Comments - Sorry about the delay - you know me. But here it is! Thanks reviewers, you're a constant source of happiness and delight for me, you don't know how much it means.

Chapter Nine

Time passed oddly in Hell, but as far as he could tell, Aziraphale guessed they had been travelling for at least one long, exhausting hour and a half when Crowley signalled for them to stop. As soon as they had got out of the door, down the corridor and into the lift, it had been a quick trip downstairs a level or two (once again, the ex-angel's uncommonly good luck holding true). From there, Crowley led them to a large black double door, the very sight of which sent a shiver down both their spines.

"It's through there," Crowley panted, breathing hard. Obviously the wounds he'd sustained had been worse than the usual corporeal variety, and to be frank, Aziraphale was worried. Anything that could hurt a celestial being enough to incapacitate him was quite nasty, as they had to hurt not just their current bodies, but their souls. The two of them had complained a million times about the discomfort and annoyance of having to get a new manifestation from their respective offices, but that was nothing. The only weapons that could do physical damage to an angel or demon were occult themselves, such as the sword that Aziraphale had wielded at the end of the world. That, being a holy blade, would do considerable damage and even cause death to a demon, and probably the same to any angel as its effect was on a soul, not a body.

So, in brief, Crowley was in trouble.

Still, they slugged on, the disgraced angel taking more weight on his shoulders than the demon probably imagined. As soon as they reached the doors however, Aziraphale reached out with one hand to open it, and immediately his hand brushed the surface, the wood seemed to almost shudder under the touch. Then, a split second later, the most awful screaming din rang out, and the two jumped, Crowley nearly falling to the stone floor in shock.

"What on Earth is that?" Aziraphale shouted, trying to cover his ears to block out the noise.

"Alarm," Crowley shouted back. "Come on, we'll be surrounded any minute!"

Without hesitation, they both moved forwards and forced the heavy doors open as the very air shrieked, the sound echoing through the corridor and out into the barren plain desolately.

It was the most lonely and inhospitable place Aziraphale had ever seen – not just in the environment, but the feel of the place. The flat and unyielding ground seemed to scream of the pain it had seen, the air tasted of betrayal and the wind whistled with the scream of the alarm and the salty taste of tears. Unconsciously, he tightened his grip on Crowley, not noticing the way the demon reacted the same way, making it hard to see which was giving and taking comfort.

They walked forwards slowly, and when he looked at the demon, Aziraphale noticed his face looked deathly pale, and not just from pain. Wisely, he kept his mouth shut, but was just wondering where they were going to go from here when there was the sound of a door banging, and they whirled round in time to see the corridor they had just left flood with demons.

And, at the front, her eyes blazing, was the receptionist.

"Now would be a good time to think of a plan," Aziraphale commented uneasily. He glanced quickly at Crowley, who was looking hard at the sky speculatively.

"Aziraphale…"

They backed off slowly as the crowd advanced.

"How much do you trust me?"

Looking sharply at his friend, he was surprised when the demon eased himself off his shoulder and stood almost normally on his own two feet. His reply however, was instinctual.

"More than life itself."

"Good." Crowley grinned, and with a sudden noise of tearing fabric, his wings burst out, shaking feathers all over the ground. He grabbed the ex-angel tightly around the middle and leapt up, fanning out his wings and beating down hard to gain some up thrust. After a few perilous seconds, they were airborne and shooting upwards, clinging tightly to each other as the wind whistled past.

"You're going on a diet," Crowley complained, breathing heavily at the effort of keeping them both in the air and moving up. Aziraphale however was looking down.

"They're following!"

"I'd be surprised if they didn't," the demon replied. "We're going through the crossover zone soon-"

"The what?"

"Just do as I say," Crowley shouted back. "I need you to picture your bookshop – the front room. Build it in your mind and imagine yourself there."

"But-"

"Do it Aziraphale – if you never listen to me again, do it!"

Obediently, the ex-angel closed his eyes and ignored the arms around his waist, the feeling of the ground moving further and further away beneath his feet, and instead remembering the bookshop. The feel of the dusty floor beneath his feet, the smell of books, the bookshelves (complete with bloodstains), the desk in front, the door behind…

All of a sudden, he felt his stomach lurch, and suddenly they weren't rising, but falling and landing painfully in a bundle of limbs on the uncomfortable floor of the bookshop.

"Urgh," Aziraphale groaned, his mind whirling and trying to persuade his body that it wasn't.

"Ow," Crowley agreed, his face squashed against the floor and his wings contorted around the two of them to fit into the suddenly cramped amount of space.

"What the-?" Aziraphale asked groggily, pulling himself carefully from under a pile of Crowley and onto a spare bit of floor.

Crowley didn't reply for a moment and instead seemed to be trying to figuring out how to move first. Eventually, he settled on winching in his wings and then flopping over onto his back, his pale face showing starkly beside the red spots of exertion on his cheeks.

"What just happened?" he asked again, leaning against a handy bookshelf. Crowley didn't move, but glanced across as he explained.

"You can get to Hell from anywhere, right? And when He Fell, he Fell from Heaven to Hell, passing Earth out entirely. That was what we just passed through – the link between Heaven and Hell, which is both on Earth and somewhere completely different. Don't ask me all the details, but I figured that if the crossover point is both nowhere and everywhere at the same time, then so were we. All we did, by thinking of here was to suggest one of those places as somewhere to be."

Aziraphale thought about this for a moment.

"That's insane," he replied eventually. Crowley shrugged.

"It worked, didn't it?"

The disgraced angel half-smiled, shaking his head as he watched the demon carefully sit up, not even wincing as he used the bookshelves to pull himself up.

"Ahem."