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Half of Something Else	By : copperleaves Category: Supernatural > Het - Male/Female Views: 1670 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
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Chapter List
- 1-Squeeze
- 1
View this as a post-8x14 AU, if you will.

It was all that we could do;

We're the only ones who knew.

Now all I think about is you.

The Airborne Toxic Event, "Half of Something Else"
To a demon, Hell is home. The cries of the damned are like a mother’s lullabies. The scent of roasting flesh and boiling blood is the same as fresh-baked cookies or a newly mown lawn. Just as a human might have a particular sentimental attachment to a park or a lake or even a house, a demon can sometimes grow…fond…of a certain area of Hell. Make it his—or, in this case, her—own.
To the demon who called herself Meg (that wasn’t her real name, of course; it was just a name she had found once, and liked, and kept), the torture chambers were that place. She had apprenticed under the great master himself, Alastair, whose name was still spoken in hushed and reverential tones along these hallowed, fluid-stained halls. Azazel’s daughter. Alastair’s pupil.
Crowley’s plaything.
How bitter the irony that he brought her here, of anywhere. But of course that’s why he did it. He reveled in her humiliation as much as anything, to see her brought so low where once she had ruled at the Master’s right hand.
Now she dangled from her chains like a limp and broken puppet, and the King of Hell looked on with a satisfied gleam in his olive eyes.
“Ah, poppet,” Crowley said, “tired so soon? We’ve only just begun!”
Her head hung low, and tangled black hair dragged the blood-saturated stone. That was another concocted humiliation: they were in Hell. Here, demons didn’t parade around in their meatsuits, but he kept her in hers for no other reason than because it amused him to do so. He liked to rip it apart and put it back together again.
She spat and raised her head. Glared at him through furious black eyes. “Go fuck yourself, Crowley,” she said in her sweetest voice.
His torture was amateur hour. It was only pain, and she’d been born of pain. What was pain to her? Her meatsuit’s blood meant nothing, and she endured it all. She screamed. Of course she screamed: it fucking hurt, and she wasn’t stupid. But she endured, and she was no closer to breaking than she’d been a year ago when all of this had started. Frankly, he was starting to bore her. Alastair would have strung him up by his own entrails as a hopeless incompetent five times over by now.
He smiled that smarmy, shit-eating grin of his and patted her. “Now, now, my dear. Language. Just because I’m torturing you doesn’t mean we should eschew civility.”
“I don’t think anyone actually says eschew anymore, Crowley.”
“Hum.” He rose from his chair and paced around the cell as he considered. “I suppose you’re right. Terrible shame, too.” He sighed. “There are days when I think perhaps I’ve lived too long.”
Her head lolled and she offered him a smirk. “Finally something we agree on.”
He backhanded her casually—she could tell his heart wasn’t really in it—and fixed her with a stern look. “Meg, my dear girl, you have proven far more resilient than I anticipated.”
“Why, Crowley, I’m touched. Honestly, my heart’s all aflutter.”
His mouth quirked. “I’m prepared to make you an offer.”
She shifted and her chains rattled. “I’m listening.”
“I know you are. You’re a smart girl.” He pulled his chair around and sat down just across from her. Their eyes were level, and his were dark and canny as they bored into hers. “Tell me everything you know about the angel Castiel,” he said.
That wasn’t at all what she’d been expecting, and it threw her. She tried to hide it behind a sneer and a glib comment. “That featherbrained tree topper? Only thing I know is last time I saw him he wasn’t exactly flying with all his wits about him, if you know what I mean.”
He stared at her. She tried not to squirm. She’d rather he go back to cutting her. “And that’s all you know? Truly?”
“What else would I know about an angel? I’m a demon, remember? Mortal enemies and whatnot. Idiot kept going on about bees and sandwiches.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head as though the vagaries of the angelic thought process were a complete mystery to her.
“Ah, my dear,” he said, his tone regretful, “I wish I could believe you. I truly do.”
“Great. More fun with sharp objects just so you can hear me repeat myself.” What now? There had been a several-month period where he’d enjoyed removing her limbs to “study” the agonizing process as they grew back. Or maybe they’d revisit the fun of him flaying her and feeding her skin to his dogs while she watched. Boring, boring, boring.
He chuckled, and something in that little laugh sent a chill straight through her. Her eyes snapped up to his, and he smiled, a feral baring of teeth that left her…unsettled. She shuddered hard enough to make the chains clank. Something new, then. Something…creative, maybe.
“I know we’ve just been playing games up to this point, you and I,” he said. “A bit of fun, really.” The heavy door behind him opened and a new presence filled the room. She didn’t recognize it, but she felt something…wiggle…at the corner of her mind, like a questing dart.…
Crowley still wore that aggressive not-a-smile. He caressed her cheek and his eyes flashed crimson. “Play time’s over, little girl.”
Now when Meg screamed, it was to beg. For mercy. For quiet. For an end. To tell. To tell. To tell all.

The memories came in searing white flashes, agonizing jolts and jangles and a tumble of pictures with words that matched the moving lips and, occasionally, accompanying background music. She hadn’t remembered her life having a soundtrack at the time. But then she realized it wasn’t music at all, not music but the sound of her own screaming bleeding through and sometimes memory-Meg’s face would contort in sudden agony and she would cry out but no one around her would react and how could they not notice…?
Flash

The rustle of wings. A rough voice, low and almost angry as it said her name. The wrongness of touch, almost stinging, somehow soothing, a hot tingle that ignited both demon and vessel…
No, not that. That was hers. He couldn’t have that.
Flash

“You’re an angel.”
“I’m sorry; is that a flirtation?”
Flash.

“I’m not angry with you, Meg,” Lucifer said in that careful, gentle tone he used when he was, in fact, truly furious.
She wanted to whimper, but he hated weakness. Instead she jutted out a hip and tossed her hair and offered him a cheeky grin. “Sorry, boss. Really. I just wasn’t expecting—”
“The ruthlessness of angels. I know.” He lifted his hands in a little shrug and smiled—what can you do? “You mustn’t forget, sweetheart: I’m an angel, too.”
“Well, yeah, but compared to you, Clarence is just…he’s nothing. You’re everything.”
He smiled again and beckoned her closer. She forced a swagger into her gait as she took a step toward him. He ran a finger down her burned cheek and she couldn’t hold back a wince. “I should make you keep these scars,” he said, “to help you remember.”
Her eyes widened. “I won’t forget. I got arrogant and stupid, and next time I see that little cloud hopper, he’s dead. I promise.”
“Always so vain,” he said. “That will get you in trouble one day.” He shoved her away and turned back toward the window, bored of her. “Go, then. Castiel got the better of you today, and Michael’s vessel is still alive because of it. Be glad I’m in a good mood.”
She swallowed and tried to speak, but he raised a hand to stop her. She stood, uncertain and a little frightened, until he flicked his fingers in dismissal. Fury drove her pace, and her steps pounded out his name: Castiel, Castiel, Castiel. Damn angel. She’d skewer him with his own blade and deliver his head to Lucifer on a platter. She’d bathe in his blood and play cat’s cradle with his entrails. She’d make him beg for mercy and then laugh in his smug angel face as she cut.
The pictures in her mind grew increasingly violent, and she danced in the street with glee. Clarence was as good as dead. She spun and bounced on her toes, and the scent of him filtered up from her clothes among the smoke and burnt flesh and blood. She went still. Closed her eyes and recalled the moment just before he shoved her into the fire and stepped over her burning body.
Opened them again as a catlike smile spread across her still-healing face.
Death, yes. Definitely death and pain and general unpleasantness. But first? Maybe fun of a different sort.
Flash

Blue eyes the color of a midnight sea, and she wondered when she’d gotten so damn poetical. Ridiculous. His eyes were blue. Just…blue. Kinda nice when they didn’t have that dopey I don’t know shit from Shinola expression…but kinda nice even when they did.
Dumbass angel.
Flash

“Why do you stay with me?”
“Nothing better to do.”
“Don’t lie. Why do you stay?”
She flipped the pages of her magazine and pretended to be absorbed in celebrity gossip. Her face burned and she was glad she had something to hide behind. She needed the time to steady her voice, mostly because she didn’t want to bite his head off. “How many demons have a chance to see an angel so helpless? It’s empowering.”
“Meg—”
“Don’t, Clarence.” She dropped the magazine and fixed him with a dark-eyed glare, hot and furious. “Don’t ask. If you have to ask, it ruins it. I’m here. Isn’t that enough?”
Flash

Fear. Adrenaline. Blood and, yes, tears, because she knew her number was almost up, and she didn’t want to die. She dashed the back of her hand across her face, furious with herself. What kind of an idiot cries in the face of Death? She should be laughing. Or at least really pissed off.
She rounded a corner and realized she’d hit a dead end. Fuck goddamn fuck mother fuck. She doubled over and pressed a small hand against the wound in her gut. It was the type of wound that killed a human after ten or fifteen minutes of agony (she knew from experience), but for her it was just the pain without the nice relaxing death at the end.
Crowley’s boys were coming, and they had her cornered like a rabid dog. She gritted her teeth and stood tall—or as tall as she could, considering. Maybe she should think about a more imposing vessel should she live through this. She could hear them. They knew where she was, tracked her by scent and blood spore, but they toyed with her. Enjoyed the hunt. She’d done it often enough that she couldn’t blame them, but still it annoyed the piss out of her and she wished they’d just get the hell on with it.
She tapped her foot, but then the pain doubled her up again. It was worse than it should be. Had they doped her with something? Typical Crowley. Too incompetent to do things the old-fashioned way, so he always had to add an extra flair or twist.
The filthy asphalt rushed toward her, and next thing she knew she stared up at the sky. Clouds scudded across a waning sliver of a moon. The stars were pale and far away and couldn’t hear her pleas. The demons drew closer.
She closed her eyes. When her lids dragged open again the sky had been replaced by a familiar face, and she gazed up at him with a sardonic twist to her lips. “Well, Clarence. Comin’ for to carry me home?”
He blinked at her. “You’re very badly injured.”
“Good of you to notice. Guess you’re here to gloat. I don’t really have the energy to pick up where we left off, sexy wings, so maybe next time, okay? Raincheck.” Her head lolled and she felt consciousness slipping. His voice floated to her from miles away, and she was glad that he’d left her to die or be captured in peace.
“Try not to die,” he said. “I’ll take care of the demons.”
They appeared at the mouth of the alley, and he was there to meet them. She tried to focus, but the images were slippery as eels. He had his blade in one hand, the blade she’d so memorably taken from him last time they’d met, and he used his other hand to smite the demons with pure angelic Grace. It was beautiful and horrible and Meg wondered if she were next. Why was he even here?
When it was over he straightened his coat and came back to her. Lifted her in his arms despite her token protests. “Thank you for not dying,” he said, his tone grave.
She let out a wheezing, breathy sound that might have been a laugh. She wanted to fight him. She really did. Every instinct told her to lash out with claws and teeth and thorns. But the pain in her gut was like a live wire, and he was warm and solid, and even the darkest part of her felt the irrational urge to twine herself around him and purr like a cat.
Regardless, she was too weak to fight. It didn’t seem like he was going to kill her. That let only one question. “Why are you doing this? I’m a demon.”
“The first time we met, I pushed you into holy fire.”
“I remember,” she said in a low growl.
“The second time we met, you fought off Hell hounds at great risk to yourself.”
“I tried to escape like anyone with half a brain. Don’t go making me out to be some big damn hero.”
He looked down at her, expression intense and befuddled. “A hero? No. You are a demon. But unlike most of your kind, perhaps there is a thread of redemption running through you. Some tiny spark among the putrescence.”
She glared. “You take it back, Clarence. I’m one hundred percent pure putrescence, and don’t you forget it.”
“As you wish,” he said, and they disappeared in a rustle of wings.

Flash
It wasn’t real. The screaming part of the memories wasn’t real. The memories were real, and she tried to feed him (it, the bizarre worm-like presence poking around in her brain) the benign ones, the ones that didn’t matter, but it wasn’t fooled. It delved deeper, and the harder it searched the more it hurt. If she just gave it what it wanted to know.…
No. Fuck Crowley. Fuck his mind-trawling whatever-it-was. If it wanted to squeeze Clarence out of her head, then by Lucifer it would have to fucking squeeze.
- 1
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Half of Something Else