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The heavy, dank smell of Hell filled his nostrils, instantly recognizable. His head throbbed and Crowley winced, biting back a hiss of irritation. He hurt everywhere . Scrapes against legs, blood slowly drying on his skin, his tunic torn open and carelessly manhandled, despite the delicate silk, and ropes, the awful prickly kind, biting into his wrists. An orange glint from the corner caught on his hair, tussled from coiffed curls to spilling over his shoulder, dark and matted by something he didn’t want to know about. The fire popped and Crowley jumped, finding matching ropes against his ankles as they pulled against the chair.
Fuck , Crowley blessed, tugging against his restraints. He tried to think of anyone he may have recently pissed off, could have irritated, someone that might be a bit... perturbed . He’d kept his head down recently, save a sly tongue and some quick fingers. Hell was supposed to encourage that, though, weren’t they?
With a slump of his shoulders, Crowley finally stopped trying to fight against the ties on his wrists. For a moment, Crowley wondered just where, exactly, he had been dragged. It didn’t last long. He’d been in this room before; it came with being a pest to your boss. The snake on the side of his face itched, his first reminder of exactly what he was.
“Crowley,” came a voice and he wiggled against the scars on his skin as they lit up, quite peeved the marks seemed to remember who had inflicted them. Hastur stepped from the shadows beside the fire, the last bit of a cigarette between his fingers, and grinned . Oh, Crowley hated that grin. Nothing good -er, well, bad?- came from it.
“Duke Hastur!” he always made a show of greeting the monarch, if not from reverence, then from spite. “Not a great time, I’m afraid. Seem’s I’ve gotten a bit tied up at the moment,” Hastur’s face fell, and he tossed the cigarette butt into an empty corner of the room. The embers glowed for a minute, two, before smothering itself in whichever substance had leaked from the walls.
And to think he had just been top-side, sauntering away from a pâtisserie, the angel safely on his way home to-
Wait.
The angel.
Sitting alone, all pretty and posh, his own hands tethered together by weak links of chain Crowley knew could be snapped in an instant. He’d been so relieved to see those marvelous off-colored eyes, thankful to Someone Aziraphale hadn’t been hurt.
Now .
Crowley felt his throat dry and Hastur’s footsteps echoed in the chamber around them, hollow tics on cold stone. The fire, sat in a braiser as it crackled and popped, seemed to follow his movements, closing whatever distance there had been to settle just behind the Duke’s heels. Something within the fire glowed a red hot, and Crowley pointedly looked anywhere else.
He’d made this easy for Hastur.
“Looks like you,” the other demon paused, watching with glee as Crowley’s amber eyes darted away from his own. “You’ve upset someone, you have.”
The hiss from an old water pipe made Crowley jump, and he vowed to himself to someday wipe that look from Hastur’s face. He tried the ropes again, unsurprised when they refused to budge, and set his chin high.
“Couldn’t possibly imagine what you mean,” Crowley started, nonchalance coating every word. He wasn’t nearly as good a liar as Aziraphale, but… “End up tied to a chair in a dungeon-y dungeon nearly every other day, me. Common occurrence. Y’know. Hell-raiser , all that.” The Duke looked unimpressed, but had little way of arguing. Top-side hadn’t ever really appealed to him; who was he to know the goings-on above?
“No,” Hastur continued, a grimy hand reaching out to stoke the fire with a poker Crowley hadn’t noticed before. “You’ve upset... Someone. ” His cackle was maddening, bouncing off the bare, clammy walls and raking down Crowley’s spine. “Can’t just go setting people free of the Bastille without Someone noticing, Crawly!”
He winced, willed the nausea to settle.
“Seven prisoners, ripe for Hell’s Army, and you set them free! ” The iron poker clanged against the braiser, the flames grew. Crowley felt an odd sense of fresh air.
Not the angel.
The storming of the Bastille.
Not the angel.
Four years ago.
Hastur lifted the poker from the flames, twisting it between his fingers to show off the white-hot end. It was all so reminiscent, this scene. Crowley could still feel the heat of the serpent at his ear, as if it had just been branded the week before. It had seared his flesh, pricked his eyes, turned his vision white with pain and a new determination.
He’d half expected another snake to be staring him down.
The mark of Leviathan glowed in the drab air, casting terrible shadows about Duke Hastur’s face. Glee in his eyes Crowley had only seen on special occasions.
“Well that’s a bit on the nose, innit?” Crowley’s voice felt much steadier than it sounded, and it only seemed to spur Hastur on. “W- I just...- y’see, it’s...-”
Crowley’s mouth snapped shut, his jaw locking nearly instantly as the brand pressed just to the right of his heart (or where his heart would be). Hastur’s sickly grin only grew as the scent of burnt flesh permeated the room. He wished he could close his eyes; begged and pleaded silently to just close his fucking eyes .
Slowly, slowly, slower than Crowley ever thought possible, the iron began to cool, and Hastur clicked his tongue in disappointment. Bit by bit, he pulled, and Crowley tried to focus on the taste of blood filling his mouth, rather than the blood down his front. The brand tugged at his newly charred chest, like picking at a too-new scab, but he allowed himself a breath as Hastur returned the iron to the braiser.
His struggle for air echoed in the room and Hastur took this time to light another cigarette. He looked proud of himself; contented and unashamed and one day, he would burn. Crowley could hear his screams now.
“That was-” Crowley stopped, cleared his throat, licked the blood from his lip. “Anticlimactic, wouldn’t you say? I mean, honestly, Hastur, the little squiggle was more tha’that.”
The putrid smell of burning flesh came back and Crowley wrinkled his nose as he stood.
Er, tried to stand.
Unlike the last time, his bonds held firmly, rather than slipping away into nothing and leaving the corporation of a demon curled up on the floor. Hastur took a long drag of his cigarette, stamped the butt out with the heel of his shoe, and lifted the iron brand again, all remaining bits of ripped flesh burned clean off.
“You’re always in such a hurry, Crawly. Stay for a while.” With his free hand, Hastur aligned the end of the poker just so, each line matching with the ones already darkening on Crowley. “We’ve got six more tries for you to learn where your loyalties lie.”
-*-*-*-
A flick of his wrist, taut and rigid with the effort of staying as still as possible, pulled the curtains closed, cutting every possible bit of sunlight from the room. It was a different darkness than the one Down Stairs; this one more soothing than the damp, sticky miasma he’d escaped. Crowley eased his way across the floor, a hand cupped loosely around the wound on his chest, as if to protect it. The brand throbbed and cursed at him angrily, more than the serpent ever had, and you would too if you had been cauterized seven times exactly.
One for each prisoner , Hastur had giggled.
Crowley snarled, padding his bare feet across the floor of his townhouse, and barely noticing the letter beside his bed as he crawled and slithered on top of the bedding, much too exhausted to clean himself of the ick he’d tracked in behind him.
Gingerly, Crowley moved his hand, his stomach flipping with disgust at the sight of his new reminder. The charred skin had already blackened, though it oozed pus and blood and every tiny movement sent new shockwaves down Crowley’s back.
A miracle would have this clean in an instant; a miracle could soothe him to sleep, and quicken the healing, and…
Crowley, with a sigh of resignation, finally looked to the letter beside him. Aziraphale’s perfect swooping handwriting addressed the front, and as he unfolded it, Crowley felt his eyes sting and burn and get top-heavy.
Dearest Crowley,
Despite the terrible circumstances in which our night began, I did so want to thank you for the crepes. It was a wonderful ending to a chance encounter with my greatest adversary. I should hope to do it again, someday.
Yours,
Aziraphale (signed in a wonderful flourish)
The letter fell from Crowley’s hand, the muscles much more relaxed than they had been only moments before. He sucked in a staggered breath, fought the weight of his eyes for just that bit longer, before he fell onto his pillow, the barest hint of what could be a smile on the corner of his blood-dried lips.
He’d be fine, like he always was. He’d be fine, because he had to be.
He’d be fine, for Aziraphale.
And when he woke, nearly a hundred years past in the blink of an eye, Crowley would know exactly how to wipe that torturous gleam from Hastur’s eyes.