Save Me From These Perfect Clouds

[sitsherequietly]

It was like being woken from a dream.  That moment where he'd snap back to reality, and Sam and Dean would be talking, or he'd be sitting in the backseat of the Impala, watching the rural countryside pass by from the highway.  But always, there was that moment where he knew that something wasn't quite right, that he was missing something, something

Comments

[crossroadskink]

"Oh, I imagine Shaggy and Scooby are up to the usual... piling into the Mystery Machine, eating sandwiches, unmasking monsters..." he leans forward just a bit. He looks like he's enjoying this. And he is.

But there's more to it than that. This is the moment, the big reveal. Now is telling Cas what he's done for him, how much he's sacrificed to help him. How he wasn't successful in getting him out, but still how he'd tried. He'd leave out the lives he'd torn through, carelessly as if they were tissue paper. He'd silenced the heaven in his mind, the link that drew him, the big brother connection that was using him as if he was nothing more than the string in a tin-can telephone line to the Winchesters. He'd freed him

[sitsherequietly]

There was a hint of comfort in Crowley's response. While the demon could be lying, of course- and really, was there ever any reason for him not to be?- there was something familiar in the flippancy with which he spoke about them that quietly reassured Castiel that the two brothers were safe. But, there's clearly a game here, because Crowley is enjoying himself far too much for anything else. He's expecting a grand story about how he found the missing tablet; the Tablet of Angels, of conquest and of how he, and not Castiel, now gets to play at being God.

Maybe that's why he's here. Maybe this is one of those "poetic justice" things (although Castiel has rarely found justice to occur in the correct meter to be considered properly "poetic"). Maybe, after how he betrayed the demon when they'd taken the souls from Purgatory, maybe he wanted Castiel here to watch him sit upon his self-made throne. All of his thoughts run along those lines, so when the big reveal does come, the first emotion that blankets his face is shock

[crossroadskink]

Crowley watches as whatever passes for realization with the angel dawns over his face, and there's a beat where he normally would rush in with exasperated expressions but is now trying very hard to give Castiel the space to follow along. If he's truthful, there's plenty of reason for disbelief. What was there between them was never explicit, never spoken, and it was never easy.

Crowley grips the edge of that stark white desk and stares into the angel's face, watching as he looks aside, as if he's looking back through his own memories, working his way through what happened to begin to entertain the why. But he can't go there, he can't get past himself, perhaps. Crowley can see the guilt on his face, like he thinks he doesn't deserve to have been saved

[sitsherequietly]

Cas watches Crowley as he slips off of the desk, infuriatingly graceful, almost threatening as he closes the distance inbetween them, and that murmur of low voice makes his shoulders tense. He's not sure that he wants to see it all over again, that he can stand to remember everything that he's felt, everything that's happened and gone between them to leave them standing here. He sees the look on the demon's face, warm and sentimental, and it's that more than anything else that keeps him from fighting, that allows Crowley to turn those moments bright and honest in his memory. He'd always considered the memories of angels to be infallible; there was a brief loss of pride in knowing that he was just as prone as Dean to remembering things the way that he needed to