You Win or You Hide, 8/?
Title: You Win or You Hide, 7/?
or,
The Adventures of Charlie and Chuck in the Mysterious Kingdom
Author: reading_is_in
Chars: Charlie, Chuck, Crowley, ensemble.
Pairings: (later) Cas/Dean, Charlie/Anna
Rating: PG
Genre: Crack, Adventure, AU
“Where are we?”
Chuck glared at Charlie: “How should I know?”
“Well you’ve been out more than I have,” she said defensively. “You’re always saying I’m naïve…if you’re so worldly, I thought maybe you’d know-“
“Well I don’t, okay!” he snapped
“Alright, there’s no need to be mean to me!”
“Children,” said Dean, “Can we play nice?”
“We’ve moved east of Azazel’s keep,” Sam said, studying the stars. “There are villages to the north - his bannermen. We’ll get shelter there for the night.”
“Orrr they could turn us over for a tidy sum,” said Chuck glumly.
“How would they know who we are?” said Charlie. Chuck rolled his eyes:
“They won’t know who we are,” Chuck rolled his eyes, “But somebody’s gonna recognise the Winchesters. They’re famous.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go that far,” said Sam.
“We are pretty famous, Sammy,” Dean said.
Sam scowled.
“Anyway they aren’t going to turn us in,” Dean said to Chuck. “Azazel’s bannermen hate him as much as anyone. Or more.”
“And then?” Charlie asked urgently. “How will we find the Prince?”
They all looked at each other. Then Dean said resignedly,
“Gabriel.”
“His cousin?” asked Charlie, at the same time Chuck said,
“Who’s Gabriel?”
“Right, his cousin,” Sam was nodding.
“It’s the safest place Cas knows,” Dean said. “Shame Gabriel’s a giant dick.”
“He mentioned him to me,” Charlie said excitedly. “When he told me to run away. He said I should go to his cousin’s holdings. It makes sense that he would head there himself.”
“Which wouldn’t even be necessary if Gabriel would stop screwing and drinking long enough to come North and help his family when they need it.”
“Dean,” said Sam.
“What?” The brothers glared at each other.
“Gabriel is our best bet,” Sam said after a moment. “We’ll send a carrier pigeon from the village if we can.”
“How can he reply?” asked Chuck: “We’ll be moving.”
“But at least if Cas is there, it’ll let him know we’re coming.”
They started walking.
“Why do you call him that?” Chuck asked Dean.
“Call who what?”
“The Prince. You call him - Cas….” Chuck quailed under Dean’s look, but as usual, failed to stop talking: “It seems over-familiar.”
“Cas is my friend,” Dean bit off. “He is a person, you know. Not just a - a symbol or whatever.”
Chuck repressed a sigh. Although he was rather afraid of the elder Winchester, he couldn’t help but feel a bit sorry for him at that. Here they were, risking life and limb to get
Castiel on the throne, and Dean had this idea he could remain ‘friends’ with the man who would be King in the North. Chuck felt his age.
The made the town of Keystone just as the morning guards were opening the gates.
“Business?”
“We are weary travellers seeking lodgings,” said Chuck. He’d been practicing that in his head for a while now. The guard rolled his eyes:
“What kind of travellers?” Crap. They were all rather dirty from the trudge through the tunnel, but the Winchesters had their weapons, and he and Charlie had at least
cleaned up and changed clothes from the prison cells.
“Personal,” said Charlie loftily. “If you must know, I am a merchant’s daughter on my way North to visit my married sister. This is my page,” she nodded at Chuck, “and these are
the guard my father gave me,” at the Winchesters. “We had trouble on the road, and our horses have bolted.”
Charlie looked like she had more, but the guard had stopped listening. He waved them through and they entered Keystone. Chuck didn’t think he imagined the second glances the
Winchesters were drawing.
They pawned one of the good blades Dean had taken off a guard. It had gems in the hilt, so they managed to get quite a tidy sum, and found decent lodgings for the night in a
quiet inn kept by an elderly couple. For the coins they got two rooms.
“Dean, room with me,” said Charlie.
The Winchesters exchanged surprised looks.
“I promise you don’t need to fear for your virtue,” Charlie rolled her eyes.
“Dean has no virtue,” Sam pointed out.
“I’ve always felt virtue was overrated,” said Dean, but he looked uncomfortable.
“I want to talk to you about sss-something,” Charlie tugged Dean’s arm.
“Well don’t let me stop you,” Sam said. “Believe me I can use a break from his company.”
“I am a joy to be around,” said Dean with dignity, but he went with Charlie, and Chuck felt rather like he’d missed a whole conversation.
So, Chuck was rooming with Sam. That was okay, he rather like Sam. He was - polite. Ish. The beds were hard, but clean, and a short flight of steps led to a stone washroom
heated by steaming coals. It felt like luxury.
“So, have you met Gabriel?” Chuck asked Sam.
“Once or twice. He’s….he’s a character.”
Pause.
“Like in a good way?”
“He…comes across as superficial,” Sam said carefully, “Kind of a playboy. Don’t let that fool you though: he’s perfectly dangerous to his enemies.”
Chuck gulped.
“But I’ve never known him to make an enemy without good cause.”
“Yeah,” said Chuck. “Man, I would really like to drink myself to sleep now.”
Sam looked at him for a moment, seeming to consider. Then he sighed, reached for his bag, and tossed Chuck a wineskin. “Pawned a dagger myself,” he explained.
Chuck supposed the correct thing to do would be to ask Sam if he were sure, or at least temper his intake, but in truth he just really wanted the booze. He opened the stopper and
chugged from the skin.
The drink was much stronger than wine.
Chuck blacked out, and the next thing he knew, Sam was shaking him awake.
“We have to go,” said the younger Winchester grimly. “Azazel’s soldiers are downstairs, looking for Dean and me.”
Crap. Oh, crap. Chuck’s head pounded, hard enough to blur vision, and Sam more or less shoved him out of bed. Charlie and Dean were already waiting in the corridor.
“But the innkeepers!” Charlie was protesting, “The old people! They’ll kill them!”
“Charlie,” Dean took her shoulders and said sharply, “How many people do you think will be killed if Crowley rules in the North?”
Charlie looked stricken, and her chin quivered, but she steeled herself. The Winchesters hurried them down the corridor and they stopped at a window looking down on the back yard. Dusk had fallen again, and the flagstones swam in Chuck’s hungover vision.
“I’ll go first,” Sam said, and clambered out - he was so tall that when he turned backwards and clung to the shelf with his hands, the drop to the ground seemed less dramatic.
“Chuck,” Sam reached up. Chuck positioned himself in the window and tried not to look down. or was it better to look? Perhaps if he -
Dean pushed him.
He yelped, air rushing past him, and more or less collided with Sam, who at least cushioned his fall.
“Thanks,” said Chuck.
“Get off me,” Sam gritted his teeth, and Chuck revised his opinion about him being the polite brother. Charlie exited rather more gracefully, clinging to the cobbled wall in places, and Sam caught her when she dropped. Dean came down much the way Sam had - slightly more of a drop for him, but Sam assisted.
They headed east and slightly north. The Winchesters claimed to know where they were going, and Chuck decided to trust them. On the third night, as they camped out in the woods, assassins set upon them. Chuck was going with ‘assassins’. Charlie called them ‘brigands’, and Sam and Dean ‘drunken morons’. Granted they weren’t the most competent group of assassins it would be possible to encounter, and the Winchesters dispatched three with disparaging ease whilst Charlie clanged the fourth over the head with a cooking pan, but they had come on a mission to kill Chuck and Charlie and take the Winchesters to Azazel. In Chuck’s book that made them assassins.
“This is bad,” Dean said grimly as Sam slit the throat of the man Charlie had knocked out. Charlie looked away. She gulped visibly, and Chuck thought he ought to say something tough and manly like, ‘hey, it was them or us’, or perhaps more sensitively manly like Sam would think of. He drew blank. “Azazel must have put the word out that we’re wanted. We have to get to the White Spear tonight.”
The Spear was a river, bisecting the Kingdom North to South, and on the Eastern side was Gabriel’s fiefdom. Once they crossed the Spear, Azazel’s power and influence would diminish dramatically.
“Then I guess our friends here have done us a favour by accident,” said Sam: “listen.” They held still and quiet, then Chuck heard it too: muffled neighing and stamping, the shuffling of animals restrained by ropes and tether.
“Horses!” Charlie brightened, and they hurried through the dense trees towards the sound.
TBC