Just Passing Through (Travel Thread)

[Ada Wong]

Crowley’s wings stretched and aired loftily above him as he arrived in the blank, canvas-like expanse from before, twin silent shadows smoothing over the pallid white spread out behind him. It felt like falling under some primordial scrutiny, a watchful eye gleaming with silent humor at his expense. Awe overcame him, swelled within the very fiber of his being like low-moored clouds drifting lazily over rippling saltwater, yet grew more carefully guarded the nearer it drew to his heart.
 
Nothing pained him. He was whole once more, no uncomfortable wounds marring the skin of his vessel or breaking unpleasantly through his torso. His clothes, red like the juice of a pomegranate and running with fine seams of black, contrasted sharply with the white world; the Fountain of Infinity’s streams of water shone translucently like bluish-white beadwork. The demon’s yellow eyes glittered with a conceited and private delight as he regarded the sleeves of his dress shirt, straightening them until they were impeccably aligned.
 
The second thing Crowley noticed upon his arrival in the Nexus was the complete and utter lack of the weapon he had grown to appreciate— admittedly a little more than he should have. A crumpled wisp of paper, like one might find in a fortune cookie, crinkled up at him from the sparkling white floor. When he stooped down and brought it up for inspection, noting with supreme satisfaction that his sunglasses were once more where they belonged, Crowley gave a light ‘hmph’ at the numbers scrawled upon it.
 
It was a receipt, in case you were wondering, for the gun he had unluckily lost.  The numbers listed upon it were so outrageously large of a sum that Crowley had to wait for an embarrassingly lengthy moment before they successfully registered in his mind.
 
With an even more exasperated huff, Crowley crushed the letter in his palm and squinted irately around at his surroundings. ‘That old coot. Can’t even explain things properly, that’s the ancient Grecian way, you practically have to—‘
 
A brief shuffle of sound came from over his shoulder, as disconcerting and dreadful as silent weeping in a sterile hospice room. His head turned, a thorny quality hovering about him in dangerously palpable warning. At that juncture, the demon went absolutely still, his body abruptly so rigid that it was almost as if he had been frozen in ice.
 
Deliberately, cautiously, Crowley blinked at the large group of staunchly-guarded Primes watching the Fountain of Infinity from a measured distance away. And, by default, watching Crowley.
 
He hissed some muted obscenity under his breath, as if to stretch the timbre of his voice in the prevailing quiet. Well, quiet save for the red-skinned man in yellow tights drifting above them all and the snappy robot clanking about on faulty wheels. Crowley believed he caught a glimpse of Magus, who seemed impressively healed since he had seen him last, and waved shortly in greeting.
 
The demon certainly didn’t know what was going on here and he also didn’t especially relish finding out. Something great and terrible stifled the customary radiance of the place, a boundless machine whirring with oily conspiracy and most probably death. It grated heavily upon his nerves, sent a nervous skitter dancing through his limbs like a freshly hanged man. Yes, it would be best to move and move quickly.
 
But where to venture off to? This was not the world he knew. Such a precipitously ominous storm of gathered Primes might be preferable to aimless wandering— at least here, among these wielders of great power and strangeness, he might find some precious resemblance to the former infernal unity he had once been a part of. Did he really want to chance death in the pursuit of glory?
 
No, Crowley decided. No he did not. He might be a tool or a pawn, but he certainly wasn’t going to let himself become ensnared in a game of moral questioning and fear-devouring regimes. That was the very kind of poison even some of hellish make despised, and he didn’t want even a single choice nibble of it.
 
“Er,” the demon blurted, angling his head in a random directly and letting his body follow suit, as if nothing were amiss and really he had to be going elsewhere, no time for such trivial shenanigans or silly witch hunts, no thank you…
 
So it came to pass that Crowley turned and left, drifting in a rootless, wavering pattern that led him towards the crumbling, sand-dusted remnants of a gateway arch. Much of his time traveling was spent walking, occasionally sending backward glances lest any ill-intentioned fellows be in pursuit, and so it was quite a relief when he stumbled across such a peculiar landmark.
 
A discerning look was directed at the sun cracked gate, the dry, arid scent of frankincense itching at the demon’s constitution and prompting a subtle sniff. Blessed allergies.  His skin practically crawled as a trail of dust skittered out and across the pristine white of the Nexus floor, lightly sprinkling it with glassy and fine granules of glinting sand.
 
Affixing his sunglasses once more upon his face, Crowley warily regarded the portal swirling before him. It wouldn’t be so bad, would it, for him to just… slip inside real quick, conveniently escaping any hostile notice? Certainly not.

With little preamble and only a brief, hesitant skid, the demon slipped soundlessly through the portal.