "The one thing no angel could resist. Especially not this one. Not when it was taken from him so long ago, not when he's had to live so long not knowing ... Not when he can't remember who he might have been, or why he fell, or what might have ... might have been done to him."
Crowley stared, shook his head. "I didn't ... I never mentioned ..."
Aziraphale smiled, very gently, crying just a little. "No, dearest. You didn't. But ... I know you. I do know you. And there is only one thing, really, that I could never offer you, only one thing he could have that I don't ... I'm so very sorry, my dearest. I'm so sorry." And Crowley shook his head, mute, blinking rapidly. There was nothing ... nothing he could say to that ...
"What does that mean?" Dean growled, staring between them in angry confusion and suspicion. Not surprising. Not surprising. "What the hell has his name got to do with anything?"
"His true name, Dean," Castiel explained softly, and there was a world of pity in those harsh blue eyes, a world of understanding. "It is ... the Word made Grace. It's what spun him into being, in the Beginning. Everything he once was, everything that was stolen when he Fell. And Lucifer ... claims he knows it?"
"He does," Crowley murmured, ducking away from their stares. "He ought to. He's the one who apparently bloody stole it in the first place. Whatever the hell he wanted it for, whoever the hell I was that he felt he needed to take it ..." He looked up, for a second, vaguely hopeful, but there was only pity on their faces, not knowledge. No hint of knowing. He ducked his head down again. "He has it, and he let me know he has it, and the only reason he'd do that is that he wants something from me. And while he wants something, I can tempt him. While he's trying to use me, I can trap him. That's ... that's why I'm going alone. That's why it has to be me."
He waited, for a beat, while that sank in. Waited for the inevitable questions, waited for them to ask, rather sensibly, how they knew he wouldn't be tempted, how they could know for sure Lucifer was the one he planned to betray. With something that big on offer ... something he'd wanted, for so very long, something he had to ... had to give up, forever, if he did this ... He waited for them to ask. They had to.
But ... a second passed, a beat, and then another, and no-one said anything. No-one spoke up, pointed out the obvious flaw. Gabriel's hand pressed close against his shoulder, holding on with silent strength as the archangel looked down at him with pain in his eyes, and Bobby was a silent wall at his side, and somewhere beyond them he could feel his angel's gaze, the warmth and anguish of it. And no-one asked. No-one questioned. Finally, he couldn't bear it.
"Not going to ask, then?" he murmured, still looking at his hands. "Not going to ask if maybe the Devil isn't right, and I'm going to sell you all for a chance at my name?" Because, let's face it, he was the demon here, and if there was any of them they had every right not to trust ... well, not his angel, obviously, because Aziraphale ... although if ever there was cause to doubt him, this was it, and even Aziraphale ...
"You ..." Gabriel started. Stopped, struggled for a second with something, his face scrunching in on itself. Maybe rage. Maybe exasperation. Maybe something else entirely, Crowley didn't know. "You ... are an idiot! You are the single most stupid, arrogant, insane ... Father help me, demon ..."
Crowley blinked at him, blinked up while the archangel fumbled in mute frustration above him, and then Bobby was reaching over, prying Crowley's hands from around the bottle and pulling it roughly over to take a swig while he glared and elbowed Crowley sharply in the side. Crowley stared.
"I think what the archangel is trying to say, idjit," the hunter growled, slamming the bottle onto the deck and shocking Crowley silly. "Is that I just spent fifteen of the most embarrassing minutes of my life telling you I trust you, and he's just spent the past month or so of his telling you the same thing, and I don't even know how long yon angel of yours has been saying it, and that there was quite probably the stupidest damn question we ever heard!" He grunted loudly, and poked Crowley's chest. "Of course we bloody trust you, y'idjit!"
Oh. Ah. Right then. And Aziraphale was quietly, tearfully beaming at him, and Gabriel was smiling fondly through the lingering rage, and even the kids were shuffling sheepishly and trying to pretend they didn't agree, and ... Right. Um. Okay then.
Damn it to hell and back. This had to be the angel's fault. It just had to be.
Contd: Interlude III - Conversation
It was a nice night, really. Crisp, clear. The sky full of stars, and all that. A nice night.
Not at all the sort of night you spent curled in the shadows on a hunter's porch while angels and humans fought it out in the house behind you, but Crowley had always been a firm believer that beggars couldn't be choosers (Aziraphale, not so much, but then the angel always had been an optimist). And given a choice between being out here, and being in there ... well. Better part of valour, and all that.
It was a shame, in some ways. Things had been going so very well, over the past two weeks. For Someone's sake, given that they were a bunch of half-arsed nobodies trying to stop an Apocalypse (again, and if they survived this he might actually have to have a word with the management about that), they weren't doing all that badly at all.
It turned out, for example, that between them, Bobby and Aziraphale were a worryingly effective pair of generals (well, not quite generals, maybe, because 'general' implied there were orders being given, when in fact it was more like a friend calling a friend of a friend to ask a favour, but ... ). The two of them had settled into Bobby's back room with a pot of coffee, another of tea, and a small army of telephones, and suddenly half the supernatural, religious and criminal populations of North America were on the move. Suddenly, Heaven and Hell had reason to be getting a little nervous.
Between that, and Gabriel's Horsemen plan, and the Banishment Loop ... well, let's just say things had been busy.
It hadn't been so bad on his end. Besides his three-continent-long argument with the kid, anyway. (Seriously! He'd been fighting, trapping and tricking angels his entire career! He knew perfectly well how to lay a sigil, thank you very much! The nerve of the little bastard ... "With respect, Crowley, anything that can be assembled by a third rate angel can be taken apart by a third rate angel. Precision is the only way to counter my brothers' experience." Third rate! Little snot!) And aside from a few creepy moments with Kali (he knew they should have had Gabriel do the asking, but the bloody archangel had ducked out on the grounds of 'complicating factors from a prior relationship', the sleazy bastard), and that sort of terrifying moment when he'd taken Castiel aside to mention the Plan to him ... Anyway. All told, not bad. For an apocalypse, that is.
It hadn't been that bad on the boys' end, either, from what he'd heard (Castiel had a tendency to check in with Dean regularly, and Aziraphale might, possibly, have checked up on him ... every six hours or so ...). Given that Pestilence had made the huge mistake of hurting Sam while Gabriel was in range, and found out really quickly what a pissed off, possessive archangel could do ... And, alright, the back-up plan with the zombie-virus was evil (whoever came up with that one must have gotten a commendation on the spot, provided of course that Down Below were still doing that sort of thing), and it had taken his angel drafting in a Knight of the Cross to help take down the warehouse to sort it, because Gabriel was busy escorting Dean to a date with Death ...
But, all in all ... a freakily effective apocalyptic campaign, if he didn't say so himself. Definitely a pat on the back job, and a finger in the general directions of the old bosses. But it lacked one thing. Something Gabriel and the Gruesome Twosome had finally noticed.
It lacked an endgame.
And now ... now they'd run through the preliminaries. Now they'd armed the planet, drawn up their defenses, and gotten themselves something to use against the Devil in the final confrontation. Now ... they were trying to figure out how to make said confrontation happen, and how to survive it ... and in Gabriel's case, how to make sure Lucifer survived it. Because ... well. That was the other thing.
It had taken them a while to notice. To be fair, him and Castiel had been in the Himalayas at the time, Gabriel had been busy staring Death in the eye (which had given Adam pause, so Crowley could easily forgive the archangel for being ... focused), and Aziraphale had been panicking about Sam and Bobby on their own with only the Knight to protect them (which Sanya had been very upset about, in an impenetrable, Russian kind of way). They were all busy at the time, so they could be forgiven for not noticing immediately.
Forgiven for not noticing that Michael, Prince of Seraphs and Heaven's General, had taken a vessel. A here-to-fore unremarked (and deceased) Winchester half-brother, and when the boys figured that one out ... that hadn't been a happy conversation, even by his standards. That hadn't been a happy conversation at all, but there was no doubt about the truth of it. Michael had taken a vessel.
Which was sort of ... more or less as planned, really, on his and his angel's part anyway, and that might be some of the reason voices were rapidly rising behind him ...
Anyway. So now they were thinking about it. The humans and their angels. Now they were thinking about how the hell they were going to manage this with only the keys to a cage and some sigils to their name. Now they were thinking about the fact that Heaven was decidedly pissed off about the successes their little Loop was having so far, and that Heaven really, really wanted this Apocalypse, and that the chances therefore of Michael letting them anywhere near his homicidal brother with a cage were slim to nil.
Now the humans were making noises about maybe saying 'yes' to their respective homicidal archangels, lure them into the trap that way, or some other completely harebrained notion, and Gabriel in particular was getting very, very jumpy, and more than a little homicidal himself. Castiel would probably have been the same, if Crowley hadn't taken him aside already and quietly mentioned an alternate, if equally harebrained, plan. Then again, maybe not. It was hard to tell with the grim-faced little bugger. But Crowley had had the feeling, the last couple of days, that knowing what they intended had relieved a little bit of the tension in those wiry shoulders ...
Sod it anyway. So here he was, then. Planning something so damn stupid it was positively heroic. Sitting in the shadows, hoping his angel could take the heat for a while, while he tried to convince himself that he could actually do this, that he was actually seriously thinking about this, that this was their actual plan ... And there was a part of him that really, truly hoped that Gabriel's rapidly skyrocketing voice would talk them out of it, that the flat, calm answers Castiel was giving, or Aziraphale's earnest wheedling, would fail to convince them ... Hah. Pathetic, yes? Some demon he was.
"You gonna sit there all night, feeling sorry for yerself?"
Crowley jumped, and strangled the squawk that wanted to come out before he could embarrass himself any further. Damned bloody ... human, sneaking up on him under the noise of Gabriel yelling, scaring him half to death ...
"What the hell do you want?" he snarled, shoving his hands down by his side to hide the shakes until he could get it under control. He gave the old hunter his best, most withering glare, all burning eyes and the suggestion of fangs, but the bloody bastard had obviously been hanging around the angel too much and never even turned a hair. Instead, Bobby ambled closer, out of the light from the windows and into Crowley's patch of shadow, and held out a bottle with a grunt, looking gruffly to one side as Crowley blinked at him and took it with hands that were mostly, mostly back under control.
"Er, thanksss?" he murmured, coughing around the first shot of something that bore too much resemblance to paint-stripper to call whiskey, but liking the warmth of whatever-it-was in his belly. Never could get warm enough, these days, short of curling around his angel. Bloody stinking apocalypse ...
"Don't mention it," Bobby murmured, waving a hand as he lowered himself down the wall with a grunt to sit next to Crowley. Who sort of blinked at him, but decided he probably shouldn't mention anything, given the fact that the old hunter was almost always armed. Bobby grinned at him sharply, and crossed his arms. "So ..."
Crowley shrugged, and looked away. "Sssso? Shouldn't you be inside, refereeing or ssomething?" Which was a legitimate concern, really, since Bobby was about the only one in the house who was relatively neutral, and also sane, and it was his house Gabriel and Cas sounded about ready to smash up a bit. But the hunter would have none of it.
"I reckon your angel can probably handle it," he said quellingly, arms still crossed and gaze still drilling a hole in the side of Crowley's head. Crowley scrunched down around his bottle, and did his best to ignore it, picking at the wax seal in stubborn silence.
"Fine tale they're telling in there," Bobby went on at last, obviously realising Crowley wasn't going to comment. "Your idea, was it? This plan of theirs?"
"Well, obviously," Crowley drawled, sliding a little further down the wall. "All the rampant idiocy it involves, all that lovely self-sacrifice and throwing myself on the trust of people who've no reason for it, not to mention the whole suicide part ... obviously that was my idea. Sounds just like something I'd come up with, doesn't it?"
Bobby's mouth twitched. "So ... that'd be a yes, then?"
Crowley grimaced, and folded his arms sulkily. "Oh, ssshut up. It'sss barely a step up from the wonder twinsss' idea, I know, but we're running out of optionss over here. It ... sounded sssaner before I'd mentioned it to anyone." Not much saner, admittedly, in the fumbling minutes in Anansi's limo, or the long intervals when he should really have been concentrating on the sigil he was supposed to be constructing, but ... It was only when he'd seen Aziraphale's face at the idea, only when he'd seen the breathless fear and pride and love in his angel's face, that he'd realised how utterly suicidal and stupid and heroic the whole thing actually was. And by then he'd told someone, and it was too damn late to take it back ...
"Bit risky, yeah," the hunter agreed, watching something invisible in the darkness beyond the porch, and sounding far too much like Castiel in a sneaky mood for Crowley's liking. "What with the whole kidnapping the archangels of heaven and hell thing. Could see why that might turn out to be a little dangerous ..."
"Didn't I tell you to shut up?" Crowley interrupted, testily. "Look, it was just ... something the Devil said ... I didn't want this, alright? It's just ... Look. We can't lose the kids, right? Anyone with eyes can see that, whatever happened between them two weeks ago, Sam's got Gabriel all shattered and broken and ... and bloody head over heels, and if we let the little idiot go through with his plan to say 'yes' for humanity's sake, then that's one more broken and possibly genocidal archangel to worry about ... and Ssssomeone help us if something happens to Dean, because that little bassstard angel of his is quite possibly more dangerous than any of them ... Honesstly, it's probably safer doing it our way, suicide and all ..."
He stopped, realising that he was babbling a little, and shutting his mouth before he could get too close to ... to the other reasons. The older reasons, or newer reasons, or whatever the hell they were. The reasons that even Aziraphale didn't really know, and probably wouldn't understand even if he did, and oh, Crowley could happily have gone a few more millennia before coming up against the choice the Devil had put in front of him in that bloody factory, the choice he was going to have to make now ...
"Oh, sure," Bobby murmured quietly, eyeing him in the dimness, human eyes seeing far, far too much for Crowley's liking. Bloody bastard had definitely been hanging around the angel too long. "I can see how the idea of luring the Devil and his brother into a trap, and trying to convince them to stop an apocalypse ... I can see how that seemed like the safer option. Piece of cake, that. No problem."
"You know, sarcasm ill becomes you," Crowley muttered, wrapping his arms around his chest and looking anywhere but at the hunter. "Besides, that's mostly Aziraphale's idea, that part. I was just going to trap 'em, and drop the rings down between them while we had 'em. Talking to them, giving 'em time to escape and wreak terrible vengeance on our heads ... that's all the angel. Trussst me."
Bobby was silent for a second, silent in a way that had Crowley looking up at him, blinking at the long, quiet stare the hunter was giving him. Curling away a little from the weight of it, before he remembered himself, remembered pride long enough to stiffen and glare back a bit in bafflement. Bobby stared at him, and then smiled. Just a little. A bit of a smirk like Crowley had seen on the bugger's face two weeks ago, when he'd been in a heap with Aziraphale on the library floor and the man had been grinning at him like he knew something Crowley didn't. It gave him the shivers, that smile. It really did.
"You know," the hunter murmured, slow and thoughtful-like. "I think I do, at that." A faint smile, gruff and uneasy as the man looked down at his feet. "Trust you, I mean. You and your angel. For all that you're the biggest pair of idjits since the Winchesters, and don't go gettin' a big head about it, or nothin' ..." He flushed, and grabbed the bottle from Crowley's limp hands without looking, concentrating on not choking on the rotgut while Crowley blinked in shock and stared at him like an idiot. Flushed darkly, and refused to look anywhere near the demon, but ... Crowley knew he was telling the truth, you couldn't lie, not to him, not unless you were really, really good at it, and Robert Singer was many things, but a liar was not one of them ...
"Um ...?" he managed, accepting the bottle again. Intelligently, but hey! It was not this demon's day, and he was entitled to a little confusion ... and no small amount of embarrassment, of course, and ... and complete and utter bafflement ...
"Don't go making anything of it," Bobby muttered, glancing sideways at his expression and flinching a little at what he saw. "Ain't nothing, demon. Just ... Just so you know, whatever stupid thing you're about to go and do ... you got someone at your back, is all. Besides that angel of yours, I mean." He huffed silently, crossing his arms defensively, and glared. "And the rest of 'em, too, once they calm down a bit. They're not totally stupid ..."
And that was more than half to break the moment, to stop Crowley staring at him in stunned amazement, but Crowley took it gratefully. "Not far off it, though," he pointed out, voice a little higher than it should have been, humour a little more forced, but Bobby was a decent chap, and didn't mention it. Mostly to avoid terminally embarrassing the both of them, but Crowley was taking his mercy where he could get it these days.
"I'll take that in the spirit it was meant, and smite you later," growled a low, shaking voice from overhead. Crowley swallowed, hard, and looked up at the porch roof, where, naturally, their resident psycho archangel had decided to perch. Dammit, he should have registered when the noise from inside had died down, but he'd been just the tiniest bit distracted. Again. Manchester, he needed to get his head together, sometime soon.
Provided he survived the next few minutes, of course. And then the few days after that, possibly including the end of the world, and almost certainly including an interview with a very annoyed ex-employer ... On second thoughts, he'd probably be better off saving his quest for sanity until afterwards, and just play it by ear for now.
"Later?" he asked, managing a frankly impressive degree of insouciance, all things considered. "Very patient of you, archangel."
Gabriel grinned sharply, swinging down onto the porch proper, for once towering over Crowley since he was still in a heap on the floor. Towering over Bobby, too, but since you couldn't intimidate the hunter with a nuke next to his ear, Crowley figured the show was mostly for his benefit. Dimly, he registered the other four, two angels and two humans, filing out onto the porch via the door. You know. The normal way.
"I'll smite you for being a prick later," Gabriel smirked. Sort of smirked. The archangel was almost buzzing, there was so much ... something ... wrapped down under that smirk and cocky stance, and Crowley had to resist the urge to try and crawl under the porch like the serpent he was. "Right now I'm trying to decide if I should smite you for being insane, and putting ideas in my brothers' heads, and, oh yeah, planning to kidnap the two most dangerous archangels in existence. So we can brainwash them, apparently. You calling me stupid can wait for later."
"Gabriel," Aziraphale murmured reproachfully from the door. Ordinarily, Crowley would expect his angel to be wringing his hands or something, nervously, but Aziraphale had obviously gotten fed up about fifteen minutes of shouting ago. "You've already agreed this is our best chance. Please stop trying to intimidate my demon." Or else, and Crowley had to blink a little at that.
"Wait, you agreed?" he stuttered, blinking up at the vibrating archangel. Trying to ignore the squirmy little curl of disappointment in his chest, because ... for a little while there, he'd been sort of hoping they wouldn't have to go through with it ... But then, the only other suggestion had involved the Lucifer wearing the love of Gabriel's life for a dress, so ... He'd never really expected that to fly.
"Not agreed, as such," Dean muttered from the sidelines, glaring at a very granite-faced Castiel. "I mean, general theory, yeah, sure, why not. Actual plan ... not so much."
"It's simple necessity, Dean," the angel stated, steady and calm and ever-so-slightly annoyed, under the ruthlessly-held veneer. He looked almost as tightly-wound as Gabriel did, and Crowley took a second to re-evaluate exactly how pissed off and scared Dean's repeated attempts to convince them to let him say yes to Heaven's general had been making Castiel. "The easiest way to get to Michael is through Zachariah. I'm perfectly capable of handling him."
More than capable, if the steely and more-than-a-little vengeful glow in those eyes was anything to go by. Oh yes. Castiel had been waiting for a chance to go for the slime-bag for most of this apocalypse, and this way he got to save Dean on top of it. From the look on his face, the hunter would have an easier time trying to convince water to run uphill than trying to talk the little bugger out of it. Which Crowley had been sort of reluctantly counting on, yes, and alright, he'd planned this stupid venture, and he could hardly blame them for agreeing to it when he'd done everything in his sneaky, demonic power to tempt them into it ...
"Yeah, and when Raphael and Michael drop down and smite your ass?" Dean growled, obviously picking up right where the argument had left off inside. "How you planning on handling that, Cas?"
"By having you and Gabriel as back-up," Aziraphale interrupted testily, glaring at the pair of them. "And more besides, once I've had a chance to make some arrangements! Honestly, Dean, I understand your concerns, but it's Castiel's right to choose to risk himself if he wants to, and he'll be in no more danger than the rest of us. And considerably less than you would have been otherwise!" Crowley blinked as his angel sniffed furiously, part concern, part fear, and about fifteen parts impending smite. Yeah, this was going down sooo well.
"Which," Gabriel interrupted, a low purr of menace that stopped the impending argument in its tracks and caused Crowley to quietly shit himself when the archangel turned to glare at him, "is what I wanted to talk to you about, demon."
Crowley gulped, scrambling to think what the problem was. It could be anything, given that his plan involved Gabriel's new family kidnapping his old one at (not inconsiderable) personal risk, but why Gabriel would want to talk to him about Dean and Cas being in danger ... "Um. Yes?"
"Yes," the archangel grinned, stalking closer to lean over Crowley, his Grace vibrating around him in the tiny space between him and Crowley and the wall until the demon could barely breathe and had to clutch white-knuckled at the bottle. Bobby shifted almost protectively beside him, glowering at the archangel, but Gabriel was in a mood. No getting out of this one by hiding behind the hunter's skirts, much as he would like to ... "I want you to explain something to me, Crowley," Gabriel murmured quietly, leaning close, face-to-face. "Something about this little plan of yours that I'm just not getting. Okay?"
Crowley nodded, pale-faced. Bugger, he didn't think the bloody archangel would take it this badly, whatever it was. He'd known Gabriel wasn't the most stable of individuals, but he'd counted on a little more sanity than this ...
"I want you to explain," the archangel murmured, "why you've arranged for half an army to go after Michael, including half of this little team of ours ... and another small army laying the traps, including most of the rest of this team ... and the only person going after Lucifer, the most dangerous, and homicidal, and pissed the hell off at you of my brothers ... is you. Just you. All by your lonesome. Because that ... that doesn't sound very sensible to me, and I always thought you were a sensible person."
Crowley blinked. A lot, opening his mouth for a second and then closing it again. Well, yes, and that was in fact the main problem with the plan, and most (okay, all) of the reason Crowley had been sort of not-so-secretly hoping they'd reject it, but ...
Oh. Yeah. But Gabriel had been there, in that factory. Gabriel had heard. Maybe not all, maybe not even all that much, depending on how long he'd been waiting for a chance to distract Lucifer, but ... Enough. Probably enough. Enough to suspect ... oh, lots of things. Enough to wonder why Crowley needed to talk to the Devil alone, enough to wonder why Crowley wanted a word with his old boss, enough to wonder if Crowley wasn't arranging this little plot in order to shop someone other than the Devil.
He swallowed, feeling his spine stiffen automatically, defiantly, as he tipped his head back to meet the archangel's stare. Given how pale he was sure he'd just gone, it probably wasn't going to do much good, but he wanted to meet Gabriel's eyes for this. He wanted the archangel to see ... A lot of things. None of them. Something.
"Because Michael has the most forces to call on, and needs most of us to deal with," he said softly. "Because no way in hell is Sam going anywhere near my old boss until I'm sure he's sane enough not to do anything stupid. Because the Devil is getting nowhere near my angel while I'm still breathing. Because you're all needed elsewhere, and because I'm the only one who has a chance of leading him on without getting killed two seconds after opening my mouth. And ..." He stopped, took a deep breath while the archangel's eyes bored into him, and finished. "And because the Devil is expecting me. Because he's probably been waiting for me for the past two weeks. Because the Devil thinks he has something I want, and he'll believe I'll do anything to get it, and because while the Devil thinks he's trapping me there's no better chance to trap him. Because I can do this, and none of the rest of you can, and I really, really don't want to, believe me, but I'm am sick to my back teeth of fucking apocalypses every time I fucking turn around, and I want this to be over!"
He stopped, struggling not to throw up, not to lean to one side and throw up, because he'd been thinking about this all night, and every night for the past two weeks, and it was suddenly real, and suddenly something he'd have to actually do, and he wasn't a fucking hero. He was a demon, and demons weren't supposed to make choices like this, and it was Aziraphale's fault, so fucking much, and Someone help him, he'd never been this terrified in all his life. Not hearing that Voice on the radio, telling him the First Apocalypse was nigh. Not standing beside his angel with a tire iron in hand, waiting to die. Not standing ringed in fire, waiting for the Devil to kill him. Because those hadn't been choices. Those hadn't been his choice, he was just doing what adrenalin and panic and love had dictated in the moment, but this ... This was a choice. This was his choice, and the ball of dread in his stomach had been getting heavier and harder and more pervasive every fucking night.
"Dearest," Aziraphale whispered, somewhere off to his right, beyond Bobby. Soft and crushed and desperately, achingly caring. Stupid bloody angel. Stupid bloody angel, taking him and making him something he was never supposed to be. Making him care, and stand up, and everything else, and dammit! It was all the angel's fault. He wasn't a fucking hero. It was all the angel's fault!
"Crowley," Gabriel murmured, and then a hand reached down from on high, oddly gentle for the temper the archangel had been vibrating with all of two seconds ago, ignoring Crowley's flinch to rest carefully on his shoulder. "Crowley ... what my brother said, what he told you ..."
"Was a trap, yes," Crowley muttered, eyes permanently fixed on his hands and the bottle clenched between them, trying to curve away from the warm, solid bulk of Bobby beside him, and the vast presence of the archangel above him. "Six thousand years serving Hell, I'm not stupid, archangel. Even if they're a complete lie, even if they're not true ... He told me for a reason. He knows I can't ... can't resist that temptation, that need. He's expecting me to come to him. Expecting me to ... to sell you all, for that chance, and as long as he believes that ... then we have a chance. Then I can string him along, and lure him in, and it's the best hope we have, now, with Michael on the field ..."
"Gabriel?" Sam, cutting in very quietly, almost nervously. Out of the corner of his eye, Crowley saw the gigantic human reach out, and stop himself. "Gabriel, what's he talking about? What ... what did Lucifer tell him?" And it figured the kid would react to that, figured that Sam of all of them would realise what the Devil's temptations could be like, and be worried about it, about Crowley being too weak or stupid or flat-out demonic to resist ...
"He's talking about his name," someone said, very, very softly, and Crowley actually looked up in shock. Because that voice ... Aziraphale looked at him, looked down at him, and his eyes were so very soft, and wet, and proud, and heartbroken ... "The one thing no angel could resist. Especially not this one. Not when it was taken from him so long ago, not when he's had to live so long not knowing ... Not when he can't remember who he might have been, or why he fell, or what might have ... might have been done to him."
Crowley stared, shook his head. "I didn't ... I never mentioned ..."
Aziraphale smiled, very gently, crying just a little. "No, dearest. You didn't. But ... I know you. I do know you. And there is only one thing, really, that I could never offer you, only one thing he could have that I don't ... I'm so very sorry, my dearest. I'm so sorry." And Crowley shook his head, mute, blinking rapidly. There was nothing ... nothing he could say to that ...
"What does that mean?" Dean growled, staring between them in angry confusion and suspicion. Not surprising. Not surprising. "What the hell has his name got to do with anything?"
"His true name, Dean," Castiel explained softly, and there was a world of pity in those harsh blue eyes, a world of understanding. "It is ... the Word made Grace. It's what spun him into being, in the Beginning. Everything he once was, everything that was stolen when he Fell. And Lucifer ... claims he knows it?"
"He does," Crowley murmured, ducking away from their stares. "He ought to. He's the one who apparently bloody stole it in the first place. Whatever the hell he wanted it for, whoever the hell I was that he felt he needed to take it ..." He looked up, for a second, vaguely hopeful, but there was only pity on their faces, not knowledge. No hint of knowing. He ducked his head down again. "He has it, and he let me know he has it, and the only reason he'd do that is that he wants something from me. And while he wants something, I can tempt him. While he's trying to use me, I can trap him. That's ... that's why I'm going alone. That's why it has to be me."
He waited, for a beat, while that sank in. Waited for the inevitable questions, waited for them to ask, rather sensibly, how they knew he wouldn't be tempted, how they could know for sure Lucifer was the one he planned to betray. With something that big on offer ... something he'd wanted, for so very long, something he had to ... had to give up, forever, if he did this ... He waited for them to ask. They had to.
But ... a second passed, a beat, and then another, and no-one said anything. No-one spoke up, pointed out the obvious flaw. Gabriel's hand pressed close against his shoulder, holding on with silent strength as the archangel looked down at him with pain in his eyes, and Bobby was a silent wall at his side, and somewhere beyond them he could feel his angel's gaze, the warmth and anguish of it. And no-one asked. No-one questioned. Finally, he couldn't bear it.
"Not going to ask, then?" he murmured, still looking at his hands. "Not going to ask if maybe the Devil isn't right, and I'm going to sell you all for a chance at my name?" Because, let's face it, he was the demon here, and if there was any of them they had every right not to trust ... well, not his angel, obviously, because Aziraphale ... although if ever there was cause to doubt him, this was it, and even Aziraphale ...
"You ..." Gabriel started. Stopped, struggled for a second with something, his face scrunching in on itself. Maybe rage. Maybe exasperation. Maybe something else entirely, Crowley didn't know. "You ... are an idiot! You are the single most stupid, arrogant, insane ... Father help me, demon ..."
Crowley blinked at him, blinked up while the archangel fumbled in mute frustration above him, and then Bobby was reaching over, prying Crowley's hands from around the bottle and pulling it roughly over to take a swig while he glared and elbowed Crowley sharply in the side. Crowley stared.
"I think what the archangel is trying to say, idjit," the hunter growled, slamming the bottle onto the deck and shocking Crowley silly. "Is that I just spent fifteen of the most embarrassing minutes of my life telling you I trust you, and he's just spent the past month or so of his telling you the same thing, and I don't even know how long yon angel of yours has been saying it, and that there was quite probably the stupidest damn question we ever heard!" He grunted loudly, and poked Crowley's chest. "Of course we bloody trust you, y'idjit!"
Oh. Ah. Right then. And Aziraphale was quietly, tearfully beaming at him, and Gabriel was smiling fondly through the lingering rage, and even the kids were shuffling sheepishly and trying to pretend they didn't agree, and ... Right. Um. Okay then.
Damn it to hell and back. This had to be the angel's fault. It just had to be.
Contd: Interlude III - Conversation
