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Crowley had been gone for two days now.
It was an excruciating forty-eight hours of pacing his bookshop, worrying over the demon excessively. Was it the journal he gave him, with his love confession so clearly spelled out in it, the reason Crowley hadn’t returned? He wouldn’t worry him like that, surely. Perhaps worse, Crowley had been caught, just as the demon had feared. He could be dead.
Aziraphale took a deep breath and unfurled his white wings. It was time.
He took off towards Heaven with a heavy heart, knowing he likely wouldn’t be leaving the same way. But Crowley could be suffering far worse at the hands of Hell’s torturers by now, and his own suffering would be worth it, he knew. He had to have faith. For Crowley’s sake.
He loved him, after all.
“Aziraphale!”
Gabriel stood at the front of the group of archangels, giving Aziraphale a wide grin and an open gesture. “What have you got for us?”
Aziraphale was gripped with sudden fear. These same angels had demeaned him and clipped his wings during his last visit, rendering him flightless on the basis of mere suspicion. He suppressed a shudder at the memory of how he had to rip the feathers out to grow them back. This would undoubtedly warrant an even worse punishment.
“Gabriel,” he started coolly, nodding to each archangel, “Michael, Uriel, Sandalphon...”
They looked at him expectantly. He took a breath.
“I resign.”
There was a moment of painful silence.
“What?” Gabriel asked, uncertain amusement playing across his face. “From... your mission on Earth?”
“No—well, I suppose—but no; I’d like to... switch sides. Become a demon, if that’s what has to happen.” His mouth twisted; it felt even more foul to speak aloud.
Uriel scowled at him, Michael gaped. Sandalphon just snorted in disbelief. Gabriel didn’t seem to know what to do with himself.
“But... why?” He shook his head. “Nobody wants to be a demon,” he chuckled halfheartedly. Surely Aziraphale was joking.
“I do.” Aziraphale responded quite seriously, drawing himself up. “So, go ahead, cast me out, turn my wings black, whatever it is you have to do...”
The tone of the room ran cold.
“You think we’ll just let you commit an act of treason?” Uriel hissed.
Sandalphon nodded firmly in agreement. “You can’t just switch sides,” he pointed out.
“Call the guards in,” Michael said.
Aziraphale took a step back and brought his hands up desperately. “I—I didn’t get to choose my side in the first place, did I? Can’t you just let me go?”
“No,” Gabriel said curtly. His violet eyes were devoid of emotion as he snapped his fingers and the guards were summoned, lesser angels surrounding the principality. They began to draw their swords.
Aziraphale opened his wings in a panic and dove out of the circle, using the moment of surprise to get through unscathed. He ran, back the way he came, but there were more guards coming up the steps. He doubled back and went for the nearest floor-length window, disappearing the glass and launching himself outside, spreading his wings.
He spared a brief glance backward as he frantically beat his wings away from the building; the guards had taken flight and were chasing him now, flickering flame sprouting up from their blades. There were other angels everywhere, unsuspecting but against him all the same, he wasn’t welcome here anymore. The thought made tears spring to his eyes.
He dodged around another guard who came at him from the side, they were gaining on him, with their superior athletic abilities. He had hit the top; now there was only one way to go—down.
Tears falling from his face, Aziraphale folded his wings around him and let gravity seize hold of him again. In a moment he was plummeting like a stone, and he closed his eyes against the wind, willing himself through the heavenly plane and back into Earth’s. It felt a little like a sheet of solid stone passing through every atom of his corporation—he cried out at the pain—the transition was never meant to be made that fast, not in a physical body. Aziraphale worried dimly if he had been discorporated, unable to tell. It was all happening so fast, he was terrified, and that was when he burst into flame.
He couldn’t even think about trying to open his wings at that point. I’m dead, that’s it, this is the end, was all he could process. He was screaming, crying, but he didn’t hear himself. The plane shifted violently once more, and suddenly everything was dark and bleeding red. The flames around him turned white as he careened towards the Pit. The light of Hellfire rose around him, the ground rushed up to meet him and suddenly there was nothing.
Aziraphale woke to the sound of screams and the flicker of flames.
Pain shot through him a second later, and he reflexively began to heal himself, repairing his broken corporation so that he could bring himself onto his knees. The fire was so bright, and his eyes watered against the sting of the smoke. Aziraphale gave in to a fit of coughing a moment later.
He took too long getting up. A geyser of hellfire sprung up just beside him and engulfed his right leg, a pain far worse than anything he’d felt so far coursing through him—the fire was burning away his very soul, and he scrambled away with a terrified shriek. He batted at the flame with his hands to put it out, smothering it with his sleeves, until the corroding feeling faded, leaving behind a dark, gaping hole in his innermost self and a nasty, glowing burn on his corporation. No, something wasn’t right...
Aziraphale opened his wings and shot back up into the sky, flailing frantically; his feathers, still gleaming white, rushed back and forth past his face as he hovered above the reach of the fire. He stared at them through the tears still hanging in his eyes.
He hadn’t fallen.
Aziraphale shook himself and wiped his face, hands burning and beginning to blister. He let his leg hang limp as he began to uncertainly flit back and forth—he had to find Crowley, that was the whole point of this. He had to somehow find and rescue him if he wasn’t already dead without getting burned away by hellfire or captured by the demons who infested the place, and his wings were acting like a glaring beacon at the moment. Aziraphale flew as close to the ground as he dared, dodging columns of hellfire.
“Can anybody...”
He heard a weak voice singing. Immediately he remembered when Crowley told him about his particular collection of “soul music”, apparently recordings of what tormented souls in Hell would sing to keep their spirits up.
“Find, me...”
But it wasn’t just anybody’s voice.
“...somebody to...”
Aziraphale was already rushing towards the sound. The voice was flagging, and he could hear the stress it was under, singing as loud as it physically could.
Then he saw the building, and the barred window Crowley’s voice was drifting out from. He flapped over and reeled back when he nearly ran into a gush of fire, coming to Crowley’s cell window once it had cleared.
“Cr, Crowley?” he tried. The demon was chained up inside, wings skewered by hooks on the walls. He met Aziraphale’s gaze and kept singing.
“...love?”