Chapter Text
A drop of rain hits the windshield of the Bentley. Perfectly in character for Her, Crowley thinks, to kick a horse when it’s already down (and has been beaten there, over and over, and over and over, ever since it Fell).
He almost wants to commend her – park the car on the side of the road, hop out and point his nose Heaven-ward, screaming at the top of his lungs about great blasted plans, about love, about ineffability.
Instead, he accelerates the car, drives on forward, further and further, until he eventually leaves the sordid London air behind him.
And then, just to be sure, he accelerates the car just a little more – if he goes fast enough, he’ll go back in time and…and…
He slams the breaks, his neck miraculously doesn’t break, and his hand shakes when he lifts it to rip his shades off his eyes and out of the window.
The Bentley stands, in the middle of the road, surrounded by hills and faraway houses that will, miraculously, not notice the car much more than the passing vehicles won’t ram into it.
Crowley stares at the road ahead, his lips and hands trembling (all of him, trembling, freezing like he never has before), trying to make himself press on the gas again. He wants to drive so, so far away, until eventually he’ll be nowhere, be no one.
Instead, one shaking hand covers his mouth and catches the treacherous, treacherous sob that fights its way out despite all of his efforts. Another follows, then the next, and before he fully registers what he is doing, Crowley grips his mouth so tight his lips go numb, and his eyes are squeezed shut with burning tears.
An us, he’d said. He’d wanted an us.
He tastes blood on his lips, a droplet running down his hand, mixing with the tears.
“Six thousand bloody years!” He keels, eyes open but not able to see anything, his other hand coming up to wrap around his waist.
He has spent six millenia forgetting what an absolute fool he is.
Crowley bends over, his bony arm pressing into his stomach, his forehead digging into the steering wheel. He tries to catch a breath, tries to keep himself from freezing, tries to open his mouth and let out any other sound.
But it doesn’t work. He can’t even miracle it so, because that part of him is so far out of reach. Hidden, tucked away, while everything else seems to be spilling forward.
Six thousand years.
He swallows a mouthful of blood. Then he laughs.
Because isn’t it just hilarious, dear Lord, how it all has played out? How divine, how ineffable?
“Six thousand years!” He bellows, laughing breathlessly until his chest cracks. “And I’m worth less than a blasted promotion–”
He chokes, then coughs violently, pounding his chest as he makes a retching sound.
Crowley cannot stop laughing.
Tears stream down his face in torrents, his yellow eyes large and dilated and empty.
He said I could appoint you to be an angel, the Angel had grinned. You could come back to Heaven.
Crowley laughs, and laughs, and laughs.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Tell me you said no, he had answered.
Stupid.
Crowley abruptly pushes himself backwards, his back hitting the seat, and cranes his neck skyward, “Are you happy? Lord?” He grins through bloody teeth, copper on his tongue. “You’ve won, haven’t ya? Just like you Planned!”
His hand grips his chest so hard it probably breaks skin, but he doesn’t feel it. His useless heart beats on, even though it doesn’t have to. His lungs lack air, even though they don’t need to.
“Great, big, stupid demon! Thinking he could– could– nnnggkkkkkk, COULD BE LOVED!” He cries out, grinding his teeth, another laugh bubbling forth. “By an angel! Isn’t it funny?”
An us! An us he’d wanted, knowing everything. Knowing full, damn well he was going to crash and burn, yet still, always, always, choosing an us.
He said I could appoint you to be an angel.
Crowley laughs, laughs, until he can no longer pretend they aren’t sobs.
You could come back to Heaven.
“You’re such– such an idiot,” Crowley chokes out, his nails embedding in the skin of his chest. “Go– Sata–, fucking Hell, Someone!” He leans forward, gripping the steering wheel with both hands, and stares at the downpour through the windshield. “Are you entertained?!”
She, as always, does not answer. The raindrops bounce off of the hood of the Bentley, pearly and beautiful as they day they were invented. Crowley punches the glass.
“Who am I kidding,” he chuckles wetly, not wiping a tear as much as scratching it off. “He’s not the idiot, I am. Always good ole me, Anthony J. Crowley, demon and fool extraordinaire.”
Tell me you said no.
He sniffs, leans his head against the window, and stares out at the downpour. “All I wanted–” But he stills, closes his eyes, and cuts the words off, burying them so deep within himself, not even he could ever wring them forth, ever again.
Crowley Fell a very, very long time ago. Time, as it stands, had barely been invented then. He’d Fallen because he’d asked questions, because he didn’t understand and wanted to.
Ironic, how for all that he’s asked questions, Crowley never questioned them.
Silently, he watches as the wind picks up, forcing the trees in the distance to dance until the branches bend and twist and break off.
To think that he could have lived on without that– that thing he’d finally spoken out into the open. Been perfectly happy just being an us, whatever that entailed, however that presented itself. How he, no matter the fondness he has for it, could have left the Earth behind, just for an us, in whatever way the Angel would have let him. Being with the Angel had never, ever just been about that.
He’d wanted them, an us, that he so desperately (foolishly) tried to make the Angel see.
An us, Crowley thinks, that has never even existed.
Another tear manages to escape. The wind howls past the Bentley.
The raw, empty feeling that has opened up in his chest feels a lot like a certain Loss, aching, writhing, spreading into burning sulphur all around him.
A deceptively familiar feeling, that Crowley hasn’t ever truly felt, because the Faith he had in Her has never been the same as the faith he had in the Angel.
Six thousand years, and an Archangel and a Prince of Hell could love without millenia of friendship, an Arrangement, and an Apocalypse between them. But not them, because there is no them.
He said I could appoint you to be an angel.
Crowley brings his legs up to his chest, hugging them tight. To think, that all this time, the Angel has never loved him, but what he thought he could change him into. That six thousand years’ worth of clandestine meetings, secret gazes, rescue missions and shows of trust, can all be boiled down to you could come back to Heaven.
The Angel has never known him, Crowley comes to realise, not bothering to stifle his sobs. He’s only ever known what he wanted Crowley to be.
We can be together! Angels, doing good!
Crowley will never be someone’s first. He should have accepted that a long, long time ago. Should have, if he had any shred of self-awareness left, realised that the first time someone who was supposed to love him unconditionally had cast him out. Why would it be any different now?
Six thousand years, and the realisation – that they were never on their own side – has been a long time coming.
It’s always been just him, even when he deluded himself into thinking it wasn’t.
You said it isn’t lonely?
“I lied,” he whispers.
We’re on our own side.
“But you did, too.”
An angel not belonging in Heaven, a demon not belonging in Hell. From the very first day of his Creation, Crowley has been just Crowley.
The Angel, however, is one. And in his eyes, Crowley has always been just a demon.
“Never knew me at all,” he mutters, staring at the tree as it sways, cracks in half, and falls.
It’s just his luck, that he fell in love with the only being – on Heaven, Hell or Earth alike – that would watch love bloom between the two unlikeliest sources, and still ask him with the grandest smile on his face to change.
O heavy lightness, serious vanity, Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms, Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health, Still-waking sleep, that is not what it is! This love feel I, that feel no love in this, as Shakespeare had put.
A demonic charity case, is what six thousand years of love boil down to. No wonder the Angel has always preferred the gloomy ones.
And Crowley? Crowley had slapped a band aid on a bullet wound, hoping against hope, one last time.
Tell me you said no.
But you can only ask someone to run away with you so many times before you have to save yourself.
If there is one thing Crowley, in his long-suffering, pathetic existence, will never do, is change who he is. He didn’t in Heaven, not even when he knew he’d Fall. He didn’t in Hell, not even when he knew they’d destroy him. He didn’t on Earth, just a little while ago, not even when he knew it’d grant him the only thing he’s ever truly wanted.
Heaven will never change, and by proxy, Hell won’t either. Crowley has known this from the moment his Mother cast him out, simply because he’d asked why.
“Have fun fixing what you can’t,” Crowley whispers, his eyes tracing a drop of rain on its path down the window.
Six thousand years, and it’s only ever been Crowley.
If I’m in charge, I can make a difference .
“I hope you’re happy, up there with the big guns,” he lets himself say, hollow as it is, wondering when he lost control of the words coming out of his mouth. Vain, useless, like the prayers he always denies he sends towards Her. “An Archangel.”
He doesn’t think about his own time as an angel – an Archangel – or Gabriel, who has always been the paragon of an Angel of the Lord.
How both of them chose something – someone – else.
The Angel will realise, Crowley thinks, eventually. He’ll see what Crowley saw before he Fell, he’ll understand what Gabriel realised when he made his choice.
But that time is not now. And when it comes, well. The Angel shouldn’t bother.
I need you.
“Liar,” Crowley smiles.
I forgive you.
But Crowley is unforgivable. It’s what he is. It seems that maybe, the Angel should be, too.
Something fundamentally him retreats into the recess of his heart, tucked away carefully like it never has before, and Crowley restarts the car.
His eyes are miraculously dry. His mouth is miraculously free of blood.
The Angel has made his choice. Crowley accelerates the car.
"You're not God, angel," he says, allowing that special kind of softness to leak into his tone for one last time.
Then, without looking back, he leaves London well and truly behind.