The last thing Crowley remembered thinking, briefly, as he watched Hastur raise a hand to both signal his departure and as a sort of summoning of his own, was that they had probably fucked up.
Not that they'd had much of a choice, really - killing Hastur would have caused a lot more problems for all of them, rather than only one rather specific problem for Crowley.
Because he wasn't stupid, and he knew there would be a more-than-reasonable chance that the other demon wouldn't simply leave without a little retribution of his own.
He just hadn't expected the effects to be quite so...immediate.
Physically.
Certainly hadn't expected his body to just...give up, quite like that.
Extremely inconvenient, really.
The first thing Crowley thought when he came to again, slumped against a wall, freezing air and a slight cough agitating his already aching lungs, was that they had definitely fucked up.
The room was pitch black, unnaturally so, because even he couldn't see a thing through the darkness. But he could sense he was alone, for the moment, and although it was terrifying not knowing where Aziraphale and the humans were, he knew anywhere else would be better when he heard the voice that had literally been haunting his dreams seconds later.
Crowley pressed himself back a little further into the wall, ignored the searing protest in his back as he did so, but stared into the darkness as the expected figure stepped out of it.
And Amabilis - as that was her name, apparently, and in countless other scenarios he would have found the irony darkly amusing - smiled her terribly familiar smile. "It's been awhile, hasn't it?"
He felt the panic well up as it always did, the fear, the dread, the tears behind his eyes and the painful beating of his unsteady heart, and didn't answer immediately.
They were alone, wherever they were, and he would stall and keep it that way as long as he could.
"Where are we?" he asked, for a lack of thinking of anything better in the moment, and he hated the way his voice wavered.
She raised an eyebrow. "You don't know?" The smile grew impossibly wider. "That's interesting."
It wasn't, but he didn't dwell on that. Instead, he pressed a shaking hand to the wall and slowly pushed himself to his feet. She watched him and didn't say a thing, nor did she interrupt in any way, just as he had assumed would happen.
She liked a little defiance, a little bit of a fight, he'd learned that the hard way the first time. So he ignored every part of him that was screaming not to do so, and stood upright as much as he dared.
Didn't take his hand off the wall, though.
"So is this just another social call, then?"
"Crawly, you astound me," she did sound just short of delighted, tightened her grip on the knife in her hand ever so slightly. "I couldn't just ignore the call Hastur sent out. He must really hate you." She paused then, turned contemplative. "He hates me too."
"Can't imagine why."
"We could work together, you know. This could stop, you could heal. We hate the same demons, we could take the same demons out."
He let out a short laugh of disbelief, he couldn't stop it, and he ignored the dark blood that splattered into his free hand when it turned into a cough. No, they couldn't. He wasn't about to say as much, would instead ask whatever other mindless questions presented themselves in his head in order to waste more time, but she smiled knowingly.
As if he had already spoken aloud.
"No, we couldn't," she agreed, and snapped her fingers.
The room and it's pure darkness didn't change, didn't become a bookshop, but instantly Crowley found himself back on the floor, knelt over, mangled wings folded crookedly against his back.
He took a moment to fight back the waves of nausea brought about by the displacement, then straightened his back again to meet her fascinated stare. Her friends were present now as well, but they were still the only things he could see in that black hole of a room.
"How did you do that?" The idea of her knowing his thoughts was quite possibly the most terrifying revelation yet.
Amabilis didn't answer outright. "You get weaker, I get stronger. When you die, I'll have to find someone to replace you." She seemed almost a little forlorn at the idea. "I'll be honest, I had hoped you'd last a little longer."
He struggled to keep his thoughts focused strictly on the here and now, not at all interested in giving her any more insight into his head. "Well, that's me. Never quite living up to anyone's expectations."
"I wanted to kill the angel first, so you could watch," she continued, and her smile seemed to directly coincide with the fresh wave of panic that seized him at the words, although he had managed to keep his expression impassive. "But I fear you won't make it that long. We'll make do," she spoke the last words as she glanced slightly to his right, started intently at the empty air beside him for a moment before stepping forward, finally close enough to touch him. He couldn't maintain the eye contact without craning his head upwards, so he dropped it instead. It was disconcerting, staring down past his hands into what looked like endless darkness, and a little bit familiar.
He waited for the pain, the beginning of a fresh round of torment, and it didn't arrive in any way he expected when he felt her hand, hot but strangely gentle, on the back of his neck. "This power of yours is one Hell of a thing, I'm going to miss it. You can just think of something, and have it happen? Like, maybe I think this human form of yours has grown old..."
The shifting of skin to scales was a familiar sensation under her fingertips, but it had a wicked edge to it when not happening by his own choice. He tried to pull away, wasn't surprised when he found he couldn't.
"Or maybe I think earthly bodies in general aren't needed."
The scales spreading across his skin stopped, as did his heart and his lungs. Not normally a deal-breaker, but in his current state he wasn't so sure. The near instant wave of dizziness and fading vision definitely wasn't the norm, anyway.
"Or, maybe..." she paused, waited until he was sure he was only seconds from blacking out, or worse. "Maybe I think Aziraphale is dead."
Crowley's body stuttered back to life, but he wished it hadn't. His first gasp of air was strangled on a cry he couldn't stop as unwanted images flooded his mind.
Aziraphale, broken body crumpled in a heap on the ground. Clothes shredded and covered in golden blood, body littered with grisly wounds. Wings once white and full and vibrant now more reminiscent of his own, broken and stripped and any remaining feathers damaged and stained a darkened gold. And blue eyes, empty and unseeing but still locked with his own, echoing with terror Crowley understood all too well.
His nails snapped under the grip he had on a floor he couldn't see, wouldn't have been able to see even if there was light because all he could see was his angel dead, dead, dead.
Amabilis pulled her hand away to gesture towards the other demons, but he barely noticed. "Come on, then."
He was only vaguely aware of them at all, as they pulled stiff wings out from against his back to stretch across the ground. He didn't react at all to blades meeting his skin, nor muscle and bones beneath that. And he didn't hear the exasperated sigh as he barely flinched when a particular knife went straight through all three with extraordinary ease to pin his wing to the invisible floor.
"You're taking this even harder than I thought you would. He's not dead yet, alright? Now let us have some fun."
The shift in knowledge was jarring, the images burned into the forefront of his thoughts not disappearing, but fading as though they were only a distant memory of something that might have happened. But they weren't reality. They never had been.
Reality was painful in a very different way.
The mental anguish melted away to be instantly replaced by the physical sort, as his mind gave the blade impaled through his wing very sharp and sudden attention. He instinctively reached for it and didn't have the strength to resist when a hand grabbed his wrist and yanked him forward, slamming it back to the ground instead. He could only watched as another knife was swiftly shoved through his hand, effectively and gruesomely fastening it in place. The pain was strangely delayed, but relatively manageable even when it caught up compared to the abuse his wings were suffering.
"Better. Now, do cooperate and don't move." One more hand and one more knife met each other in short and bloody order and Crowley found himself effectively immobile on his hands and knees, pinned to the floor by three points.
It was fine though, he thought hazily, watching blood well up and run down his hands rather sluggishly. It was fine, because Aziraphale wasn't dead, and Aziraphale wasn't there.
He didn't understand why Amabilis laughed.
"Have you ever witnessed a wing amputation, Crawly?" she asked sometime later, it might have been minutes or it might have been hours. Blood from his back and his wings had started to spread across the ground, enough to meet that which had run off his hands already. He stared at it with detached interest and didn't answer. "Nasty stuff, so I've heard, but I've always wanted to try it!" He heard shuffling behind him, out of eyesight, and then felt a hand on the base of his neck again. "I'm feeling a little bit generous, so have some anesthesia. Of a sort."
The instant burning sensation, starting from her point of contact and tracing along every dark vein under his skin, across his back and shoulders and down his arms, was enough of a shock that his body reactively jerked. The movement caused the blades through his hands to cause more damage, and fresh blood began flowing from the jagged wounds.
"Got a bit overzealous there. But don't worry, now that your back hurts so much more, you won't even notice when your wings are gone!"
He wondered, then, how long it might take to die if he stopped breathing of his own accord this time.
"Longer than you'd like." Amabilis walked back around into his line of sight, crouched down in front of him and forced him to raise his head by way of a blade under his chin. "Now, would you prefer to lose your eyes before or after you lose the wings?" She adjusted the placement of her knife, instead rested it at the corner of his left eye, the pressure only enough to cause the slightest flow of blood to begin trickling.
She knew his emotions, and she knew his thoughts, and so he didn't know the point in answering and only met her gaze with an unblinking stare. She pressed harder. "Wouldn't I be doing you a favour? You do hate them, after all. And you might appreciate not being able to see what the future's going to bring."
His thoughts were blurry, hard to focus on. That might be true, about the future. But there were plenty of things he did like seeing, would be sad not to see again, snake eyes be damned. Like the view of a grey London skyline from the window of his flat, and the plants growing vibrantly inside of it, and the speedometer of the Bentley climbing higher as he sped his way through the city. Like humans doing their best to improve the world and books about stars he missed almost desperately but refused to visit alone.
Like Aziraphale, face lit up as he talked about a new book, or content as they dined at a favourite restaurant, or lined with worry but still gentle as he pulled Crowley back to consciousness before wrapping him in a firm and comforting hug.
Like Aziraphale, smiling so softly, so warmly, just for him and in a way no one else ever had or ever would, when he leaned in to -
No. She couldn't have that one.
He backtracked those thoughts instead, in favour of giving more attention to the growing pressure of her knife beside his eye. Back to the last time Aziraphale had woken him up. That had been nice. A relief. And the angel had promised him this wouldn't happen again.
That would have been nice too, if it had been true.
He considered the idea of Aziraphale saving him this time, too. Crowley was truly glad he wasn't there, but he couldn't help the thought.
That Aziraphale would put an end to this, that his angel could save the day, if not a not-so-slowly fading demon in a not-so-slowly dying human body.
Sudden screaming, surprisingly not his own, redirected his attention somewhere to his right, and the removal of the knife from his eye as Amabilis whirled towards the noise allowed him to turn his head to follow the sound as well.
Two of the demons had been there, deep in conversation over an assortment of blades, discussing which length and serration style would be best for limb removal.
They were still there, technically.
But one of them was already reduced to a bubbling, lightly glowing pile of sludge. The other was still screaming - or more gurgling, now, because the mouth was already melting, sliding off its face as thin jets of water continued to land across its body. It looked a slow process, at least until a sudden splash of water suddenly landed on top of its sizzling head, and that demon quickly joined the first in a puddle on the ground.
Crowley continued to stare, his foggy mind taking its sweet time processing the scene, but Amabilis gave her own short scream of frustration even as she staggered slightly and the darkness around them started to waver. She snapped her fingers, and she and the remaining two demons were gone. The darkness continued to dissolve, giving way to light and shape and a very familiar living room.
And a very, very familiar angel, empty bottle in one hand and a water gun in the other.
Crowley blinked hard a couple times, both to adjust to the sudden light and to try to focus on who was now the only other person in the room, dropping his weapons and rushing towards him. Aziraphale wiped his hands on his shirt, sure to dry any trace of water from them before dropping to his knees beside him, giving no notice at all to the sticky blood covering the floor.
"Crowley! Here, let me just - don't move."
That would have been funny, maybe, but he couldn't force his brain to shape a witty retort or his mouth to form the words, so he didn't say a thing and only watched Aziraphale's face as he reached for one of the knives still impaled through his hands.
There was a rage there, not like anything he'd ever seen on the angel's face before, but it was layered with sorrow and pain and a few other emotions the demon was well-acquainted with. He was crying, and Crowley understood that sentiment too, because he was pretty sure he was doing the same.
It could have been blood running down his own face instead, though. He couldn't quite tell the difference anymore.
Could be it was both.
Aziraphale gripped one of the knives firmly, pulled it straight out and upwards without a moment's hesitation, and passed his other hand over the injury quickly enough that Crowley hadn't even had time to instinctively pull it back towards his chest. The wound closed, the pain faded somewhat, but it didn't heal completely. The angel frowned at that, but didn't pause to dwell on it as he quickly did the same for his wing and then his other hand. He was about to move again, back to his feet to circle around and see to the demon's wings, but Crowley reached out a hand to grasp at his sleeve.
Amabilis had been right about one thing, at least. Whatever she'd done to his back, he could hardly feel his wings at the moment and they weren't his most pressing concern. And Aziraphale disappearing from his blurry eyesight for even a moment, even if it was just to move a few feet around to help him, wasn't at all what he wanted.
"You found me," the relief in his voice was greater for the fact that Aziraphale had stopped when Crowley reached for him, hadn't moved at all save to be closer to him.
The anger in the angel's expression gave way just a little more to sorrow, and he inched forward just a little further to be able to wrap Crowley in a gentle hug without the demon needing to move. And Crowley, eyes closed and head settled against a warm and familiar chest as a hand ran through his hair and down the side of his face with all the care he had thought he'd never experience again, could sense rather than see the strong, white wings that encircled him as well.
"Darling...you didn't go anywhere," Aziraphale said softly, eventually, in response to a comment Crowley had already almost forgotten he'd spoken. He wasn't warm, but he wasn't so cold anymore either, just...a little numb. But that was fine. Nice, even, compared to just a short time ago, and it would have been immensely easy to drift off in his angel's embrace.
"What? Was dark 'nd such, really dark..." He was tired, so, so tired, if Aziraphale would just let him sleep for a minute...
"Crowley, look at me, please?"
He didn't want to, didn't want to move at all, but somehow he always seemed to end up doing a great many things he didn't much care to, only because it was an angel who asked. He lifted his head, opened his eyes, and the light in the room was much gentler when filtered through soft, white feathers.
Aziraphale moved his hand from matted hair to rest on the side of his neck instead, leaned forward just a little further so their foreheads were touching. There wasn't anywhere else he could look besides painfully beautiful, painfully sad blue eyes.
"You were here the entire time. So was I. I don't know how it happened, I couldn't help you, I couldn't touch anything. I could only watch, I couldn't stop them, I don't know why..."
He stopped hearing the angel's words, struggling to focus on what he'd already said. He'd been there the whole time? That was...awful.
"But you did stop them," Crowley interrupted the rambling when he'd processed the next bit, and he made the attempt to not slur his words. "You did. You saved me." There were fresh tears welling up in Aziraphale's eyes again. Crowley would hate to see them fall, so he tried to grin. "With a supermarket water gun. The very definition of heroic."
Aziraphale gave him a tiny, watery smile, and the extra effort that had been speaking was instantly worth it. "There was a shift. All of a sudden I was corporeal again, I could interact with the world, and I didn't waste any time. I'm sorry I didn't get her, I didn't want to splash you by mistake..."
Crowley considered that, and his own fragmented thought process. Amabilis had been right again, his powers could be a Hell of a thing.
"That's why you could do it," he said aloud, and smiled again, a little easier, at the silent question on his angel's face. "Because I thought that you would."
Aziraphale hugged him close again, pressed a gentle kiss to the top of his head. And with his head tucked back under the angel's chin and comforting arms wrapped tight obscuring his vision, Crowley didn't have have to watch the tears fall.
