And there it was. The exact thing he didn't want to hear, but had expected all along. It didn't surprise him that there was little anyone could do to keep the bloody Devil out of their heads. The fallen Angel had who knew how much power at his disposal and fear it as he had to, Kol also respected it. The fact that he had so much at his fingertips. Because acknowleding it meant he wouldn't be dead for ignorance, if nothing else. "Good to know," was all he could manage to mutter in response.
The sharp reaction from that tiny little request wasn't alltogether what he'd been expecting. The harshness, sure, being called an idiot for wanting to see it, yeah, but the permission. That he hadn't expected. A vehement no, a list of reasons why he didn't need to see it, anything but that allowance. Kol had been so certain that Crowley wouldn't have even given him the option and now that he had it, he wasn't sure, he was almost frozen trying to actually decide if it was worth it.
"Maybe I'm an idiot," he could admit that, who the hell ever wanted to see the sort of thing he was asking to see? No one smart. No one sane. "But I think I'd rather know. Because you say it won't happen, but that's just because you don't want it to but you don't know, not really, no one does, but you also have said you can't promise you can protect me. And if it comes down to it, and there's no way out of it, I want to know what I'm in for." He never said it was a good reason.
There was still a hesitation though, some part of him trying to tell him this was the worst fucking idea in the history of ever, but he ignored it. He pushed through that and moved so that he could look the demon in the eyes. They were, of course, the window to the soul, weren't they? Kol was careful enough at least, to only stay on the surface, because the dream, vision, whatever it was, would be just at the front of Crowley's thoughts and honestly, that was as far as he wanted to go.
The images that flooded his mind were, to say the least, hard to watch, so vivid that, even knowing he was only in Crowley's thoughts, Kol could feel it. The heat of the flames. The burning cold of the blade against his skin. He could hear it. The pained screams of the damned. The taunts, oh the fucking taunts from his tormentor. An experiment, it's all he was to the damn cocky Irishman, just a game.
The images stopped as soon as he looked away, broke the eye contact that had allowed him to see it, but they didn't fade, burned into his mind now. He absently reached up to touch his chest, where he'd seen, where he had felt that blade dig into him. Kol tried to find the words to speak, to say something, anything, but there were none.