un_fallen | (no subject)

A little more certain now, a little surer - with a moment's thought - that he might just be onto something.

"D'you have a lighter?"

"'Course I do," Raguel says to this bizarre non sequitur. Frowning, he pulls a lighter featuring a raised sheriff's badge out of his pocket.

Crowley grins abruptly to see it - one of those rare smiles with no trace of sarcasm or irony, that isn't wry, or smug, or devious, or in some way at someone else's expense.

Taking it from Raguel, he runs his fingers across the embossed badge, before flipping the top open.

With a click, the world changes: from a broad plain picked out in dim silver highlights, to once more an island of light standing out against a sea of inky darkness.

He looks curiously at the light, then up at Crowley, now blurred by the afterimage of sudden brightness.

"Still works," he points out in a low voice. That's not actually surprising; there's better-than-average chance that it will still work five hundred years from now, too.

"Still works," he agrees, lifting up the tiny flame between them to eye level.

"Remember, remember," the grin's in his voice, if not visible past the flame, "last November. Not the one just past, I mean - the one before that."

"I remember it," he says, more confused than ever. "Don't forget much."

Nothing at all, unless somebody's making a real effort.

"When I was..." he clarifies as an afterthought. Sort of. For a given definition of 'clarify', anyway. "When we all came through that door in the wall. And you and Aziraphael..."

"Oh," he says. "Yeah, uh. I know what you mean."

Raguel doesn't blush. Not so you can see it by lighter, anyway.

"There," he says, "the walls - well, never mind the walls. But when you got away from them, it was... big."

Crowley reaches over a little, bringing the flame closer to Raguel's face - close enough for the angel to feel what little warmth there is from it, but mostly, mainly, close enough that its glow fills his field of vision.

His voice sounds detached, distracted; sounding out the words carefully so as to be sure of their meaning.

"Dark, so you couldn't see anything, and big enough that I couldn't see anything. For... forever, you know? And cold."

With a click, Crowley flips the top down on the last, lonely flicker of light, and life, and warmth.

Like this, he doesn't need to say.

Big, and dark, and cold.

Raguel shivers a little against his will. With the brightness of the flame suddenly extinguished, he can't see a damn thing, and the strange quality Crowley's voice has taken on isn't exactly reassuring.

"Given the condition you all were in when you came back, uh. I only saw the others for a second, but it looked like there was more wrong than just the cold. They were. Shaken up."

It's the kindest way he knows to phrase it.

For a moment, silence - and in the pitch, pitch black, that's the most disconcerting thing of all.

Then:

"Yeah," Crowley says. "The last thing I remember, things. Things started - moving."

Suddenly - heart-attack suddenly - warm fingers close around Raguel's wrist, and an unseen hand drops the lighter into his.

"Anyway, that's why I was - you know. Before. Why I couldn't find the flask."

It takes him a second.

"Moving?" he repeats, and jumps when Crowley grabs his wrist. His fingers clench tightly around the lighter.

"Oh. But you're okay now," he says, as though to reassure himself. "Would, um. Would it have helped if I'd brightened up the fire a little?"

"No," he says. "I mean - yes. Yes, moving, no, it wouldn't have helped, I don't think."

He doesn't particularly sound as though he minds. In fact, he sounds - well, not cheerful. But okay. Normal.

And little by little, as night vision returns: he looks okay, too. He's also watching Raguel carefully.

"Would anything help?" he asks after a moment. "If it happens again, I mean. I guess there's not much I could do from this side of that door if you were inside."

He turns the lighter over and over in his hands, but doesn't seem anxious to put it back in his pocket.

That, more than anything, seems to throw Crowley; for a long few seconds, he simply looks blankly at Raguel, hand scratching uncertainly at the thick wool of his coat, right above the centre of his chest.

One false start, and then finally, "I don't really intend on it happening again."

"No," he agrees, "but I don't guess you intended for it to happen the first time. I just - if there's anything - "

He trails off. The lighter keeps moving through his hands, which makes a low, raspy sound in the silence.

"I don't like not knowing what to do."

Edited 2008-03-30 08:01 (UTC)

"You and me both."

"I'll tell you what you can do, though," he adds after a moment. "If you see any doors in the walls that aren't normally there, stick a 'do not enter' sign in front of them. A big one. Maybe after throwing in a grenade."

"I mean what happened tonight," he says, and grins suddenly.

"A sign I can do. I think carrying grenades would be a professional hazard, though."

"As opposed to being any other kind of hazard? You're probably right, though. You go to light up a cigarette without paying attention, we eventually find your hat in a palm tree."

There's probably not much to be done. Nothing that Raguel hasn't already.

"I'll be sure to keep any lighters in a pocket without a grenade pin," he promises.

"The hat's okay, though, right?"

"To be honest," Crowley says, "I think that hat would probably survive the Apocalypse, and I say that having been there."

"Oh yeah," he says, grinning. "That's a relief, then. You can't get 'em like that anymore. Dust brushes right off."

"Yeah. Off."

Crowley's more of the opinion that the dust is ground right in, but he doesn't want to tip the balance back the other way: if Crowley's hit his mark, Raguel's probably feeling too sympathetic to blab to Aziraphael about the Cactus Incident.

Or, for that matter, about anything else that's happened tonight.

(His expression might do a good enough job of saying it for him, though.)

"Mm," he says, raising an eyebrow. He is probably opposed to blackmail on the level of principle. Probably.

It's not as though he can argue with Crowley's skepticism, though.

"Well," he says, crumbling a little, "you can't see the dust."

And all that that implies.