United We Fall, Ch. 2

Chapter 2: So a demon walks into a barn...

The reaction was instant. John and Rory had their guns out again before anyone could blink, John striding back over to Sherlock, who had tensed a split second before Cas had spoken – he could feel the advancing angelic presence, too, and his eyes darkening as he fought the rising urge to start tearing into something. John placed a calming hand on his shoulder, thumb stroking circles on Sherlock’s shoulder blade as the consulting detective took slow, slightly shaky breaths.

Sam swore loudly and ran back over to the bag he had been packing up, digging through it in an attempt to find a gun. Dean said something similarly obscene, and made as if to get up, forgetting that Cas was still using his shoulder as support for staying upright, and then had to stop the angel from doing a faceplant yet again.

“I’m sorry,” he gasped, a low noise of pain escaping his throat, “my vessel is not- there’s still – the temporal relocation was unpleasant and… and the Leviathan were not careful when they rode it. I’m still repairing. I’m sorry.” He pushed himself onto his knees again, using Dean as a support again, and reluctantly met the hunter’s eyes. “I truly am sorry, Dean. For everything. I-”

“Save it for later, Cas,” said Dean tightly, “when we’re not all about to die.” He accepted the gun Sam offered him gratefully, and then slid an arm around Cas and hauled him to his feet, ignoring the pained whimper it caused. He was sonot ready to talk about all of that yet. Thankfully, Castiel seemed to get the hint and said nothing more, merely looping his own arm over Dean’s shoulder and attempting to stand up a little straighter.

The Doctor’s lips thinned into a tight line at the sudden abundance of weaponry being waved around – along with John and Rory’s guns, Sam had handed one to Dean, who had held it awkwardly with one hand and kept one for himself. Amy had quietly shook her head at the gun Sam had offered her and instead picked up a long, thin poker of iron from one of the bags. She had no past experience of guns – unlike her husband, who had had plenty of unwelcome practice with them during his time as the Lone Centurion – and was well aware she’d be more of a danger than and aid with one if it came to a fight. The idea of facing whatever was coming unarmed, though, was highly unappealing, so poker-sword it was.

“They’re coming,” said Sherlock suddenly, stepping forward and standing behind Dean and Cas, John by his side. His eyes were entirely black, gazing up at the ceiling with fierce concentration. “But… just one. One angel. And a… a demon?” He shook his head, frowning. “Completely illogical. Why would there be an angel and a demon, just one of each, it doesn’t-”

“Angel?” rasped Cas, trying to turn to look at Sherlock and just sliding awkwardly towards the floor. Dean hosited him back up with an irritated growl, still trying to keep his gun steady and pointed at the barn doors. Rory moved to stand next to Dean, on the other side to Sam, and Amy stood next to him. The Doctor was already next to Sam, sonic screwdriver pointed at the door – they’d discovered, through happy coincidence, that it had a frequency that was apparently extraordinarily painful to both angels and demons. Of course, this meant Sherlock and Catiel would suffer too, but in a live-or-die scenario it was a comforting last resort.

“Nonono,” mumbled Castiel, shaking his head, trying to keep his eyes focused and think straight. Although the urge to pass out had gone, the very human need to sleep was now painfully apparent, and he could feel his mind clouding over with the desperate desire to make him close his eyes, to be able to recuperate some of his lost energy. “No, there’s an angel- an’, and a demon- they-”

Wind began whipping up around the ban, making swirls in the dust. A faint howling could be heard from outside, the promise of danger approaching at unholy speed.

“Save it, Cas!” snapped Dean, flicking the saftey off. Twin clicks from Sam, John and Rory echoed on either side of him. Amy dropped into a ready position, poker held across her body like a sword, eyes trained on the door. In the Doctor’s hand, the sonic screwdriver began to hum faintly, glowing blue and illuminating the blank, terrifyingly serious look on his face. In the back, behind them all, Sherlock smiled.

The doors to the barn crashed open, and two shadowy outlines could be seen in the gap left by them, glimmering palely in the moonlight.

“Fire!” yelled Dean.

Half a second later, Castiel growled, “No!”, but not before Dean had hit the trigger and a crack sounded through the barn. Everything fell instantly silent, confusion and tension almost palpable.

Castiel dragged himself away from Dean’s support, stumbled forward a few steps, and stood between the group and the figues, swaying. “‘Ziraphale?” he rasped into the silence, peering through the gloom.
There was a moment when a shocked gasp broke the silence, and then a soft, cultured English voice cut through the air. “Castiel? Bless me, is that you? We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

One of the figures stepped forward, and a man became visible. He looked to be in his mid-thirties, slightly soft around the middle, with unruly golden hair, wide blue eyes, well-manicured hands and absolutely no fashion sense whatsoever. He hurried across to Castiel and put a hand on either shoulder, examining him critcally. “Oh, you poor thing, whatever happened to you?  We felt purgatory open, even all the way over in London, and I insisted that we come look for you as soon as we could, but there was no trace of you! We’ve been trying to track you down since then, but there was no sign of you, and we couldn’t find those brothers you’d told us about either. We only came here because there was the most enormous burst of energy, what on earth happened?”

Castiel just looked at him, face blank and exhausted, with honestly no idea where to begin.

“Who the hell’re you?” Sam snapped. He hadn’t lowered his gun, and neither had Dean, although Rory had allowed his arm to drop to his side with a look of heartfelt relief after the newcomer hadn’t attacked them straight away. John had lowered his gun slightly, but there was still suspicious wariness written across his face. “And why d’you keep talking in the plural?”

“I’m Aziraphale, angel of the Lord and erstwhile guardian of the East gate.” He smiled in a slightly awkward manner. “I’m also a principality, but I don’t like to talk about that. And this here is-” He turned to his left, and blinked when he found the air empty. Then he let out a despairing sigh, and looked back at the door. “Crowley, dear, do stop lurking.”

“But angel, they shot me,” whined a hissing voice from the doorway, and a thin, pale man slunk out of the gloom to stand next to the angel, holding his arm just above the elbow where dark blood was seeping into his expensive suit. He was the exact opposite of his companion – well-dressed, sharply angular and dangerous looking, with slicked-back black hair and dark glasses covering his eyes even in the gloom. “Look!” He shrugged the shoulder of his bleeding arm with a petualnt expression; the pain didn’t seem to bother him, more the fact that he’d been shot.

“Aziraphale and Crowley?” came a voice from the back of the group, and Sherlock pushed his way through to the front, elbowing Sam in the ribs. “Put your gun down you idiot, it’s not your Crowley.” His attention turned back to the pair in front of him. “The Aziraphale and Crowley?” he inquired, voice politely incredulous. “Really?”

“Oh look, we’re famous!” Crowley seemed delighted. Aziraphale just gave him an embarrassed little smile. “Oh, yes, you’re the one that caused quite a stir down there, aren’t you?” He eyed Sherlock curiously. “You’d have only just been let out when it all started happening. Must have been a rather exciting introduction to being a demon on Earth.” 
He grinned at Sherlock, who smiled back with slightly more teeth than was strictly nessecary. “Indeed. Below wouldn’t stop complaining about you, very wearing.”

“Azi and Crowley!” The Doctor slapped a hand to his forehead, eyes lighting up. “Oh, I haven’t seen you two in- must be over three hundred years, right? Sorry, the change of bodies threw me off, last time I saw you, you were both in togas.” He grinned briefly, and then sobered again. “Burning of the library of Alexandria, right?”

Aziraphale nodded, the polite smile falling off his face for the first time since setting foot in the barn. Crowley reached out with his uninjured arm, as if to pat him on the shoulder, saw the blood on his hand, and then stopped. It was hard to tell, with his eyes concealed by his glasses, but he looked almost guilty. Castiel made a small, sad noise – although that could well have been from the pain.

“I keep meaning to drop in on you, you know. With all that fuss at the power plant. Keep forgetting about it.” The Doctor smiled akwardly, rubbing the back of his neck.
“You never do,” says Aziraphale, tone bristling ever-so-slightly with something that could be irritation if he weren’t an angel and therefore immune to such things. “Me and Crowley had to sort the whole messy business out by ourselves. Really, if you want something done, you have to do it yourself.”

“So wait. Lemme get this straight,” Dean interrupted. He adjusted his grip on his gun, lowering it very reluctantly – Castiel seemed to know the newcomers, and Sherlock seemed to know of them, which meant they probably weren’t going to start killing them all any time soon, but you never knew. “You-” He pointed at Aziraphale, “-are an angel, so what, you’re Cas’s brother? And then you-” He shot a dark glance at Crowley, “-are a demon, and also called Crowley, but I’m guessing not our demon who’s called Crowley. And you both fought and apocalypse, but not our apocalypse. Right?” He blinked, and shook his head. “The hell is an angel doing, wandering around all friendly with a demon?”

“We have an… Agreement, of sorts.” It shouldn’t be possible to make words smirk, but Crowley managed it.
“We’re ground troops,” added Aziraphale, “I suppose you could call us recruitment officers, for Great Britain at least. Being on Earth millenia after millenia gets rather wearing unless you’ve got someone to talk to, and anyway, I rather think this whole ‘sides’ thing is a bit of a moot point, really. They both seem altogether too fond of ineffability and attempting to destroy the world, which I happen to rather like.” He frowned disapprovingly. “So many good books…”

“Really.” Crowley’s eyebrows went up, and Dean imagined he was rolling his eyes behind his glasses. “Don’t mind the angel, he’s a bit…” Crowley made acuckoo motion next to his head, and Aziraphale… well, it was something like bristling, except there was the vague feeling that wings he couldn’t see were involved in the motion. It was a sort of a fluffing motion of disapproval.

Dean looked like he wanted to complain suspiciously some more, but then Castiel made a small, breathy, wheezing noise and Sherlock said, “Dean, you might want to catch your angel.” Dean dropped the gun automatically, lunging forward just in time to catch an armful of shuddering, coughing miserableness. Sherlock’s lips tightened, and he stepped pointedly away from the pair of them, eyes closing briefly in distress. John squeezed his arm gently, a comforting motion, and then stepped past him to take a look at Castiel.

“He’s just unconscious,” he announced, looking around at everyone. “But we need to get him back to the TARDIS as soon as possible, he needs medical care. I don’t know what kind of damage these Leviathan things could have done to his brain or internal organs.” Dean and Sam exchanged anxious looks, and Dean’s eyes dropped back to Castiel’s pale, muddied face.

“And I need to get away from him,” hissed Sherlock under his breath. “I can’t- How do you bear it?” He looked hopelessly at Crowley, eyes wide and dark. Crowley chuckled.
“Aziraphale has a habit of getting himself knocked around, don’t you, angel? The number of times I’ve been around him whilst he’s bleeding… I’ve got used to it.”

“You’re bleeding now,” pointed out Aziraphale sniffily, “and you’re the one who needs help.”
“It doesn’t even hurt!” whined Crowley, pouting slightly.
“It would be very inconvenient if you got discorporated now. I don’t want to wait around for however long until you can requisition another body.”
“Ah, yes, you’d have no one to wrangle Ritz reservations for you, would you?”

“Are you two married?” interrupted Sam in mildly incredulous tones. Amy giggled slightly, and then clamped her hands over her mouth when Rory stared at her.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “They’re adorable.” Her eyes still sparkled with mirth.

Blushing furiously, Aziraphale stuttered before finally managing, “We most certainly are not! He- he is an agent of the Pit!”
“I asked him once, a few years back.” Crowley shrugged, expression unconcerned, but his eyes danced. “I was very put out – wasn’t I, angel?” He leaned closer to the angel, raising his eyebrows and showing too many teeth.
“He’s just having a joke,” said Aziraphale sternly, and pushed the offending demon away, eyes focused on the ceiling and high spots of colour across his cheeks.

Crowley made a low, hissing noise. “Angel! Okay, now that’s starting to hurt.” He sighed, hand moving up to just above the elbow of his damaged arm, fingers tightening around it. “I think you’re right about the discorporation thing.”

There was silence in the room for a while, Dean cradling Castiel gently and Aziraphale watching Crowley anxiously. Sherlock’s fingers were twitching, clenching and unclenching into fists, John’s hand making soothing circles on his shoulder. The Doctor’s gaze was flicking between everyone, alternating between concern and excitement. Amy was still smiling behind her fingers.

And then Rory stepped forward. “I have a novel idea,” announced Rory, voice laced with an unusual amount of sarcasm, “how about we get the unconscious and bleeding people into the TARDIS so we can give them medical care and maybe stop them from dying – or being ‘discorportated’, whatever that is?”

“Excellent idea, Rory.” The Doctor grinned, clapping him on the shoulder. Rory rolled his eyes, shaking his head slightly as the Doctor bounded towards the barn doors. “Probably best to evacuate before the nasties turn up, anyway. Come along Ponds, angels, demons, hunters – to the TARDIS!”