AN: I have no excuses for this update taking a year, almost to the day, beyond I hit severe writer's block. I plan to finish it soon and, if anyone is still reading this , let me know and enjoy!

XIII

Esther had fallen silent some time ago. Lilith assumed she was asleep, though had no idea one way or the other. She was out of sight, somewhere in the background and wisely away from the demon.

The urge to eat the poor child continued to grow long after Lilith had ceased with her light show. It might have increased, but she couldn't say for certain. Lilith had reached the height of hunger pangs. That also meant she'd become so much closer to eating the sacrifice, because that's what Esther was intended to be, a sacrifice.

For some time, delirium had knocked at the door. Lilith had managed to keep it at bay, to ignore it and cling to her remaining sanity, but that sanity had faded. Locked away in the depths of Hell, too weak to move, being bled daily and taunted with a meal she could never eat had taken their tolls on her. They forced Lilith to do something she had never done.

Tears fell uninhibited from her eyes, gliding across the side of her face and landing on the dingy, cold concrete floor of her cell. Even if she had the strength to stop herself from crying, Lilith doubted she'd have been able. The situation had become dire.

"Please," she mumbled. Her voice cracked. It'd become weathered and thin, nothing as it once was. "Please save her. I know you don't give a shit about me, maybe you never did and making me was some kind of sick joke, that this was all part of your ineffable plan, but-"

Her words caught in her throat. Lilith slammed her eyes shut. She tried to bury her face in the ground, to shield herself from the truth of what she was.

"I don't want to hurt a baby," she cried. "Please, please, please… just help her."

Lilith wept and trembled, alone in a cell and terrified. It wasn't her circumstance that frightened her, the fact that she would likely die in Hell. What scared the Mother of Demons so much was that she knew God wouldn't listen. She knew that God didn't care and that no one was coming to help Esther. She would die in a dank cell in Hell for nothing.

Somewhere in the back of his mind he could hear Queen. It might have been coming from the stereo, or it might have been in his head, he didn't know. In truth, it might have been both. Crowley was too preoccupied either way to bother figuring it out.

Horrible things ran through his mind, things he hoped hadn't happened to Lilith. Torture had never been part of Crowley's bag. He didn't have the stomach for it because he saw no reason to it. A whisper here and a suggestion there was where he shined. He coerced. He cajoled.

But, he had met the tortures. Crowley had met the monsters, the demons that even demons were afraid of. They were twisted souls, the sort that deserved eternal damnation. No, not damnation. They thrived in that. Those souls should have been forced to sit in a park on a lovely spring day. For them, that would have been a fate worse than death. And to think that Lilith had been or would be exposed to that pained the small portion of Crowley's angelic side that had survived his descent.

He knew Aziraphale wanted to help, bless the stupid angel, but Hell was no place for his sort, especially with as angry as they were at the pair. So, no, Aziraphale would have to sit the rescue out. Besides, Crowley wanted to do it.

For the better part of the day, he'd struggled to identify the exact reason he was about to march into Hell, a place that openly wished and had tried to kill him, to save Lilith. Had the good rubbed off on him? Was it because he didn't want Hell to have something they coveted? Was it because they were friends, or possibly more? Maybe he wanted to save her because she'd shown him such genuine kindness in The Beginning, or because he still harbored guilt for her exile.

Maybe it was because he knew what it felt like to have God turn her back on you.

A twinge raced down his spine forcing Crowley to roll his shoulders to try and alleviate it. That thought hit a bit closer to home than he expected it to. As much as he cared for Aziraphale, the angel hadn't been forsaken. Heaven might not want him anymore, but God hadn't left him behind. She hadn't cast him out or shown Her wrath, not like She did with Crowley and Lilith. They'd each felt the brunt of it, the unspeakably cold, bitter rejection of the one whom they'd loved so greatly abandoning them. For Aziraphale's sake, Crowley hoped the angel never did have to feel it. The shock may kill him.

But he and Lilith were different, two twisted, broken things, and he wasn't going to leave her alone. He wouldn't turn his back and abandon her like God had.

There were many portals to Hell littered across the world. Some were hidden in obvious, unassuming places. Others were trickier, though rarely used. Demons had a terrible time remembering where they were.

In most major cities, London included, the entrances to Hell tended to be where the densest traffic swelled, where people were shoved together in tightly packed spaces, where they couldn't breathe beyond the stench of body odor and horrendous perfume. They were the sort of places where tempers would flare, but proper British convention wouldn't allow for a release, so the emotions would fester and roil and bubble beneath the surface, breaching through the planes and opening a portal.

The Underground.

Crowley parked and descended into the depths. He could smell the scent of Hell almost immediately, but the platforms were a bit too crowded at the moment. Stepping off to the side, he waited for the coming train. As he did, something caught his attention, a strange thing that made his brows rise high.

"What the Hell are you doing here, Angel?"

"Well, I alreay told you, didn't I? I can't very well let you go after Lilith on your own," he said. "I'm not one to sit with the sidelines."

"On the sidelines, you mean."

"Yes, precisely." Aziraphale nodded sharply.

Crowley's skin crawled. The entire situation made him far more uncomfortable than he could express. If Aziraphale had approached wearing his usual attire, he wouldn't have minded, but to see the angel standing beside him wearing the demon's face, well… there were no words.

"You've got the eyes wrong," Crowley said, staring at himself with blue eyes.

"Well, I can't do anything about that without taking your face like last time." He was flustered. "This is the best I can manage."

"Fine, then." Crowley snatched his sunglasses off and handed them over. "Wear these. They'll notice those bloody eyes."

"Oh, thank you." Aziraphale smiled wide.

"Yup," he mumbled.

"So," the angel fixed the sunglasses snuggly into place. "What's the plan?"

"Well," he sighed. "Most everyone there's still terrified of me, so there's that. Might help keep anyone from getting too close for a bit."

"Wonderful. Do you know where she'll be?"

His stomach curled at he thought. "They'll likely have her in the deepest cells, the ones in the basement."

"Um, Hell has a basement?" Aziraphale asked with a wavering voice.

"You've no idea how deep the hole really goes, Angel," he replied. "We'll need to split up the second we get there."

"Can't we just enter separately?"

"Best not risk it. I think Archangel's are the only ones who can get through without problem."

"Ah," he nodded. "Of course."

When the train came, the waiting passengers loaded. The moment the train left, Crowley would take Aziraphale onto the track, and they'd pass through the gate.

Everything made his skin crawl, the sunglasses hampered his vision and the overwhelming smell of evil had made it difficult for him to remain in character, but Aziraphale found something soothing in mimicking Crowley's walk. It held confidence, a confidence he desperately needed.

Crowley had given him directions to follow once in Hell. They would lead him to a multitude of corridors that would, in turn, take him to the depths of the basement where the kept the worst of the worst, those who needed punishment greater than Hell could provide.

The fluorescent lights continued to flicker and hum. They gave him a headache, and he knew that had been the point. Everything that pained a person, that offered them the slightest aggravation or annoyance, had been used to construct Hell.

Aziraphale found the correct corridor. His blood chilled. It was so incredibly long, never-ending some might say. A bleak grey slab of nothingness that stretched forever.

"Oh, bother," he mumbled to himself. He had no idea how he was expected to find Lilith in such nonsense.

And then he spotted them. In the nearest door, and the doors that he could see, there was a slot. It was roughly eye level, a window with a sliding door so that he may see who was inside.

Filled with renewed hope, Aziraphale opened the first and immediately closed it. He might have only caught a glimpse, but it had been plenty for him to see that Lilith was not the prisoner. No, what had been within that room was a blackness, a wickedness draped in shadow. It had no form that he could see and instead seemed to be made of nothingness itself. He'd felt such an immediate chill that he had to step away.

A bit shaken, it took him a moment to proceed down the line.

By the time he made it to number sixty-three, Aziraphale had begun to lose hope. Just as he reached for number sixty-four, he heard the fast, heavy patter of shoes on concrete. Solidifying his "Crowley Persona", Aziraphale turned to confront whoever approached only to find the demon himself.

"Oh, Crowley," he sighed in relief. "What on Earth took you so long?"

"You've any idea how hard it is to avoid a thousand demons?" Crowley asked, a bit winded when he finally stood beside the angel.

Avoid? Aziraphale thought to himself. It hadn't even donned on him.

"So, nothing?"

"Not yet, no," he said. "I was just about to check this one."

Crowley nodded and stepped to the next door down. As he looked within his, scowling at whatever he found, Aziraphale checked his cell.

He saw no hideous beast or monstrous creature. He saw no ordinary demon, either. Instead, to his surprise, he saw a little girl sitting beside a bundle.

"Oh, my," he gasped. He knew immediately that she was human. Aziraphale, without a care as to who might sense it, miracled the door unlocked.

"What you doin'?" Crowley joined him.

The light from the hall, no matter how dim, caused the little girl in the dirty dress to shy away and revealed the mass lying nearby.

Aziraphale's stomach sank when, through tendrils of matted hair, familiar red eyes glowed.

"Oh, good heavens," he muttered.

"Oh my God," Crowley said in a tone to match, not even grimacing at the words he'd spoken.

The mass was Lilith, but she looked nothing like herself. Black blood had been smeared across the floor. It seemed to have emanated from her and been shifted whenever she moved. Her once lovely dress, the very dress she'd worn to dinner with him, had been soiled with blood and dirt.

A large, angry gash had been torn through her arms, arms that were chained behind her back in a painful way, her skin had become even paler than before, sickly, and her fiery eyes seemed to have become dull.

"Crow…" her waif-like voice barely reached their ears.

Crowley immediately entered the cell and dropped to her side. He shifted her as best she could, yanking the shackles off and tossing them aside. He struggled with getting her to hold any sort of shape. Each time he attempted to help her sit up, she'd slump and fall. It was almost as though Lilith had no bones. All the while, her eyes remained hauntingly open.

Aziraphale turned his attention to the little girl and immediately placed a smile on his lips. It didn't have the desired effect. She broke into tears. Her wails echoed through the hall and, unwilling to be discovered, he quickly put her to sleep. Aziraphale swept her up into her arms.

"Poor thing," he muttered. "Why would she be in here with Lilith?"

In an icy voice, he replied, "To feed her."

"Oh!" He was horrified. "Oh, this poor girl. We need to get her out of here immediately."

Crowley nodded and turned his attention back to Lilith. He held her jaw, doing his best to keep her eyes, but she had no strength left.

"Lilith, can you hear me?" he asked. She did little more than blink and it must have been the slowest blink possible. "Lilith, I-"

A chorus of sirens suddenly erupted around them, lights flashed in the halls. Aziraphale flinched. His heart raced and he knew, he knew they'd been discovered.

"Oh, no," Crowley muttered.

"What? What is it?"

Crowley peered at him. "It's the horns of battle."

"Oh, Lord,"