Archive of Our Own

Now, Crowley had seen his fair share of pub fights. The one where he nearly got his whole face peeled off when he met Halt was not in his book of favourites, but it certainly was in Halt’s, considering how often he liked to remind everyone of it during every single Gathering. Crowley had gotten used to half-kneeling by the campfires to be able to leap at him and shut him up if he looked like he was about to start his tirade.

Crowley had seen his fair share of pub fights. Most were short-lived, sparked by only a few people and then broken off by a similar few. And, generally, if Crowley was there, he tried to stay on the side of those that weren’t throwing bottles of booze at their supposed comrades. And, usually, it worked. If it didn’t work, Halt would grab him by the collar and tell him to settle down, or he’d settle him down himself. That would work, then.

Crowley had seen his fair share of pub fights. But not in one of them did he see Halt be the one to ball his fists and look like he was a step away from starting a massacre, as he did now. See, it wasn’t easy to tell whether a Ranger was angry, but you could tell when one was furious, and that was already so far behind the line you should probably just accept what destiny was shoving your way.

When the commotion initially broke out, Halt, as always, moved to his side with a nearly bored expression, waiting to see how it’d turn out to end. Crowley had drunk, as he always had, and Halt had too, but at least Halt also had maintained some form of common sense and that sense reminded him that he couldn’t exactly hold his liquor and stopped his hand after a glass or two. Crowley had no such voice of reason in his mind, and, although his head was more or less clear, Halt still sort of positioned himself suitably to smack him across the head if he tried anything.

Crowley wasn’t going to try anything though, and he turned to reassure Halt so, but as he opened his mouth to speak, a less-than-content man that was more of a size of a bear than a regular lad appeared at their table. Well, perhaps ‘appeared’ would be an understatement, considering he was thrown on top of it, bringing the tablecloth down with him. There was a loud thump as he hit the floor and a river of cursewords in some southern accent. Halt sneered, keeping an eye on Crowley, but his face still sent disgust off in waves. Crowley gave a snort as the man struggled to stand up. The sight of two Rangers calmly waiting by their table with faces of mild interest in the middle of a brawl was probably quite the rarity, he assumed.

However, the situation turned sour faster than either of them liked – the man barely got up onto his knees, held onto the table and then reached for the closest person he could see – and, unfortunately, the closest person to him was Halt, who, clad in his gray cloak, managed to move away fast enough, but the mottled cloth didn’t.

The man latched onto the corner of the soft material, and straight up grabbed Halt by the collar.

“Hey!” Crowley jumped up, subconsciously reaching for his seax.

Halt, however, wasn’t an easy target to anyone, even this boar of a man. Easily, he took the man’s wrists and pulled him forward, bowing his head and throwing it back under the man’s chin. Even Crowley heard the yellowing teeth clack together and made an unpleasant noise at the second-hand felt pain.

As he fell back, the man made his last mistake by trying to hold himself up by any means possible – and those means were him grabbing at Halt and wrapping his hand around the leather necklace Rangers carried their oakleaves on.

The leather tore into two by the sheer weight, its last breath an awful snap, and both Crowley and Halt froze after hearing the silver amulet fall onto the table.

Wisely, Crowley first looked over to Halt’s face. And, surely, he didn’t like what he saw.

Crowley wasn’t meaning that a torn-off oakleaf wasn’t grounds for homicide if you were in the Ranger Corps, he just thought Halt murdering the entire pub, which they both knew each of them was capable of, wasn’t exactly proportionate. But the look on his face suggested he was about to do just that, despite the fact that he’d leaped and retrieved the oakleaf seconds after it fell, hooking it onto one of the straps on his belt while eyeing the crowd.

Reacting to a situation accordingly was in Crowley’s instincts by now, sure, but he also coincidentally had this little thing called I don’t want to be stabbed by my best friend, and so he wasn’t sure how Halt this red-eyed would react to him holding him back from (rightfully) ripping a few intestines apart and hanging their owners with them.

Finally deciding it was worth risking Halt’s wrath if it meant saving a few drunken lads, he jumped to him, grabbing him by the arm just as he seemed to finish weighing all the possible charges he could be forced to answer to, would he go through with the murder scheme he inevitably had planned.

“Look how the tables have turned, eh?” Crowley said – yelled – with forced cheer, still unsure if Halt even heard him. From the way he rolled his eyes and something in his expression visibly settled, Crowley’s words probably got past at least somewhat. “Hey! I don’t think we’re gonna get any coffee with this party over here!”

“You don’t say,” Halt muttered. Crowley could tell he was muttering because he didn’t hear the voice, although his lips moved clearly enough. The arm Crowley had grabbed was straining with tension, knuckles whiter than snow.

“What are we standing around here for, then?” Crowley shouted again, Halt motioning to his ears wordlessly – I can hear you. Crowley beckoned him over, doing his best to inconspicuously drag him away from the slowly rising mass of bodies, all attempting to get the best of each other. “Come on, Abelard’s probably getting lonely.”

Halt, who was now at least two meters closer to him and therefore somewhat audible again, snorted. “Not if he’s with Cropper, he’s not. He’s almost as obnoxious as you are.”

“Keen on compliments tonight, aren’t you, Hibernian?”

As they went on toward the door outside, someone smashed a glass in front of them. Crowley jumped back, refraining from laughing as Halt glared at the glass shards as if they’d personally insulted him. “What an atmosphere.”

“Rush on,” Halt advised, and so they did, stumbling over fallen chairs and puddles of strange spilled liquids, grabbing onto each other for support.

And, just as they found themselves two measly tables away from clean air of the night, a blood-curdling scream echoed through the pub, sticking out from the others just with the sheer terror concealed in the voice.

And, immediately, Crowley’s head snapped back, followed hesitantly by Halt’s. Blood had been spilled, as it usually was in fights, but neither of them usually heard such screeching. And, as they looked back, surely, the floor had been dyed with red.

A man was down, and the ruckus around them seemed to freeze for a second. The man, who was now much more fit to be described as a body, lied limp on the ground, his hand fallen next to his head as if it’d slipped out from under his neck when he was sleeping. But the expression on his face wasn’t peaceful. His eyes wandered smoothly, not a conscious man’s eyes, no – and, strangely, the gaping wound in his neck with blood spurting through wasn’t what Crowley saw first.

The small trickle of blood on the corner of his lip was it, that and the involuntary little twitch of his fingers as the rest of his body spasmed out for a single second before twisting oddly into an unmoving statue’s frame. For a moment, his eyes screamed out for help – and then the lights went out.

A woman with long dark hair had sunk to the ground next to him with a strange expression, tilting his head up softly, quiet tears streaming down her cheeks as she tried to say something, but couldn’t. She couldn’t.

The murderer stood in front of them idly, looking damn near bored, his face devoid of any emotion as he gestured for the woman – no, it was a girl that looked just a little younger than Halt – to move away. She didn’t notice his movement.

Halt turned to Crowley.

Wait, no, stay –

But he couldn’t hear Halt, who’d come to his senses again, despite the pub having gone more or less quiet in horror, faced with the weight of a life. Amidst the silence, even the man with the bloody knife wavered. Crowley, however, threw himself over a chair and half-leaped half-stumbled toward the girl. Somewhere in the back of his head, he heard Halt following – except he sounded like he’d taken a less extreme route. The men who were trying to yank them by the lapels mere minutes ago seemed to let them through with no issue now, as if the sight of a fallen figure brought some sense into most alcohol-clouded brains.

Truly drunk men were unpredictable. Truly drunk men killed without thought or consideration, and truly drunk men only cared for the eyes of the spectators.

They reached the body at nearly the same time, but Halt had a good head on his shoulders and knew Crowley, red with anger and disbelief, would go for the man standing around with a blank face, so he crashed to his knees next to the lifeless victim, pushing the girl away gently and resting his hand on the side of his neck to search for a heartbeat.

Crowley shoved the man away with even more force than he’d attempted. The murderer, however, clearly hadn’t expected two cloaked figures to emerge and attack that suddenly, so, rightfully startled, he took a complimentary step back, and stumbled – he was quite drunk, Crowley deduced. It wasn’t hard to tell. He’d guessed it long before.

“Move,” the man huffed, and Crowley stood up straight.

“No,” he replied, a vicious smile spreading over his face. “Sit down.”

A moment of silence.

“Then I’ll kill you.”

Crowley blinked. “A’ight then, come at it.” Looking almost delighted, he raised his arms slightly, a mock invitation. “Come on, have a stab. Let’s see how much gods of luck favour you against me.” We’ll see who kills who.

“Crowley,” Halt’s voice warned behind him, but all he could see was the clouding eyes of the man in front.

“I keep my promises.” The man’s hand shook oddly, the knife still, though.

“Oh, I’ll make sure it’s gonna be difficult to keep this one, pal.”

“Crowley,” Halt hissed.

“What is it?” Attentively watching the man stepping in place, Crowley barely turned his head in Halt’s direction.

“He’s dead.”

A voice next to him tearfully exclaimed, “No!”

It was the girl that had collapsed next to the body, but Halt wasn’t ever really into sentiment.

“Yes,” he confirmed calmly, and went on, “And those morons will pile up. It’s not worth it. Come on. Let’s go.”

Crowley’s seax had hung loosely in his hand as he stared the man up and down in offending apathy until Halt’s words sank in.

“Morons?” he repeated. Plural?

And, more on instinct than thought, he leaped back.

It turned out that raw intuition had saved his life, because, moments later, a knife blade sliced the air exactly where his chest would’ve been. Crowley barely yelped in surprise rather than pain – the knife had cut the front knot of his cloak above his collarbone, but not him. The man in front of him stumbled back in surprise.

“Crowley!”

Halt didn’t see the extent of the damage, though, as he was behind Crowley, assuming the worst and yanking the throwing knife out of his scabbard. The first thing the Crowley heard was whistling from the back and under his arm, and then a man to his side fell, Halt’s steel blade going in through his chin all the way up to the hilt.

Crowley stood very very still, realizing the murderer of that poor man behind them wasn’t alone, and letting that thought slowly settle in along with the immediate frustration – how didn’t he notice them? How didn’t he notice people all around staring at him like they were the hunters behind a successful boar trap?

Halt didn’t give him much time to scold himself, though, as he had sprung to his feet, leaving the girl with the body, and dragged Crowley closer by his collar.

“Are you alright?” He asked quietly, and there was a strange tone to his voice, rising as he stared him up and down.

Crowley grinned, gently pushing his hands away. “Don’t worry, Halt. I’m not getting gutted today.”

“I’m not just worried, I’m sure you’ll get gutted if you keep this up.” Halt’s own seax clashed against his scabbard, taken out so swiftly it seemed like it’d jumped into Halt’s hand itself after Crowley was free from his hand. A focused grim expression spread over his face, a hunter’s mask, in a way. “If that’s your decision, let’s dance.”

“Easy, easy,” Crowley told him, his smile shrinking. “We don’t need a pile of corpses.”

“We don’t,” Halt agreed, pulling him to his back, facing the other way. “But they do, evidently.”

 Crowley turned his head – and there they were. Not many, not many at all. They could take them on. He and Halt were capable of subduing four, maybe even five. That’s how many there were standing – but Crowley was a quick learner. How many was he not seeing, how many could be hiding in the crowd?

They’re not that smart, are they? He’d ask Halt, who was undoubtedly wondering the same thing.

Crowley felt like laughing out of sheer horror. He gripped his blade and shook his head for the last few seconds he and Halt had. “No time like the present, huh?”

“Godspeed, Crowley,” Halt wished simply, the Hibernian accent that grew a little thicker betraying his anticipation more than his tone.

“Godspeed, Halt.”

But we’re not going anywhere. Neither one of us.

And, with all said and done, they dove forward.  

Crowley lost most sight immediately as the world became a mass of flesh and blood. The short way they had to run to get to the men worked to their advantage, and Crowley heard a splat and a shriek from Halt’s side of the men, one of them falling barely after Halt got there. Crowley grappled with his pair, kicking one in the shin and then driving his knee up into the man’s face to knock him backwards so he had enough time to turn to the other.

This one took a little more, seeming the most battle-ready out of all of them; it was not the leader, Halt was currently avoiding that one’s knife, but he was good nonetheless. Crowley wasted no time in shoving his seax forward, but the man circled him, jumping to the side.

Crowley was not up for a game of cat and mouse. He was not up to any game, really. They were two against five – or four, admittedly, since the man Halt killed didn’t count anymore – and Crowley didn’t want to leave Halt alone against three. He’d felt what it was like when they were picking off Thorgan’s bastards, and he did not want his dearest friend to have the pleasure of ever being cornered like that.

Too bad this man was relentless. Frustrated when he heard Halt being shoved to the side and his seax clunking against the floorboards, Crowley mistimed – and the bandit grabbed his wrist. He tried to kick, but the man pulled his arm, driving him off course and twisting the knife out of his hand.

Fuck.

He nearly crashed into Halt, who wasn’t doing too well either, with a bloody face and an oddly-facing leg. They didn’t even get a good look at each other before the bandits doubled down on them again.

Then, Crowley heard an awful crack behind him. And someone thumping down to the floor right over the dropped seax.

He snapped his head back, even the bandit freezing because of the sound, and there Halt was, slouching on the floor, the seax covered by his cloak as were his hands. He was gripping his side quite clearly, though, and Crowley understood.

He barely swallowed a smile. Bastard, I know what you’re doing.

He’d seen him do that. He’d been tricked by it, and he’d be tricked by it again, simply because Halt was convincing. Crowley could recall a knife under his chin and him complaining, I thought you were actually hurt! to which Halt would only reply, Well, that’s your personal problem, really. Now, however, Crowley knew. Halt’s breathing was a little shaky but not frantic, and there was no puddles of blood, and Crowley looked right back to the bandit and leaped forward, leaving his Ranger to play his games.

The bandit didn’t think he’d turn from his companion that fast, and didn’t manage to avoid Crowley’s punch straight to the jaw. Before he could regain his balance, Crowley ducked down and grabbed his own seax from the floor. The bandit jumped back, and their knives scraped against each other. A Ranger’s blade had proved more valuable than any other on many occasions, and this one was not any different.

He twisted the man’s knife out of his hand as he had done to him a minute ago. His opponent fully expected him to just go for the kill as that’s what he would’ve done, but Crowley was really not into senseless murder. Instead, he grabbed the man by the elbow and swung himself around, pushing his whole weight through his hands to force them both down.

He threw both his arms over the man’s shoulders, pointing the seax right between the eyes as a warning, and wrapping another around his neck in a chokehold. He pulled, and the man tried to suck in a dry breath, but Crowley, through strain and sweat, didn’t let him go.

Then the body relaxed.

Crowley closed his eyes for a split second before dropping the man down onto the floor and just managing to stand up. His opponent wasn’t dead. Just unconscious. It had been what he wanted. But something was missing.

Something was missing. He could hear Halt jump onto his feet behind him, uninjured and armed, and leaping right onto his attacker, but it wasn’t him. It was something else. Something, right there, right there-

“Wait!”

It was loud, it was frantic, it was the girl’s voice, the girl who had long black hair and who had been hunched over the corpse along with Halt with so much hurt in her voice it hurt to hear it.

Crowley snapped his head to the side.

She was standing with her legs wide and her hands raised in plea, she was standing over the body, and the man Crowley thought he’d knocked down the first was in front of her with a throwing knife Halt had put through his comrade just before all hell had broken loose. The man was pointing the very tip at her. He was pointing the blade of a Ranger at an innocent person. Crowley shot toward him.

“Move,” the despicable man barked, but she just raised her hands higher.

“Please!” she begged, seconds away from straight-up kneeling down. “He’s dead already, he’s dead!”

“You’re lying!”

Oh, he was drunk, and he was drunk with a capital D. And drunken men made idiotic decisions. Such as stabbing a corpse. Or stabbing a living person who was trying to keep a corpse from being defiled.

And, as the man raised his hand in motion with her, Crowley realized he wouldn’t get to him in time.

“Please,” she whispered, eyes large and terrified and praying, and the hand chopped down.

Time froze.

Crowley was unsure of what he was doing. He jumped the last few feet, and he landed in front of her.

Then it was as if someone had punched him.

At least it wasn’t a hard punch. Blunt and sharp all at the same time, but it wasn’t hard.

Yet he could almost hear the astonished silence.

There weren’t many people in the inn anymore, he thought peculiarly. But it wasn’t supposed to be this deathly quiet.

“No,” said the voice behind him. Quietly. It was quiet and it was full of pure horror. “Oh, no, no...”

A punch? He reached down, and his hand – and mind - went limp. Oh, not quite.

There was a knife handle in his lower side. Somehow, it meant his head immediately raised war banners in the form of strange quivering through his whole body. He heard the girl’s voice, but it didn’t register for a few moments.

“Crowley!”

Another voice, same words, and it was Halt’s. It took him a minute.

Crowley tried to touch the hilt of the knife, an odd thought that maybe he could pull it out surfaced. But he couldn’t. It would only make things worse, logically. But he couldn’t feel anything just yet.

He raised his head, and Halt was right in front of him, but also much too far away. But he was there. And Crowley smiled.

Yet his own voice was quieter than he expected and quieter than he wanted to be.

“So much for not getting gutted, yeah?” He managed to tell Halt before his knees gave out.

Before he could really fall, Halt stepped forward, wrapping his arms around his waist and helping him down. He was saying something, but silently, and, since that was about time it started to ache, to ache, he couldn’t hear it. He could only recognize his own name by the time he was on the ground.

He could see Halt somewhere above him, which was odd as Halt was generally shorter than him. But the surprise was something else – there was an unexplainable expression that surfaced on his face after he put two and two together and realized Crowley couldn’t understand him. Lips parted and eyes wide, and he wanted to say something, but he couldn’t.

Crowley tilted his head as much as the pulsing pain allowed him. He’d never seen Halt out-right terrified before.

Halt’s hand stopped by the knife, pushing it very very slightly. With what strength Crowley had against Halt, he swatted the hand away. He could still see the inn around them, and the people.

Before he could really process what was happening and why it was starting to hurt so bad, he attempted to piece together the rational leftover pieces of his mind. There were other people here, ordinary people who didn’t know all that much about Rangers, who only saw them in their cloaks and in the mist, mysterious and untouchable, shrouded in fear like a shield. Those people helped upkeep their reputation and Crowley was not doing wonders for it.

And they were Rangers, Halt and him, right then and there – and he was the Commander. So his possible bleed-out session wasn’t worth the sacrifice of the invincibility myths spread around them. It kept some of Crowley’s Rangers safe.

“Not here,” he said, the words barely getting through his lips. Halt shook his head.

“I don’t want to move you.” His voice echoed, but at least Crowley could hear it now. “You could easily bleed out on the way.”

“Yeah, but it won’t be better if we stay here.” He really didn’t want to be arguing now.

“Crowley...“

He took a tiny little breath. One more thing. He didn’t have a lot of time left for talking. “Halt, listen. Out. It’s an order.”

Oh, he hated giving orders. Halt sensed it, giving him a blank stare for a bit as he was folding his cloak swiftly and slipping it under Crowley’s head for the time being. Crowley nodded as thanks, but couldn’t tell if Halt saw it.

He could tell, however, that something in Halt switched as soon as he stood up. Something like, a cold flame that surfaced, illuminating the inn. And although Halt wasn’t exactly a tall and imposing fellow, he could absolutely lace his fingers together and play as sinister as he liked.

Halt took a single step toward he door before turning back to face the rest of the reluctant spectators, staring each and every one through the eye as if he was personally accusing then.

"If a hair falls off his head while I'm gone, I'm going to personally butcher each and every single one of you," he warned. There was no trace of intimidation anywhere in his tone, and there didn't need to be. His eyes could freeze anyone who looked at them in place. Cold and hard and unfeeling. Crowley tried not to stare too hard. Not like he really could, truth to be told. His eyes kept rolling down to the knife handle in his side. “Like I killed him. Worse. I could do you so much worse.” Crowley couldn’t see all that well, but he could tell Halt was pointing at the man with a hole all the way up from his jaw. “And none of you want that, let me assure you. So scratch your nails somewhere else.”

He then must’ve muttered something in Hibernian, because Crowley didn’t understand a word. Or maybe it was his head going foggy.

Before really leaving, Halt looked over to Crowley, bowing just slightly to pass a last quiet message.

“Don’t move,” he instructed quietly. “I have a kit by Abelard, I’ll make a run for it but it’s important you don’t move. So don’t move.”

Crowley blinked at him, lying still.

“Do I look like a toddler to you?”

“Always. But you also do look two steps away from death, so do humor me.” Halt stood up straight again, never looking at anyone, and marched straight out. Crowley listened to his hurried footsteps echo away from the inn and then fade into silence as he moved onto grass. He was running in his haste.

And, in light of his friend’s behaviour, Crowley choked on surfacing laughter.

"Oh, don’t you just—That’s what your care looks like, huh? That’s how you love people, that’s how you love me," Crowley echoed, the laugher coming off a little mocking but it wasn’t as if Halt could hear him anyway. “Won’t listen to me, I’m your—“ His tongue didn’t cooperate. “You bastard, you son of a...” The fit pricked at his side, chuckles turning into gasping as he tried to reach for the wound. “Ah, my fault, that’s a... That’s...”

His mind went blank in a split second.

He pressed his eyes shut, and nearly shot up to hunch over himself before remembering Halt’s request and freezing up again, trying in futility to ignore the burning all around the knife. It was starting to feel like the flame had always been there, always melting him from the inside. He pinned his own hands behind his back so he could resist grabbing the handle of the knife. Still, nothing helped with the loss of blood and the inevitable ticking clock that was descending on him if Halt didn’t make it back in time, but Halt always did his best, and his best never disappointed – Crowley trusted him. With his life. Easily.

But he groaned with every hesitant breath nevertheless as the wound settled in.

It was a messy hit, and it would’ve been a good one as well. The man who threw the knife must’ve been trained with it, but Crowley’s quick appearance threw him off guard. If he’d stood there from the start, the knife would’ve gotten him right in the chest and there would’ve been nothing either of them could’ve done about it.

Crowley turned his head just barely to the side, and even that increased the pain and made everything spin, but it was worth it – from the four men they’d taken, only one had escaped to harm him, and even he was dead on the ground now. Crowley squinted just barely – another throwing knife was forcefully put through his throat – multiple times - and it didn’t look like it had been thrown.  Halt didn’t hesitate after all.

Maybe he could’ve avoided this situation if he just hadn’t stood against the attackers, Crowley thought grimly, immediately shutting that inner voice up. If it wasn’t going to be us, who else was going to do anything? If it wasn’t us, who would’ve stood?

And that girl would’ve died, that much he couldn’t deny, the girl with the nest of black hair and the terrified eyes. The knife would’ve reached her and it would’ve killed her, but Crowley took it and it might not kill him.

It was a solid bet, according to his honest opinion.

But where was she? Had she run away after seeing Crowley’s hands mindlessly reaching for the handle of the knife, or when he fell to the ground, or when Halt firmly told everyone to behave or he was going to give them a hard push in the right direction?

But, almost immediately when he started wondering, a voice separated from the rest’s hushed whispers and concerned muttering. She was talking.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to, I didn't want to—" The voice started a trail of regret right next to him, and Crowley didn't even need to turn his head to know it was her.

He felt a little stronger, now. Maybe there was something about blameless fellows blaming themselves for things they had no responsibility over, or maybe he was just getting a little better at managing with a knife handle sticking out of his side.

"Lady," he called, and the girl’s voice immediately got cut off. He could vaguely see a waterfall of raven hair over him. Like a crow’s wing. And he made his best effort to offer her at least the tiniest smile. "Of course you didn't mean it. You didn't do anything."

A moment of silence, then a silent, breathy "What?"

Crowley tried to move, maybe at least turn to the poor girl, but it only sent another shot of pain through his body. He grit his teeth.

"You didn't pull me over. I jumped to you. If I hadn't, I wouldn't have gotten that little thing where it is at the moment," he explained.

"But you shielded me," she repeated, confusion evident in her voice. Crowley sighed. Even that hurt.

"Myself. By my choice. And if it was my choice, and you couldn't do anything about it, is it really your fault?" He was aware he wasn't making much sense. He was also aware that he was running out of breath. "I don't need your sorrow. What I need is that— ow, okay— that fucking knife out," he hissed the last words out, physically feeling the blade shift slightly when he moved. "Bloody hell, that hurts."

She had flinched away when he swore, and he understood her haste. It wasn’t a pretty image on someone who’s supposed to be upholding the law, but could you really blame him? There was a knife in his stomach.

Nevertheless, she decided she’d want to repay them either way. Assuredly, she rose and started waving her hands to the people around them.

“Off and away! Off and away!” She pressed, shoving them farther from Crowley, who could only nod in appreciation. At least he thought he was nodding. “You heard them! We’ve got this!”

Slowly, the little group dispersed to all the corners of the inn and some – right through the door. Silence lingered for a couple odd minutes while the people were figuring out what was appropriate in the situation – after all, there was now a Ranger just laid down on the floor with a stab wound in his stomach.

And, finally, quiet chatter began. They were no doubt discussing the commotion, but at least they pretended to leave them alone for a little.

Crowley could still somewhat read the crowd. Tension crackled in the air, but it was at least a rather thin layer. He grimaced, trying to settle in a way that wouldn’t wipe his whole head empty.

“Thank you,” he told the girl. “Apparently being stabbed also makes your – ah! – your head hurt. I’ll write that down for next time.”

She cackled – out of pity or surprise, he wasn’t sure, but she cackled, the black hair bouncing up and down with the movement of her head. And that’s when a name surfaced to Crowley. Raven, he thought, while he couldn’t just ask her. Raven, he thought, subconsciously, seeing through the mist and gray, a bird with a head just as lively and feathers just as black. He would’ve just spoken up, inquired, but he just didn’t think he could, at that point. His tongue was dry and stuck to his mouth, and he would’ve rather just made something up than forced his already fading mind to remember.

Raven looked on to him curiously, concerned over something in his face. She glanced up, to the people who didn’t leave the inn, some who were pretending to be in the middle of conversations, and some who just blatantly stared at the handle in Crowley’s stomach. She leaned a little closer.

“I’ve heard you oughta talk when you’re hurt, so you don’t fall under,” she said quietly. “So tell me something, okay?”

“Like what?” Crowley asked. He’d heard that too.

“Your name is Crowley, right?”

He blinked. “How’d you know?”

“Your—Your, um, friend was calling for you earlier.” Oh, of course. Crowley wouldn’t be upset at him, he hoped, but, well, it’s really better when you don’t know many Ranger names. It’s not exactly the safest situation for the Corps to be in. Or for a person unrelated to them, too. Again – the fog of mystery was their forever shield.  “I- I didn’t catch his name, though.”

Sure, Crowley thought. ‘Halt’ isn’t really a name. Hard to know someone who’s called that – Crowley was sort of content with it.

“That’s alright,” he managed. Something stung in his chest. “He wouldn’t mind.”

She swallowed something, eyes darting all over the place. Running out of conversation topics, probably – or about to ask something of questionable worth.

“You’re Rangers, yeah?” She leaned in even closer to ask that, to the point where Crowley could almost feel her eager breath on his face. He turned his head to the side and she leaned back.

Crowley took a breath, then another, but didn’t answer her. It was clear from their cloaks and their necklaces – or Halt’s, as his was the one that slipped out from under his shirt – either way, he wanted to let her know this wasn’t a good question to ask, or a good topic to be talking about.

“I’m sorry, I just...” She looked him up and down, wide-eyed. “I’ve heard a lot, and you’re nothing like what I’ve heard of.”

Oh, Halt gets that one more often.

“People like to talk,” he said.

“Not you, though. That’s why nothing anyone says about you people can ever be really right, no?” She managed a small smile. “You’re all... Ghosts.”

“I s’pose ghosts bleed, then,” Crowley muttered as another sting pierced through his stomach when he tried to turn to the side again. His back was going numb, but that was fully compensated by the sharpness of the blade. He grit his teeth and bore it, though. He’d been worse. He wouldn’t be worse, he hoped. Goddamn it, where’s Halt?

“I’m sorry,” Raven echoed again, and Crowley eyed her in frustration.

“Stop apologizing, for all that’s good in the world,” he asked, and she opened her mouth – and shut it, promptly. Crowley nodded, grateful. His head was starting to get fuzzy again.

Raven either sensed it or remembered, because she was waving her hands over Crowley’s face in a seconds.

“Hey, are you—okay?” she asked cautiously.

Crowley sighed.

“Whoa, that won’t do, I told you you had to talk,” she insisted, tone rising.

Why? After all, it was far easier not to.

“Oh, no. You have to talk, hey, hey!”

But it was warm, and the warmth was spreading through his whole body from his stomach. Why talk? He could go under instead, let it win and let the slowly spinning world take control, rock him to sleep. He didn’t see what was so bad about it. It was warm. He’d just rest for a moment.

Just for a moment, and then he’d get up and go.

Just a moment, please.

Just a...

“Hey! Hey! Crowley!”

His own name snapped him out of it for a good second, enough to regain control of his mind. The sensation, the tug of sleep sent a cold breeze up his spine. He nearly fell unconscious, he realized. He nearly gave it up.

Halt pulled him up a little more by his shirt.

“When I told you not to move, I didn’t mean die, you goddamn moron,” he hissed. Crowley could sense Raven’s eyes, wide and horrified, somewhere to his side.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I guess I just get the two mixed up lately,” Crowley bit back, surprised himself at the sharp tone of his voice that he managed to summon.

“Would be within our best interests you learned the difference,” Halt threw it back to him, letting his shirt go and instead wrapping one arm around his shoulders, holding him up as if he didn’t know whether to carry him or drag him up.

“Would also be within our interests you didn’t give out our names just like that,” Crowley ended, and that got through. Halt’s grip tightened.

“I was worried.”

“Learn to be worried quietly then, won’t you?” He had gotten his voice back for a minute, and damn it if he wasn’t going to say all he had in him. “I wouldn’t like all townsfolk to be able to recite our names by the letter. I thought you were a good Ranger like that, Hibernian.”

Halt didn’t answer, but Crowley didn’t feel like he’d won. Instead, he felt like he shouldn’t have said that out loud. It was as if he was spiralling back down again, and, when Halt finally lifted his legs up and picked him up with offensively little effort, he tapped on his shoulder.

“Give me a second,” he asked. “Just until my head stops spinning.”

“That won’t happen soon, ‘m afraid,” Halt snorted, a little harsher than he probably would have.

Crowley wanted to snap back at him, say something clever, he knew he could, but, in a blink, he was gone. His voice seemed to have slipped right back into his throat, strangling him.

Halt didn’t feel his desperation. He was looking at Raven, who stood in front of them with her skirts clutched in her hands expectantly, instead.

“What, you want me to fight through you too?” Halt asked dryly. “While I’m holding him? I can do that.”

“No!” She jumped out of his way, not having caught the sarcasm, and raised her chin high nonetheless. “I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” Halt cut, voice low, but, unfortunately, he’d met his match in stubbornness.

“You can’t care for him all by yourself,” she argued, but he shook his head.

“You don’t get to tell me that.” He pulled Crowley a little higher up to his chest and stepped out. Crowley cracked a smile, hidden in Halt’s shirt, when he heard her eager footsteps behind them. “Get back, I said.”

“I’ll help you. “ She stood tall, going as far as to tip-toe next to them. She was taller than Halt. Which, to be quite honest, wasn’t a big achievement. Most were taller than Halt. “He saved me. I don’t want him to...” Decidedly, she ended, “I don’t want him to die.”

Halt brought them to a sudden stop as he dug his heels into the ground and turned to face her, raising his head to meet her eye. She undoubtedly felt the freezing cold radiating off him, but didn’t back down either way.

“I don’t want him to die either, glad to hear we have something in common,” he bit, and Crowley would’ve told him to lay it easier on the poor lass – she just wanted the best, really. But Crowley couldn’t talk, and Halt’s less-than-subpar social skills had to suffice for the both of them. “But if you ran back to the tavern and pretended to mind your own business, we’d be in and out and you’d never have to see us again.”

Desperately, she put her hands on her hips, and Crowley silently promised himself he’d try and recall who she reminded him of when she stood like that.

“It’s my business now, too, Ranger,” she said. The last person to say that got their nose broken, it occurred to him. Thankfully, Halt’s arms were busy holding him up, and they were slowly starting to strain against time. “He almost— he almost died for me, I wanna help him. I don’t care about your secrecy, okay, you can’t wrap up a pulsing stab wound alone, and I’ll do whatever – just let me aid, okay? We have garlic at the inn. I’ll make a mixture. That ought to help.”

Halt stared for a moment. Crowley could sense what he was thinking – a garlic drink would help him tell the extent of Crowley’s injury.

“If I said no now, he’d bleed out while you clawed at my face, lady.” He turned to jump down the stairs, all three at the same time, and Crowley groaned against his chest as it felt like all his organs were crushed into mash. “Sorry, you.”

“So I can--“

“Come along,” he allowed ruefully, and she did, leaping down the same stairs like a gazelle. “But, by the gods, be quiet, or I’ll make you so.”

And she was quiet like no one else. Halt seemed content, looking around to see where he’d put down the kit and walking a little softer to put down Crowley.

It was somewhere around that time that Crowley started seeing stars again. Well, not necessarily stars – it’s just the light from the candles and the fires all around that slowly blended together into what seemed darkness surrounding him with a flashy spot here and there. Halt was asking him something, no doubt sensing how disorientated he was, but Crowley didn’t hear him.

Everything around and over seemed strangely soft to him, then there was a strange sensation of falling –falling slowly, or maybe it was just Halt laying him down. Then his head was a little higher and he was cold. He was so cold.

But not for long. Something was burning in him, and he closed his eyes, trying to block out the feeling of flames in his muscles. To his surprise, it worked, somewhat – the view was still blurry, but he could distinctly hear the chirping of the last birds before the grounds died down, and he could hear voices, although he couldn’t quite make them out just yet.

Slowly, he came to realize he knew the voices, and he knew he had been talking to them not too long before. He couldn’t talk to them now, though – not nearly as much as he’d like to. He tried to take even breaths. It came as sharp whistling all the way to his lungs.

Then, some words were clearer. Some voice was louder. Some man was addressing him. Halt.

"Crowley, you hear me?"

It took him a few moments to realize that it's his name being called.

"I hear you," he replied, a little too shortly and a little too quietly. Halt accepted it, though.

"I'll get the knife out," he said evenly. "It'll hurt."

Crowley nodded. Or, at least, he hoped he nodded. Immediately, though, another voice cut in.

"But he'll start bleeding!" It was the girl, right above him. Cupping a dripping glass in her hands carefully. It didn’t smell nice. Crowley felt frustration coming off Halt in waves like wind.

"He's already bleeding, lady. And he'll bleed even more if you don't shut up."

How cold of you, Crowley wanted to say, Talking to such a kind gal that way. But, somehow, he felt Halt wouldn't appreciate that. He'd probably just roll his eyes. Or raise an eyebrow. Or both. Halt was skilled in those things. Yes, Halt was skilled.

There was a cold hand on his side, pressing around the knife. He didn't feel pain anymore, just a strange cool numbness. Maybe it was just the hand. Maybe he was in shock. Probably a mix.

“Okay, give him— that thing,” Halt said, gesturing vaguely to the cup in Raven’s hands with a displeased face. “And, for the record, Crowley, I’m sorry. I can taste it from here.”

“In the name of not dying, I s’pose,” Crowley muttered, watching as Raven brought the foul-scented cup to his mouth with a helpless expression.

“It’s not bad if you get used to it,” she tried, but he shook his head in dismissal.

“Don’t wanna get used to it. Just go.”

She complied.

Now, if the smell had been bad, the taste was all according to Halt’s predictions. He didn’t even feel like he could swallow the damn thing. Forcing it down, he eyed Raven, hoping maybe she feels at least a little bit of the nauseating aftertaste the garlic left on his tongue. She didn’t see it, though, instead watching Halt work.

“Convenient for you, it doesn’t seem to have gone through your bowel or anything like that,” Halt said, tilting his head very close to the wound.

“Convenient indeed,” Crowley sneered, only light mockery in his tone. Halt glared.

“Could always be worse,” he reminded, and poked the knife handle with his finger. Crowley’s hands spasmed immediately and instinctively tried to pry Halt away again. Halt raised his arms in peace. “See, I reckon this isn’t going to be nice. I barely touched it.”

Crowley sighed, and even that hurt. It was as if the blade in his flesh was moving on its own, but Halt’s hand made it worse. The numbness was gone, replaced with a sudden awareness that Halt wasn’t trying to scare him, instead really just warning about what it was going to feel like.

“Just get it over with, then.” He raised his arm, the one that could get in the way, and looked over to Raven. She had this inexplicable expression on her face, a mix of terror and interest, and although Crowley was used to such looks, he really would’ve preferred receiving it a different way, a different time.

Halt moved up closer, lifting him up and putting his head on his own legs to at least slightly elevate the wound, although it wasn’t much good. His hair was sticking to his forehead. It usually was, Crowley remembered. Halt had stupidly short hair. Stupidly cut, too.

“I could give you something to bite, no?” He suggested, but Crowley barely shook his head.

“I won’t shout,” he promised. Halt nodded, grim and not really looking at him. He trusted Crowley to know himself better when it came to those types of things, and he was glad.

“Okay. You hold him down, then,” he told Raven, whose face changed from morbid fascination to equally morbid dread.

“Me?” As if unsure, she raised her hand to her chest.

Crowley could pretty much hear Halt groaning internally, but he refrained from actually doing it out loud.

“How many other people do you see here? Of course it’s you. You insisted on coming, you do your part. Now hold him down.”

“Wh— Why?” Her hands were shaking. Even though Crowley’s whole world was spinning, he still saw her hands were shaking. It was truly that bad, then.

Halt leaned over Crowley and towards her, and Crowley didn’t even need to look to know the expression on his face. If there was one thing Halt could do, it was looking intimidating enough that no one would object to his words, usually.

“Because,” he said slowly, slowly enough to seem like he was spelling something out to a toddler, “people tend to squirm when they’re in a lot of pain, if you really need me to tell you this. So he’s likely going to move, and I’d strongly prefer him not ripping his own guts out. Hold him down.”

His last words were a little harsher than a regular order, and, finally, Raven complied, reaching out to grab Crowley’s wrists.

“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice noticeably wavering.

Crowley smiled. “No need,” he managed, and realized himself his voice was slowly dying down. “Considering you’re really not gonna keep me down with just that.”

Halt didn’t give her any more time to look confused.

“Knees on his thighs or he’ll kick you off,” he told her, and she did as asked, albeit a little bewildered. How often do you people do this was almost written on her face. “Good. You don’t weigh all that much to him, so try not to get tossed to the side.”

“Is he really gonna move that much?” She asked in a small voice, and Halt shrugged.

“Won’t know it ‘till we try it.” He looked down at Crowley for the last time. “Alright. As I said – not going to be pleasant.”

“Heard you the first time,” Crowley said. “Make it better than the drink and I’ll forgive you.”

Halt nodded, no sense of humour to be found, and moved to the knife.

Then he leaned over the wound, and suddenly Crowley couldn’t say anything anymore.

To say that it hurt would’ve been wildly inaccurate. It burned, it ripped through him, it felt like some wild animal was clawing through his flesh, and Crowley didn’t want to believe it was just some puny knife, because it felt like twenty. It felt like an arrow had gone all the way through his body, through all the muscle and bone.

He wasn’t aware whether he was bleeding – he probably was, but it didn’t feel like it. It felt like fire. It felt like a white flame in his veins, not the cool steel that it truly was.

Halt worked fast, Crowley knew that per routine, but he wouldn’t have, then. Seconds stretched, and it didn’t feel like the burning had a beginning or an end. It was just there, tearing him apart and tossing the pieces around like firewood to a dry campfire.

He heard Halt saying something, or muttering something, or maybe it was just Crowley’s head that was too loud to hear it. He tried to listen, but he couldn’t. It hurt.

"Oh, that's no good," he managed, aware that his voice was too high and his body too tense. "That's no good, that's no good, that's...” And, as much as he didn’t want to admit it, it came out on its own. “Ah, for pity's sake, it hurts. It hurts."

"I know." Halt was right by him, Crowley could feel his forehead somewhere against his jaw as he had moved to the wound and Crowley’s head had been on the ground again, the unruly black hair sticking up his cheek and partly obscuring his vision. Now he could hear him, Halt was looking down, his arm shifting slightly every-so-often. Each shift moved the knife, which brought another burning flame ravaging through Crowley's body like a thousand tiny thunderbolts. He didn't know if he was shouting. He wanted to, but his mouth was barely moving. He promised he wouldn’t shout. He promised.

"It hurts," he repeated, and Halt only pressed harder.

"I know. It's okay." His voice was barely cutting through the white noise in Crowley’s head. "It's okay. I promise."

It’s not.

“Please,” he said. He didn’t know why he was asking, what he was asking. Make it stop. Make it stop.

Amidst Halt's words, another voice was interrupting, harsh breaths from the girl. She was trying not to cry. Crowley wanted to raise his head, tell her it was all going to be just fine, but he couldn't move and that told more than anything that his words might be a lie.

The knife was barely in, but Crowley could still sense the flaming iron cutting every single muscle he had just below his stomach. Slowly, Halt was trailing off. As his voice faded, the girl's weeping grew quieter as well. It was safe to say Halt had been glaring her down. He tended to do things like it. But she, on the other hand, didn't seem to be all that intimidated by him as she was intimidated by his hands, coated in a thick red veil.

"Heavens, can't you do it faster," she asked, and he only huffed in response.

"Right, and cut through a dozen more veins. Gladly. Shut up."

No need to be so rude, princeling, Crowley would've said. If he could've.

Suddenly, Halt was even closer, right by his ear.

"I'm almost done. I'm gonna want you to stay awake as long as you can for this, okay?"

He wanted to nod, again. But he couldn't.

"Crowley, can you hear me?"

Parted lips. They were dry. His tongue was dry, too.

"I hear you," he repeated, unsure if it was even audible. Halt heard, though. Halt always heard.

"Good. Now, it might not hurt as much, but it'll definitely not be pleasant," Halt warned, and, unceremoniously, yanked his hand away.

The knife fell onto the grass without the characteristic clank of metal.

It hurt. It hurt. It wasn't subsiding at all. It felt like he was being pressed into nothing. Halt was spilling something out to the girl, she was pulling him up, hands on his side, cold and warm and cold again, then wet, and he was going to be sick. He was going to be sick.

God, it hurts.

He couldn't say it now. Not anymore. Halt couldn't hear him. He was there, somewhere, and he wasn't listening.

But Crowley was.

Through half-opened eyelids, he could see flashes of water, and, through the cold on his side, he figured someone was cleaning his wound. Through the silent chatter, he figured he could still hear them. From that, he took that he was still very much alive.

There was sharp pressure between the flashes of the water flask over his wound. Then more pressure. Sudden warmth - and more water.

"Enough," he muttered through the fire and the ache, and nothing had hurt more in a long time. "Isn't it enough?"

The girl choked something out, something that sounded an awful lot like a refusal, 'I can't,' and Halt's words, although quiet enough for Crowley's foggy brain to fail to understand, seemed firm enough to get her back on track.

"I'll break his bones," the girl said with the last trace of hesitation.

And Halt’s frustration finally did him in. The evening of worry and the sight of Crowley on the ground begging him to make it stop did him in.

"Break his goddamn bones, then! Go right ahead, break them, break every single one of them," he snapped, freezing in place to glare a burning hole through her soul. Crowley wasn't even watching and he felt the stone-cold eyes. "Break him all over, but if you stop the pressure, he's going to bleed out. Do not stop the pressure or he dies. And hurry it up!"

And, by that point, Crowley could’ve easily convinced himself he was sitting by the hottest spot of hell.

He was still awake enough to feel what was happening - Raven had moved from underneath him to above him, and she had weighed her entire body down onto his wound through her hands. Halt had put something over his wound - cloth, perhaps, a makeshift bandage. They had a kit. They had it. Had Halt gotten it? Crowley didn't see hear him leave. When did he leave? Did he even leave?

Crowley held complete silence in movement. More so than any other Ranger. He was the best one on the front. He was supposed to hear everybody else. He didn‘t hear Halt leave. What‘s wrong? What‘s wrong with him?

No, he told himself. He remembered. I have a kit by Abelard – oh, Abelard. That’s his horse. That’s the only one capable of putting his wit to shame. There was a kit, and Halt had run off to get it. His footsteps echoed in Crowley’s mind and he took a tiny breath of relief – he remembered.

"Crowley, if you even think of going under, I'm going to personally break all of your fingers. I mean that." Halt's voice. Just slightly, he felt like giving a chuckle. It was Halt's intent. But he couldn't move. "Stay with us. Scream, if you want. Kick. But don't drift off."

He shifted. The tightness on his stomach relaxed just a little.

"Can't," he explained. Really, something was tugging all over in his head, mashing all thoughts up. It would've been easier just to let it take over.

"I don't care if you can't," Halt said, and his words rung oddly loud in Crowley's ears. "You'll stay awake. I'm not giving you a choice here. Hey, hey, you're letting him squirm away, get back up!" The last order was meant to the girl, who managed to concentrate back on the injury. "Alright, I'm almost done. I'm almost done, you hear me? Talk to me."

I hear you.

Can you hear me?

Do you hear me?

"I don't think he's all there." A high voice, then a huff and a shove, and a different voice.

"'Course he's not all there. Wouldn't expect anything else after this much blood. Crowley. Talk to me. Please."

Four fingers above his eyes, moving slightly.

"Hey." Black hair. Black, black hair. Long hair. "Do you hear us?"

His lip twitched. His mouth was open.

"Halt," he said. The hair was black, the black hair - but the voice was too high. Not Halt. But his mouth was still open, and he couldn't stop talking. Because he could talk. He could talk again. "Halt."

The black hair moved back as the girl brushed it away from her face.

"What's he saying?" She asked, fear mixing with confusion.

She doesn’t know his name.

"Doesn't matter. He's awake. Getting him away will be a little more difficult."

Stupid suggestion. But light. His head felt clearer. The world gradually stopped spinning around him.

"Knock me out, then," Crowley said, surprising even himself with the clarity of his voice.

Suddenly, they could hear him again. And he could breathe. And the pressure was even.

A cloth on his wound, and two people by his side, and his mind not so excruciatingly blank anymore.

His name was there, he could remember who he was. For his own ease, he checked - Crowley Meratyn, King’s Ranger and the Ranger Commandant, and his teacher used to say that his temper came from his red hair. He could feel it, damp and sticking to his forehead. He was there. He was.

To his left, and girl he subconsciously dubbed Raven because of her hair - he didn't know her name, not yet. She was frozen with concern written all over her face.

Just to his right, Halt, his, his Halt - and it took Crowley a second to remember his name, all of it, so fancy and so unnecessary, who even needs an apostrophe in their name? - and his face less readable, just as it always was, and it brought a strange comfort. The sleeve of Halt’s shirt was torn off at the elbow, and a part of that warm material had now been neatly wrapped around his side.

He had been talking.

"Cave your skull in? Brilliant suggestion," he said, and while Crowley usually didn't mind the native tongue of his partner being fluent sarcasm, the words hammered through his head. "What else? Do I drag you by the hair? Because I could drag you by the hair."

"I got stabbed," he said, eyes large and round as he realized he really was stabbed, shit, there was a knife sticking out of his side for a good ten minutes. Or twenty. Or an hour. He really couldn‘t tell. "I got stabbed, and you're not willing to spare any sympathy."

"You got stabbed," Halt confirmed, venom almost sweet dripping off his tongue, "And why is that? If you didn't go saving strangers, maybe you wouldn't face death seven working days a week, Crowley." Disinterestedly, he nodded to Raven. "No offense."

"None, err, none taken?" She gave an awkward shrug. "I am glad— I'm glad this is... This didn't take a turn for the worse."

“We don’t know anything yet.” Halt was quick to tear any optimism she had to shreds. Crowley – not so much.

He smiled at her, watching her eyes filling with tears she was too busy to cry out before. "I'm a Ranger, lady, we have nine lives." His smile was nothing if not pathetic, but she listened still.

"Like a cat?"

"Whichever way it is with lives, he's run out of his own years ago and is now borrowing my fifth." Halt had been watching him intently, checking for signs of his wound reopening – it could always get worse. He didn’t tell Raven that. For whichever time that night, Crowley was glad.

Halt finally tore his eyes off Crowley's makeshift bandage and crouched up. "Come on, glass-bones. It’ll be a little bit until the garlic makes it down there so I can see if you’ve really done yourself in. Cropper will surely want a word with you as well."

Oh, wonderful, I somewhat survived a hole in my stomach just to get stomped to death by my own horse. Slowly, Crowley pushed himself up with his elbows, and it was fine.

He let Halt pull him up, admittedly slumping against him, but he wasn't a Ranger for nothing - so it was fine.

He noticed Raven by Halt's side - she'd see them out, but he didn't know why. It was going to be fine.

Halt's shoulder was pressing into Crowley's side quite roughly. It was fine.

"Okay, come on."

Halt was half-dragging him. One of them was limping, definitely one of them, or maybe they both were. Slowly, Crowley came to the horrid realization that he might've been too quick to stand. But it had to be fine.

"Wait, can you—" Halt's voice. Even more horrid was the fact that this voice, never wavering, had been rising in concern. "Oh, oh, no. That’s no good, I'll get you back down."

"I'm fine," he insisted.

He was not.

His legs gave out a mere blink after saying that, and Raven's sharp gasp pierced his ears like a blade again, bringing the world to a screeching stop.

"No, this won't do. It's a proper bandage by the horses, or you won't be able to move until next month." Halt wasn't saying this to anyone as much as to himself, really. "Crowley?"

"I'm fine," he repeated, despite his knees buried in the ground. "Just— give me a second."

He physically felt Halt shrug - his arm was still around Crowley's waist.

"Okay. I'll carry you again. Don't get jumpy."

Crowley quirked up, lips already parted to protest, but he was losing the ability to have them hear him again. His tongue wasn't cooperating. God, he really shouldn‘t have stood up.

It could always get worse. But it was not getting better.

He wasn’t sure exactly how much weight Halt could carry, but he definitely hadn’t thought that his pebble of a companion could just scoop him up with ease while he was still standing. Well, who could’ve guessed, he thought, resting his head against Halt’s shoulder for a little minute. Halt’s full of surprises. When he wants to be.

Raven was chattering by their side, anxiously trying to reach him, but Crowley’s mind stopped taking in the meanings of the words she was saying. He could only hear the quivering of her tone and the dryness in Halt’s. Unfazed by her attempts, he told her off, and Crowley stopped listening.

It felt as if the air was growing warmer, and Crowley was warmer with it. Halt’s rushing footsteps swung him from side to side ever-so-slightly, and he really wanted nothing else than to just give in now. The knife was out. Halt was there. Everything had to be fine.

Raven squeaked about something, and he just wanted her to be quiet – her and the rest of the world, too. He tried to raise his hands, then to look up – neither worked all that well, he just got Halt’s attention.

“You still need me awake, or...?” He tried, hardly even getting the words out. Halt looked down to him instead, carefully lifting him a little higher.

“I’d prefer that, you’d be easier to wrap up,” he said, and, taking note of Crowley’s doubtful expression, added, “But I don’t necessarily need that, no.”

Crowley thinks he nodded, but, again, he wouldn’t know. He didn’t feel anything when he drifted off.

“Sorry,” he said, and then there was nothing except the silent shuffling of two pairs shoes on the ground. Finally.

Finally.

It was raining. He could smell the cold in the air and he could hear the droplets hitting the tent. He was, however, warm. Under something. Under a cloak, and there was pressure somewhere. He felt it, he was aware of it, he wasn’t numb but it didn’t hurt either.

When his eyes tore themselves open, he immediately had an apology on his tongue – I’m sorry, I should’ve stayed awake. But, as his senses slowly returned to him, he was elated to realize that not only he could hear the world around him, but his stomach was dry, wrapped up in proper bandaging. That was where the pressure had come from.

And, well, what could he hear – he heard breathing by his side, and then a shuffle.

His head was not empty anymore, but his mouth was – and his dry tongue was not doing his voice wonders. He couldn’t call out.

Someone called out to him, though. “Crowley.”

It was nothing less of torture to turn his head – but he managed, and he saw Halt hunched over him with wide eyes next to him, legs crossed and look, albeit for some reason clouded, still rather prying.

“Crowley?” he said again, this time lifting it into a question. Strangely, Crowley noticed at first how dry his lips were. He looked like, well. He looked like absolute hell.

“I’m ‘ere,” Crowley replied, and, although it sounded more like the croak of a toad than a regular person’s speech, he was proud of at least that.

Halt, however, only gestured vaguely. “I can tell,” he assured. “How is it?”

“How’s what?” he asked, and Halt’s eyes rolled up to his skull and beyond.

“I don’t know, Crowley, how’s your grandmother?” he bit, and Crowley instantly came to his senses. “How’s the side?” Oh, oh, that.

“I feel like I’m gonna die, to tell you the truth.” He shifted with a grunt. “But, hey, I’m probably not.”

“Probably,” Halt agreed. “Though I barely got you into those bandages. You’re rather heavy, you see.”

It was Crowley’s turn to roll his eyes. The bandage on his side was far too neat for that to have been the case.

“Garlic?” He asked, and Halt shook his head.

“Not a trace, thankfully.” He shrugged. “Turns out not only are you thick-skulled, you’re thick-boned everywhere else, too.”

“You’re a bastard, you know,” Crowley told him, watching with an amused expression.

“And you’re not?” Halt questioned, leaning forward slightly.

“I’m not. Never have I ever done anything that’d make me any sort of villain.” He smiled brightly, and Halt rolled flicked his eyes up and down and then stayed like that, stayed still. Crowley added, then, “Maybe I wanted to take a knife, you don’t know.”

Halt’s eyes darted to the side.

“Don’t say it like that,” he muttered.

“Seriously,” Crowley chuckled, failing to notice how Halt was doing his best to look everywhere but at him. “One experience only made me more self-confident in exacting my bastardly skills.”

There was a chilly pause before it occurred to Crowley that Halt wasn’t actually handling this too well.

“I take it back, Crowley,” Halt said. “Not only are you a bastard, you’re an absolute prick. Going around taking knives to the stomach, terrifying the fuck out of me and then going up to call me names? You glass-hearted idiot,” he continued, and Crowley was slowly leaning back with every half-hearted insult Halt delivered to him. He wasn’t aware a joke would agitate him so much. “You think what you do only concerns you? You, you self-sacrificing, knightly,” he hissed that out as if it was the worst thing a person could be called, “knightly moron, you, you...”

Slowly, he ran out of swears to throw at him, having gone through both Araluenian and Hibernian vocabularies (and, if Crowley was not mistaken, some fancy Arridi words as well), and just sort of stared him down for a second before looking away, and adding in a low voice:

“Don’t do that again, will you?” His eyes skittered to Crowley’s stomach. “You almost died.”

Crowley bit his lip and nodded. “I’ll try and refrain,” he promised with a half-smile.

He felt a weak sting of guilt somewhere in his chest as Halt looked him up and down.

“I’m sorry for telling you off when you said you were worried,” Crowley said quietly. “I wasn’t thinking straight.”

“When do you ever. I’d forgotten that.” Halt shrugged absent-mindedly. “You were right. I shouldn’t have given out names like that. But I really was, well, out of it, and... It just... It came out.”

“Happens.” Crowley waved it off, glad they’d sorted it. Halt rarely – if ever - rubbed him the wrong way.

He looked around, not really expectant but just confused. “Wait – where’d she go?”

“Who?”

“Your grandmother, Halt,” he threw his words back at him, and Halt may have punched him if he hadn’t been stabbed beforehand. “Raven, where is she?”

“You asked her for her name?” Halt raised an eyebrow. “Thought you only asked for the names of ladies you wanted to sleep with.”

“Halt, for God’s sake.” Crowley scrunched up his nose. “I don’t bed people that have seen me bleeding out on some dirty floor.”

“That’s rude, I was about to offer.”

Crowley laughed, and he felt like his stomach had torn itself apart again. With the most serious expression he could muster up, he added, “That jealousy, Halt? You wouldn’t sleep with anyone, for better or for worse. Except for me, you know the drill.” Halt opened his mouth, then closed it, deciding not to dignify that with an answer. “And, for what it’s worth, asking for someone’s name doesn’t mean you’d sleep with them.”

Halt shrugged. “Still. I mean, good for you, she knows your name, you know hers.”

Here Crowley got a little embarrassed. “I don’t know hers, actually.”

“But you just—“

“I call her that because somewhere in my wounded delirium I was about to start mixing you two up.” He felt himself go red. Halt and that woman looked nothing alike, but the black hair seemed to do it while he was fading in and out of consciousness.

“You mixed me up with a seamstress,” he echoed, and Crowley shrugged – or tried to.

“What can I say, hard to tell pretty people worrying about me apart,” he said. Halt blinked for a second.

“Okay,” he said. “You’re still out there, I suppose. Sleep.”

 Crowley choked with laughter, and his poor stomach reached its limit.

“Ow,” he barely managed. Halt’s eye offered no sympathy. “So where is she, after all?”

“She went back,” he finally answered. “I told her to get my cloak and then we left.”

Crowley’s smile disappeared. “You left her?”

Halt was quiet for a second. Reluctantly, he confirmed, “Yes.”

Crowley sat up a little straighter, to Halt’s dismay. “You shouldn’t have. She helped us.”

“No, Crowley. You helped her, you saved her life, and she just held you down enough for me to cover a wound you’d gotten by shielding her.”

“And don’t you dare tell me it wasn’t the right thing to do.”

Halt bowed his head. “I won’t. I’m just saying it was better to be out of there as quickly as possible. It’s not Araluen or Redmont, it’s not our fiefdoms, we don’t belong there and there is no reason for us to leave any more of a trail than we already have. She’ll probably go to her own Ranger if she needs anything else, anyway, whichever one’s around here.”

He stretched, all his points made, and knelt forward, then rolled onto his blanket, not too far away from Crowley. The latter realized he probably hadn’t slept all that much, waiting for him to show any sign of life. Again, when Crowley first woke up, Halt looked like garbage. Relatively relieved garbage, but garbage nonetheless. Now he turned on his side, facing away from him, and soon his breathing was evening out.

Crowley himself sat in gloomy silence, interrupted only by a quiet snore from the side every once in a while. He didn’t even particularly like or dislike the girl, he was just constantly baffled by Halt’s ability to just disengage himself from any matter whenever he wanted. To Crowley, it seemed at times cruel and, at other times, an irreplaceable gift. Now it was... Reasonable, but it still didn’t sit well with him.

“How do you do that?” He asked. Halt coughed himself awake, turning to look at him.

“What?” He asked hoarsely, dark eyes shining with accusation, and Crowley gave an apologetic shrug for waking him.

“How do you just... Leave? And not care at all?”

“Because if you start trusting strangers, you’re gonna get stabbed and die,” Halt explained, half-asleep. “So don’t trust anyone and there’s less chance of getting stabbed and dying.”

“Wow, you really—“ Crowley chuckled. “I shouldn’t have woken you up.”

After a minute, he added, “But here you are, trusting me. Trusted me since the very start. A bit hypocritical, isn’t it?” He paused before rushing, “And you did trust me, right?”

“With my life,” Halt muttered.

“What, you think I’m incapable of stabbing you?” Crowley said jokingly, but he might’ve as well been talking to the ceiling of the tent – Halt had slipped under the second he put his head down, and Crowley looked on in wonder. “You know what, to hell with morals— I want to know how you do that, too. I wish I could just lie down and knock myself out immediately,” he told Halt’s blanket. Naturally, the blanket didn’t answer, and neither did Halt.

Crowley shrugged, sitting up and looking up at the ceiling, trying to see the stars through the stretched material.

His stomach was slowly starting to ache again, but it was nothing like the flames that ravaged him before. He was glad.

Casting another glance at his sleeping companion, he carefully borrowed his seax—Halt had collapsed as he were, all weapons still in scabbards, easy for Crowley to help himself. While he was at it, he brushed some hair off Halt’s face, and gave away some of his blanket. Crowley wasn’t going to sleep now, anyway. With the blade resting in his lap, he touched his side – not even a day ago, there was a knife sticking out to the hilt, and now he held a similar one for his watch.

To be quite honest, it should’ve horrified him more than it really did. Maybe the Ranger lifestyle was getting to him and it was simply harder to be shocked. Maybe it would move to his subconscious, eventually. Maybe he’d become like Halt.

No, no, anyone but Halt.

Oh, the daily irony faced by a Ranger.

Sheepish and a little red in the face, Crowley smiled.