Chapter Text
The air in the Alps is very cold and bitingly pure, and Crowley breathes deep as he clings to the side of the wooden tower. His shoulders ache as he maneuvers the cable into position, settles and clips it. He can't tell where corporeal exhaustion ends and the miraculous takes over. It's all work and it needs to get done, so he's doing it.
Why Hell cares if the Austro-Hungarian Empire gets this new technology across this stretch of the World, he doesn't know. Crowley's not a Member of the Dark Council. He's a field agent and this is an assignment. The humans can't be tempted to it -- it's physically beyond them. This task came from Ligur with a map, clearly marked (if badly spelled), and Crowley doesn't need another argument with his supervisors. This time he will do the job himself.
The afternoon sky is full of clouds, the landscape so thickly covered with snow that the directionless light reminds him (he's almost sure) of Heaven. It smells better, though: evergreen trees, clean wind, and the oiled metal of his sharp-bladed, smooth-jointed tools. It's a warmish day for the season; sometimes there's a brief shower of snow or sleet. Nothing worth stopping work for. He takes off his gloves and turns his fingernails into claws to climb down to the ground.
When the rest of his unit arrives, it'll be all right if they look at their own maps and orders and murmur csodák, miracles. Communication is patchy; they can imagine some other outfit got there first. But Crowley needs to stay embedded, needs to remain human in the eyes of his companions. It's hardly safe to be known as csodatevő -- miracle worker, let alone démon. His assignment isn't to ensure their victory -- that always seems like it would be easy, but policy rarely permits it. It's trivia as usual: the proverbial horseshoe nail.
This time it's cable towers, running ropes like roadways high above the treacherous, trackless mountains below. (Crowley thinks of live vine bridges in tropical New Guinea, and shivers in his woollen uniform.) The raw materials are the trees themselves, and Crowley's often fancied himself a gardener. It's close enough to pruning to clear them from the forest and get them stripped to timber. The engineering's straightforward: bracing, counterbalance, brakes. He's got the manual in his pocket and checks it from time to time, to make sure he's keeping on spec. Miraculously, his bags of spikes and wheels and brackets never run out.
He's about a kilometre ahead of his unit. When they catch up (likely tomorrow) there will be grumbling and dispatches -- no army is ever as organized as it pretends to be -- but in the end the soldiers will sign off and be grateful. Everyone will be glad to find themselves ahead of the plans for once.
Building these isn't bad, as work for Hell goes. He cuts a rope and two logs drop into their bracing crosspiece with a CRACK! They bend and shake like snakes at first, then settle. Crowley sets the pins at their bases with a miracle -- his hands, always a little delicate, wear out quickly with hammering in the cold. Then he climbs up to secure the joint where they cross, high above. That's crucial for the strength of the design.
His secret that he likes this kind of work. Building things. Working out each problem (he's using a chisel now, so the two logs cleanly interlock) as plans come into reality. Whether or not it's what he was made for, he likes what he's making now.
Each tower's base is a timber square, with a tall, slender pair of poles rising to a peak on each of two opposite sides. These are further reinforced and braced together with eight timbers straight across and eight more at angles, and then a single one like a bridge at the top, between the peaks. They're not quite as tall as the surrounding trees, which are ancient. Crowley has already finished five, which would be a good day's work for the company, and he thinks he can manage two more. He left before breakfast ("Orders, corporal," and waving of paperwork) and plans to slink back after supper. It will be warm in the tent with his comrades, and he's glad he does not need to eat.
The sky clears as the day ends, and it's nothing like Heaven now. The sun goes down in a wash of soft greys and hot pink around bright gold. Overhead the vault dims to indigo, and stars come out in silvery pinpricks. The Moon hangs in the east, an arc like a delicate bone.
Crowley bangs a spike through a crosspiece, then leans on it to test its strength. Solid. He's suddenly very tired -- every one of these logs he moved should really take a squad of soldiers with ropes and pulleys, and it's been just Crowley and his own demonic miracles all day. But he feels good, too, in a way. He looks back down the slope of the mountain, sees the line of his work behind. Pride, that's it. A proper sin. He climbs up to sit on the crosspiece, get a better view.
It's glorious. The World stretches out below -- rippling slopes of mountains, snowy peaks and living forests. There are his towers, barely visible beneath the trees. He can trace the line back to his fellows' work, which makes him feel a different kind of warmth. There are the lights of distant villages, the tickle of human souls. It's beautiful. There is nowhere in the Universe he would rather be.
He stays there, turning sometimes to take in another aspect of the view, until the sun is gone. The winter sky is gorgeous and terribly familiar. The hot-blue glimmer of the Pleiades, the green blur of nebula in Orion's belt -- human eyes can see that, he's pretty sure. The ragged arch of the galaxy, in its thousand shades of white.
He watches long enough to see the sky turn (the World turn) around the axis of the North Star. The moon rising, a meteor blazing through the atmosphere. Crowley isn't comfortable at all -- his corporation is shivering and stiff, and his arse hurts where his old bones press against unyielding wood. But the stars are pouring light into his eyes until he feels like he could overflow, and it's good, it feels so good. He never wants to look away again.
He'll be AWOL if he isn't back by night check (supper's pushing it), and it's a hassle doing miracles for army paperwork. Crowley tries to organize himself, to crawl back across the crosspiece and climb down. His spine hurts too, its too-many joints cramped up where he's raised the serpent head to look unnaturally upwards.
The raw wood beneath him is both splintery and slick. A sharp bit catches his glove like a bite and his boot slips, snags on the edge, then slides off again into the void. "Bless it!" he hisses, loud in the night air. He kicks out wildly, trying to find the crosspiece again, or maybe the vertical -- anything solid -- but there's nothing. He's off-balance. The stars in the sky spin above him like they're drunk.
Crowley's falling.
His wings snap out but he's falling. They beat and his body twists in the air, between snow and stars, Heaven and Hell, but he is useless loveless broken lost --
He hits the ground and crumples into a burning star of pain.