log: cas+crowley WHO: Castiel and Crowley WHEN: Ambiguously in October before Demon!Dean has been cured WHERE: Crowley's room (504J2) WHAT: DVD extras! In this delayed deleted scene from October, Cas confronts Crowley about what Crowley did to his grace to keep him from being able to harm demons. WARNINGS: N/A - not really. Crowley gets rather fresh.
_____________________
That son of a bitch.
Castiel didn't know what he'd been thinking. Sam had been right, of course, about the fact that trusting Crowley was a terrible idea, but Cas had been desperate to protect himself — and the only way he knew how to do that was to have his grace. He'd been injured in this human body before, and recovery time was slow. He'd almost been killed here more than once. Most importantly, he needed his grace to go up against Dean, to stand up to him if he had to.
But Crowley had tampered with the grace that he'd tinkered to fit Castiel. Crowley had tailored it so it wouldn't kill Castiel, yes, but something was still off — and part of it was the fact that Castiel felt excruciating pain any time he tried to harm a demon. It wasn't the kind of pain he could power through, wasn't the sort of pain he could simply endure to get the job done. It was a paralyzing, crippling pain that shot through him like lightning, like his grace flaring up and burning him from the inside out.
Sam had warned him. Sam had told him it was stupid, and Castiel had been stubborn.
He blamed Crowley anyway.
He kicked Crowley's door in and stormed in on him in his quarters, stopping just shy of grabbing his throat when he felt the flickers of pain start in his chest and flare out into his arms. No, bad angel, don't harm the demon.
"You did this to me! What else did you do?" he demanded. "What other surprises did you put into my grace?"
Crowley had been debating the idea of going to poor overly-sensitive Dean to do some taunting and/or offering carnal distractions. Rude of Castiel to interrupt those kinds of thoughts. Crowley gave Castiel his best "oh please" look, and deliberately remained standing in place with his hands tucked into his pockets. Ordinarily, a pissed off angel coming right at him was good cause to get the Hell out of there; Crowley was arrogant but he was not stupid about his chances against a raging celestial force. In the current situation, though, Castiel was so non-threatening.
"Now, now," he said, stepping closer into Castiel's personal space. "If I just go and tell you, they aren't surprises any more, are they? Assuming I did do anything else. What were you trying to do just then, caress my face?"
Castiel scowled. The only thing that kept his hands off Crowley was the threat of debilitating pain, and he felt it tearing at him even while he did nothing but think about it. "You put this in me, I need to know what you did. Is it going to kill me if I try to heal? What happens if I try to get rid of it and take it out again?"
He didn't have to live with this. He'd lived as a human for a while now, and there was no reason why he couldn't slit his own throat and let this broken grace pour out of him.
"Heal yourself? No. Heal a demon's injuries? No. 'Heal' someone of being a demon, on the other hand… that's bye-bye, Cas. Not that you'd be able to finish it, impotent as you are now." He reached out a finger to poke Castiel in the center of his chest. "Oh, I really don't recommend trying to take it out. You wouldn't like what state you're left in."
Of course Crowley would have arranged it so removing his grace would destroy him. How could he have been so stupid?
Sam had told Castiel not to make a deal with him, not to think that he had the upper hand in any of this. Castiel had relied on Crowley's addiction to blood and swore that he had the better of him, and he'd been wrong. Of course he'd been wrong. One more mistake in a line of mistakes, and this one he could blame on fear of being human while Dean had the Mark of Cain.
"You must think I'm an idiot," Cas said quietly, resisting the urge to grab Crowley's hand and break off his fingers. "Do what you want with me, fine. But what you do to Dean—"
"— is exactly what Dean deserves. Probably even craves. And yes, as a matter of fact, I do think you're an idiot, but not for making this deal. Smarter men and women than you have been wooed by my very skilled tongue. Have you forgotten?"
Crowley's voice got quieter and harsher. A definite hint of red showed in his eyes and he began to circle around Castiel. "You betrayed me, Castiel."
Castiel hadn't forgotten.
He'd made an arrangement with Crowley, years ago. He'd plotted to split the souls in Purgatory once they managed to open the door, to give half of the souls to Crowley for Hell while the rest went to Castiel to fight the civil war in Heaven. In the last moment, Cas had turned on him, had taken everything for himself. He'd unleashed the leviathans on the world in the process, had taken on too much power and declared himself God. Everything he'd done in that time all counted as the very worst mistakes of his life.
He stayed very still. His wings were no longer functional; they were battered and broken, barely feathered, and though a human like Dean wasn't able to see them they were clearly visible to Crowley, flickering in and out of the physical plane as Crowley circled him, tightening closer against Castiel's back as Crowley crossed behind.
"I did what you'd do," he said.
"Wrong!" Crowley yelled. A human might have cowered at the sudden volume and fully red eyes, but it was a lot harder than that to make an angel flinch. He could at least force Castiel to keep drawing the damaged wings close. "We had a deal. We. Had. A. Deal. The price of working with you was worth what I'd get out of it, or I wouldn't have offered it. I wouldn't have trusted that you'd hold up your end if you hadn't acted like you would never, ever screw up something so important. The way you lied to your dear little Winchesters probably should have tipped me off to how far you'd really go. But I was never going to break it."
Crowley came back around to stand in front of Castiel and stare hard at him, if Castiel could stand to meet his eyes. "What does it say that the bloody King of Hell has more integrity than you, hmm? Betraying me that deeply earned you a very personal payback. So I took a page out of your book of deception. Customizing the grace and not telling you is something you would do to me."
Castiel met his gaze, but there was little defiance. He'd been worn down over the last several weeks with Dean the demon, and he seemed more exhausted than anything else. He simply seemed weary these days, after everything he'd been through. He was fully aware of his mistakes, of all of the underhanded things he did, and he was the last person to defend himself for any of it.
"This is your personal payback?" he asked through his teeth.
"Oh, I'm sorry—" Crowley rolled his eyes. "Does it not stoop low enough for your very own standards of personal payback? Guess I'll just have to keep going until something does. You can't even retaliate, but I can do any number of things to you." Crowley listed several such things in unpleasantly explicit terms. "Of course, the grace is just one part. Watching you watch Dean corrupted by the Mark, oh, that was something special. He did so much better this time around. That thing really is the gift that keeps on giving. And you, willingly giving me your blood, willingly taking on the grace..." He gave a theatrical squirm of pleasure.
Castiel snarled. There was something bestial in him when he was angry, like he was a wild creature on a leash that was just waiting to be unchained. He was a being created to enact God's celestial wrath. He was a hurricane in a bottle, and when he held himself back from socking Crowley in the jaw, the lights crackled and flickered.
"You touched Dean," he snapped. The thought of it gave him a twist of jealousy in a way he didn't understand or expect.
Crowley watched the lights with clear amusement. Castiel was really putting the 'impotent' in 'impotent rage'; all that revived power, and none of it could touch Crowley. "Oh yes, I touched Dean, in all of his naughty spots. It's amazing how that Mark really brings out his not-so-secret slutty, kinky side."
Castiel raised a hand to punch Crowley across the jaw, but he never made it.
He cried out in pain and doubled over as he felt like his grace was burning him from the inside. It flared up, it ate at him, it tore holes in his human body in a way that no human would have been able to survive. Cas was no stranger to pain, and he could push through a lot — but he was certain that if he laid a violent hand on Crowley or any other demon it was going to kill him.
He looked up again, panting for breath, and there was blood dripping from his nose. "Dean's not going to be happy," he said. "If I can't hurt you, the Winchesters will."
Unlike some lesser villain, Crowley wasn't the type to stand over his foe indulging in maniacal laughter while convinced of his own invincibility. He was far more savvy than that. When it came to Castiel in this moment, though, Crowley was effectively invincible. As Castiel was overcome with agony, Crowley laughed heartily and soaked it all in. It was even better than he'd imagined. He'd seen to Castiel's physical pain, but Castiel had brought the emotional torture all on his own.
He crouched down in front of Castiel and reached out to grip his chin. "Another empty threat. I. Don't. Care. Darling, do you know why I don't care?"
Castiel wanted to smite him. He wanted to reach out and smite him so hard that there was nothing left, and he dissolved into meaningless oblivion like the sack of crap he was. But even the thought was painful, and all he managed was to growl, "Why."
When that grace started running out, Crowley knew he'd have to be very, very careful indeed-- probably flee to another part of the world, and that was just sensible, not cowardly. But until then, he was going to revel and gloat. "You see, unlike any of you, I know how to behave. I know how to put on a pretty public persona. You could even say I'm becoming a valuable, contributing member of this community. And they either enforce their 'laws' regardless of personal bias, or they invite anarchy. Let's say you convinced Moose to do it. If he got his nerve up to even try, he might as well kiss his girlfriend goodbye because they'll have him locked up for assault. And Dean, well-- we both know Dean would be happy to. That's practically our foreplay."
"You're playing people," snarled Castiel. "You're getting them on your side so no one will want to take you down."
He said it as if it were a bad thing, but wasn't that simply the ideal game to play? Castiel wasn't an idiot. He understood strategy and he knew how to play games in order to win favor. He was far smarter than he often let on — because it wasn't Castiel's intelligence that got in the way, it was his naivete, his inexperience with free will and making his own choices. He tried to make the right ones, but his success rate was low.
"Of course I'm playing people." Crowley had no problem freely admitting that; playing people is what he did. "If I didn't, you and the boys would've had a lynch mob on me as soon as someone realized I was in that pod. You have no grounds here to 'take me down' or you become the bad guys. I happen to value my continued existence, and I'm willing to do what it takes to secure that. But I'm also very happy to have found a way to screw yours over that doesn't compromise mine."
Castiel wiped the blood from his nose with the back of his hand and straightened up again. His grace was beginning to heal the damage that it had caused, knitting internal wounds back together and saving his vessel. "Fine," he said gruffly. "You stay out of Dean's way and I won't get in yours."
It wasn't about him. It was never about him. Castiel's purpose had always been divided between what was best for Heaven and what was best for humanity — for Dean Winchester in particular. Since the end of the angelic civil war, Dean came first. Always.
Crowley watched Castiel's vessel mend, and raised his eyebrows at Castiel's words. His response was very simple. "No."
No, he wasn't going to stay out of Dean's way. No, he wasn't going to back down to Castiel's "threats". No, nope, nuh uh. Who had the power now? Not Castiel.
"But if you ever want to join us..." Crowley offered. He knew Castiel would never take him up on it. With a sarcastic wave and then a snap, he disappeared. He'd really need to see about angel wards in his room, but that could wait.