#reblogging this here because it’s hamlet adjacent

[somethingjustsouthofbrilliance]

When Love Must Die (chapter 8)

Longer chapter this time. Hopefully, you, guys, will enjoy it :)

Link to Chapter 1 (masterlist)

Tagging:  @armaggedidnt @oh-hamlet @foxyfoe-reblog @s3dgy @butttteeerrrrrr @swanheart69 @giulisetta  @tonystark5ever @agentlokii @tardisoftheshire @maehemscorpyus

------------------------

Chapter 8

 A few moments after all the sounds in the adjacent room seem to die down, Anathema finally gathers the courage to step out of her hiding spot in the kitchen and slide cautiously into the living room, Newt following hot on her heels.  She heard… some of what the demon had said, though it didn’t quite make sense to her.  But it was the angel’s reaction to the demon’s words that truly got to her – the raw, unbridled fury in his voice she didn’t think him capable of; the seismic shockwave of it rolling through the cottage like a hurricane-force wind, knocking out light bulbs and rattling windows and doors.

It was terrifying.  And she wasn’t sure she was ready to face whatever the consequences of that fury left behind.

 Turns out, she was right, but not for the reasons she thought.

 The smell hits her first – burned flesh and rot, emanating from a blackened puddle on the floor just outside the now extinguished demon trap.  She doesn’t understand the meaning of it, not at first.  Not until she shifts her gaze to the angel, back in his familiar shape now, standing at the very edge of the still-smoking puddle, with his head low, his shoulders hunched, and his hand gripping a vaguely familiar sword engulfed in flames.

 “Holy Belladonna…,” she gasps out, and the angel startles at that, turns around to face her, sword at the ready.

 There’s a moment of shocked silence as he stares at her, eyes glazed with darkness and pain so palpable that she has to fight the urge to shy away from that gaze, to retreat back into the kitchen and stay there until the suffocatingly terrifying swirl of emotions she feels emanating from the angel settles down.

 The angel blinks, slow and dazed, as though coming out of a trance, and the sword clatters to the ground, breaking the silence, the flame going out the instant it touches the floor.

 “They have him,” comes the equally dazed, quiet revelation.  “Hell… They have Crowley.”

 Anathema flicks her gaze to the gooey puddle beside the angel, purses her lips in doubt.  “He told you that?”

 The angel shakes his head, swallows with visible effort.  “Showed.”  

 There’s something in that admission, in the way his voice catches and breaks on the word that sends a jolt of compassionate worry through Anathema’s heart.  She dares a step or two closer, hovers almost within reach.

 “He’s alive then,” she tries for comfort. “We know for sure now that he’s still alive.  That’s a good thing, right?”

 The angel’s face twists in a terrifying display of raw, unadulterated pain.  “You don’t understand!”  

 The grief in his voice is once again a powerful, physical thing.  It pushes against Anathema’s senses, and she can’t help but recoil from the sheer force of its pressure.  

 The angel doesn’t seem to notice.  Stands where he is, hands gripping the sides of his head as if to keep it from splitting open, and words pour on, disjointed and rambling.

 “He’s an angel now.  The poison he absorbed, the poison he took from me – it destroyed his demonic essence, burned it away.  It should have… it should have killed him.  Permanently.  Because once you destroy a demon’s essence, there’s nothing left.  Same with angels.  But Crowley, he…” Tear-bright blue eyes find Anathema’s, and he smiles, bitter and wistful, “he’s different, isn’t he.  Always has been.”

 “He kept his angelic essence,” the guess spills out of her in an awed gasp.  Because she’s read about the Fall, alright? She got curious after the failed Armageddon, she wanted to know more about the forces that started it all.  And there was a lot of squabbling and disagreements between the different accounts she’s seen, but the one thing they all seemed to agree on was that the Fall was painful and traumatizing for the future demons and that the process burned away all traces of their former angelic essence, everything that ever tied them to Heaven. The mere idea that one of those fallen angels could somehow manage to save even a spark of that heavenly connection within them… it was… it was…

 “Ineffable,” the angel breathes out, as if reading her thoughts, his smile wobbling as tears spill down his cheeks.

 “It’s still a good thing, is it not?” Newt chimes in from behind her, and she jumps, having all but forgotten about his presence.  “I mean, if he hadn’t, he’d be dead now, but this way we can still get him back, right?”

 Aziraphale blinks at the question and looks away to where the demon’s remains slowly congeal into a cold viscous mess.  And there’s that wave of pain again that rolls off of him, tinting his aura a sickly mustard yellow.

 “I’m guessing an angel trapped in Hell is never a good thing,” Anathema muses, thinking back to the confrontation at the Tadfield Air Base, remembering the open rage and hatred she felt pouring off Crowley’s demonic colleagues.  She remembers something else, too: the cold, ugly swell of deadly menace from both the demon with a fly-shaped hat on its head and from Satan himself, both directed at Crowley.  “Traitor,” the fly demon had called him. And, oh, she thinks.  Oh!…

 “It’s worse for Crowley, isn’t it,” she blurts out, trying for gentle, but not quite succeeding, judging by the way the angel flinches at her words.  And she gets it now, the reason for Aziraphale’s distress.  Because… “They were already angry at him in Hell, weren’t they?  For messing up their plans?  And now they get their hands on him and he’s an angel…”

 “Archangel,” Aziraphale speaks up finally, voice hollow and bitter with pain.  “Raphael.  Lucifer’s baby brother.”

 Oh… my…

 “He was tortured!” Aziraphale whirls back toward them, eyes blazing with self-directed fury.  “All this time.  All the time I’ve spent feeling sorry for myself, moping around this place like a goddamn fool.  He was tortured, and I… oh dear God!” He pales, hand clamping over his mouth as he looks for all the world like someone about to get violently sick.

 “You didn’t know!” Anathema tries.  “How could you?  We all saw what happened, we all assumed that he was–”

 The angel shakes his head. “Crowley would have known,” he forces out, strangled.  “He always… he always…  He would have known!”  His words break on a pulse of guilt and self-hatred so strong – it physically pushes Anathema back a step.  And then it dies out, just as quickly as it came, leaving behind a swirling murky sea of weariness and despair.  “I gotta get him out of there…”

 “Yes,” she nods, still feeling quite off-balance from the whirlwind of powerful dark emotions radiating from the angel.  “But how?”

 The angel shakes his head, forehead creased in thought.  Murmurs a quietly helpless, desperate, “I… I don’t…”

 “Um… I hate to bring this up,” Newt cuts in again, “but don’t we need to do something about this?” He points warily at the puddle of demon goo on the floor.  “I mean… you said yourself he was a… a duke or something. Wouldn’t the others be expecting him back?”

 Aziraphale’s head shoots up at that, face brightening unexpectedly, eyes gleaming with almost childlike excitement.  “That’s it!” he cries out, reaching his hands toward Newt as though aiming to embrace him.

 “What?” The younger man stumbles back instinctively in the face of the angel’s near-manic fervor.  Reaches up to fix his glasses in an awkward attempt to maintain his cool.  “What did I say?”

 Instead of a response, the angel snaps his fingers, and Anathema sucks in a startled breath as the angel’s form shifts once more: the white hair lengthens, the soft curls straightening out into an unruly tangled mop; the smooth perfect skin darkens and sags, breaking out in ugly, weeping warts; the bright angelic blue of his eyes disappears in the pools of seemingly bottomless inky black…

 “Holy shit…,” Newt gasps out beside her, and, yeah, she thinks, as she watches the newly-baked demon roll his shoulders, adjusting the hopelessly stained, worn-out trench coat on his shoulders, that pretty much covers it.

 The disguised angel smiles at them, revealing a row of rotten smoke-yellowed teeth.  Twirls around for good measure, arms spread out wide, as if inviting them to appraise his newest form.  

 “I’ll be back soon,” he promises, and now, despite his earlier distress and confusion, despite the ever-present pain in his aura, he exudes nothing but frighteningly calm, furious conviction.  “Bring Adam here if you can and have him wait for me.”  At Anathema’s questioning frown he explains, “He helped me once, when my old corporation was destroyed.  I’m hoping he can do the same for Crowley.”

 And with that and another flick of his fingers he’s gone.

 ***

 Hell is different from the last time he remembers.  For one, his return is not greeted by any special fanfare.  There are no demon guards surrounding him, tracking his every move.  No hungrily leering gawkers crowding the hallways, their sharp teeth bared in anticipation of a good show.  He walks through the damp, sewage-smelling hallways unhindered.

 It’s a blessing on the one hand.  On the other – he needs to find Crowley, and he has no idea where to go.

 He gets lucky finally after yet another sharp turn into a winding corridor with a leaking overhead pipe that a couple of low-rank demons are lazily trying to patch up.  

 Perfect.

 Shoulders squared, mouth set in a haughty disgusted sneer he’s seen Hastur wear on numerous occasions, he strides purposefully right up to the pair, growling out a “What the Heaven are you two, idiots, doing here?” in lieu of a greeting.

 The demons turn around, startled, their grime-smudged faces frozen in fear.  Stare back at him in a helpless flounder.

 “Well?” He lets his frustration and worry seep through, disguised as anger.  Lets the threat of it flash in the blackness of his eyes. “Why aren’t you over there guarding that traitor Crowley?”

 One of the demons, a squatty wart-covered thing, stammers out finally, “Not… not supposed to be there, Your Lordship.  It’s Armaros’ turn now.  And I think… I think they may be waiting for you?”  The demon ducks his head immediately, perhaps fearing he’d spoken too freely.

 Aziraphale narrows his gaze, aware that on Hastur’s face it looks menacing enough to cause the two demons to cower and tremble before him.  He uses that fear to his advantage.

 “Take me to him,” he says, and when the demon hesitates a fraction, giving him a look of scared confusion, he snaps, teeth bared in a clear show of menace, “NOW!”

 The demon jumps forward as if shocked and scurries obediently down the hallway, careful to stay only a couple steps ahead.  Pauses in front of a thick metal door whose surface is dented in places and smeared with grime.  

 “Armaros has been working on ‘im for the past couple hours,” the demon reports with a tremulous smile.  “But ‘e should be good and ready for you now.  You want me to announce you?”

 “Leave!” Aziraphale growls, barely restraining himself from pulling the flaming sword back out of the hidden plane and running the bothersome demon through.  Crowley is there, behind the door.  He can feel him – the familiar tug he’s learned to hone in on over all those millennia.  And he needs to get to him.  Can’t afford to give himself away just yet.

 The demon gulps nervously and is gone faster than could be expected from a short-legged creature like that.  

 Aziraphale yanks open the door and steps inside.

 For a moment – a long breathless moment – everything stops, as he stands, frozen, on the threshold of the makeshift torture chamber, its air so thick with the scent of blood and sweat and despair that it makes him want to gag.  He thought he was prepared, he’d glimpsed some of what was awaiting him in Hastur’s memories, and he tried to mentally steel himself for this very moment.

 It turned out to have been a futile endeavor.  Because nothing, nothing could have possibly prepared him for this!

 He sees Crowley, hanging by his wrists from a spiked metal chain that cuts ruthlessly into the tender skin; rivulets of blood – angel-gold blood – trickling down the skinny trembling arms from there the barbs pierce the wrists, sliding past the awful looking bruises and welts that cover every inch of those arms to drip in a monotonous cadence down to the floor, where they merge with a much bigger puddle that has collected at his feet.  He sees those bare feet, burned and bloodied, barely scraping the cold surface of the floor – not enough, not nearly enough to provide any support for his sagging body; Crowley’s head hanging limply on his scourged chest, the beautiful sun-red hair dull and matted; his beautiful wings – horribly mangled and torn, sticking out at awkward, broken angles, vulnerable and unprotected behind his back…

 There’s a loud roar in his ears, an awful pressure in his chest – so strong he thinks he might burst from it.  And for one horrifying moment his vision goes dark, as though someone somewhere had just turned off the light.

 “Hastur!”

 The raspy gleeful voice pulls him out of the suffocating blackness of his stupor and he blinks to find a tall scraggy demon, whose presence he had previously ignored, stepping out from behind Crowley’s back, one of its many unnaturally long, clawed appendages curled around the handle of a knife steeped in angelic blood.

 “It’s about time you showed up,” the demon continues, a lewd smile pulling at his blackened lips.  “I’ve been getting quite bored here.  There’s only so many notches you can make on those wings before the blasted creature passes out on you, and then you have to wait for him to wake up.  And waiting’s no fun, if you know what I mean.”  

 The demon looks back at his prisoner, pretending to consider him a moment.  “Perhaps I could wake him up for you now,” he offers with a laugh, low and grating.  Grabs Crowley’s wing, pulling it sharply toward him, his knife hand poised to strike down.

 And drops howling to the floor as the flaming sword slices through his appendages like a hot knife through butter, leaving behind blistering, sizzling stumps.  The sword swings down once more, swift and vengeful, and the demon’s screams cut out, silenced into a dying fizzle.

 Aziraphale doesn’t give him another glance.  Steps forward instead, swinging his sword at the chain that binds Crowley in place.  The Hell-forged shackles yield under the furious onslaught of holy energy, crack and shatter, scattering onto the floor in tiny smoking pieces. And Aziraphale lets go of the sword that same instant, lets it clatter to the ground unheeded, as Crowley, released from his cruel bonds, drops boneless toward the blood-covered floor.

 Aziraphale catches him before he hits the ground, the momentum driving him to his knees.  He lingers there just long enough to take a quick, relieved breath – perhaps his first one since crossing the threshold of this awful room.  Then he stands, his precious burden cradled against his chest, his arms wrapped around him with the desperate protectiveness that’s tempered only slightly by his fear of causing Crowley more pain.

 Crowley’s head lolls with the movement, a soft moan slipping past the cracked lips, and Aziraphale stills once again, breath bated as he waits hungrily, selfishly for more.

 “Crowley?” he prods, realizing belatedly as the former demon jerks suddenly in his arms that the voice coming out of his mouth is still Hastur’s voice.  

 And, oh, he wants to kick himself, wants to bang his stupid head against the wall for needlessly scaring his friend!  He should have just kept his mouth shut.  Just long enough to get them both out of here so he could shed this hated disguise.  He should have–

 Crowley shifts against him, effectively silencing his self-deprecating train of thought.  Opens his eyes a slit, his bleary, pain-filled gaze skating slowly up Aziraphale’s face to rest on his eyes.  And Aziraphale wants to close them, wants to keep Crowley from seeing those hateful soulless pools of black he knows are looking back down at him.  

 But Crowley doesn’t flinch away.  Stares mutely into Aziraphale’s eyes for a long breathless moment, and then, inexplicably, smiles.  “Angel,” he exhales, his eyes slipping closed once more as his head rolls, his battered face nestling trustingly into the stained smelly material of Hastur’s coat.

 It takes Aziraphale another interminably long moment before he can breathe again.  Before he can blink away a veil of tears that washes out Crowley’s dear features and get his hopelessly rattled emotions under some modicum of control to snap the two of them back to the Jasmine Cottage, miracling the flaming sword away onto the hidden plane as an afterthought.