Title: Crossroads
Fandom: Supernatural
Words: 311
Pairing: Gen
Characters: Crowley, Castiel
Crowley hasn’t changed much.
He eyes Castiel with open hostility when he appears, instantly suspicious. Castiel feels no different; past encounters with this creature have seldom ended well. Still, this encounter can’t be avoided and he knows it.
All the same, he tires of waiting for Crowley to speak, is disinterested in whatever games he has planned.
“Well,” he says, finally. “How the mighty have fallen.”
“Pot, kettle, darling,” Crowley spits back at him. “Though these days you’ve fallen a bloody great distance further than I have.”
Castiel doesn’t disagree. He’d been falling since the day he brought Dean Winchester’s chewed and torn soul out of Hell. None of them knew how their lives would turn out after that, though Castiel remembers at the time thinking of nothing more than a mission successfully completed, what lay next and how to prepare for it.
He chides himself sometimes for his own lack of insight. How he had failed to see the impact one human soul would have on him, and impact is certainly the right word. Even now, all these years later, he knows he bears the marks of Dean Winchester.
He knows he always will.
But those thoughts lead him to a place he swore never to return to so he forces his mind away from it and back to the sulking treacherous thing in front of him. “Shall we?”
This must be agony to his pride, Castiel knows. The once mighty king of hell, reduced to Crossroad haggling again and before his sworn enemy.
But it’s been many a year since Castiel felt pity for anyone.
“Fine,” Crowley says. “Just remember, Castiel, that a crossroads demon always keeps his word.”
Castiel smiles at him. “Don’t worry, Crowley. I promise not to cheat you out of your years. Though I doubt these days your soul is worth one let alone ten.”