(Untitled)

[anthony_crowley]

Date: March 27, 2001
Status: Private - Crowley and Gabriel
Setting: London
Summary: The first leg of the journey, continued from here

Comments

[dontcallmegabby]

Gabriel sat a bit more stiffly in his seat as Crowley moved closer. He'd been expecting the demon to be angry, of course, but it wasn't always easy to stay passive in the matter. Crowley had, after all, spent six thousand years learning just what he could say that would burrow deepest under one's skin, that would sting the most.

The angel had, in fact, considered discussing the matter with Crowley, but only after his first plane had taken off: It didn't seem the most tactful thing to admit now that, as he'd watched Heathrow recede into a small blotch beneath him, confident that Crowley was somewhere nearby, he'd quickly decided that the demon would only have been argumentative and unpleasant about the issue. So far, he was seeing no evidence to the contrary.

"They don't know you're following me, serpent," he said; and though his own confidence in this statement wavered, there was a hardness to his previously not-quite-amiable tone that spoke otherwise. "They don't know where he's gone, and they don't know what my orders are, so there's nothing to suggest we're not simply each tracking him independently. I very much doubt that three days of you lagging along behind me has given away anything about 'the two of us,' and really, I don't see how this could make you look any more unfit than not leaving Lower Tadfield at all."

He settled more easily into his seat, as though speaking the words aloud had made them somewhat more tangible, boosting his shaky confidence. "But by all means, demon, tell me," he added, his tone more cordial if still somewhat dry, "what was your plan?"

[anthony_crowley]

Unwilling to admit that Gabriel's barb about being unfit had hit home, Crowley sneered.

"They don't know I'm following you? It's more plausible to think that I just happen to keep ending up in all the same places as a sodding archangel with an unnatural interest in an ex-Crown of Hell? Most demons are dumb, but not all of them and not that much. Underestimate the wrong one at the wrong time and you're fucked." He smacked the table with the heel of his hand. "If I'd had any indication that I didn't have to come after you and save your sorry arse again, I'd be halfway across the planet right now and we could have done this right."

The demon sank into a chair, suddenly tired from his emotional outburst. "I've been keeping an eye on the news," he explained, his voice rough. "I spend half my day reading bloody papers from around the world, trying to find patterns of unexplained deaths or disappearances. Probably disappearances. Belial's too canny to leave bodies around. I thought that in that way, I'd either find him and be able to avoid his location, or find enough evidence to logically go somewhere else when something like this happened. But rather than use my months of apparently pointless research and look good for the cameras in doing so, I've been wandering aimlessly around Northern Europe and ended up in this dump. With you."

[dontcallmegabby]

"So your plan," Gabriel began, his cautious tone not matching his inflammatory words, "was to sit about reading newspapers for another three months and... then wander aimlessly? And you're upset because, what, I didn't stop to peruse the headlines first? Should I have consulted Belial's horoscope in the back, too, just to be sure?"

He surveyed the demon across the table, noting that Crowley's face seemed tight, drawn with the same lines of fatigue that the angel suspected might have been etched in his own expression upon arriving in Amsterdam. Perhaps it was the discovery of this similarity that added more understanding to his tone as he continued. "Or is all this just to emphasize that I should have spoken to you first?"

[anthony_crowley]

"Oh, fuck you," said Crowley wearily. "This isn't easy, you know. I put everything on the line for you and your boyfriend and it's a fine fucking line to tread."

He sighed. "Look, we both care about him, though in vastly different ways and for vastly different reasons. The least we can bloody well do is talk. I refuse to have him caught and me dragged down with him because you and I couldn't manage a civil conversation. So can the tough act and let's figure out what happens now."

[dontcallmegabby]

"Fair enough," the angel replied. He was uncomfortably aware of the risks they each had taken thus far, and he also knew that Crowley was right: there was no better way to help Belial than to attempt to do so together.

"So far as I am aware, the only demons who know of any special circumstances between Belial and myself are you and Lucifer. I think it would be plausible for you to say you were after the Crown, but were waylaid in Amsterdam by the archangel Gabriel? No one needs to know you have any idea why I would be seeking him as well." The angel's gaze was sober as he watched the demon across from him, but Gabriel kept any malice from his tone, even when he spoke the Morningstar's name, and tried to sound as though he were inviting the demon's - hopefully less vehement - opinion.

[anthony_crowley]

Crowley would have given his opinion whether it was solicited or not.

"We don't know what the Morningstar knows," he said, beginning to fall into habits of explanation and rationalization that he'd made with Aziraphale a millennia prior with the adoption of the Arrangement. "I think if he suspected something between the two of you, he would have mentioned it when he... gave me my new assignment." There, that sounded professional and not at all gory. "Unless, of course, he's testing me." Crowley wasn't being paranoid. He was simply thinking in knots the way he had to in order to survive. "But waylaid is fine. No one would doubt that in a fight with an archangel, I'd get my arse handed to me. That doesn't explain why I followed you for three days first, though."

The demon was silent a moment as he parsed a thought. "What if you lured me out here with the promise of information on Belial, stopping in those other cities to make it look believable? Then, once I was outside of Adam's protection, you made your move. You get to look clever to whomever you report to for whatever reason you want and I look foolish rather than treasonous. I can't look too stupid or I'll lose this job, but being underestimated is always an advantage..." Which was possibly a technique he was using at that very moment. The life of a long-term double agent is a complex one, but in the end his loyalties lay with, well, Crowley.