Log: SPN!Lucifer and Crowley WHO: Lustiel and Crowley WHEN: Now! WHERE: Crowley's lair in Scotland WHAT: Crowley invited Lucifer over on the pretence that he was ready to kill Dean. That isn't what happened when Lucifer got there. WARNINGS: Focus on consent issues (in the form of SPN's angel/demon possession)
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Castiel's mind was a dangerous place to be.
It manifested itself as a real place, thoughts taking the shape of the halls of Mount Weather, able to be walked through and explored — it looked as if a hurricane had wiped through it all. Furniture overturned, doors off their hinges, most of the lights blown out. Blood on the floor and the walls. There had been a fight here, but now it was silent, save for the flickering hum of fluorescent lights and the crackle of damaged electricity.
All of the hallways led to one place: Dean's room. It was never Castiel's room, it was Dean's room, and Castiel just lived there, too.
Unlike the halls, it was untouched. Stacks of books taken from the library littered almost every available surface. An almost-completed puzzle of The Creation of Adam was carefully laid out on the floor. Castiel's two-headed rabbit, Princess Fluffles, was taking a nap in the corner. Princess Fluffles never ate anything, because Princess Fluffles wasn't real. None of it was real, but when Castiel thought of a safe place to be, this was all he wanted.
Castiel was on top of the bed, one arm dangling off the mattress and his eyes staring blankly at the closet. Bob Seger was playing on an old cassette deck.
Lord I feel no more.
In the real Mount Weather, Crowley wouldn't have been able to walk through the door of Dean's room; the devil's trap on the floor prevented that. In Castiel's mind, however, there was no such restriction. Still, Crowley was careful as he passed over the threshold. He knew he wouldn't have long to try to reach Castiel before Lucifer came howling along. It hadn't been easy for Crowley to draw Lucifer into his reach, or to possess Castiel's body himself— but, Crowley being Crowley, he'd pulled it off.
He noted the puzzle on the floor. That puzzle and its missing piece was the last thing Castiel had posted about before his "update", wasn't it? The two-headed rabbit was a stranger detail to him, but as long as it stayed docile, Crowley could ignore it.
Castiel— well, Castiel looked like shit. Clearly things were not going well for him.
"Loneliness is a feeling," Crowley said as he pressed 'stop' on the cassette deck. "What you need to be feeling is angry."
Castiel had been drowning out the sound of silence with music, and when it was gone it took him several seconds to blink slowly and lift his head. Nothing ever changed in his headspace as long as Lucifer wasn't here, and Lucifer had been leaving him alone ever since he gave up fighting. No more pain, no more suffering, no more struggling to get back to Dean and scream out that he was trapped here and he didn't want this, no matter what he chose in their home universe.
He didn't know how long he'd been lying in here, how long he'd retreated into his safe space, the one spot left in his mind and body where he could be without being harmed. Days? Weeks?
Did it matter?
He looked toward the tape deck. "...Crowley?"
Crowley spread out his hands. "Tada. In the smoke your mind is perceiving as flesh. Why are you here?" He looked at Castiel more closely, distaste twisting his features. It'd be one thing if Castiel looked that pathetic because of Crowley's own doing; then, Crowley would be pleased to see it. But seeing the fight gone out of him over Lucifer? Ugh. "Come on, get up."
Castiel frowned. "Why are you here?" he asked, instead of getting up.
"Because I can get in without a 'yes' and tell you how much 'no' you need to be giving Lucifer."
"You're … here?" Castiel glanced at the door. Crowley had gotten into him, too. That was just great.
He rolled over, wrapping his arms around a pillow and settling back in. He'd been content being alone, drowning out the reality of the situation, giving up. It wasn't death, but it was surrender. He kept to his own space, and Lucifer got to control him. The less he fought, the longer he could survive. "You need to go before he finds you."
"Castiel. Get up. I'm here, risking him because that's how fucked up things are. You've got people ready to help trap him once he's out, but they can't do that if you can't or won't give him the shove."
"I can't shove anything," said Castiel. "I've tried."
The bloodied, damaged hallways made sense now. Castiel had fought. He'd fought for months, and the internal struggle between Castiel and Lucifer was killing the vessel faster than it should have. It was killing Cas.
Now, he'd been beaten down. There was no point in continuing to fight. No one had come to get him.
Crowley's face clearly showed his reaction to that realization: oh shit. Kicking out an angel was just supposed to be a matter of consent. Kicking an archangel out while sharing with another angel, and in a screwed-up world where normal rules of Heaven and Hell were absent… should have known it wouldn't be quite so easy.
He Crowley stormed on over to the bed and grabbed Castiel by the shoulder. "You've given up, then? Going to let Lucifer win, not even going to try? Going to abandon Dean? Let Lucifer kill both of your precious little humans?"
Castiel barely responded to the shove. "Dean is gone," he said. "They're all gone." The people who wanted to save him had all disappeared. They were no longer here. If they weren't fighting for him, what was the point? Lucifer just wanted to survive. Castiel was letting him. He didn't have any will to fight him anymore, not if Dean wasn't there.
"Did Lucifer tell you that?" Crowley scoffed and pulled on Castiel's arm; with Castiel so weak, manhandling him took little effort. "Of course he wanted you to know that. But they were only gone for a little while. Surprise— we're back. And the first damn thing they said was they had to get you back. Do you even want your life back?"
Castiel pushed himself up to sit, but it was clearly an effort, even in his own mind. "Dean is here?"
Where had they gone? They were here, they remembered that he was possessed? People forgot things when they left and came back, this didn't make sense. "What happened?"
It was troubling that Castiel had to struggle so much; it showed how much control Lucifer had taken. Damn it. Dean wasn't literally in there, of course, but Crowley didn't have an issue with stretching the truth. "We were under a spell, not actually gone from the world. What happened really, really isn't the important thing right now. Lucifer could get here any moment."
Castiel let out a breath, staring down at the floor as his thoughts raced. Dean was here. Sam was here. The others were back. And that meant that he could muster up whatever strength he had—
"You know what? You're right," came a voice from the doorway. "I could get here at any moment."
Of course Lucifer would have that kind of timing. Crowley didn't turn to the doorway at first; he knew he wouldn't be given more time, so he grabbed for Castiel's face and spoke fiercely, "Fight."
Castiel met Crowley's eyes, but he didn't have the chance to answer. With a flick of Lucifer's fingers, Castiel was thrown off of the bed and across the room, slamming into the closet and crashing down on top of the puzzle on the floor.
Lucifer turned his attention back to Crowley, pouting. "Puppy. And here I thought we were friends."
Time for Crowley to get back to what he did best: look out for Crowley. He couldn't stop anything happening to Castiel, so he didn't try; instead, he got busy trying to exit. "We both came into this relationship knowing how it'd end. Let's make a clean break, shall we?"
Lucifer caught him by the shoulder. "What are you doing? Sneaking in to give Castiel a little pep talk? He was perfectly happy in his little room, and you had to barge in here and harsh his buzz. That's a problem, puppy."
He frowned, catching Crowley by the jaw and using his thumb to gracelessly caress Crowley's lower lip. "How's this for a plan: I kill both of you right now, and no one's the wiser. No one knows what Cassie's up to, and no one cares about you."
"I don't think I like that plan." There was no point in the servile act any more. When Lucifer touched Crowley's lip, Crowley bared teeth. "What do you suppose happens to an angel's vessel if you smite a demon inside of it? Can't imagine it'll stay hospitable for you."
"Then it looks like you've overstayed your welcome."
Ejecting Crowley from his vessel wasn't a matter of revoking consent. It was a matter of power. A human had no way to simply get rid of a demon through sheer will alone, but an archangel — particularly the archangel who was the father of all demons — could do whatever he pleased. He could violently expel Crowley through Castiel's mouth, shove him out of Castiel's mind, keep him away from Castiel's thoughts and force Crowley to abandon Castiel in a vulnerable, broken place.
And he could do it easily. Castiel's body wasn't strong enough for a fight within it, but a fight on the outside? Please. Crowley would be dead with a snap of his fingers.
Crowley started backing away from Lucifer, his face reading like he was scared and ready to flee, then abruptly twisting in pain and disappearing from Castiel's mind as Lucifer forced him out of Castiel's vessel and back into his own body. Lucifer was in a room adjoining the one that Crowley's red smoke went churning towards, passing through a doorway on its way into an unlit and empty space.
He rose up from the seat that he'd left his body on. Lucifer would want to see Crowley dead, of course, not just do it from another room, so Crowley watched the doorway, and held a bleeding hand next to one of the walls.
Glass crunched underfoot as Lucifer entered the room. The former contents of several vials were painted on the wall that Crowley's cut hand reached towards, shaping familiar angel warding and banishing sigils as well as more obscure Enochian spells drawn around them: disorientation, pain, and other fun things. Some of the blood was Crowley's and relatively fresh; the rest had started to dry and was most definitely not his own. Wouldn't it be interesting to see what a vessel's own blood could do to it?
He hadn't been afraid of what awaited him with the expulsion from Castiel's body. He'd planned this. And he'd planned this for a long time, all the while feeding Lucifer intelligence and pretending to the other plotters that he wasn't going to lift a finger against Lucifer.
There was no Heaven for a banished angel to go to, but Crowley was damn well going to cast Lucifer and Castiel elsewhere. With a sarcastic wave of his free hand and a palm press of the other, he activated the spells. He shouted over the noise of the magic activating, "Thanks for Castiel's blood!"