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On a day like this you wouldn’t expect to find a man in the fields, his head thrown back in glory as he mocked the wind with his laughter, grinning like a madman. Yet there he sat surrounded by tall grasses, willow and wildflower. When he stands, he sways with the wind, battered, and bruised. He stumbles, arm clutched into his side, teeth still bared to the wind. Long hair sticking to his skin darkened with rain. If Icarus laughed as he fell, he could too. Despite all odds, headed home once more.
~
Home here starts as it does for most with a door. A large thing made from darkened wood with an ugly brass knob dressed in swirling patterns. Past that fading emerald walls. This time the front door revealed envelopes and postcards strewn across the ground. Letters of varying sizes covered what should have been the entryway floor. At the very least you would have to wonder what they were all doing there, or perhaps why there were so many. Why hadn’t anyone picked them up? Why had some been there for weeks, lying beneath others that arrived just that morning? Some lay opened on the table from before the others were left strewn across the floor. For now, they were left alone, stepped over.
You almost wouldn’t expect someone in his condition to get this far, though he made his way up the stairs to where you could see varnished hardwood floors. Anthony stumbles through the halls, the same deep wallpaper here as was in the entryway, and into the kitchen. He retrieves a small chest from a cabinet below the sink, hinges squeaking as the door moves. As if to check all was as it should be, from the box came: bandages, plasters, wipes, and other small pieces. They are returned carefully by shaking hands and moved atop an ottoman in front of an armchair in the heart of the next room.
The leather on the chair is irreparably cracked; a lighter brown where the material had been worn and rubbed at through the years, its pair across the room cold.
An almost foggy looking, rusted, mirror is dragged from its place across the room with one hand, scraping the floor as it’s moved to the far side of the stool. His tie thrown across the chair with the other before returning to support the shoulder.
Crowley sinks down into the chair sighing as he relaxes for a second before leaning forward to nurse his wounds. Hissing as the antiseptic touches his cheek and bandaging himself up to the best of his abilities. He knew someone else could probably do this for him and much better at that. Looking back on it someone else had saved him the last time he was in such bad shape. He could remember him mumbling under his breath, muttering something about being more careful next time. Only he wasn’t here, they couldn’t share any of those musings this time. He sat alone in the middle of the room. In the big brown chair between the window and the fire. The sun setting behind him casting a golden yellow glow throughout the room.
No world has ever felt emptier than when you are among the things to which you once belonged.
~
Hours later he could be found curled up in the same oversized leather chair, glass in hand, under a greyed knit blanket, far more worn than when it was white. The yellows from behind gone. Replaced by deep flickering oranges from the grate. The peaceful crackling of burning wood lulling him into sleep, surrounded by a familiarity he had missed in the time he had spent away. He fell asleep in the chair not willing to face the bedroom. Not willing to face the reality of sleeping alone. Being alone, alone in a house that suddenly seemed far too big.
~
The fire had long burnt out by the time Crowley woke up. Yellows and pinks returning to the room through large windows between even larger bookshelves. Between shelves and cabinets housing many newly sorrowful delights. Physical memories, proof he existed, proof he had lived. Before if he woke up at home the air would be filled with the flavours and sounds of morning waiting for him. Crisp air braking in through open windows wafting bacon, pancakes and fresh orange through their home. Instead, all that remained were the smells of him the whiskey and the fire. Even the birds seemed to know his loss. Their song sorrowful, slower than before.
He managed his way up out of the armchair, joints cracking and pulling as muscles stretched free from their settlement.
There is a certain grace in the way he makes his way downstairs toward the front door to collect the mass of papers from the floor. Once gathered they are piled high on the kitchen table to be sorted and read later. Perhaps if he had been properly wakened at this point, he may have found the name on one letter at the very bottom much sooner. But for now, it stays, peering out from beneath the piles, waiting to be found. Waiting patiently to break his bliss.
In the bedroom Crowley can be found swapping dark slacks for soft worn jeans and his torn shirt for a white tee. Leaving his eveningwear crumpled on the floor. Spending as little time as possible there as the bed bores into the back of his skull walks the hall pulling a mossy knit jumper over his head and wrangling rusty curls back into a low bun.
Pushing aside letters as he clears a space for himself, reveals the waiting envelope addressed ‘the proprietor of the estate of Mr Ezra Fell.’ Crowley sits the letter onto the counter away from the others as if to distance himself from whatever soft horror lies within.
~
Upon finishing a breakfast scrounged together from the remnants of an almost baren kitchen Crowley decides he is going to open the shop beneath the flat. Passing the counter, he lifts the envelope from where it lay. Making his way down the stairs into the entryway, tucking the paper into his back pocket as he fumbles his keys trying to open the front door.
There is a pot knocked over in the doorway spilling dirt across the front step that he makes note to rectify at some point; he’ll have to find a broom first though. Finally through the door he is met with a familiar homely sight. Rows and rows of shelves full of books. Draped ivy between young fruit trees and house plants.
Sure to lift an apron from the coat hook on the way, he waters each plant acting almost as if he’d never left. Pretending everything was exactly the same, as if nothing had changed. As if the paper in his pocket wasn’t burning a hole in his conscience. As if he was coming home. As if he was going to walk through the door any moment now, grin wide as a cheshire. Trying so desperately to believe he was going to make it back to him. Pretending he wasn't already gone. Lost from this world. His Angel returned to the skies.