Chapter Text
He wakes up in Lawrence, Kansas.
Only he doesn’t know it yet.
In fact, he knows nothing, save that it’s night and he’s cold and hungry and uncomfortable.
Even the discovery that he can’t recall his own name comes second to the need for food.
He gets up, dizzy and disoriented.
To his surprise, he’s wearing a suit that must have been expensive, but has definitely seen better days. He’s dirty all over.
No one else is around. He’s all alone in the park he just woke up in.
Judging from the trees, it must be spring, but it’s still too cold for him; he shivers.
Human. I’m human.
He shakes his head, wondering where that thought came from. Of course he’s human. What else could he possibly be? A ghost?
Alright, it’s an amusing theory, but he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t be cold then.
He stumbles along, eventually finding a street as abandoned as the park was.
Finally he makes it to a gas station. At least he can clean himself up a little there.
To his relief, he finds a few bills in his pocket. He’s not affluent by any means (and for some reason he’s not carrying a wallet) but he can at least get something to eat and drink.
The cashier eyes him wearily, but he doubts he’d be in any condition to rob the place, even if he wanted to.
Her gaze softens as he tries to pay with a few rumpled bills.
“Keep it. It’s only a bit of water and two sandwiches anyway.”
“Thank you” he says honestly.
He learns soon enough that he’ll not often be met with kindness.
He has no name, no money and no home.
He could go to the police, but something keeps him from it.
Maybe it’s the fact that he woke up freezing in a park in a suit that a mafia boss might wear without looking too shabby, or that no one in Lawrence was looking for him.
Or maybe it’s the dreams.
He doesn’t understand them. He only knows that most times he manages to fall asleep, he sees blood and hears screams, and then he’s burning.
The only thing that scares him more are the thoughts that sometimes pop in his head.
Like that night he sees an old man walking down a dark street.
Could cut his throat from behind and get away with his wallet, no one would know.
Or when he meets a woman at a crossroads and their eyes meet briefly.
Wonder what she’d ask for if she sold me her soul.
None of it makes sense.
And so, he slowly makes his way through America’s streets without any help.
About a month into his “posthumous existence” as he’s come to call it, he learns there are more dangers out there than just hunger and cold.
He’s trying to go to sleep on yet another park bench when someone hisses “Oh how the mighty have fallen”.
He’s up in an instant, staring at the woman who’s grinning at him, and even in the pale light from a street lamp not too far away, he can see that her eyes are completely black.
“Well well well Great One... Life hasn’t treated you well lately, has it? Don’t worry; it ends tonight”.
Only the reflexes he doesn’t think too much about because he’s worried he wouldn’t like the answer to that particular question save him as he launches at him.
The next few weeks, he wonders if he only hallucinated all of that. After all, quite a high percentage of homeless people do suffer from some kind of mental illness.
But then more black-eyed people show up.
And none of them are particularly friendly to him.
After a few more close calls, he learns to avoid them.
Thank God he’s pretty clever.
Life goes on, although he’s not sure he can call what he’s doing “living”.
He ponders the past now and then, but with the dreams he has... He’s not so sure he wants to know.
At least until he meets Dean.
It’s quite warm outside, thankfully, and he’s reading on a bench when someone says, “I’ll give you that, it’s a good cover”.
Crowley looks up warily, expecting another fight with one of the black-eyed people, but instead a man in a suit is standing in front of him.
By now, he’s got more than enough experience to recognize law enforcement a mile away, and he scrambles to get up.
“Don’t worry, officer, I’m on my way”.
Without looking at him again, he starts walking away.
“Wait!”
He walks faster; the last thing he needs is a night behind bars. He tried it once on a very cold winter’s night, to get arrested to avoid freezing to death. The cell made his nightmares worse.
The guy grabs his arm, and he reluctantly turns around.
“I told you, I’m on my way. I have no wish to get into trouble – “
Another of these thoughts he never can get quite rid off darts into his mind.
Squirrel’s looking good, as usual.
What the –
“You’re not in trouble. Crowley, it’s me – Dean Winchester – “
His heart starts beating faster.
This man knows who he is.
“Crowley? Is that my name?” he asks.
The – Dean looks shocked.
“Yes. It is.”
“You know me?”
All the answers he’s been scared to ask for could be standing in front of him.
“Better than anyone, I’d imagine”.
Good God.
“So we’re... friends?”
What if he’s just used to arresting me on a regular basis?
“Yes. Yes we are” he says, and – Crowely breathes a sigh of relief.
“You disappeared a while back. We –“ he stops, realizing Crowley has no idea who “we” are.
“Me and my brother and our best friend” he finally continues, “we were all worried about you”.
Someone was worried about him.
Someone cares for him.
It could all be a trick, but what has he got to lose? A miserable, homeless existence, with no one caring whether he’s swiped off the face of the earth or not.
“Look, I know you have no reason to trust me – “
“That’s quite alright. I haven’t got anything to lose either”.
“So you’ll come with me?” Dean asks eagerly, as if he can’t wait for him to meet his brother and their friend.
After a year of constantly being shown the door, it feels good to be wanted.
“We’re working a case in this town, so it’s only a motel room for now, but you’re welcome to stay with us if you’d like”.
“Better than on the street” he answers, wondering what kind of case Dean’s talking about. Are they some sort of private detectives by any chance?
“You said case... did we work together?” Crowley asks once Dean is done texting, presumably telling the others he stumbled across him.
“Now and then, yeah” Dean answers.
“Can’t be the feds” he decides. “Someone would have come looking for me then”.
Throughout the past year, it has been both his biggest fear and greatest hope that someone would eventually be searching for him.
“We thought you were dead. That’s why we didn’t search for you. Something... went wrong on a case” Dean explains.
It’s by no means the most logical explanation, but he’ll take what he can get. For now it sounds like he’s one of the good guys, and that’s quite enough for him after the year he’s had.
True, he has no proof yet that they are actually decent human beings, but he can’t believe Dean’s a bad guy. There’s just something good about him. He can’t really explain it.
The tall man and the man with the incredibly blue eyes that await them in the motel room don’t look familiar at all, but he’s used to that feeling.
Dean’s eager to get him something to drink, and the thought that he might be drugged occurs to him; but frankly, why should he care? It’s either staying with them or going back on the streets.
And it turns out to simply be a bottle of water anyway.
Strange when it doesn’t burn.
He ignores his strange inner voice.
As it turns out, the truth is even weirder than anything he could have come up with.
The black-eyed people who’ve been after him for a year? Apparently they are demons. Great.
And the Winchesters and he... they hunt them and other supernatural creatures.
Not exactly a career option he would have considered, but it’s something to know he’s been about doing good deeds.
And the boys are happy to take him home with them, no questions asked.
He won’t lie, there’s something comforting about having friends.
They’ve told him about the hell hound (invisible dogs, who would have thought) they adopted a while back. Strange choice if you ask him, but then he can’t remember the circumstances.
The dog – Juliet, Dean said – is all over him the second he steps foot into the bunker (another nice little detail, apparently owning a house would not be edgy enough for hunters).
God, she’s grown so much.
He shakes his head as he pets her.
“She’s pretty tame for a hell hound” he says, frowning as she slobbers all over the clothes the boys have lent him.
“Well-trained, I’d say” Dean agrees.
“And rather happy to see me, I think”.
Dean only nods.
Juliet follows him around the rest of the day, always barking excitingly when he bestows attention on her.
He’s given an empty room, which only makes sense; if they considered him dead, they probably got rid of his things.
He ignores the alarm bell that starts ringing in his head because who would really throw away all mementoes of a fallen friend?
Thing is, he’s had nothing for so long, he wants to have something.
And here, he does.
And it’s even something good, for once.
He likes the bunker, he likes his room, and in the ensuing weeks, he comes to like the boys and Juliet tremendously.
True, Sam seems a bit wary of him at times (he supposes coming back from the dead can have that effect) and Cas is prone to study him with confusion, head tilted to the side. Dean, though, seems happy to have him back.
It takes a while for them to take him with them on hunts. He can’t blame then. While he is remarkably fast when doing research, any training he might have received once is long forgotten, as are the mother and son they tell him about, one night.
He is sad, but he can’t grieve. Not really. He’s sad he doesn’t remember them, not sorry for their loss.
If there wasn’t this old dread he knows so well, he’d wish he had his memories back.
Around this time, something strange happens.
He wakes up thirsty in the middle of the night and goes to the bathroom to get a glass of water.
In the dim light, his eyes look as red in the mirror as the blood he keeps dreaming about.
He all but flees.
Once they trust his skills enough – he really does have remarkably fast reflexes – their old team is back together on hunts. They develop a routine, and Crowley slowly meets other former acquaintances, like the friendly sheriff who’s so shocked at his reappearance she stares at him for almost five minutes.
He should have realized that things going well is a sure sign of something being wrong.
One night, his dreams are not ineligible anymore.
There are screams, there is blood, there is pain, and for once, there’s no question that he’s the one inflicting all of it, and thoroughly enjoying himself.
And the boys are there, too.
“Flee or die” he gleefully tells Feathers. How the tables have turned.
“No one hates you more than you do. Believe me, I’ve tried”. Oh, and how he has.
He’s standing in front of Sam, contemplating snapping his neck, giddy with power.
He wakes up in a sweat, heart racing, remembering it all.
Juliet is whimpering at the end of his bed.
He knows what she looks like, now.
More importantly, he knows who he is.
And to think he dared to believe it might be one of the good guys after all.
The boys must have laughed forever about that.
Why did they ever take him in? There’s a good chance, if he were Dean, that he’d have taken him with him in order to finally make him disappear of the face of the earth.
Maybe they were just biding their time, waiting for him to remember. The Winchesters are exactly the type to allow him to defend himself before...
Defend himself. How quaint.
It’s a human instinct, defending oneself.
As a demon, he never felt bad for the things he’d done. He was supposed to be evil, and he delighted in it.
Of course the guilt’s crushing him down, now.
Over the next few weeks, he’s barely able to sleep. Juliet, sensing his agitation, takes to following him around at night when he tries to flee the memories of the things he’s done, whimpering at his side.
He’s only waiting for the boys to find out.
One of them is bound to figure out the truth.
He’s not surprised that ultimately it’s Dean who confronts him one night, Juliet for once nowhere to be heard.
“You remember”.
It’s not a question.
Crowley nods.
“A few weeks now”.
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
“You want to know the truth, Squirrel?” he asks tiredly.
“Because the past you allowed me to believe in was far more pleasant”.
“It was, wasn’t it.”
It really was. Crowley, a hero for once instead of a pathetic drunken tailor who turned into a demon.
Dean makes a quip about Juliet and he can’t help but chuckle.
He might be on his own again very soon, after all. He’d never force Juliet out on the streets with him. She’s got a good home here.
“Do you want me to leave?”
He doesn’t know what he’s expecting; there are strong arguments for both sides; but it surprises him how quickly Dean is to say “No” – and without any indication that his stay is limited, too.
“You’ll still bake pies, right?” Dean asks hopefully.
He groans.
I basically turned into their housewife.
“Fine, Squirrel, but only if you make burgers.”
“I can do that. Now, come on; we both need a night cap”.
Over their drink, Dean asks, “Do you have any idea who brought you back and why you had amnesia?”
“None.”
He might have suspected Chuck had something to do with it, if he wasn’t off on his tour of the universe with his sister.
“Maybe it was a test” Dean supplies.
“What was it supposed to achieve then? I hardly assume the universe thought it adamant I learn to bake you pies.”
He laughs.
“Hate to admit it, but I kind of missed your sense of humour”.
He clears his throat to hide he’s somewhat touched.
“No, I meant maybe... someone wanted to see what you’d do, human and with a clean slate. And I have to admit... you didn’t do bad at all. You’re actually... decent”.
“Thank you for the evident surprise in your voice”.
They both know he doesn’t mind.
Dean raises his glass.
“Here’s to new beginnings?”
It is, indeed.