Chapter Text
In the communal rooms in Hell Crowley was holding back his tongue in his mouth to avoid any dangerous comments about the pointless infernal bureaucracy that had been keeping him Downstairs for at least a week due to a useless quibble when a heavy clangour startled him from behind.
Biting down a swear, Crowley turned over and saw six laughing demons throwing spears, daggers, traps, bows, arrows and other hunting items in a messy pile on the floor at the center of the room.
Crowley would have ignored that group if those weapons weren't stained by some half-dried blood which had a familiar smell he knew well.
In a blink, Crowley sneaked next to the demons, almost praying for the first time in a while that he was being wrong, and started eavesdropping on their conversation.
“...don't know how he could believe he could get the better of all of us with his tricks!” one of them said.
“Thirteen demons against him: what an airhead!” a owl-demon hooted.
“He was an angel, what you were expecting! He even had puffy white hair like a cloud,” another one commented.
That news hit Crowley like a thousand bricks: it hit him so hard that he couldn't stop a choked gasp from leaving his throat, making the demons notice him.
“Oh, yeah, it was your personal enemy,” the demon with owl features said while staring at Crowley with his huge eyes, “and you've always said he was too dangerous to approach. It looked like we just needed the right situation and enough dummies like the Erics to fall for his trap.”
“Six Erics discorporated at the same time: it must be a record,” a fish-demon giggled.
“You weren't so cheerful when it happened: it almost got you too,” another one hastened to add with a grin full of long but thin fangs. “You should thank me for hitting him with one of my special arrows before he could activate another trap”.
“Don’t you dare take all the merits: we all ganged up on him,” a demon with staf horn said, showing his bloodied knife.
Pale as a sheet, Crowley asked: “So… did you ki- …discorporated him?”
The owl demon answered with a chuckle: “If the angel was still alive after all the wounds we inflicted on him, the hellhound definitely killed him after it threw itself with the airhead in the ravine. Heaven, the hound is probably still feasting on his body now.”
The fanged demon noticed Crowley's silence and taunted: “Why do you ask? Are you jealous we could do that?”
“SomethingLikeThat,” Crowley muttered, with a spark of hope silently kindled inside him. The demons hadn't seen the angelic corporation and they've left him for dead: Aziraphale could be still alive, despite everything.
“I gotta go… over there” Crowley blabbered pointing randomly at a dark corridor but, then, he proceeded to rush in the opposite direction towards the closest infernal exit, following the stench of the hunting demons and the blood stains.
Crowley rushed to the place where the demons had hunted Aziraphale in such a hurry it looked like he was having Satan (or God) on his heels. In less than fifteen minutes he found the ravine and, luckily remembering the gravity was optional for him, he ran down on the steep walls.
When he reached the bottom, under the canopy of the trees, he spotted an area full of broken branches and covered with splatters of drying blood: it was clearly the place where the angel and the infernal beast had crashed but no bodies were in sight.
Looking around himself, the demon spotted a ivory torn piece of cloth on a trampled bush and, in a heartbeat, he dashed inside. In front of his eyes there was a huge hellhound, covered from head to tail in crimson blood: the tip of a demonic sword was poking out from the back of its skull.
The demon was still fearing for the worse until he spotted a small pale right hand with a signet ring on his little finger peaking out beneath that immense beast.
“Angel!” The demon cried while pushing away the huge hellhound that was crushing down Aziraphale, covered in blood and many wounds. He delicately removing the angelic arm from the fanged mouth, prying the finger from the hilt of the sword.
When the dead weight was lifted from him, the angel took a ragged breath: he was unconscious but was still alive.
However Crowley knew well he had no time to lose and he couldn't waste time there, especially since he couldn't perform any miracle because he had to hide his presence: he gently picked Aziraphale up and, after wrapping him in his mantle, he carried him to a nearby cave where he layed the angel down on some soft dead ferns.
After taking a calming breath, Crowley said to himself: “Let's see what I can do for you, angel.”
Then, after he lit a small fire, he feverishly started to take care of Aziraphale.