Hastur, as Aziraphale feared, kept trying to route his anger toward Crowley in an effort to throw Aziraphale off-balance, so to even the playing field, Aziraphale snapped his fingers and took himself out of the equation, leaving behind a tendril of his essence for the demon to follow. Hastur follows as he knew he would, and now it is just the two of them on this lonely hill somewhere near the cottage in the South Downs, and Aziraphale reignites his sword.

"Clever angel," Hastur sneers. "But it won't save you."

"My dear, I don't need saving."

Hastur surges forward with a wave of demonic energy—bright red strings which flicker around him, like red lightning, and the demon's wings spring from the aether, flapping behind him to give him speed as he flies at Aziraphale, his blade hissing with demonic power and burning with hellfire, specifically.

Aziraphale can't let it touch him. Even a single swipe will ruin him, will cling to his essence and destroy him completely, while it's flamed up like that. HIs own blade should, in theory, do the same to the demon, though that's never been tested. This is the only flaming sword that he knows of, but demons can ignite many things with their hellfire, as hellfire seems alive in its own right—unable to fully be controlled, easily summoned, and rather hard to disperse.

Holy fire, in theory, should be as powerful as hellfire, but it's very nature isn't to destroy. Hellfire clings to such radiant things and destroys them completely, while holy fire burns at the essence, but perhaps not enough to outright destroy a demon, not like the use of holy water.

Aziraphale's holy essence swirls around him with rays of yellow-white light. The exact colour doesn't exist on the human spectrum, and so there is no real name for it, but the closest it might come in human terms is to simply compare it to the sun, though that is perhaps too yellow, too deep a colour. The energy surrounds him, hot and radiant, and his own wings appear behind him from the aether, flinging him backward sharply with a quick flap of those white wings, and he's suddenly several lengths away from the demon lunging at him.

Hastur's strike lands in empty air and he snarls, low and menacingly, and rushes at Aziraphale once again. The demon is rather aggressive, and perhaps he can use this to his advantage, if he could just find a way to use that raging momentum against the demon.

He draws his sword up to meet the clash of the demonic blade, hellfire swirling with holy fire briefly before the flames quickly disperse apart, repelled from one another by their very natures. Hastur growls and brings himself back around, using his cast off momentum, and swipes upward with his blade, and Aziraphale is just barely able to meet it in time with his own sword.

A flick of the demon's wrist and there are tendrils of red igniting around him, circling tighter and tighter, crushing him. Pain streaks out through his entire being, and it is just enough of a shock that the next strike manages to land directly on his shoulder—though the hellfire has slithered away from that particular edge of the blade, thanks to how it met the holy fire and peeled away a second earlier.

Aziraphale rears back in pain, raising his own hand, palm open, igniting a burst of holy energy in a spurt in front of him—yellow-white tendrils jutting out sharply at the demon, forcing him back and away to give him just a second to regain his footing.

And a second is all he has.

Hastur is fast, he thinks, as the demon springs back at him with a flap of dark wings. His palm twists and opens, and a jet of hellfire spits toward him, and he has only a fraction of a second to bring his sword up, slicing with an arc through the hellfire, forcing it apart down the middle, leaving space barely for himself as he twists sideways to make himself a smaller target. The heat of the flames brushes against his wings but doesn't ignite, and in the next second Hastur is swinging with his blade again.

He doesn't have time to block.

Instead he shoots upward with a burst from his wings, raises his palm into open air, and lets heavenly light flare from his core and shoot through his palm, yellow-white light blazing down onto the demon beneath him. Hastur snarls and flinches back in pain, skin searing and burning from the radiance forced down on him, and parts of his skin begin to melt away.

Hastur doesn't seem to mind the pain, though.

Instead of running, of backing off and letting Aziraphale catch a breather, he instead flings himself upward with a flap of his own wings, into that heavenly energy, and even as his skin starts to sear off revealing the mangled muscle beneath—he takes another quick swing at the angel, and Aziraphale goes to meet the blow with his sword.

Hastur quickly changes his trajectory, though, swinging back the other way as he drops a little lower—

Oh, Aziraphale thinks, numbly, as that blade tears through his arm right at the wrist, cutting through skin and blazing against his soul, and his sword drops from suddenly limp fingers, the tendons controlling them cut.

The sword drops through the air to land somewhere on the ground below.

On another plane, a wheel ignites.

White-hot pain blots out his mind momentarily, and he drops. Just drops out of the air, overtaken with the pain and shock of it all, and hits the ground hard. The breath forced from his lungs, he's left wheezing as he lays there on the ground, and a second later, Hastur flies above him, rushing downward with his blade pointed at Aziraphale's chest—

No! He can't let this happen, can't do this to Crowley—

He's supposed to win—

HIs hand moves on its own, instinct and panic driving him to stretch the fingers of his free hand, the one not injured, and he summons his blade to him, but not hilt first like usual.

Everything happens in slow motion for a moment. Hastur bearing down on him, his hellish blade getting closer and closer… and his own blade, igniting in the distance, flying toward them blade first…

Hastur and his sword seem to get there at the same time.

The tip of his blade spurts out the front of Hastur's chest, and that hellish blade drops a fraction of a second before it can strike his own chest. For a moment, everything seems frozen in place—Aziraphale on the ground, Hastur suspending in air—

Then the demon drops on top of him. The tip of the blade stabs into Aziraphale's chest, but it's not the demonic blade—just his own blade which had previously skewered the demon, sticking out enough that the impact leaves a rather impressive wound, if he is being honest. It knocks the breath from his lungs even further, and for a moment, he lingers there—fighting the darkness at the edge of his vision, fighting to remain conscious even as the demon fizzles away into nothing, fading into ash atop him.

The hellish blade has landed at his side, and it stops burning with hellfire, extinguished as the demon's willpower ebbs away, with little to sustain it in the wet grass.

It takes a moment to regain any semblance of breath.

On another plane, a wheel is burning.

Oh…

He was touched with hellfire when the blade cut his wrist, after all. The pain should remind him of this fact, but he's grown rather numb to everything at this point—numb to the end of everything.

Is this how he is to die? Alone on a hill after defeating the enemy? Because of a measly nick?

It doesn't seem fair.

Oh, Crowley isn't going to like this at all. The poor dear. Aziraphale doesn't know what this all must look like to the demon—if he thinks something awful happened at the bookshop or if he is still fighting the other demon and is too busy to notice, but what will he do when… Aziraphale just… doesn't come back?

His eyes fall shut. Golden blood seeps from his wrist onto the grass below, and red blood drips from his chest thanks to his own sword poking at him with such ferocity when the demon crashed into him. He doesn't have the energy to heal that particular wound, even if his blade did drop out of him and land on the ground at his side when the demon faded into ash.

Crowley.

He can't do this to Crowley. Oh, what will happen when he doesn't come back? When he simply fails to return to the bookshop, return to anywhere?

What would he do, if the same had happened to Crowley and their roles were reversed? He'd be a right mess, he knows instantly. He'd be absolutely distraught, because what is the point to all of this if he has to go on alone? If Crowley isn't there to—

No. He can't do this Crowley.

His eyes open. The world is burning, and even thinking hurts, but he manages to lift a hand and snap his fingers.

The miracle it takes to get him to the church is almost too much. A sob of pain escapes him as that flame inside of him grows as though fed by his flare of heavenly power, and he doesn't even know if this will even help but it's the only thought he has—the only possible chance of extinguishing that flame.

The font of holy water is just a couple steps away. Just a few steps and he'll be there.

Moving is pure agony. Pieces of the wheel stutter and break off, golden light particles flitting off into nothing, and the pain of it all threatens to drag him to his knees.

He remains standing simply because he refuses to do otherwise. He will make it to that font if it kills him, he decides, because if there is even a chance he can stop this and stay here with Crowley—he has to take it.

He staggers toward the font. Just a couple steps, he tells himself. Just a few more… Just… a … few…

A breathy whine slips from his mouth. The pain blots out his vision momentarily, and he staggers into the font. Yes. There it is. There.

He submerges his wrist, hand, and part of his forearm into the water.

There's a burst of energy—radiant and glowing, and a sharp stab of searing pain straight into his very core. A wheel stutters to a halt, burning, burning, burning—and Azirapahle forces that holy essence from the holy water to appear like actual waves of water over the burning flames.

The hellfire eating at his very being isn't anything physical, at this point. In this human body, it appears as a simple cut to his wrist, and it certainly isn't flaming, just oozing blood like a cut wrist would, even if the blood is golden. The golden blood swirls in the water, and suddenly it's a foggy brown color instead of the clear font it had been. The hellfire isn't real fire, and holy water doesn't act as actual water—but he pictures it like that in his mind, anyway. Crowley can make things twist and bend to his reality simply by imagining them, right?

Surely Aziraphale can do the same.

Because if this fails… if this fails…

I am so terribly sorry, Crowley.

So he pictures the radiant light of the holy water—a blessing so strong and pure, given to humans by the very Heavens, by Her Love—as actual water dousing flames of agony, even if nothing is actually, truly on fire, not in a way which would make sense to humans, anyway.

He pictures it, and he believes in it. He believes it will work.

"You're not dying here," he hisses through clenched teeth with all the conviction he can muster, even if his voice trembles and shakes as ripples of pain echo through him. "You are not leaving Crowley. You're not. You're not!"

The last words in that new part of the bible don't matter, he tells himself. It won't happen, it can't happen, he won't allow it to happen—

Slowly, he can feel the flames dying down—extinguished by the water.

Extinguished.

Oh. Oh my dear Lord.

A ragged, shaky breath escapes him. He drops to his knees, his arm slipping out of the font, and for a moment he just sits there, eying his injured wrist.

Slowly, the golden blood gives way to red. He can't move his fingers and he might lose the hand if he doesn't heal it—but it's not bleeding celestial blood anymore.

He's done the impossible, he thinks.

He was touched by hellfire, and he survived.

A wheezing, somewhat delirious laugh escapes him. And another, and another. Before he knows it he's laughing hysterically, because he survived. He lived. He lived.

By the grace of God, he lived.

He didn't leave Crowley here all alone.

But he is still bleeding.

He'll take care of it in a moment, he thinks, and leans against the font, letting his eyes fall shut at long last.

Just a moment. He'll just rest for a moment, let himself catch his breath, so to speak, and then he will work on the seemingly impossible task of fixing himself up, miracling back onto that hill for his sword, and then finally back to Crowley.

Crowley.

Oh, he hopes his demon is alright.

He will have to trust that Crowley can hold his own. He always has in the past, and Aziraphale is simply in no condition to go flying through the aether to wind up at another place entirely right this second.

No… he's just going to rest here, just for a moment.

Just a moment.

xXx

Hellfire is burning away at the inside of the bookshop, but the demon Crowley is on his knees somewhere in the middle of the shop, staring at some empty space which shouldn't be empty. Aziraphale should be standing right there, fighting with Hastur, and the bookshop shouldn't be empty.

Aziraphale is gone.

Perhaps not destroyed, not dispersed into nothing, his body and very being destroyed in that burst of hellfire which Crowley struggled not to let get past him—he stopped it, he stopped it… come on, he bloody stopped it—but the angel is absent all the same, and so is Hastur.

It's the lack of Hastur which leaves hope clinging to life somewhere deep inside his chest.

If Aziraphale had been destroyed behind Crowley's back like that, Hastur would surely be there, grinning smugly at the pain he's caused his nemesis. Hastur has never liked him, and his part in stopping the world from ending was the final straw. Hastur wants to make him suffer, and perhaps going after Aziraphale specifically is his way of doing that.

It's more than that, though. Hastur seems to be targeting Aziraphale for a different reason, although Crowley is certain destroying Aziraphale to take a stab at Crowley is just the icing on the cake for him. No, Hastur seems to be under orders to take out Aziraphale for some other reason than as punishment for Crowley.

Even so, the absence of Hastur and the fact he doesn't see a pile of ash on the floor—even as the bookshop burns around him—leaves some part of him eager to believe Aziraphale is, in fact, alive. He's out there somewhere right now, fighting Hastur alone, and Crowley has no bloody idea where he went.

He was too busy fighting another demon. Too busy to look over his shoulder. Too busy to sense Aziraphale leaving like that.

He pushes to his feet and looks at the burning fire around him. Hellfire is wild and rampant, and it licks at the books, igniting entire shelves so easily. It's definitely not that blazing inferno he'd walked into the day the world didn't end, but it's going to turn out that way if he doesn't stop it.

Crowley snaps his fingers, forcing his essence over the hellfire in the shop and willing it to suppress, to suffocate and smother. Hellfire is difficult to put out once it gets going, as it likes to destroy things down to its very nature, but some part of it still seems to listen to demons—it's why they can summon it at will, igniting a part of themselves to bring it forth. By that very logic, he should be able to smother it.

He held a burning pile of metal and rubber together and told himself it was a car fit to drive around in, after all—he can surely put out some flames in a bookshop.

Aziraphale will be right pissed with him if he lets all his precious books burn.

Not to mention the fact if the angel miracles himself back into the bookshop, unaware it is on on fire and decidedly deadly to him—

Smother the fuck out, you stubborn flames!

He pictures his essence as a thick fire blanket, the kind firemen use to smother flames so they can move around a burning building to save people, and puts the remainder of his power into it. "You are not going to burn," he hisses at the disobedient curls of flame still struggling to rise, "you are not going to burn."

The flames smother and die out, eventually. It takes a long time for them to finally die off, and there are sirens blaring outside and jet of actual water shooting through the window, nearly crashing into him where he stands, and—

Suddenly he's back in the bookshop on that day. The day he lost everything, for the briefest of moments. The day they stopped Armageddon.

HIs vision blurs. His legs, traitorous things that they are, stop holding his weight and he drops to his knees, and the world is spinning around him and there isn't enough air in this stupid bookshop and he doesn't need to breathe but in this moment if he can't take a decent breath he is going to—

"Sir! Sir, are you alright?"

A human lands next to him. Hands brush his shoulders.

Crowley whirls from the touch, hissing as his face transforms for the briefest moments into some sort of snake-like monster, and the human rears back in alarm. The flames are out, the fire is gone, and this man needs to get the fuck out of this bookshop before Crowley decides to bite him.

He must force this temptation onto the human, because the fireman blinks and backs away slowly, out of the building.

Then Crowley snaps his fingers and disappears from the bookshop.

He goes to the cottage, because that's the only other location he can think of in that moment. His flat could be dangerous considering Hastur knows of its location, and Aziraphale surely wouldn't go there when fighting the demon. He might go to the cottage, he can't help but think, but even then that's not the reason he made the split-second decision to wind up here.

He just… needed to get out of that smoking bookshop.

And chose the cottage.

The living room is still burnt and broken, the door still bashed in and charred almost into nonexistence. Stubborn bits of the door remain spread across the floor, crunching under his feet as he steps into the cottage. His core is nearly completely empty and he can feel the tug of sleep on his mind, but knows he can force such thoughts away. He didn't always sleep, after all. He just can't be very useful for the next day or so, while he regenerates his pool of energy.

Aziraphale isn't here.

Somehow, he didn't think he would—but some small part of him hoped that maybe, just maybe, this is where the angel disappeared to. It's one of their most recent locations, and would have been a fairly quick miracle to return here.

But the cottage is empty.

Aziraphale isn't here, and Crowley feels cold all over. Maybe it's shock from the battle, shock from emptying himself and managing to snuff out those hellish flames in the bookshop, or shock from thinking, for a brief moment, that he'd failed and Aziraphale was, in fact, charred into nothing because he failed to hold back that hellfire.

But Aziraphale is alive, he reasons.

He's alive because the alternative is unthinkable. Unacceptable.

His legs give out on him again. This time when he hits the ground, he lets himself drop all the way forward, landing on his chest on the ground. The breath is knocked from his lungs but he just lays there, not even trying to get up. Too wrung out, physically and emotionally, to even think about moving.

Aziraphale is alive.

He's alive.

He has to believe that or he might just go insane.

There's a burst of lightning in the distance. Well, not far into the distance. Just outside, really—on that hill overlooking the lake.

Crowley knows because he and Aziraphale spent some time out there, just enjoying each other's company.

Except this isn't an ordinary strike of lightning.

He knows this because there's the faintest hint of ozone in the air, which could mean angels.

Aziraphale.

He staggers to his feet, vision blurring as he nearly collapses on his first step forward, but he manages to catch himself against the doorframe and push out of the cottage.

Traveling via lightning like that is something only angels do—something only they can do, as it spits them out of the sky fields only angels can flit through due to their connection with the Heavens. The last time he saw it used was by the Archangel fucking Gabriel when he tried to restart Armageddon, but there's nothing saying it can't be Aziraphale.

After all, the other angels would have no reason to come to this particular spot. How could they possible know about it? Heaven is on lockdown, anyway, right?

So it has to be Aziraphale.

Each step seems to sap more energy out of him, but he presses forward anyway. Some deep, desperate part fo him urges him forward, that part of him which always—always—urges him to Aziraphale. To home.

He just wants to go home.

And bless it all, there he is! The angel. His angel.

"Aziraphale!" Crowley tries to shout, but it comes out as a hoarse whisper instead. Nevertheless, Aziraphale hears him as his head snaps up from where he was looking across the dark, wet ground, and Crowley surges forward.

Legs threatening to give way, he all but lunges the rest of the way—pushing off the ground with his feet and diving through the air at Aziraphale.

He crashes into the angel and knocks them both to the ground, Aziraphale toppling backward. He hits the ground hard with Crowley crashing on top of him, just holding onto that familiar body for dear life. He dips his head, burying his face into the curve of Aziraphale's neck, and breathes.

The scent of his angel has always managed to calm some feral part of him. The aura around Aziraphale, his very presence, nudging against his own is grounding in a way nothing else has ever been, and he bites back the urge to whine or something equally as ridiculous.

Aziraphale is here. He's alright. He's here. He's alright.

One arm comes around him, holding him as well. "Oh, my dear. It's alright. Everything is perfectly alright."

This time a whine does escape. He presses his face into that soft skin, feeling the the-thump of Aziraphale's pulse as it beats across the edge of his nose. "I turned around and you were gone," he says pathetically. He must sound like some pathetic child right now, but he can't help it—when he'd turned around and realised Aziraphale and Hastur weren't there… "What happened?"

"There, there, my love. It's alright."

Love.

Crowley's breath stutters in his throat.

"Where's Hastur?" He asks, keeping his face right where it is even if it does muffle his voice and slur some of his words together.

"I, um…" A low, rumbling chuckle vibrates in Aziraphale's chest. The sound of it tickles his nose, still pressed into delicate skin. "I think I might have—that is to say, I—Well, I stabbed him."

"You… stabbed him?"

"I don't know if he was simply discorporated or if I managed to actually destroy him, but yes, I stabbed him."

A shaky laugh scrapes out of his mouth. He pulls back, moving to sit next to the angel and give him the space to breathe. Aziraphale slowly sits up with a wince, and Crowley notices for the first time the red blood coating his tartan clothing.

"You're hurt," he says intelligently.

"It's fine, dear," Aziraphale says. "I healed most of it."

"What happened?"

A scent catches his attention then. Something he didn't notice under all his panic the first time, even with his nose pressed into that skin as it had been. The distinct scent of sulphur, of hellfire burning. It could be because Aziraphale was fighting Hastur and obviously he'd be around hellfire—and yeah, that has to be it.

Because Aziraphale isn't—

Golden flakes stain the sleeve of Aziraphale's shirt. There's a nasty tear in the clothing there, like a blade had—

"Let me sssee," he hisses, clawing at that hand. "Lemme sssee—"

"Crowley, no," Aziraphale says sharply, yanking his hand away. "I am fine, I promise you!"

Crowley Looks.

And instantly feels a wave of cold hard panic, of searing dread, wash over him.