Chapter Text
Crowley almost didn’t mind being back in Hell. There was a certain—not exactly comfort but rather—an old familiarity. The memory of a place where he had once belonged in only the most begrudging sense. A place that had at one time oppressed him, like the office of a former employer after one’s contract’s expired.
If he could for a moment forget the manacles, he might even imagine he was there voluntarily. Might pretend he had been transported back in time a handful of years, to give some presentation or to stand for his quarterly review.
Except that he couldn’t. And he hadn’t.
He had been surprised by the attack, weakened instantly by the occult sigils snapped to his wrists, and—rather efficiently, he had to admit—smuggled down. He had put up a spirited resistance, of course. But between the dampening effect of the cursed manacles and the preternatural strength of a huge demon (with a neck wider than the distance between his ears), his efforts earned him only a punch to the gut and a bruised pride.
“You gonna tell me why I’m here?” he asked the giant, a quiet, pale-skinned demon whose thick neck resembled a gnarled tree trunk. He stood against the far wall of the dank, humid room that served as Crowley’s holding cell, muscular arms crossed over his chest.
A single fluorescent bulb (bless Hell and its infernal love of the invention) hummed overhead, its sickly light doing little to illuminate the other demon’s impassable expression.
The door creaked open to admit the-other-one responsible for his capture. On their own, this one would have appeared diminutive. Next to the giant, however, they were almost pitiably small. Their skin, an iridescent blue, shone slick and hard like a waxed carapace in the weak light. They turned their glossy black eyes on the giant and rasped, “He’s on his way,” in a hollow voice that bore the rustling quality of dry grass.
“Finally,” Crowley said. “Someone might actually tell me what I’m being held for.”
The little one hissed at him, clicking an extra set of vertical mouth flaps in reproach.
“Yeeeaaahh, feeling’s mutual.”
Some minutes later, the door opened a second time to admit another presumably male-shaped creature. Though with these corporations it wasn’t always easy to distinguish the make and model. And it was anyone’s guess as to what effort, if any, a particular demon cared to make from one century to the next.
Crowley could approximate this one as masc-presenting, at least, from the spiky hair worn shockingly short against his angular scalp, the strong cut of his jaw and thick, dark eyebrows. The way the light slanted down his face, his smile seemed circumstantial, a mere function of naturally upturning lips pulled over a mouth too full of teeth.
He looked young. And altogether too easily handsome. And peculiarly without a visible animal aspect.
“You must be Crowley,” he said in a lyrical voice that rose and dipped between syllables.
“And you,” he answered, “must be the bloody stupidest demon in Hell.”
The other licked his lips. “My name is Rakim. But to my subordinates, I am Sir, Count Rakim, or Your Countship.”
Crowley barked his laughter. “All right then, Cuntship. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this whole,” he gestured as expansively as his bound wrists would allow, “thing isn’t sanctioned by head office? ‘Course it isn’t, why else bother with all the secrecy? Sneak me down through a back entrance? Get Tweedledee and Tweedle Dumb over there to keep watch, in case someone actually important were to stroll by?”
“You’ll come to find I’m incredibly patient. Especially when it comes to getting what I want. In a few moments, you’ll be paid in kind for your disrespect.”
“That’s your plan? Torture? Shit plan, if you ask me. What’s it I’m to be tortured for, anyway? Y’should probably lead with that next time, you know? Rookie mistake. S’okay, you’ll get there.”
Rakim calmly blinked his dark eyes (green, or perhaps brown, and all too normal, too human), his predatory grin not slipping. “You’re going to tell me how it is you came to be untouchable. Supposedly.”
“Oh,” Crowley said, slouching in disappointment, “this is about Holy Water, is it? Damn. I mean, I figured eventually they’d get curious and send a delegation to ask me. But this? An off-the-books kidnapping by some unknown Count angling for a raise?” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “To be honest, it’s a bit embarrassing.”
“The means by which you achieved immunity are embarrassing?”
“No, I’m embarrassed for you, you twat! Do you think if Hell really needed the answer, they’d send a bully with some honorary, meaningless title?” Crowley leaned forward, bringing his eyes a degree lower to meet Rakim’s level. He went on snarling, making sure to show as much teeth as possible. “You and your threats of pain don’t frighten me, Count. I was one of the first to crawl out of boiling Sulphur. I was born in pain, and I sip terror like a well-aged Burgundy.”
Rakim’s smile became something cloying, stretching impossibly wide across the lower half of his face but never reaching his dead eyes.
“Is that so?” He snapped his fingers, and Crowley’s chains rearranged themselves with a quick demonic miracle, pulling his hands downward at his sides and fastening to the floor. “Before I leave, I should let you know you’re not the only phase of this project. You have no idea what kind of pain is coming.”
Crowley scoffed. “I have an imagination. I can hazard a guess.”
“No, you really can’t. Oh. And, ah, one last thing. I insist that my subordinates look me in the eye.” He reached out and plucked the sunglasses off Crowley’s face, earning a hiss of defiance. Rakim held his stare for one strangely intimate moment, his focus shifting deliberately between his eyes, studying each one in turn with alarming intensity. “How striking.”
He pocketed the shades and turned toward the door, addressing the muscular demon as he went. “Teach him some respect. And keep him quiet, will you?”
“Oi, wait!” Crowley called after him, schooling petulance into his voice. “Aren’t you gonna stay to get your hands dirty? What the Heaven kind of a Count are you?”
“I prefer to dirty my hands elsewhere,” said Rakim over his shoulder. “Talk again soon.”
When he’d gone, flanked closely by the beetle-like demon, Crowley jerked his chin up. He felt exposed without the dark lenses but willed himself not to show it. “Alright, big boy,” he said, “let’s dance.”
The brute shrugged his massive shoulders and cracked his neck, first one way, then the other. He didn’t make a sound, hardly even had to take a step forward before his first blow caught Crowley in the throat. Almost simultaneously, the other fist connected with the side of his face, and he went down with his ear ringing and a head full of stars.
The thing about beatings, as any demon can attest, is that there’s no notable difference between twenty blows or two hundred. If your torturer has been well-trained—which Crowley’s certainly had—then blunt force trauma and shock comprise a backdrop to constant pain. The blows alone cannot kill, nor can any depletion of oxygen or moderate blood loss. Broken bones could be troublesome. Brain damage might prove an inconvenience. But a good torturer knows how to avoid these by careful application of strength to the corporation’s vulnerable but non-vital anatomy.
About the only thing that could discorporate Crowley in this situation was a spinal injury, but so far, the brutish demon spared his back and neck. Not even a heart attack could technically kill him. Sure, his heart had raced and stuttered at various points over the course of his beating, which he now gauged at anywhere from several hours to the better part of a day, by Earth standards. But as his heart remained technically unnecessary and—more importantly—ruled by his demonic nature, he himself persisted beyond a minor restart or two.
His mouth had filled with blood. Ragged breaths wheezed from his bruised trachea to his burning lungs. A white-hot stabbing at his side confirmed at least one broken rib. Nothing a few undisturbed hours of his corporation’s accelerated healing couldn’t mend.
He realized the blows had ceased when he heard a musical voice murmuring something close by. It must have been an order, for then a heavy hand grasped him by the hair and hauled him to his knees. He kneeled without protest, nerve endings firing at his scalp from the mistreatment. It felt like love kisses after his torture session.
He blinked the blur of sweat and blood and tears from his stinging eyes.
Rakim stood before him, calmly as before, hands clasped expectantly at his navel.
“Are you ready to tell me,” he said, “how you came to be immune?”
His croaking response was immediate. “Would you believe I’m just that special?”
“No. I believe you’ve made some kind of exchange, you and the other one. The angel.”
Bile rose traitorously in Crowley’s stinging throat at the thinly veiled reference to Aziraphale. He swallowed it defiantly. He decided on nonchalance.
“That would be clever, eh?”
“Is it true, then? That the two of you have…struck some sort of deal? Somehow exchanged abilities, powers?” Rakim’s voice was even, but his eyes simmered in the flickering light. “Tell me how it’s done.”
Crowley allowed himself several heaving breaths for effect before rasping, “It’s true…that you can fuck right off. Because I’ve nothing to tell you.”
Rakim’s jaw quivered furiously. “I have other places to be,” he said between clenched teeth.
Crowley felt a weak tremor of triumph, even holding himself upright when the grip on his hair released. “Kissing the arse of some higher-up, I presume?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know? I’m through wasting my time with you for now. I’ve worked up quite the appetite.”
“Mm-hmm.” Crowley smiled, feeling his cut lip reopen at the gesture. Again, he leaned forward, projecting as much hatred and disdain as he could manage. “Eat shit and discorporate.”