Hung the Moon

Deep To My Heart, Deep To My Core

After he and Zira had cried themselves to sleep, Crowley slithered out of bed that morning feeling as sluggish as a snake in snow. He felt like the lilly law had beat him with a sock stuffed with Alexander the Great's treasury. It wasn't so different from waking up after an epic bender. The kind that left you with a weight on your back and a brick in your stomach.

He felt...

Dead, his traitorous mind whispered.

So his mind? No better than the rest of him. His skull felt like a dirty glass a barkeep had drained the bar mats into, and his hair looked how his head felt. He tried to comb it back with his fingers with fair to middling success. He grumbled when his cowlicks wouldn't cooperate.

He didn't have the anger or the self-possession he needed to force his hair to behave via infernal means. He felt too numb, too leaden. Not conducive to ordering his world as he had become so accustomed to doing, where things did as he liked with little more than a glance and a snap of his fingers. Where things worked simply because he expected they would.

He noted that at some point the other items that had been delivered to the house had ordered themselves via miracle. So like his angel. The desire to deal with the utter mess the prophecy had foretold by creating some semblance of order. As if he were making a rude gesture at fate. Even if it was just doing the dishes and decorating, so simple and mundane. Even if he'd done it with a miracle while half asleep.

Zira's sword from when he was a Knight of the Round Table had found a place on one of the bookshelves across from the bed. He recognized it despite only ever glimpsing it in passing. Immaculate as the day it was forged, it lay proud and stately on its display stand.

It had a multicolored beast - somewhere between a fearsome dragon and a massive serpent - and a white lion coiled around the cross-guard and down to the blade. Their mouths were open as if they were both about to breathe fire down the length of the sword. Their tails entwined to protect the hand of the wielder.

It was impossible to tell if the two creatures were in opposition, or united in cooperation.

It was certainly no common knight's blade. He could tell just by the presence the blade had, even before noticing the many physical details that confirmed the assumption. He held his palm over it, but not daring to touch. Owning something like this, well, it was the sort of thing Arthur looked for in a man. He wanted his closest champions to be worthy, worthy to hold a blade that had the powers of Heaven and Hell inside it. That they could manage the magic inside and bend it to the will of the Table Round.

A flicker of power rippled along the pads of his fingers. It was as if the beasts depicted so meticulously in gold and gems were slumbering, and had roused for a bare moment at his proximity.

He didn't know much about what Aziraphale was up to in those days. He made a mental note to ask. The weapon implied so much more than he had assumed, though he managed a smile at the sight regardless. Even if their encounter in that misty forest hadn't gone nearly as well as he had hoped.

Some voice hidden deep in the quagmire of his mind wondered if that would be the sword to cut him down, one day.

Come on, Crowley, you sad sack. It doesn't have to be so literal, does it? Agnes didn't exactly write in plain language. Hells it could mean, I don't know. I drop the toast marmalade side down or something one morning and Aziraphale threatens to kill me with the butter knife.

He pulled his clothes on (sans shoes and jacket) and, pronouncing the outfit serviceable, went downstairs. A quick burst of power and the clothes were clean and tailored again. No sense in letting one's sense of fashion go to the wayside, no matter how shit your circumstances.