Chapter Text
Spring, 1994
Anathema met Crowley when they were both children. Crowley had just moved into the neighborhood, taking up residence in what Crowley called a house but Anathema thought was a castle - turns out, as she learned many years later, castles can be houses if you're filthy fucking rich.
Naturally, Crowley's family also owned lots of beautiful, white horses, and that's how it all started - with "the horse incident".
Anathema could hear the animal's cries from where she was playing at a river nearby, and without thinking started to run as fast as she could towards the source of distress. She was out of breath when she made it to the top of the hill, bending forward to rest her hands on her knees and take a few deep breaths as she scanned the field before her. Then she saw it - a beautiful, snow-white horse lying on the ground, tied to a post with a rope. There were angry red marks running across their body, visible even from where she was standing. The horse was attempting to stand up, struggling pathetically.
Anathema noticed two figures a few feet away - an older woman was holding a boy with dark red hair - who was holding a whip. As Anathema began to run closer, she noticed that the woman's face was stained with tears, but the boy's eyes were dry. The woman let go of the boy suddenly, pushing away at him halfheartedly, and when he fell back to the ground she walked quickly to the injured horse. Anathema hurried over to the boy. As she offered her hand and helped him up, she noticed small blood splats over his clothes and hands.
When Anathema's mother came looking for her more than an hour later, the two kids were playing in a tall field of wheat. Her mom promptly dragged her away from the still blood-covered boy, and when they got home, she sat her down and told her to never go near him again. Your father saw it, she said, he beat that horse, nearly killed the poor thing.
As soon as Anathema finished her cereal the next morning though, she ran over to where she last saw the boy, and found him not far off. "I'm gonna follow you forever and make sure you never hurt another horse!" Anathema screamed at him then, and proceeded to do just that.
She followed him around the entire day. Crowley rarely spoke and was just so strange, Anathema thought, not at all like her other friends, but there were so many fun things to do in the castle Crowley lived in that Anathema soon forgot all about it. And maybe her dad was wrong, anyway. She was old enough now to know parents weren't always right about everything.
. . .
More than twenty years later, Anathema was still by his side. Crowley never hurt another horse again - at least as far as she knew - but he was still... him. He was still that same boy, with that sometimes unnervingly empty look in his eye that seemed to come to life at the wrong time and in all the wrong ways.
Despite all that, Crowley did seem to genuinely care about Anathema, and even went so far as to tell her he loved her a few times. She took those confessions with a grain of salt and didn't particularly enjoy hearing them in the first place - she'd learned that love meant something very different for Crowley, and wasn't sure she wanted to be on the receiving end of it. But he wanted to "be good" - he told her so often and meant it, as far as she could tell. He also trusted Anathema to teach him what that meant. And she tried, for years and years, keeping Crowley close - because he was her friend, her best friend really, but more importantly... he was her responsibility. If Crowley ever... if anything ever happened to someone, Anathema would blame herself.
So this was her life. Probably forever. Because although he did seem to be improving, even managing to feel something good every now and then, Anathema could never really be sure. She could never really know. Maybe he was just getting better at what Crowley used to call 'the performance' - swearing he only ever did it for other people, not her. Indeed, Crowley didn't pretend, not with her. Oh, no. She got to have the absolute mis-fucking-fortune of knowing him.
Fall 2002
"Always tell me the truth, always always always," Anathema told him many years ago after finding a girl Crowley had sworn he had no interest in, passed out from drinking and locked in Crowley's dorm closet. "You said you didn't want to hurt her. Now tell me the truth, all of it."
And Crowley did as he was told - told her the truth, all of it, uncensored, with none of the usual sugar-coating. Anathema watched him as he spoke, Crowley's face as neutral and dead-looking as ever as he described... unspeakable things, awful things, and Anathema was kneeling in front of a trash can, emptying her stomach before Crowley even got to the juicy parts.
"You said the truth," Crowley said from behind her, defensively. "And I wasn't going to do any of those things."
Anathema stared at her half-digested lunch in the trashcan. She didn't want to turn around, couldn't face him, not yet. "I know," she said. Lied. Because she didn't know, not at all.
How could she possibly trust this man wouldn't do the things he'd described when he was capable of thinking them in the first place? A normal, healthy person wasn't capable of coming up with that sort of shit and- and... fuck, Anathema cursed under her breath - she couldn't let Crowley see her right now or he'd know, he'd know she was thinking those hurtful things about him. Though the fact that she just vomited merely from hearing his unfiltered thoughts might have tipped him off.
(Every now and then, Anathema swore she could sense the dark energy radiating from him, sinister and malevolent and unpredictable, and then she'd hear those... godawful screams of the white and red horse in her head and remember the blood-stained hands on that little boy, and it would all just be... too much, just too much for such a young girl to bear all on her own, and she'd be unable to stop the frustration and fear and hatred and disgust that she sometimes felt for her best friend from overpowering her love for him and becoming visible on her face. And in those moments she just went by instinct, curling her lips in disgust at him, slamming her fists against his chest, hurling objects in his direction, screaming hateful accusations at him or doing any number of things she later regretted but dammit, she just wanted to hurt the- the vile thing in front of her sometimes. Not the way he wanted to hurt others, of course - her need felt... righteous, like something she had to do, like it was good. Like pouring holy water on a demon or cutting a poisonous serpent's head off with the sharp edge of a shovel. And when she succeeded in hurting him, when her cruel words managed to shake up his shell of a soul enough for him to feel it, it would be only moments before she was apologizing and telling him she didn't mean any of it, 'but at least it made you feel something, right, this is good, it's a good thing, Crowley' and he'd nod and she'd be forgiven, and they would both try their best to do better until one of them failed again and the cycle repeated.)
Her thoughts were interrupted by a light touch on her shoulder then and she jerked violently, jumping forward and away from the touch, spilling the contents of the trashcan as she scrambled over it before turning around. Now facing Crowley, she saw something that - perhaps - looked vaguely like hurt on his face. It was too strange, too Crowley for it to be his 'performance' - he could do better than that. He seemed to recognize her reluctance.
"Sorry, sorry, it's fine, I'm fine," she said, trying her best to hide the fear and anger and revulsion she still felt throbbing in her chest. Crowley looked unconvinced.
"You're a bad liar," he told Anathema, who held his gaze.
"Yeah... You aren't though, are you?" she returned unkindly, more of a statement than a question, and Crowley was the first to look away.
"I don't lie to you," Crowley said quietly at his feet, keeping his body limp and slow as he shuffled slightly back and away from her, trying to appear harmless - just the way Anathema had taught him throughout the years.
(1. "Could you not freaking loom, Crowley?", 2. "Stop staring at me like that", 3. "Fuck, don't- don't touch me, you-!", 4. "Don't raise your voice like that, it scares people", 5. "Where are your contacts? Don't look at me with those ugly yellow-" (Well, the last one was his mother's. An old classic.))
Ah shit, thought Anathema, he saw it. He's gonna crawl back into his shell and send out some... hologram, and play a recording of some emotion he saw somewhere, on someone else. She finally got up from the floor, standing to face him.
"Right," she sighed as she cleaned some of the sick off her shirt and pants. "You don't lie, you just don't tell me things."
"I can't tell you every single thought that crosses my mind, how would that work?"
Anathema felt a spark of anger. "Don't play stupid, Crowley. You know exactly what sort of things I'm talking about."
Crowley's eyes darted away again, and he was clearly trying to think of a way to get out of this and ah, here we go, she thought, wily fucking bastard. Anathema felt like punching him for the millionth time since they've known each other.
"You know I can't always tell," Crowley said, looking at her now, his eyes big and vulnerable and his voice soft and innocent. "That's why I need you, Anathema."
Motherfucker, she thought, her hands forming tight fists. "Don't pull that shit with me, Crowley, or I swear to god I'm gonna walk away right now and fucking disappear."
Whatever emotion Crowley was attempting to simulate on his face was gone with a blink, and Anathema was too fucking pissed off to shiver. That wicked energy of his was suddenly pouring off him in waves.
"You're not going to leave me," he said, quietly, calmly - confidently, the fucking bastard - and Anathema could hear the threat behind it. She pressed her lips into a thin line.
"You sound mighty sure of yourself there, friend," she hissed, and his flinch was so minuscule no one but Anathema would've ever noticed. "And you're gonna make sure of that, are you?"
They stood there, watching each other, neither willing to admit to the other that they were afraid.
"Yes," Crowley replied, finally.
Anathema's nostrils flared, face contorting in anger. "How you gonna do that, Crowley?"
He was almost like a statue, unmoving and silent.
"You gonna lock me up in your closet? Huh? Gonna keep me like a fucking pet?"
Crowley said nothing, but the words that were coming from Anathema were having an effect. Snake - meet shovel.
"Yeah, you've thought about that, haven't you? Any other sick fantasies involving me I should be aware of? All that- all that- fucking- psycho shit you wanted to do to that girl? What's stopping you from doing that shit to me, huh? Why don't you just bash my fucking head in right now and-"
For what seemed like the longest moment of her life, Anathema actually thought she was going to die. So many thoughts ran through her head in those few seconds that they seemed like a fucking eternity as she stood trembling in her friend's strong hold. And on the question of fight or flight, she was, it would seem, in favour of the third option - freeze in complete terror. She couldn't breathe, couldn't think. She opened her eyes when she felt a warm palm slowly and softly drawing large circles on her back. Air rushed into her lungs again, kick-starting her brain. The circles on her back continued, and slowly but surely began to relax her taut muscles. He's hugging me, she thought in disbelief. She heard Crowley whisper something but she couldn't make it out though the loud drumming of her heart.
"What?" she managed.
"I'm sorry."
"Oh."
Crowley squeezed her harder then, pressing her closer, only to loosen the embrace again when Anathema tensed. He kept moving his hand on her back.
"You said to tell you the truth. All of it," he said, sounding a little desperate.
"Yeah. I did, didn't I," Anathema returned, trying to chuckle but it sounded more like a sob. Christ. This was life with Crowley. The man who felt barely anything but made you feel so intensely a mix of emotions that did not belong together. Like affection and disgust. Love and fear. Anathema swore to herself she would be more prepared next time, she wouldn't get this hysterical again when Crowley was honest with her. (Which is what she told herself every time.) "I can't control what crosses my mind," Crowley said to her once, and Anathema told him that sounded like a lazy excuse. Crowley agreed.
But it was Anathema's responsibility to know his thoughts, wasn't it? That meant she had to be able to handle hearing him speak about these things and, more importantly, he had to be willing to speak of them and that meant she had to do better. She had to stop punishing him for thinking.
She felt the hold tighten again, only slightly.
"I won't ever harm you. Not you. I swear it."
Despite everything, Anathema believed him. That was the last time Crowley ever threatened her for a long, long time.
But then... that man came along.