Archive of Our Own

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”

Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

When Crowley awoke, he was in utter darkness.

That was slightly problematic, as by virtue of being both a demon and a snake, he should be able to make out at least something, anything, in the gloom, but the dark before him was completely unyielding. A terrifying thought occurred to him, but when his hands flew to his face, it seemed like his eyes were still in their sockets. He felt around, but his sunglasses were nowhere to be found.

Crowley let out a shaky breath when his fingers came away wet and traced its source to a nasty gash on the back of his skull. Right, they had hit him across the head when-

The error screen lovingly known by computer users around the world as the “blue screen of death” was one of Crowley’s favorite creations of the past fifty years. It was amazing the depths of fury and frustration humans were capable of when they realized they had lost hours of progress over a tiny technological glitch. He always thought he should have gotten more recognition from Management over that one, as it was something he actually did this time instead of taking credit for a human invention.

It was also amazing how much Crowley felt like a malfunctioning laptop at the moment. If he tried to think about the period leading up to his unconsciousness, he was pretty sure that he would either completely shut down or straight up combust. Just like-

The impression of flames danced before him. It was swallowing everything, everything, and Crowley could only watch as it approached-

No, think of something else, for Satan’s sake, anything else.

Head throbbing and throat tight, Crowley forced himself to sit up.

He decided to take stock of his situation to keep his mind occupied, to keep himself away from any thoughts that were bleaker than his surroundings. From what he could gather, he was in some sort of hallway that was too narrow to spread his arms out to their full length, much less his wings. There was no discernible ceiling above him, and every once and a while a cold draft would blow through that would chill Crowley to the bone. The walls were formed out of some kind of impenetrable stone that resisted any attempt to be warmed by body heat.

Crowley was pretty sure he knew where he was after a few minutes. He also knew that if he was right, his prospects were beyond dim.

Tartarus. The Pit. Tehom. Gehenna. Whatever the popular religion of the day wanted to call it, it remained very much the same throughout the history of Creation and even the time that came Before. It was the very Abyss that the Almighty had formed the universe out of, then abandoned in favor of that world of light, leaving it to stagnate and wither in the dark. Altogether a very lovely place.

Tartarus was a place that not even demons tended to fuck around with. He didn’t think even Lucifer had ever been down here in a few millennia. Crowley couldn’t remember the last time either side had decided to chuck some unlucky bastard down here. It had always been a last resort.

Crowley grimaced. He supposed that a last resort was exactly what the failed apocalypse had driven them to.

There was no way out, that was for certain. No one entered the depths of Tartarus ever saw the light of day again, no matter what kind of being they were. Even if Crowley was somehow able to take flight, it would take at least nine days (according to Hesiod, anyway) to even get back up to Hell. And that would be at his best, when he wasn’t injured, cold, and completely cut off from his power.

Because he was cut off from his power, that was also for certain. Nothing had happened when he tried to heal the gash on his head, or when he tried to create a light to get a better look at his surroundings. This had never happened to him before, not even after he Fell.

It would seem that everyone, from the Almighty to Below, had abandoned him, and the one person who didn’t had been murdered because of him.

Crowley had never felt so alone.

It was a cruel fate, even for his side. One of the few things Crowley had appreciated about Hell was the level of personalization it provided. Experiences and tortures had always been tailored to the individual, giving a unique experience every time. They were all assholes, to be sure, but at least you knew you were hated as an individual and not necessarily just on principle. It was Heaven that was supposed to be coldly impersonal, businesslike, and abandon you at the first opportunity they got.

But here Hell had dropped Crowley, freezing and alone and unable to end his punishment through either death or escape.

There was only him, the darkness, and the eternity of his own thoughts stretching out before him.

Aziraphale’s first thought upon awakening is that he really shouldn’t be alive, much less still corporated.

It was quite obvious, though, upon a moment's reflection that he was somehow both of these. Mainly because he was feeling a very real and very corporeal sensation of being pinned under a pile of debris.  

Upon inspection, though, it wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Somehow a support beam had fallen at an angle and stopped the majority of the framework of the cottage from crumbling directly on top of him. And somehow the pocket of space that had created prevented him from being incinerated by the hellfire that had scorched everything else.

Aziraphale wasn’t kidding himself about the probability of this happening on its own. This was a miracle and no minor one at that. One that neither he, Crowley, nor any other demonic and/or heavenly entity had enacted.

How, then, was he still here?

He gingerly made his way out of the rubble and into the open air. Night had fallen around him, and the world seemed as still and quiet as it had on the very first night it was created. If he wanted, Aziraphale could illuminate the remains of the cottage with a few words. The thing was, he didn’t want to. He already knew it was all gone, every last teacup and book and plant, and Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure he could handle seeing his hopes for the future become ash in a very literal sense.

There was no point digging through the debris in search of Crowley. Even if he hadn’t known the attack wasn’t intended to kill the demon, Aziraphale couldn’t feel his presence anywhere on this mortal plane, no matter how far he extended his consciousness in a desperate search.  

The absence was like having a lung ripped out of his chest. It was one of those constants you never realized how badly you needed until it was violently taken from you and suddenly you could no longer breathe.

Aziraphale stared up at the stars Crowley had always pretended he didn’t love as much as he did. The pinpoints of light swam, but he didn’t fight the tears as they came.

In that rare moment, Aziraphale allowed his grief to consume him.

Going back to the bookshop was as good as suicide. But Aziraphale was beyond the point of caring about the risk. He needed information, and there would be no better place to find it than buried in one of his shelves.

And it wasn’t like he had anything left to lose at this point.

He had taken the Bentley, which, in some sick twist of irony, had avoided being incinerated (again) along with the cottage. It seemed subdued without its owner, playing Somebody to Love at a muted volume and actually obeying the speed limit for once. It didn’t seem right, without Crowley, but then again, nothing much did anymore.

Aziraphale glanced around warily as he unlocked the door and stepped into the silent bookshop. No divine booby traps were sprung, but that didn’t mean they weren’t watching the place, waiting to see if somebody tried to come back. Best make this quick, then.

The manuscript was precisely where he remembered leaving it, buried between copies of Shirley Jackson and Sir James George Frazer. An incunabulum printing of the Aeneid, complete with woodblock illustrations, published in 1502 by Johannes Gruninger. It was impossibly rare and unique, much like most of the other books in his possession.

Aziraphale flipped through the pages hurriedly until he turned to the part he was looking for. When he found book six, he placed the text on the counter in front of him and began to scan, tracing his fingers along the words.

A deep cave there was, yawning wide and vast, of jagged rock, and sheltered by dark lake and woodland gloom… such a vapour from those black jaws was wafted to the vaulted sky whence the Greeks spoke of Avernus, the Birdless Place.

Avernus… He’d heard the name before. Aziraphale went stumbling through his shop in search of books on Italy. He managed to find a travel guide from 1963, which while being horribly dated still managed to do the trick. As it seemed, Lake Avernus resided in the crater of an extinct volcano in the south of Italy and had long been regarded as a cursed place.

Aziraphale sucked in his breath. This had to be it. The passageway might not work after two millennia or so of disuse, but this was the best lead he had.

The next flight out of Heathrow for Naples suddenly had a miraculous last-minute cancellation.

It turns out they had been right to worry about being tracked through their miracles because hardly ten minutes passed before the still of the night was broken.

There was a sudden thunderous knocking on the door of the bookshop. Aziraphale stiffened and slowly closed the books in front of him. No customer would just happen to show up after the bookstore had been closed for such a period and at this time of night, especially not within an hour of Aziraphale’s return. It had to be one of them, though whether ethereal or occult he couldn’t say. At this point, he wouldn’t be shocked if it were both.

The knocking continued. It would only be a matter of time before they eschewed politeness and found a way to force their way inside. Aziraphale felt something inside him harden. If there was going to be trouble, let it be on his own terms, then. With purposeful strides, he crossed the room and swung open the door.

Sandalphon stood on the doorstep, arm raised in a frozen knock. When he saw Aziraphale, his jaw slacked and his eyes widened ever so slightly. Evidently, he had not expected to see the other angel still alive.

Aziraphale was certain he was a sight to behold. He was still covered head to foot in soot, and no doubt if he spread his wings now, they would be as dark as Crowley’s from the ashes. Well, now that they knew where he was, there was no point in holding back on miracles anymore. Aziraphale made a mental note to make himself look at least somewhat presentable before getting on the flight.

In the meanwhile, Sandalphon had regained his composure. “Principality Aziraphale,” he began. “You- “

“Shouldn’t be alive?” Aziraphale smiled, but there was no warmth to it. Before the cottage, before the failed apocalypse, he would be nervous in this sort of situation with another angel and would tend to nod along until he could leave the conversation. Now all he felt was a dull ache of sorrow for what his brethren had become. “You tried that once already and it didn’t work then. I don’t see why you thought it would do now. Definition of insanity and all that.”

Sandalphon eyed the ashes on his coat warily. “The judgment has been made. The sentence has been passed. The punishment must be completed,” he said slowly, gold flashing between his teeth. The sword on his belt swayed conspicuously. Had it been there the entire time, or had he just summoned it for intimidation’s sake?

Aziraphale sighed. He was an immortal being with a theoretically limitless energy supply, but at that moment, he had never felt more exhausted. “Surely everything we’ve been through was punishment enough.”

“You betrayed us.” Sandalphon took a step forward so they were face to face. “You betrayed Her.”

Aziraphale didn’t flinch away at the accusation like he once would have. He had always considered himself something of a coward when push came to shove. The recently thwarted apocalypse had certainly proven that. But things were different now. He had survived the hellfire for a reason, and he was going to see this through.

“‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love, I am become as sounding brass or a tinkling cymbal,’” Aziraphale mumbled thoughtfully.

Sandalphon’s brow furrowed. “Excuse me?”

His eyes flickered down to Sandalphon’s sword then back up to the emptiness of the other angel’s eyes “‘And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not love, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profiteth me nothing.’”

Sandalphon was silent, but his eyes burned.

“I… I refuse to believe,” Aziraphale said after a moment of silence hung between them, “That when it came down to it, the Almighty would choose a path that ends in pain and destruction over a path ending in love. ‘And now abideth faith, hope, and love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.’ If believing in Her utter Goodness puts me against the will of Heaven, then so be it.”

Aziraphale half expected to be smitten on the spot. Sandalphon was evidently expecting the same. But the night air around them remained calm, and Aziraphale remained standing.

Sandalphon simply stared for a heartbeat. Then his hand moved to his sword.

Aziraphale’s hand reached the hilt first.

The thing that the other angels, including Aziraphale himself oftentimes, tended to forget is that there was a reason God had given him a flaming sword at the Beginning of it all. He was a fighter, by design. And though he had a general distaste towards violent acts that kept him away from battle as much as possible, Aziraphale was still very much capable of committing them when it came down to it. An almost-shot Antichrist could attest to that.

In a way, Aziraphale thought grimly as he locked the bookshop some minutes later, things had gone according to the combined machinations of Heaven and Hell after all. They had intended for an angel to die tonight, and one certainly did.

It had just happened to be the wrong one.

Crowley should have known that it wasn’t going to last. That it was all far too good to be true, even after everything. Demons weren’t supposed to get happy endings. That’s just how it went.

But at that moment, all he could feel was contentment.

It was late evening, and he was lounging on Aziraphale’s couch. Well, their couch now, really. They had never come to an explicit arrangement about living situations, but when Crowley had come over and hadn’t left not long after the near-Apocalypse, Aziraphale hadn’t said a word in protest. The bookshop that had hardly changed in over a hundred years now sported flashes of green where Crowley had found or made space to set down a potted plant. (He waited until Aziraphale wasn’t around to discipline them, though, because when he didn’t the angel would always come behind him and make them blossom with compliments and undo all of his hard work. Traitors, the whole lot of them.)

Crowley’s head was in Aziraphale’s lap as the angel read an annotated copy of The Man Who Was Thursday. Crowley hated the book and had expressed this opinion rather vocally. Several times, in fact. It only seemed to encourage Aziraphale to read it more. He had ended up grumbling something about a nap and closing his eyes so he wouldn’t have to continue to gaze upon its stupid cover.

Not that he would rather be anywhere else. Aziraphale was absently playing with his hair while he read. This would be an absolute taboo for anyone else, as there were few things Crowley took greater pride in than his hair. But this was Aziraphale. The angel could waterboard him with holy water and Crowley would probably let him.

Aziraphale’s fingers traced their way down his jawline. Crowley reached up and took hold of his hand in his own, then pressed it to his mouth for a kiss. Ok, he might have let his tongue go a bit forked against Aziraphale’s skin and it might have lingered there a bit longer than absolutely necessary. Sue him. He had spent six thousand years pining; he was going to enjoy every damn second to the fullest.

The angel gave a small stutter of surprise, and Crowley opened his eyes and was satisfied to see a faint blush rising beneath his primly arranged collar.

“Honestly, my dear, you’re incorrigible.”

Crowley grinned up at him wickedly. “Darling, I’ve only just begun.”

Aziraphale made a sound that was definitely exasperated but not displeased. “Oh, hush now.” He seemed to be fighting a smile and losing.

Then his expression froze on his face, hand tightening its hold on Crowley’s.

Crowley immediately knew something was wrong. He sat up, frowning. “Angel?” Something uncomfortable churned in his stomach when he didn’t respond. “Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale started, slightly dazed. “Oh… oh dear,” he mumbled, eyes darting around the shop before coming back to meet Crowley’s. There was an emotion on his face that Aziraphale always tried to mask around him, but he never failed to pick up on it. He saw it when he first asked the angel for holy water almost two and a half centuries ago, and when he had finally relinquished it a century later. He had seen it many times during their recent brush with the apocalypse.

Aziraphale was afraid.

Crowley had the immediate urge to find whatever was causing this and violently murder it. Instead, he reached out and placed a steadying hand on his knee. “What’s wrong?”

To his surprise, Aziraphale pulled them both to their feet. A sort of resigned determination had settled over him. “You need to get out of here. Do you have the keys to the Bentley?”

“Of course I do, you know that. Would you please tell me what’s going on?”

Aziraphale inhaled a bit shakily. “Do you know who Enoch is?”

“Vaguely,” Crowley shrugged, frowning. “Some heavenly bigwig, yeah? Too good to concern herself with earthly matters and all that. What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, ah, that’s the thing. I felt her presence arrive in London a few moments ago.”

Damn the persistent bastards. Crowley swallowed and tried to stay nonchalant. “So we should lay low for a bit, yeah?”

Aziraphale suddenly took both of Crowley’s hands in his own with a surprising intensity. “You don’t understand. Enoch had a particular role that she was supposed to play once Armageddon came to pass, and she has always been rather zealous about it. She was supposed to be the one to pass judgment over the Fallen angels and see their punishment to fruition.”

It took Crowley a few seconds to process the full scope of what Aziraphale was saying. The angel wasn’t scared for himself; he was scared for Crowley. “You think they sent her here to kill me?”

“Or she came of her own accord. It wouldn’t shock me, as much as I wish it wasn’t the case. As I said, she’s very into her job.” He squeezed Crowley’s hands, then let them go. His shoulders were squared. “Go on now. I should be able to buy you at least a bit of time.”

All Crowley could do was stare. In the back of his mind somewhere, the building he was in was burning to the ground. “Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not leaving you.”  The again went unstated but hung in the air regardless.

Aziraphale frowned at him sternly. “She’s not here for me.”

“You don’t- you don’t know that!” Crowley snapped. He was pretty sure he was shouting at this point, but he didn’t care. “To them, you’re as good as Fallen or maybe even worse. I was there, in case you’ve forgotten, when they condemned you to death without a second of hesitation. I saw the looks on all their smug, righteous faces. Do you really think they wouldn’t do it again if they got the chance?”

Aziraphale gave him a pleading look, one so full of desperation that Crowley probably would have caved if the situation wasn’t so dire. “Do you have the slightest idea what she’ll do to you if she finds you? I should be able to- “

But Crowley was already moving, miracling bags packed and tanks filled. “I don’t intend to let her find either of us. I’d like to see her try to keep up with the Bentley. But we have to go now.”

He held his hand out to Aziraphale, who hesitated. Crowley was suddenly painfully aware of every time he’d asked the angel to run off somewhere with him and every time the offer had been quite firmly rejected. Even if he refused, though, Crowley had already come to the decision that he would rather stay here and face what Enoch had to bring rather than run off without Aziraphale again. He remembered what had happened the last time he had left the angel.

But after a moment, Aziraphale reached out and wove their fingers together. “Please promise me, my dear, that if she does find us, you’ll let me handle it.”

Yeah, there was no way in Hell Crowley was going to allow that to happen. “Of course.” Both of them knew it was a promise that wasn’t going to be kept in the slightest, but now wasn’t the time to think too much about it.

Together, they drove off into the fading light.

Crowley wasn’t sure exactly when he had started walking or where he intended to go. It was simply something to do with his body and his mind that kept it from dwelling on burned things for very long.

He rationalized to himself that he might find a way out if he looked for long enough. It was a fool’s hope, but Crowley had been more or less living on a fool’s hope for six millennia, so that particular fact didn’t bother him too much.

It was also to obtain some semblance of warmth. It was cold enough down here that Crowley was pretty sure he would be able to see his breath if he was able to see anything at all. He was exothermic by nature, and although the cold wasn’t able to kill him here, it was able to make him very fucking uncomfortable.

Crowley blew into his hands, trying and failing to regain feeling in his fingers. The only sound was the slap of his expensive- and most likely ruined, but that didn’t really matter now- shoes against the stone. He wondered absently how long it would take for them to wear down, or if they would stay in the same shape they had been when they’d thrown him down here like the rest of his body.

He started humming, at some point when the monotony of his own footsteps started grating on him. Then he gave up the pretense and added the lyrics as well. There was no one else here to act cool in front of. Crowley had never considered himself much of a singer, but he loved music and it was probably the only thing that would keep him sane at the moment.

Queen came first, of course, but other stuff started to trickle in. Ancient druidic folk songs. Sea shanties. Symphonies. Pink Floyd. Living with humans for so long had given him quite a large selection of music, even if they had only been able to record it in an audio format for a century or so. It was funny how much Crowley remembered once he really focused on it.

And if he focused hard enough on it, he could almost, just barely, start to forget everything else.

Of all the things that finally broke his fragile composure, Crowley hadn’t expected it to be Verdi. It wasn’t even Messa da Requiem, as delightful and cheery as that particular funerary composition was. The culprit was Il Trovatore’s D’amor sull’ali rosee, believe it or not. It was a piece Crowley had always found particularly moving, even if he’d never admit as much to another soul.

Wrapped in the dark

night, I am near you,

and you don't know it...

Then again, he probably should have known better than to stay away from the tragic operas and their damn love arias. Curse Aziraphale for dragging him along to the depressing ones, even if they were a good portion of the genre. And curse himself for secretly enjoying them enough to know the words.

Wailing wind,

carry to him, mercifully, my sighs...

On the rosy wings of love,

go, pained sighs…

Crowley didn’t even have to close his eyes to see the two of them side by side in the theater in Rome. It was the mid-19th century, before the fight about the holy water. They had bumped into each other (purely a coincidence, Crowley would swear, then hurriedly change the subject) about a week prior, and Aziraphale had mentioned the premiere. Crowley was fairly certain he’d made a fool of himself at how quickly he’d jumped at the offer (after all, it was still rare at the time that Aziraphale took the initiative on these things), but the angel hadn’t seemed to notice.

Their hands had brushed as the lights dimmed, but Crowley had kept his gaze firmly on the stage until he was certain Aziraphale had gotten sufficiently lost in the production. He was clearly enjoying himself a great deal, and the faint smile on his face had sent an unstoppable surge of fondness rushing through Crowley.

Go to alleviate the sick mind

of the wretch that lies imprisoned...

Like a breeze of hope

linger in that room…

He had known he had been in love for a long, long time by that point. Long enough to (sort of) make his peace with it but not quite long enough for the ache to leave him. But sitting there, listening to Leonora bemoan her sorrows, Crowley had felt a sense of serenity. It was moments like this that made it all worth it, even during the darker years.

Wake him up to remembrance,

to dreams of love!

Well, Crowley thought bleakly, his mind back in the present. Things didn’t get much darker than this.

There was a strangled noise somewhere. It took Crowley a moment to realize it came from his own throat.

He gritted his teeth and tried to fight it down, knowing that if he let that dam break, it would destroy him without question. But despite his best efforts, the flood was already coming over the levees and he could only watch as the waves struck.

The noise became more agonized as it increased in volume, more like that of a wounded animal. He was roaring now, yelling, cursing into the oblivion that had stolen his light from him.

There, in the darkness, Crowley screamed until his voice was raw.

They were driving. That much Aziraphale knew, although he didn’t know their exact destination. They simply needed to be away and as fast as humanly possible.

Humanly being the keyword, there. They had agreed that any miracles, ethereal or otherwise, could most likely be used to triangulate their location. So, for the time being, they were going native and living life like humans did every day.

Not that Crowley’s driving showed any sign of being more cautious because of that fact. If anything, he seemed to be driving more recklessly than usual, which was quite a statement. He continued to swerve past every vehicle they encountered until Aziraphale reminded him that getting in a horrendous car accident would slow them down significantly.

Crowley had grumbled that he knew what he was doing but stayed more or less in their lane after that (even if he was still going a shockingly high amount over the posted speed limit). His hands kept a death grip on the steering wheel, and his entire body seemed unnaturally tense.

Aziraphale couldn’t stop wondering if he’d made the right decision. Crowley still didn’t seem to grasp just how bad the situation would be if Enoch found them. Aziraphale might have purposefully avoided interacting with her when at all possible, but he knew her reputation for ruthlessness was well deserved. She was not an angel of a swift and merciful ending, and she would take extra pleasure in making it as painful as possible.

A guilty part of him was glad he was with Crowley now. Even if he’d managed to get rid of Enoch unscathed, finding the demon again would have been an absolute nightmare without any miracles involved, and his anxiety over the unknown status of Crowley’s wellbeing during that search would be difficult to bear. And at least this way he could at least try to intercede if she found him.

But he also felt like he was slowing Crowley down, making it easier for him to be hunted down and slaughtered. He did go faster without him. Aziraphale could live with a few months or even longer of anxiety, but he wasn’t sure if he could live in a world perpetually deprived of the demon.

He shot a sideways glance at Crowley. The demon had put his sunglasses back on, but the slight tilt of his head indicated that most of his attention was focused on the rearview mirror, scanning for anything out of the ordinary. As far as either of them could tell, though, so far, they hadn’t been followed. Maybe, for once, they had gotten lucky. Maybe, for once, that luck would hold.

Killer Queen was blasting on the radio as if the sheer vocal prowess of Freddie Mercury would destroy any bloodthirsty angels in their path. Which, who knows, could be entirely probable. It certainly hadn’t been tested before.

After a moment of hesitation, Aziraphale reached out and placed his hand over one of Crowley’s. He felt Crowley start, then loosen his white-knuckle hold on the steering wheel ever so slightly. Physical touch had always been soothing to the demon, even before they became more, well, involved with each other.

“We’re going to pull through, love.”

“Of course,” Crowley moistened his lips in a rather serpentine manner. “Of course.” It didn’t sound like he believed it.

The worst part was Aziraphale couldn’t blame him.

“Oh, Crowley, it’s absolutely delightful!” Aziraphale beamed at the cottage before them. It was small, in a cozy sort of way. The garden on either side of the path was in full and glorious bloom, magnificent flowers opening wide unto the daybreak. It was all rather picturesque, like something out of a magazine.

Crowley had to admit that he had done extraordinarily well, all things considered. The fact that he had managed to find this listing on AirBnB without any demonic influence was, well, a miracle in and of itself.

He shrugged nonchalantly, trying to downplay the fact that he was quite obviously basking in the praise. “Don’t get too grateful, angel, I only picked this one because of the garden.”

“Mm, yes dear, of course.” Aziraphale gave him a quick kiss on the cheek and Crowley felt himself dissociate for three entire seconds. “Still, it’s a rather nice place.”

Crowley flushed, coming back to himself. “Um, yes. It is rather.” He grabbed their bags out of the trunk and glanced down the street. Everything was quiet, which was either a really good thing or a really bad thing. “…We should probably get inside.”

Aziraphale nodded and held the gate open for him. They located the key under the doormat (Crowley was sure he could pick the lock if given a bobby pin and about five minutes in a manner that definitely wasn’t showing off, but, well, the key was right there) and let themselves into their new home. Crowley half expected something to jump out at them when he hit the lights, but the room was still and the atmosphere was calm.

The interior of the cottage was the right level of hominess. Aziraphale was immediately drawn to a high bookcase on the opposite wall and started tutting over the owner’s taste (or lack thereof) in literature.

“Honestly, I don’t understand what it is about these dystopian novels that humans enjoy so much. Most of them don’t make a lick of sense and not to mention are so dreadfully dreary.”

Crowley found himself smiling despite himself as he haphazardly dropped their luggage on the sofa. “There’s a village not too far from here. Maybe they have a bookshop we could check out if things are still quiet in a few days.” A few days were typically nothing to a being that had lived as long as Crowley had, but at the moment they seemed an eternity away.

Aziraphale hummed in agreement, looking wistful as he fidgeted with a wooden duck on the mantle. “You know, I could see us in a place like this. Living, I mean, not just staying for a bit. I think it would be wonderful.”

Crowley would have blinked if he was physically capable of doing so. It wasn’t something he had given much thought to before. Not the bookshop or the flat, but a place purposefully constructed for the both of them. A place meant for living together. He suddenly found himself craving it above almost anything.

“Maybe when this mess is over,” Crowley said, unable to keep the softness out of his voice, “We can see to making that happen.”

 Aziraphale smiled at him warmly. “I’d like that quite a bit.”

There was something like hope flickering in his chest. “Then it’s a promise.”

Aziraphale beamed, lighting up the entire cottage. “Excellent. Now, I was thinking…” The angel walked into the small adjacent kitchen and began to rummage. A few moments later, he returned with several bottles of wine under his arm and a noticeable lack of glasses. “I hate to steal their vintages,” A lie. “But after the day we’ve had, I think we deserve to get, well, sloshed.”

Crowley’s smile widened into a grin. “Darling, you read my mind.”

He took a bottle out of his arms and clinked the necks together and for that moment, things seemed like they just might actually be ok.

The afternoon was cool when Aziraphale stepped off the plane in Naples. The usually vibrant colors of the city seemed unusually muted, though Aziraphale wasn’t sure if that was just a pathetic fallacy at work.

It was about half an hour’s drive from the airport to the birdless lake. Crowley probably could have made it in a fraction of that time (and scaring Aziraphale witless the entire journey, no doubt).

But that was the point, wasn’t it? Crowley wasn’t here and Aziraphale had to at least try and fix that before it was too late.

He hailed a cab at the airport’s main entrance instead. It had been a while since he’d had to speak Italian, and he was pretty sure the version he did speak was at least two hundred years out of date, but the driver seemed to understand his destination well enough, and that was all that really mattered.

Aziraphale wondered if Heaven was going to send anyone else after him or just cut their losses and pretend like he didn’t exist. The entire situation was certainly unprecedented. But truthfully, his former employers were the least of his worries at the moment. His thoughts lie Below.

As far as Hell was concerned, Aziraphale had burned along with the cottage. No one was going to expect or see him coming. That should give him something of an advantage, that and Sandalphon’s sword now invisibly strapped to his waist.

He was going to have to move carefully, though. Aziraphale refused to give any thought to what they were doing to Crowley down there, but raising alarms all across Hell could only make things worse for him and could possibly result in the decision to just kill the demon before he could get to him. It was a risk Aziraphale refused to take.

It was going to be dangerous to himself too, no doubt. No angel, renegade or otherwise, had done anything of the sort before. There was a sort of cruel irony to it, the fact that he’d never displayed the proper disgust of Below until Above had forsaken him. Once, Upstairs might have applauded such selfless devotion to destroying the Enemy. Now they would look at the same action and call it treason.

It didn’t matter. Aziraphale was going to find Crowley even if all the supernatural forces in existence decided to go against him.

One might ask why. Why? Because the few months of happiness they had together had given him far more meaning than the thousands of years that came before. Because trying to picture spending the rest of his existence without Crowley in it hurt so much it was almost physical. Because Crowley would have done the same for him, in a heartbeat, without the slightest moment of hesitation. Because he had failed him too many times before and refused to do it again.

Because Aziraphale loved Crowley more deeply than he himself could fathom at times and still believed that despite everything, in the end, love truly did conquer all.

The taxi let him out in front of the ruined Temple of Apollo. Its crumbling façade stood in sharp contrast to the rest of the lakeshore, which was populated with classy hotels and restaurants.

The rest of the tourists at the site suddenly all had other, more urgent things to do and places to be. After a few moments, Aziraphale was alone in the ruins.

He followed the helpfully placed signs toward the cliff that had once served as the back wall of the temple. The Sibyl’s cave wouldn’t be mistaken for a natural geological formation by even the most ignorant of amateur geologists. It was the shape and size of a typical doorway, except the space beyond seemed to absorb any light that came near it. 

This had to be the place. Hell only had so many back entrances. It was a lucky thing that no one seemed to think it was worth it to guard the place. As far as Aziraphale was aware, no one had been through here in at least two and a half millennia.

Beside the cave stood a lone tree. An apple tree, Aziraphale noted with some irony, although it was out of season and lacked both blossoms and fruit. Gingerly, he broke a small branch off and placed it in his pocket, muttering his apologies to the ancient tree.

The mortal heroes of the so-called golden age had been able to traverse the Underworld with the aid of a golden or silver bough. Aziraphale wasn’t quite sure if the same sort of rules applied to celestial beings, but it couldn’t hurt. He needed every advantage he could get.

If a normal human being were to enter the cave Aziraphale walked into, they would file through a narrow passage until they came to a dead-end in a small chamber. Their visit to the Underworld of Aeneas, Orpheus, and Dante would end right there.

If, however, one knew what they were looking for, as Aziraphale did, they would find a slight impression in the wall in that chamber, almost like a small door had existed there but had somehow been sealed up by the very rock that formed the cavern.

His hands came to rest against the stone, curiously warm beneath his skin. Normally, it demanded some sort of blood sacrifice to open. This was a bigger deal for the creatures of the earth, which mostly lacked the ability to automatically seal their wounds, than it was to Aziraphale.

Using Sandalphon’s sword (well, his sword now, but that was just semantics), he gingerly opened the palm of his hand. It stung incredibly, but it was a small price to pay. Aziraphale placed the wound against the warm stone and felt it turn to liquid beneath him, evaporating away to reveal a large hole in the cave wall.

When it became apparent that the opening wasn’t going anywhere, Aziraphale cautiously healed his hand and sheathed the sword. The yawning entryway before him was somehow even darker than the cave around him, to the point where even the small light he created only penetrated a few feet in. From what Aziraphale could see, though, it seemed to lead to a set of descending stairs. How many there were and just how far they went down remained to be seen.

Aziraphale took one last deep breath of earthly air, then began his descent.

They were able to make it for a few months before things began to unravel again.

Admittedly, these had been rather nice months, despite everything. Aziraphale had only sensed Enoch’s presence outside of Heaven a few times, and never too close to them. Whether she had given up (unlikely) or was playing the long game (far more probable) was unclear, but either way, Crowley was thankful that they were being left alone.

The cottage itself had started to feel like home, which was a sensation Crowley wasn’t entirely used to but found himself enjoying. All his life, he’d never felt he’d truly belonged anywhere and only now he was beginning to understand just what he had been missing.

That all came to a screeching halt late one afternoon.

Crowley was draped haphazardly on the couch, painting his nails. It was an action that had expressly been forbidden by Aziraphale (“What if you stain the furniture? You wouldn’t be able to miracle it out.”) but Aziraphale wasn’t in the cottage right now so it didn’t matter anyway. The internet had claimed this shade was Vantablack, and Crowley was disappointed to see that it wasn’t, not really. But it was a fair enough imitation, he supposed, and the closest he was going to get with humanity’s current technology.

Aziraphale had gone into town and left The Great British Bake Off on in the background. Crowley much preferred cooking shows where everybody screamed and swore at each other while competing under a frankly ridiculous ruleset. But the angel adored the show and Crowley adored him, so he begrudgingly had watched quite a bit over it over the past few months. He found it was growing on him, much to his dismay.

“Still sleeping with the Enemy, Crowley?” came a raspy voice from the television set that was most definitely not Paul Hollywood.

Crowley felt his already chilly blood run even colder. With effort, he raised his eyes to the screen. A being who didn’t belong in that tent, or on earth at all, was leaning against the countertop at one of the contestant’s stations. His body was basically human-shaped, but he had made no effort to disguise his head, that of a withered vulture. The bakers continued around him like nothing was happening.

Crowley moistened his lips. “Mammon,” he began, forcing a smile that would have fooled absolutely nobody. “It’s been a while, eh?”

Mammon’s beady avian eyes were surveying him. Crowley wished ardently for his glasses, but there were none in reach, and he didn’t dare let the other demon out of his line of sight to grab a pair. Showing his eyes right now would only be a weakness, only show emotions he absolutely must disguise if he was going to talk his way out of this one.

“You look comfortable,” Mammon said, beak moving with each word. Even by demon standards, that beak was disgusting, and Crowley tried not to focus on it or imagine what it could do to any snake it caught in its grasp.

“Erm, yes, well, sloth and all that.” He gestured vaguely with the nail polish brush, trying not to splatter the couch. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“I wanted to talk to you, actually. I was thinking we might be able to come to some sort of agreement.” Mammon plucked a raw pastry off of a tray and swallowed it in one. The baker he stole from paid him no mind.

Crowley felt his stomach drop and did his best to hide his anxiety by focusing on the lid of the nail polish as he twisted it much tighter than it needed to close. “You’ve come to tempt me, then? I can tell you already that you’re not going to get anywhere. I’m the best in the persuasion business and always have been.”

The wrinkles around Mammon’s eyes deepened as something flashed in their depths. “Yes, yes, you’re the Serpent of Eden.” He snapped. “You’re hot shit because you tempted the most naïve beings ever to exist to eat something that looked delicious and then proceeded to be a disappointment over the next half a dozen millennia.”

Crowley bit back a sarcastic remark and opted instead to glower.

Mammon gave a wheezing inhale through the nostrils situated on each side of his beak, sliding his voice back into its normal deathly calm tone. “No, Crowley, even if you won’t admit it to yourself, Hell knows the truth now. And the truth is that you’ve always been a rather shit demon. How one can be a failure of a failure, I’ll never quite understand, but you seem to have managed to figure it out.”

He leaned forward and rested his bulbous pink head on his hands, clicking his tongue. There were feathers where his fingernails should have been. Crowley wondered if they got in the way during his daily life. “Only the utmost failure of a demon would care for something other than themselves beyond a superficial level. And it seems to me, Crowley, that you care quite a lot.”

It didn’t take a genius to see where this particular train of conversation was going. Crowley’s pupils narrowed into slits as his backbone straightened. If he had been a snake at the time, it would look as if he was ready to strike. “Don’t you dare- “

Mammon ignored him and surveyed Crowley’s surroundings as if he was noticing them for the first time. “Is your lover home? I would be very much interested in making his acquaintance.”

Crowley resisted the urge to throw the bottle of nail polish now tightly clenched in his hand at the screen. “I thought you came to talk to me.” He had been a bit nervous letting Aziraphale out of his line of sight for such an extended period of time, but now he couldn’t be more thankful that he wasn’t in the cottage at the moment.

“Ah, yes, well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? This does concern him too.” Mammon seemed almost amused. Fucking bastard. “We’ve heard some interesting reports from Upstairs, you see. They’re about as pleased to have an angel immune to hellfire running around as we are to have a demon seemingly impervious to holy water. Then we came to the realization that we were approaching this entirely the wrong way. Why not let each side do what it was meant to do and reap the benefits from that?”

“So, you send an angel after me and a demon after him.” Crowley’s tongue felt like concrete. “Inspired, truly.”

“That was the plan, but obviously the other side hasn’t been doing so hot on their end. Shocking, I know.” Mammon gestured to the cottage around Crowley. “But maybe that’s for the best. I have an alternative solution for you if you’ll hear me out.”

When Crowley only glared, he took it as a signal to continue. “You see, the thing is, the Dark Council has come to the conclusion that final death is too swift a sentence for you. Thus, we’re willing to fudge our deal with Heaven if a better offer arose. After all, they’re far more threatened by a renegade angel than we are. All the same, I’ll doubt they’ll do much checking up if we say we got the job done. “

Crowley was thankful that he didn’t technically need his heart to function because he was pretty sure it had stopped beating. All he could think about was the way he had felt driving away from that burning bookshop and how he would do anything to never experience that again.

All around the Mammon, the contestants were hurrying to place their finished bakes on their allotted trays. One of the contestants seemed to trip over something invisible and spilled the contents of her baking sheet on the floor. Mammon laughed, though Crowley wasn’t sure whose misery he was enjoying more. “Our offer to you is this: Come with us willingly and we’ll let the angel live. Refuse and both of you will die horribly. It should be an easy choice, but we’ll give you some time to think it over and get back to us. You know where we are.”

Crowley found his voice after a moment. It sounded as if he was hearing himself from the end of a long tunnel. “How, exactly, does working with the other side on this make you any different?”

Mammon gave a derisive snort. “I’ve never fucked Gabriel.”

Crowley snatched the remote off of its home on the coffee table and slammed the power button with enough force to crack its plastic casing. The grotesque bird face blinked out of existence and left the demon staring at his own face reflected in the darkness of the screen.

He looked as terrified and as utterly useless as he felt.

Crowley had never been able to figure out if being able to love made him a very good demon or a very bad one.

On the one hand, there was a sort of thrilling blasphemy of giving your utter devotion to a being other than the Divine. All idolatry is rooted in devotion, after all.

On the other hand, few things made one more miserable than wanting things you could never have.

He was pretty sure he was the only demon still able to feel love in the all-encompassing form that he did, both in terms of romance and empathy. It wasn’t something Crowley had been aware of until the Garden when he had felt a pang both as he watched the receding forms of the humans he had successfully tempted and when the angel who had given them his sword turned and smiled at him.

For most of his existence, Crowley had figured it was part of his punishment. He didn’t know why he, of all the Fallen, was forced to feel for a world that would always hate him, but it was something he accepted and more or less managed to live with most days. Falling in love with an angel, with his only real friend, was both constant salt in his wounds and something he was able to compartmentalize a decent amount of the time.

Things had changed after the Apocalypse That Wasn’t, though. Crowley had known Aziraphale had the same fondness of this world that he did and possessed a general angelic affection towards him as he did for everything else. And that was good enough for him, really. He could live with that. But he had never seriously considered that the angel loved him with the same passion he felt until he invited Aziraphale to stay at his place and found himself being kissed the moment he had shut the door to the flat.

It was one of the best moments of Crowley’s life, especially considering how shitty the preceding week had been. The months that followed had only gotten better. He knew an occult being like him wasn’t supposed to, wasn’t allowed to feel this sort of happiness, but he had always been one to rebel against what was supposed to be, hadn’t he?

Now, lying with his cheek pressed against the cold stone, Crowley was again beginning to believe he was cursed again. To yearn for something for so long and to get it for a few brief moments only to have it violently ripped away was just about the worst fate he could imagine.

He’d taken a break from walking for the time being. Space-time didn’t function the same here, and he could have been ambulatory for hours or years for all he knew. Crowley had no idea how much distance he’d covered- if he’d even covered any at all. At his core, he was a limbless creature and such extended time on his feet was beginning to wear on him. It made him miss the comfort and ease of the Bentley.

Crowley missed a lot of things down here; things he knew he was never going to experience again. Château Cheval Blanc from 1947. A Night at the Opera on vinyl. Tempting producers of popular TV shows to kill off fan favorites in ridiculous ways and watching the public lose its mind. Orchids. Angels with no fashion sense and dusty bookshops and nights and days and the promise of a life spent together.

He didn’t process that he’d punched the wall until the pain hit him a few milliseconds later. Crowley sucked in a breath through his teeth and willed himself to focus on the current, physical pain that at least gave him the illusion of some remaining control over his life.

The pain kept him awake, too. The cold was starting to make him sluggish, make his body long for just a few minutes of sleep. That absolutely could not happen, no matter how appealing it increasingly seemed. Crowley was having a hard enough time controlling where his mind went as it were. If he relinquished all control to his subconscious there would be no telling the sort of inescapable horrors he’d be forced to face.

Horrors like fire. It always seemed to come back to fire. Hanging it in the sky, falling through it, running into its midst and screaming.

Crowley thought he’d lost everything in a fire, once. It had made sense. Hell had found out and come for him, so of course, when Heaven found out they would come for Aziraphale. And they weren’t the type to toy with their prey like Hastur and Ligur. They would destroy everything in one terrible strike, like all the human cities that had displeased them back in the day. So when he came to the bookshop and found it up in flames, what else was he supposed to think it was except hellfire?

It had destroyed him, utterly. It was a rare moment where he understood the bloodlust of his demonic brethren, their hatred for everything Heavenly. Their purposeful Fall. All he wanted was to find the angels responsible for destroying the most wonderful thing in Creation and make them pay. But Crowley wasn’t a fighter, and he knew that even one of them could dispose of him before he could even land a single blow. In the end, he couldn’t protect the angel and he couldn’t avenge him, either.

Still, it was a rather Shakespearian way to go. Crowley might have gone through with it if Aziraphale hadn’t found him in that pub and given him meaning again. He had sworn, at that moment, that he was never going to allow the things he loved to burn ever again, that he’d do anything to stop that from happening.

And look where that had gotten him. Aziraphale had still died and Crowley had still been helpless to do anything about it. Except for this time, there was nothing here to deaden or distract him from the pain.

There were only the beasts of absence, the darkness and the cold and the grief.

“For a demon, you seem rather intent on making a martyr out of yourself.”

In any other situation, it would have been laughable, but the accusation in Aziraphale’s tone left little room for irony. The worst part was that deep down, Crowley knew there was a grain of truth to it, as much as he would loathe admitting as much.

He made an exaggeratedly exasperated noise as a deflection. “You know my intentions are never as noble as that, angel. This is pure selfishness on my part, if you really think about it.”

Aziraphale shot him a disbelieving look, then pinched the bridge of his nose. He looked exhausted. “It doesn’t matter what you call it. The outcome will be the same.”

“I’m not…! I don’t…!” Crowley made a frustrated gesture. “I’m not exactly thrilled with that outcome either! But it’s the only option I’m in any way willing to accept at the moment.” His nervous pacing probably wasn’t doing his argument any favors, but he couldn’t seem to get himself to stop.

Aziraphale’s arms were crossed. “Well, I’m not willing to accept it in the slightest. I seem to recall you refusing to let me deal with Enoch back at the bookshop, and I fail to see how this is any different.”

There it was. Crowley had been half hoping that he’d forgotten. “Because I know these people and I know they don’t act the same way towards authority as angels do. Present company excluded. If they get an offer that benefits them more than this job, they’ll jump on it without question. That’s how it’s always been down there. They’re not exactly the ‘honor among thieves’ type.”

“And what, exactly, do you plan on offering?” Aziraphale countered. The challenging tilt of the head that accompanied the statement was peak bastard, but either the angel didn’t know or didn’t care. Usually, it was a trait Crowley appreciated deeply, but right now it was only serving to frustrate him.

Crowley mustered up what he could of the easy confidence he normally presented to the human world and to his former coworkers. “I’ve been making deals since the Beginning. I’ll figure something out. No problem.”

“I…” Aziraphale exhaled through his nose and pointedly met his eyes. Crowley forced himself to not reveal anything by balking. “You do understand the implications of them wanting you alive, right?”

His tongue felt like the world’s largest ball of cotton in his mouth. “Of course I do.” Not giving him death meant they would rather make him wish for it. And rest assured, they would make him wish for it dearly. “But I’d be able to endure anything they threw at me if I knew that you were safe up here.”

Aziraphale’s face passed through a complicated array of emotions over the span of a few seconds before settling on resoluteness. “If you go down there, I’ll have no choice but to come after you and pull you back out.”

Crowley stared. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I’m not the one being ridiculous.”

“How would you even manage that?”

“I’d figure something out,” the angel parroted.

“For the love of…” Crowley wanted to grab the angel by the shoulders and shake him until he understood. Kill Aziraphale and they might as well kill him too. At least this way someone would walk away from the rubble. Crowley could take separation, he could take absence, he could take loneliness. He could even handle Aziraphale hating him over this. But he couldn’t face the absolute cruelty of existing for an eternity devoid of purpose.

“Please, Aziraphale,” Crowley said wretchedly, voice catching in his throat. “I’ll do anything. I’ll even beg if I have to. I can’t lose you again.”

Aziraphale’s expression crumbled. “Crowley, my love…” He took a few steps forward and suddenly they were embracing, the angel’s face pressed against his jacket. His frame was wracked with what Crowley realized were sobs.

Crowley buried his face in the whitish-blond curls and held him like a drowning man clutches a piece of driftwood. “Shh, angel…”

“I was always so scared of this,” Aziraphale mumbled after a moment. “I did everything I could to keep this from happening and it was all for nothing. I’m so sorry.” 

“What do you mean?” Crowley asked, brow furrowing.

Aziraphale let out a sigh and pressed himself closer to the demon. “You. Us. What they’d do to you in particular if they found out.”

Suddenly a thousand moments, millennia worth of quiet step backs and gentle but firm refusals, reframed themselves in Crowley’s memories. He had always felt an undercurrent of fear as they had grown closer with each meeting. But he assumed it was of him, as viscerally as that hurt. He had never considered it was for him. “You… You really….?”

Aziraphale looked up at him, frowning. “Of course. The thought of you getting hurt because of me was and still is utterly unbearable.” He reached up and brushed away tears Crowley hadn’t realized had started falling, fingertips lingering on his cheek. There were centuries, eons, of sorrow in his gaze. “If I had known it would have been pointless from the start, I wouldn’t have made you wait so long.”

Crowley made a noise that was halfway between a laugh and a sob. He supposed he was a bit hysterical. “We’re here now, aren’t we? That’s what matters, when it comes down to it.”

A ghost of a smile passed across Aziraphale’s lips. “I wouldn’t trade that for anything.” His grip on Crowley tightened as he pressed their foreheads together. “Nor will I trade you, my dear. I love you and all the demons in Hell wouldn’t be able to change that.”

He kissed him then, and Crowley felt the same jolt crackle down his spine he had felt the first and every subsequent time their lips had touched. He was unsure if it was a byproduct of kissing an angel or of kissing your soulmate. When he pulled away, Crowley found himself softly agreeing not to leave.

Curse his stupid, weak heart for caving. By all accounts, he should acquiesce, then slip away in the middle of the night and do it anyway. What was one more deception in his life? But the lie wouldn’t leave his lips, his arms wouldn’t let go, and he found himself staying with the angel.

In fiction, it always seemed so easy for heroes to break their lover’s hearts in order to save them. But Crowley wasn’t a hero, nor would he ever be, so maybe that’s why he couldn’t do it.

He was a coward, and it was going to ruin them both.

Hell hadn’t changed since Aziraphale had last been there, wearing Crowley’s skin. It was dark, damp, and smelled faintly of sulfur and burning hair. He’d never been here before the trial, and it was easy to see why Crowley didn’t enjoy spending his time down here either. It was hard to picture him, a creature of flame and freedom, cramped amidst the endless mildew and the flickering lights.

Aziraphale was unsure how long it had taken him to descend that shadowy staircase. Time had begun to distort from the moment he had taken a step downwards. It had felt like a human lifetime, and maybe it had been. He prayed that he wasn’t too late.

Despite it being the utter opposite of Heaven’s overwhelming sense of agoraphobia, Hell was surprisingly just as empty as its Upstairs counterpart. Shakespeare would have no doubt commented that they all were actually residing on Earth instead, but Aziraphale knew better. The one devil that did live on earth was down here, and he was going to find him.

He had expected his angelic nature to stick out like a sore thumb, but it had been unexpectedly easy to work a few minor miracles so a few lesser demons had reason to turn their heads at just the right time. Aziraphale liked to think it was because the Almighty was still with him, even after everything he’d done. It was something to hold on to.

Eventually, he found what served Beelzebub’s office, although it barely looked any different from any of the previous chambers he’d passed through so far. They were at their desk, caught up in stamping and signing various pieces of paperwork. The fly on their head noticed Aziraphale first and buzzed at its host with some urgency.

Beelzebub ignored it and made a dismissive gesture without looking up. “Put it in the box, I’ll deal with it later.” When there was no reply, they finally tore their eyes away from their desk. The irritated buzz died in their throat when they saw the angel standing before them.

Their eyes darted around wildly, but there were no other demons in sight. This was utterly unprecedented, and obviously, there were no standards set in place in case the Adversary happened to waltz in and spoke directly to Management. Beelzebub grimaced when they seemed to realize that they were going to have to deal with this situation alone.

Aziraphale smiled politely. A hand rested on the sword he’d stolen from Sandalphon, now fully visible. Not that he’d need it if it came to a fight down here, but he was self-aware enough to know that he wasn’t the most intimidating figure and every little bit helped. “Hello there. I don’t believe we’ve actually formally met. Lord Beelzebub, yes?”

Beelzebub stared at him for a solid thirty seconds like they were trying to figure out whether or not he was real. “Principality of the Eastern Gate. This… This isn’t possible.”

“Clearly it is, or we wouldn’t be having this discussion right now,” Aziraphale noted dryly.

Eyes narrowing, Beelzebub shifted in their seat. “What are you doing here?”

Aziraphale blinked. “Isn’t it obvious? I’ve come to get my husband.”

The word came naturally off his tongue. It felt… right. They weren’t technically married, not in the official human way, but Aziraphale would be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking more and more about it lately. With Crowley’s flair for the dramatic and Aziraphale’s penchant for the finer things of this world, it would surely be more lavish than the last half a dozen royal weddings. If and when they got out of this, he swore, they would have a wedding that would put Victoria and Albert to shame.

Beelzebub opened and closed their mouth incredulously. “You came all this way for the Serpent?”

Aziraphale’s smile grew thinner. “His name is Crowley, and I’d like to know what you’ve done with him. If you please.”

“He is beyond your reach,” Beelzebub said, regaining some of their posture and looking at him coldly. “He is beyond all reaching. I couldn’t get him even if I wanted to. You might as well go back now.”

Aziraphale’s eyes flashed, and for a brief moment, there were a lot more than two of them. The temperature of the stale air around them increased by about ten degrees as a noise almost too high in frequency to hear rose in crescendo to a nigh unbearable volume. Any human in the room would be bleeding from their eyes at this point, at the very least. As it were, Beelzebub jerked back as if shot, the fly on their head writhing in agony.

He took a deep, calming breath and the noise began to fade. His form shifted back to that of the amiable Soho bookseller. “Now, there are two ways we can do this. One way, which I’d imagine both of us would prefer, is that you take me to him now and both of us forget this ever happened. That means leaving us alone when we get back to Earth as well. The other option is that I go back to my more celestial form and destroy every demon that stands between us. Which, at the moment, includes you.”

Beelzebub was frozen on the spot, staring at him. After a moment, they managed to find their words. “You wouldn’t do such a thing. You’ll be destroyed along with us. The Dark Council-”

“What, exactly, do you imagine I have left to lose?” Aziraphale asked, tilting his head.

Beelzebub broke their gaze, at a loss. Then they gave a defeated scowl and approached Aziraphale. They looked around to make sure no other demons were in the vicinity to eavesdrop, then leaned forward. “All I can do is direct you to where they’ve cast him. I can’t get you any further. It’s impossible to leave that place.”

Aziraphale smiled grimly. “Yes, well, we’ll have to see about that, won’t we? Take me to him.”

Beelzebub would only lead him as far as the entryway, saying the path he was looking for was at the end of the hall. They had practically scurried away after saying this, glancing over their shoulder in the nervous way they had been the entire time. Aziraphale couldn’t blame them. He had seen rather intimately what happened to traitors here.

The hallway was long and didn’t seem to be any different from any of those he’d passed through before. Eventually, though, it came to an end in a pair of black elevator doors. In between the elevator and Aziraphale was something akin to a security desk, where a lone figure sat reading Atlas Shrugged.

He was repulsive, as all demons were (with one notable exception, of course). He was impossibly tall and thin, with limb length that would put even Crowley to shame. Two long, rigidly straight antennae sprouted from his temples, and his eyes were the compound ones of an arthropod. His lips would part occasionally, revealing twitching mandibles in lieu of teeth. He glanced up as Aziraphale approached, a flash of surprise briefly painted across his wooden countenance.

The nameplate on the desk read Abaddon. Aziraphale suppressed a grimace. He mainly had heard of the demon through reputation, although he had seen firsthand some of his handiwork on Earth. His appetite for death would put even many of the heavenly host to shame.

Abaddon leaned forward, studying him. “You’re that angel stationed on Earth, aren’t you? I remember seeing you in Egypt a couple of thousands of years ago. After all that business with the sheep’s blood and the firstborns.”

“I remember,” Aziraphale said stiffly. As much as he tried not to.

Abaddon snapped his book shut. “You’re a long way from the mortal realm, angel.” The word had none of the tenderness, none of the affection that went into it when Crowley said it. “What brings you to my little corner of Hell?”

Aziraphale glanced at the elevator. There was only a single button on the control panel, he noticed. A down arrow. Beelzebub had mentioned a place beyond return. He was starting to get an idea of what lay past the doors, although, for Crowley’s sake, he prayed he was wrong.

Abaddon noticed the look and seemed to see the wheels turning in Aziraphale’s brain. He raised an eyebrow. “Did you really come all this way without knowing where you were headed? That seems rather irresponsible.”

The angel pursed his lips. “That elevator, does it lead to…?”

“It’s the only way into the Pit of Pits without falling directly in if that’s what you’re asking.”

Fuck, Aziraphale thought in a rare instance. He knew very little about the Abyss dubbed by many as Tartarus except that it was a place both angels, demons, and mortals alike avoided at all costs. It was the nothingness of Before, and it was utter. It was where they threw what even Hell didn’t want. And Crowley was down there, alone.

Abaddon was studying him. “I answered your question, but you never answered mine. What business does a Messenger of the Lord have in Tartarus?”

Aziraphale turned back to him. “I’m looking for someone,” he said after a moment. “And I intend on finding them.”

The demon blinked a couple of times. His eyelids were clear. “Interesting. I wouldn’t have expected that.” He leaned back in his chair, stretching his willowy limbs. “You know, every once and awhile I get a mortal down here saying something similar. Always looking for their lost loved ones, thinking they were going to be the ones to save them from the Dark. Not a single one of them ever took that elevator back up.”

“I am not mortal.”

Abaddon gave an amused snort. “It doesn’t matter. Not even your kind can get out of there. The Darkness is impregnable to even the holiest of lights. It will consume you like the rest.”

“All the darkness in the world cannot put out the light of a single candle.” Aziraphale quoted softly, then shook his head. “I’ve done a lot of things no other angel has done. I don’t see why this couldn’t be one of them.” He pressed the down arrow.

Abaddon made no move to stop him. His expression had shifted from condescending to incredulous. “You can’t possibly…. You’ll never be able to get out. Even if you do find them, you’ll be trapped for all eternity. I understand mortals making that decision. They’re an emotional and highly irrational bunch. But a celestial being-?”

Aziraphale looked into Abaddon’s cold, insectoid eyes and had difficulty feeling anything other than pity. “No, I wouldn’t expect you to understand. It’s my duty to bring the Light, and I mean to fulfill that duty even now.” A smile tugged at his lips. “At the very least, it won’t be an eternity alone for either of us. No matter what happens, we’ll be together.”

The elevator signaled its arrival with a soft ding, and the doors slid open noiselessly. Abaddon stared for a few moments more, then shook his head. “Go ahead, then. If you want to resign yourself to that fate then so be it. One less angel for me to worry about.”

Aziraphale was going on the elevator whether Abaddon gave him permission or not, but he was thankful he didn’t have to waste any energy on smiting here. He was going to need every last drop where he was going.

Shoulders squared and fueled by Love and Light, Aziraphale stepped into the elevator to Tartarus.

When it finally did go down, it happened all too quickly.

They were in the kitchen together. Crowley was leaning against the countertop, watching Aziraphale attempt to make lunch and offering commentary every once in a while, which the angel brushed off in his typical manner. (“Humans have been making sandwiches for over a millennium now, how difficult could it possibly be?” “I assure you, angel, no creature on this earth puts that much mayo on anything. It’s revolting.”). But it was their usual banter and it didn’t hold the same tension that their previous argument regarding their very lives. It was quiet, peaceful even. It was the most normal thing had felt since the demonic visitor on their television set.

He should have known better, known a purposely cultivated false sense of security when he saw it. If there was one thing he’d learned from the entirety of human history, it was that things always went worst when they were most idyllic.

The phone in his back pocket gave a staccato buzz. Crowley could have sworn he had left it on silent but didn’t give it a second thought. He clicked open the lock screen. There was a single message from an unknown number.

Time’s up.

It was followed by emojis of an angel, a fire, and a skull.

Crowley’s breath caught in his throat. The phone slipped out of his hands. Dimly, he was aware of Aziraphale calling his name, asking if he was quite alright, but his body refused to move.

His eyes flickered up to Aziraphale’s, blue and beautiful. Crowley could look at them for days, but they only had seconds now. “Angel, I- ”

He was cut off by a lead pipe crashing into the back of his skull.

Everything seemed to happen in slow motion. Crowley crumbled like an aluminum can, the world spinning sickeningly. He caught a brief glimpse of Mammon, beak twisted with smug glee. Aziraphale gave a hoarse cry and lurched forward to his aid. He should be running the other way- why isn’t he running the other way- for Satan’s sake Angel save yourself- the part of Crowley that wasn’t ringing in agony was screaming. But Aziraphale kept moving towards him.

They never made it to each other, because it was then that the cottage exploded. 

There was no mistaking it this time. The fire roaring through every inch of the cottage was straight from the depths of Hell, hotter and more destructive than anything humans had managed to come up with so far (despite how close some of their nuclear weapons had come).

It consumed everything in its path, and there was no demon body for Aziraphale to borrow to save himself this time.

The hellfire swallowed him whole.

Someone was screaming. Crowley realized it was himself.

The last thing Crowley saw before he blacked out was the cottage collapsing on top of him.

In his dream, he is back in the Garden.

His hair was longer then, and his clothes were different. He had a different name then, too. The Bard would later write that a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, but he had never been assigned a name after his former one had been burned out of him, so his experience wasn’t quite the same.

Aziraphale was standing next to him, and there was rain falling from the sky. Crowley knew this moment well. It was when he had Fallen the second time, after all.

 Except it wasn’t rain coming down. It was ash, thick and black like it had been at Pompeii. Aziraphale made no move to cover him with his wing. When Crowley turned, he realized it was because Aziraphale wasn’t moving at all. His gaze was fixed on the horizon. His skin, clothes, and feathers, were gray and lifeless.

His hand trembled as he reached out to the angel. The moment his fingers brushed the edge of his cloak, though, Aziraphale’s form lost its definition and collapsed into the surrounding ashes. Crowley jerked forward and extended his arms desperately, trying to catch him, save him, anything.

All that Crowley managed to grasp at was a cloud of dust. He clawed through it, fingers sharper than knives, but there was nothing solid to hold on to. Aziraphale was gone, reduced back down to the particles from whence he was made.

Crowley gave a choking cough as the ash pervaded his lungs and fell to his knees. He wanted to dissolve, too, wanted to taste that freedom and oblivion that was tantalizing him so. But every force in the universe seemed intent on keeping him alive to wring every last drop of misery out of him.

The worst part was that deep down, Crowley knew he deserved this. This was the Almighty’s punishment for seeing the light and trying to take a piece of it for himself.

He knew he was awake again when the gray faded into an omnipotent darkness and he could no longer see the arms gripping at his hair. There must be something within him still able to cry because there was wetness on his cheeks.

He didn’t bother to wipe it away. There was no point in it.

He let the sorrow wash over him and drag him into the depths.

Crowley knew he had finally gone insane when the light first reached his eyes.

It started out as a speck, the faintest glimmer in the distance. But to a place where photons hadn’t previously existed, it was like the coming of the sun. It was utterly impossible and had to be some sort of delusion on his part

He didn’t move, as much as Crowley wanted to run to it like the hypnotized prey of an angler fish. He should be somewhat amused by the irony of it, a being of darkness longing for the light, but if that wasn’t the story of his entire existence, he doesn’t know what was. Besides, there was no point in expending the energy running headfirst towards a hallucination that was only going to make him more miserable when it inevitably vanished. If his brain wanted to fuck with him that badly, he wasn’t going to give it any more help.

The light was getting larger, or moving closer, or maybe both. It was impossible to tell for certain. Crowley watched it with dull interest from where he lay. The brightness stung, but he didn’t avert his eyes. This was better than sleep, at the very least. At least marginally.

He watched as the light came to him.

The halls of Tartarus were beyond labyrinthine. They were a maze of tight corridors completely indistinguishable from the last and lead to only more of the same. Aziraphale could see how easily despair would set in here.

The beams from the orb of light he had summoned only stretched so far. He’d heard, once, that the human eye could detect the flame of a candle 30 miles away as long as it was in absolute darkness. Aziraphale wasn’t sure if that statement had been empirically tested and was even less sure it applied to snake and/or demon eyes, but it stood to reason that Crowley would see him before he would see Crowley.

It was also frigid down here, which also was a bad sign. Crowley was cold-blooded (exothermic, the demon had corrected once, although Aziraphale had very little grasp on the difference), and had personally been responsible for the invention of electrical heating equipment after a few particularly nasty winters. He didn’t think the cold could actively kill the demon, but it would add even more misery to the situation.

He hoped he wasn’t too late with every fiber of his being. The elevator ride had felt even longer than the descent down the Stairway to Hell, somehow. The thought that he had done literally everything in his power and still had been unable to save Crowley was too horrible to consider. It kept bubbling up and Aziraphale kept firmly pushing it down. He couldn’t let it be a stumbling block to him, not now.

Still, he mentally braced himself for the worst and trudged onwards. Despite what it seemed, this place wasn’t infinite, and sooner or later Aziraphale would find him. He had to.

When the light finally got to Crowley, it almost tripped over him.

It was almost comical, but Crowley wasn’t laughing. He was staring at the form that had taken shape underneath the light, a shape so familiar that it was physically painful.

“Oh, fuck me,” he muttered, burying his face in his hands. “Anything else, please.”

Part of him had known that he’d eventually start hallucinating some sort of companionship in this shithole, but Crowley had figured his subconscious would be wise enough to leave this particular wound well enough alone.

Because it was Aziraphale, of course. Of course. Who else?

A frozen moment passed between them. Then Aziraphale dropped to his knees and embraced Crowley wholly.

“Thank God,” he whispered repeatedly. “Thank God.”

Crowley stiffened, not expecting the physical contact to be so… solid. He felt so real, so warm and good and alive. It even smelled like him. It was utterly unfair and Crowley wanted to scream. Instead, though, because apparently, this wasn’t torture enough, he buried his face in the delusion’s shoulder and let himself get lost in the sensation.

“I’m sorry,” he heard himself croak hollowly, over and over again. “I’m so sorry.”

The hallucination of Aziraphale gripped him tighter. There was something like the heartbeat pulsing through those arms, something like a breath against the nape of Crowley’s neck. Impossible. Impossible. The mind sees what it wants to see, no matter how painful the vision is, and the body only listens.

“Shh, none of that now. This isn’t your fault.”

Crowley knew he should stop talking back to the specter, but couldn’t help but give a bitter snort. “You of all people should know that’s a lie.”

Aziraphale pulled away suddenly, making the demon start. His hands moved to frame Crowley’s face, the skin of his palms soft against his cheeks. It was unbearable, but he couldn’t pull away.

“Antony J. Crowley, don’t you dare blame yourself for this. I absolutely forbid it.” Aziraphale looked so stern, like a librarian who had been forced to quiet down a couple of rowdy teens one too many times. It was a look Crowley normally found endearing but now only served as a cruel reminder of the fact that he was going to go the rest of eternity without ever seeing it again.

His face twisted into a sneer. “And what are you going to do to stop me, angel? The last I checked, you were dead.”

That was when Aziraphale kissed him and Crowley’s brain short-circuited. Because the feeling of warmth flowing through his bones, the sparks ricocheting through his veins, the things he always felt when Aziraphale pressed his lips against his weren’t something that his grief-addled neurons could make a pastiche of. Not to the degree he felt in that moment, like he had finally found that omnipresent love he’d been cut off from so long ago and let himself drown in it.

Aziraphale pulled away as Crowley tried to process the situation, pressing their foreheads together and inhaling shakily. He could feel the wounds on his head and knuckles knit themselves closed as Aziraphale flooded power into them. That cemented it, for him. This was really happening. Something within him began to reignite.

With shaky hands, Crowley tentatively reached up and brushed his fingers against the angel’s cheek. His body did not turn to ashes at the touch. His flesh was tangible and as familiar to him as his very own. It was wet with tears, and Crowley realized he himself was crying, too. He’d been doing a lot of that lately, he figured, so why stop now?

“How…?” he whispered, at once both awed and agonized. “I saw the hellfire burn the cottage to the ground. I saw you…” He trailed off, unable to finish the thought.

Aziraphale brushed away the tears before they could fall any further. “If we’re being honest, I’m not quite certain myself. I suppose She is still looking out for us, even after everything.”

It was in Crowley’s nature to doubt that, to wonder what part of torturing him like this counted as Motherly Love. But Aziraphale was here, alive and in his arms, and if he had the Almighty to thank for that he’d burn the soles of his feet every day for a thousand years going to Her house and giving thanks.

It was then that the full implications of the situation finally hit Crowley. Aziraphale was here, and here was the Pit of Pits, the Ultimate Darkness, the Unmade. Here was a place of soul-crushing despair and numbness and an emptiness so great even beings that prided themselves in their evil shuddered at the name. It was the last place in all the enormity of Creation he would ever want to see the light of his existence and yet here he was.

He pulled away, causing Aziraphale to frown. “What is it?”

“You- You shouldn’t- Why are you-?” Crowley’s breathing was quickening. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

Aziraphale’s frown deepened. “I thought that would be rather obvious.”

Crowley managed to choke back a noise that was dangerously close to hysterical. “I don’t believe… How did you even get here? I don’t even know how I got here.”

“It… wasn’t easy, I’ll admit,” Aziraphale said a bit sheepishly. “I’m afraid I wasn’t entirely polite the entire time. To either side. But what matters is that I was able to find you. There were times where I began to doubt…” he trailed off, then shook his head. “Again, that doesn’t matter now.”

“You know where we are, don’t you?” Crowley’s tone was somewhere between a shout and a growl. “This is the worst place imaginable! People choose death rather than face an eternity down here! Nothing is worth that! I’m not-!” He buried his face in his hands, miserable.

“You are, my love,” Aziraphale said with that gentle firmness that defined him. Crowley felt his chin being lifted, and his eyes met the angel’s and almost melted from the warmth. “I promise you, there’s no place I’d rather be. You’ve saved me countless times. Let me save you, for once.”

Crowley’s throat was tight. “You save me every day by existing, angel.”

When their lips met again, it was softer, more tender. It was everything, the past and the future and the shared trauma and the shared dreams. It was a cottage with a garden, a wedding beneath the stars, a shared space. Shared existence. It shone brighter than any heavenly light ever could.

After a minute or maybe an eternity, they parted, at least in a physical sense. For the first time in a long time, there was a smile hanging on Crowley’s lips.

Aziraphale helped him up, the weariness banished from the demon’s feet. He was alive again. They both were.

Their hands laced together. Aziraphale was looking at him and he was smiling, too.

“Come on, my dear,” he said, “let’s find our way out of here.”