un_fallen | (no subject)

There are places where the world is heavier. Sometimes it's the place itself (a tower, a road, a path); other times it's something that's there, something that gently warps reality around itself (a rose, a little scrimshaw turtle). And then sometimes, it's who's there - the people that press down just a little harder against the metaphysical rubber sheet of the universe.

Or, if you want to put it another way: like calls to like.

Somewhere out in the thick swirls of fog, someone draws in a deep breath, and then spits it back up in a loud, ragged cough.

And there. He stops mid-schlock and turns sharply toward the sound (and not only the sound) like a hunting dog. A frown appears between his brows; that nagging feeling of familiarity - and something like instinct - is getting stronger.

The rhythmic sound of his feet through the mud runs along just a little more quickly.

And another, and another, though it's harder now to distinguish the coughing from the harsh gasps that come between.

One cracks open on something louder - no words, but perfectly expressive.

It's not a happy sound.

There's a dim figure lying in the mud. Impossible that it should be out here; it would be hard to get closer to the Middle of Nowhere than a remote fueling station on the dark side of Jubilee, but there it is.

With every step closer, a certain suspicion bubbles more forcefully at the back of his mind. It might well have turned up sooner if he'd been thinking straight.

The figure is moving, but only just. There's something that might have been an attempt to push itself up from the dirt, but it - doesn't end well.

When it lands, another gasp lurches out, breathless and painful.

Again.

Raguel finally reaches the figure in the mud, now thoroughly coated in it, but still recognizable.

"Crowley," he says blankly, but a wide-eyed exhilaration is growing in his expression.

Beneath the mud, its features haven't settled yet, still locked in the perfect, sexless symmetry of angels. But these things are always quick; the eyes it blinks open are wide, and unfocused, and a vivid, inhuman yellow.

Raguel's presence doesn't seem to have registered.

There are so many drops.

It tries to lift itself again, bowed and shaking under the rain.

It isn't silent, either; quietly, ever so, it's making the sound you make from deep in your belly when you don't even have the air to scream.

(There are so many drops. There are so many hundreds of thousands of tiny pinprick drops of water, falling down, there are so many )

It takes him a minute, but he puts it together. Crowley doesn't like rain, he reasons; he rarely allows himself to get wet outside of the occasional shower. Certainly not when the rain is cold. And here, it's very cold.

There's a whoomp of displaced air, and huge dark wings appear and block out most of the rain. They blend with the landscape so fully that it renders the two of them nearly invisible.

Raguel crouches down with infinite care, staring. His stunningly blue eyes are overbright.

Its arms give out once more.

And then it's a minute, or nearly that, before the demon on the ground lets out a low moan of relief.

Its forehead is resting in the sticky, slippery mud, the effort gone from its shoulders (though the shaking isn't).

It doesn't look like it's about to try again.

Raguel reaches out, carefully, and his fingers brush across one of the demon's sleeves (or what passes for a sleeve).

He could conjure up a blanket, but it would just get muddy.

One. Two. Three. Four.

After eight long, wobbly breaths, Crowley - with considerable difficulty - rolls over onto his back. His hands leave imprints in the mud, but they don't last long.

It's not that he looks more himself, but rather less, as his body gently overlays his features with a semblance of humanity, weathering them into the sort of face that actually exists 'round these parts; the harsher jaw and angular hairline that say male, the tiny crooked tilt to his mouth, the faint blue tracery of veins beneath his eyes.

One ear is a quarter-inch higher than the other.

He's staring up at Raguel's wing, the one above his head, like he doesn't really see it.

In a flash of inspiration, Raguel thinks: heat. The air (and mud) within a few inches around the figure on the ground find themselves considerably warmer.

"Good to see you," he says conversationally. Or it might be conversational, if it were audible above the patter of rain on mud.

He doesn't want to look away; Crowley might not be there when he looks back. He touches the sleeve again, waiting.

Something certainly gets his attention, though it isn't clear which; whether it's the sudden shock of the temperature change, or another rasp of fabric against his skin, or the intrusion of another layer of sound, painfully distinct even beneath the pervasive, crushing roar of the rainfall.

Crowley's gaze is still unfocused, a little wild and a lot dazed, but it slides slowly to one side and lands (or thereabouts) upon Raguel.

(There are so few colours here that, even out in the dark and the fog, Crowley has to narrow his eyes against the two blinding points of blue above him.)

Raguel grins hopefully; narrowed eyes rarely mean anything good, but if Crowley can see him that's probably a step forward.

It's an awkward position that he's in, but it won't bother him unless he chooses to allow it. Crowley has remained where he is for long enough that Raguel is starting to suspect that he's not an illusion. His eyes roam just a little farther afield than Crowley's face.

Everything still checks out. The hope in his expression grows.

It's too much. It's still nearly too much: the wall of noise, and the glaring mist, and the scratch of a million coarse, tiny fibres, and the clammy seep of the mud, and the thick smell of feathers and of another living body, and every millimetre of every tiny trickle running down his temples from his bedraggled hair, and the cold air in his nostrils, and the sheer overpowering thereness of his arms and his legs and his skin and his lungs hurting and his heart beating terrifyingly fast and his stomach roiling in panicked protest.

But something's certainly got his attention, fraying as it is - and gradually, a few more thin scraps of reality manage to force their way through and begin to knit together. Visibly, between one moment and the next, Crowley stops looking through Raguel and starts looking at him.

It's for the best, most likely, that Crowley's not able to communicate this to Raguel. Otherwise he'd find himself floating naked in an airtight bubble. Raguel would forget to put air holes in it, not that Crowley normally needs them.

As it is, he makes sure that the raindrops won't land on Crowley and flops down in the mud next to him, head propped on one hand. He was wearing something dark and fairly snappy, now indistinguishable from the grey sludge covering the ground. He's still grinning like he can't stop doing it.

Crowley lets out a brief exhale, one that's not so different from any other breath in any way you could describe, but whose meaning couldn't be clearer if he'd said it aloud. Oh. It's you.

(As though he has any reason to be surprised.)

His eyes slide shut again.

In, out. Might be easier not to, but he can't remember how.

Raguel could do this all day, such as it is. He's never been discorporated, though, so certain rules he knows only via hearsay. He doesn't see any reason to go inside, for instance. It's much easier to pass unnoticed camouflaged here in the mud.

"This is Jubilee," he says after a while, remembering one rule. Obvious, but possibly not to the newly recorporated.

The proximity of Raguel's voice makes him flinch, face tight.

Raguel looks surprised, but doesn't say more. Possibly it's the warmth of his breath.

He edges backward through the mud, which makes a squelching sound, and repeats the statement.

Another sharp breath, and Crowley raises a hand a few inches out of the mud in what might be an acknowledgment, or might just be an incoherent attempt to get Raguel to stop bellowing in his ear so loudly that too-bright coloured spots are dancing in front of his eyes.

He doesn't actually interpret it as either, but as a greeting to someone he can't see. He looks behind himself, suspicious, then gets to his feet in a way that has little relationship to the planet's gravity. The mud he'd been lying in doesn't stick.

He stares around, mercifully quietly, listening for any sound other than Crowley's harsh breathing.

There's not much room to feel or think on anything else right now, beyond trying not to let living be the death of him. But there's just enough, Crowley finds (opening his eyes and looking up into the fog), for a sudden swell of hatred so visceral that it nearly lifts him up off the ground. For Raguel, for the way things work, for this being the first thing he arrives back to and for every link in whatever chain of events it was that left him this addled version of his friend so completely unable to grasp that Crowley -

A gust of cold wind claws the thought clean out of his mind.

He turns back, not finding another living creature for as far as he can see. He'd wander off to investigate, but for once his focus is in one place.

He sinks into the mud once again, but sits still rather than lying down. Something is clearly wrong and Crowley's not able to tell him what it is. He waits, impatient.

Crowley's trying to push himself up again. Less urgent now that Raguel has at least arranged for the rain to give them some space, he's trying for a sitting position first.

He's up on his elbows, so far steady in the treacherous mud.

Raguel reaches out more than once to help, but always remembers the no-touching rule at the last moment. Crowley didn't have a problem sitting up before, though, which suggests that he's worse off than usual this time.

It's been a while, he thinks at random, but he's not quite sure how long. He frowns and watches, silently buffering the air behind Crowley in case of a slip.

He notices his abdomen for the first time, which is almost enough to cause one. Not anything about it, exactly, but rather just that it's there; that instead of merely the raindrops and the damp cloth against his skin, he can feel the muscles moving beneath the skin, slowly contracting as he pushes himself upright.

- Oh. The

A shudder runs through him. A twitch, like he'd meant to move a certain way, and then hadn't.

Finally, he's sitting.

"Good," he says, to Crowley's change in position. He makes quite the bizarre cheerleader, kneeling now and sitting on his (expensive, mud-coated) heels.

"Looking better," he pronounces, by which he probably means 'alive' and 'human.'

This time, he's together enough to shoot Raguel a narrow, poisonous glare - not the same violent anger anymore, but still more than a little vicious. And, under the circumstances, probably not something Raguel should take too personally.

"Y-" he starts to say, and then realises very, very quickly why this isn't a good idea.

Crowley doesn't look nearly so good now; in fact, he looks like he's trying not to throw up. Raguel bites his lip and tries not to mention it.

The poisonous glare he counts as an improvement, though; it's unfortunately familiar enough that he takes it as proof that it's actually Crowley in front of him rather than as anything else.

Before, his abdomen; now, his tongue. Crowley presses his lips together hard, and tries not to let his throat close up against the sensation - wet, and slab-heavy, and fleshy in his mouth.

His stomach heaves, and he leans forward in a dry retch.

Well, this is not good. Even Raguel can see that.

"Nothing in there," he points out, nodding toward Crowley's stomach with a worried expression.

"I could," he adds, reaching a hand forward and making a twirly gesture, "but you should stop, if you can."

Crowley's hands are braced on his knees, but one comes up again as he manages to shake his head - a rather clearer message, this time.

The rain falls, but not on them.

Face grey, Crowley looks up at last. And after a long moment, manages an indistinct, "When."

He has to think very hard about this one, but at least the question is difficult to misinterpret.

"Around a year ago," he says at last, slowly.

And given Aziraphael's reaction, perhaps he should wait a bit to talk about Lizzie.

Like a high, clear note, something wavers in Crowley's expression, and he says, "Is - ?"

"Everybody's fine," he says, glancing away.

"Well. Angel's fine. Think most of the ones you kept up with are fine. And I'm always fine," he finishes proudly, though Crowley had not precisely asked.

They've gone through this sequence of questions before; it's not hard, somehow, to remember his lines.

Jubilee.

He tries to think, but he can't.

No great surprises here, either: when Raguel finally looks back around, the first thing Crowley does is reach out a hand to be pulled to his feet.

Raguel's surprise at Crowley's sudden recovery is visible on his face, but it doesn't last long. There's a swirl of shifting emotions there, and it might not mean anything at all.

He obliges by rising out of his crouch, though, and reaching carefully for Crowley's outstretched hand.

If it seems too soon for Crowley to have recovered, that's because it is. He nearly recoils from the touch of skin against skin, and isn't any great shakes at staying upright, either.

But he's been gone a year.

(He tries to let his mind only skirt around the edges of it: he's been gone a year.)

If he really knew the camouflaging effect of his shifting expressions, Raguel would be extremely grateful. Right now, there is an extremely somber one that hovers uncertainly on his face. He keeps a hand out since Crowley is less than steady.

"Persephone?" he asks, as though there was any question there.

There aren't any craft docked at the station - nothing that'd break atmo, so far as Crowley can make out.

But there will be.

When he manages to filter the meaning of Raguel's question through the noise of it, Crowley looks back at him and nods.

(That's another formality, and they both know that, too.)

He remembers that bit of this conversation too, and nods back.

"Can rest at the station till the ship comes. Rest out here, too, just. Wet." He gestures at the low blanket of unmoving clouds.

The mud isn't the only thing that makes the walk to the station difficult, but it definitely doesn't help.

Crowley's fingers end up leaving bruises on Raguel's shoulder, but they don't last.

Raguel is more concerned with Crowley's ability to hold on for that distance, but they move slowly and carefully, one foot in front of the other, and they make it without incident. There are very few people around, and those that are seem to look right past them as they approach.

"We're leaving tomorrow," Raguel explains as they pass a calendar mounted on a board of messy bulletins.

By then, Crowley's wearing what it takes to fit in, with the exception of a pair of shoes. The floor is cold beneath his feet, but it's better than shoes.

The light in the corridor flickers tiredly, but the room is dark, and passes for quiet. The chair in the corner isn't the most uncomfortable Crowley's ever sat in, and for the moment, that'll do. He's holding himself carefully enough that it doesn't much matter.

Raguel doesn't bother to turn a light on, but gestures to the bed.

"I'll call you when the ship comes. Not a good place to sleep, on board; it was bumpy."

And loud and dirty and hardly spacious enough to carry anyone. But out here, you take what you can get.

Crowley nods faintly, head already tipped back against the wall, but stays in the chair.

He's been gone for a year.

Out here, you take what you can get.