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I'll think of you every step of the way : Chapter 1 Explosion
I'll think of you every step of the way by Mekachu04
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Disposable Demon (Good Omens), Satan | Lucifer (Good Omens), Beelzebub (Good Omens), Adam Young (Good Omens), Wensleydale (Good Omens), Brian (Good Omens), Pepper (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: No beta we fall like Crowley, is it still 'headcanon' if you're discussing religion?, feature author's own personal outlook on religion, specifically Hell and God's relationship to it, Minor Character Death, Paul Adeyefa's character is named Legion in here, discussion of past mutilations, Aziraphale was a cherubim, Aziraphale was a warrior, Discussion of the Fall, Imprisonment, Abduction, mentions of torture, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Post-Apocalypse, Nope'geddeon, Post-Canon, Time Manipulation, Wing Injury, hurt!Aziraphale, Hurt!Crowley, discussions of Pre-Canon, Crowley didn't fall - he was pushed, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Happy Ending, Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), lucifer is reasonable, aziraphale is not himself today, smite-y aziraphale, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), lucifer is not luci (tv) but heavily influenced by him, possible self-harm, unintentional suicidal actions, Burns, Crowley's True Form (Good Omens)
Series: Part 1 of Every Step
Aziraphale worked very hard at being soft. He's been working very hard for more than 6000 years to be soft, and one demon is trying his patience on the matter, leading him on a smiting spree in hell.
aka - exploring my personal headcanon's of our fav duo's pasts, set sometime after the series ends. Tags will be expanded reflecting each new chapter to minimize spoilers. i'm not very nice to either of of our beloveds in this, but it all works out in the end.
title from 'I Will Always Love You' by Whitney Houston
Chapter titles are based on the prompt used for that day
I am not the first, nor the last, to ponder Aziraphale being a principality, instead of a cherubim, which scriptures say are the ones who guarded the gates of Eden. Given the line from the book: “Technically Aziraphale was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days” and my tendency to make every thing hurt, I took this as our angel being demoted.
Getting an Angel of the Lord into Hell was not easy a feat. Not if the angel wanted to both retain their holy grace, and didn't actually want to be there in the first place. And with very, very few exceptions, most angels did not want to be in Hell. It was Hell, of course, a place of torment and anguish, things that echoed onto an angelic essences with the force of a battering ram. But also, the thing that made Hell different than anywhere else in existence and nonexistence was the fact is was the one place in all of creation that was not part of Her Creation.
In a paradox only an ineffable god could produce, it was a place She created that was not a part of Her. The only place that She was not. The only realm that an omnipresent God was not in, nor would She ever be.
She could be, if She wanted, and that's probably the biggest insult to the LightBringer, is that She could be the Light of Hell instead, but chose to let him be the beacon in his otherwise dark and dreaded realm. That the Morningstar's free will only extended to the fact She allowed him to have it.
It was something every demon instinctively knew; just as they knew it was best not to talk about it, lest they invoke the wrath of their ruthless Dark Lord.
So, Hell was a place purposely devoid of Her Grace. And for angels still aligned with Heaven, that severance was a crippling blow. Theories abounded that you could actually trigger a false 'fall' if you could hold an angel in Hell long enough; you could starve them to the point that they would consume their own grace and burn for it. Hell had tried to test it a few times, to see if they could catch an angel, could twist it upon itself; maybe before it even knew what had happened - could they Fall an angel and have no one noticed? Let one back into Heaven before the Host knew? Unfortunately for Hell, the very few times they had succeeded in dragging an angel into their realm, the holy being had eaten hellfire before they'd allow themselves to used for demonic entertainment.
Only one angel had walked into Hell willingly; Only Lucifer's Bane was strong enough to survive being cut off long enough from Her for long enough to 'visit.' Michael had come for the Trial of the Traitor, and had left quite shaken by many aspects of her visit. It had taken her months to shed the dread of Hell from her ethereal core.
At least, only one angel as far as anyone officially knew. And even unofficially, only two other knew anything to the contrary.
Because you see, on the same day a demon walked across Heaven without burning, an angel walked across Hell without drowning.
Crowley would prefer not to think about it; as things often worked for him, if he didn't think about it, it didn't happen. And if it was assumed something would work, it tended to do as he asked. Ironically, this was also his downfall just as often. He assumed the mobile network would go down - so it did. His included. He never thought to think that he wouldn't be included, so he was. So Crowley made a point to not think about the why's of their shared deception, and instead focus on that it would work.
So it did.
Alternatively, Aziraphale often wondered why. He often turned every problem over in his mind, over and over and over, until he worried himself into mental exhaustion, or his solved the problem. His own twist of irony was, while he'd always been like that to a point, he'd never been so neurotic about it until he'd meet Crowley in Eden. He certainly never asked aloud; That was Crowley's job. And while the demon was absolutely happy to question everything, he also was quick to remind Aziraphale that his voiced questions came at a great cost. And after six thousand years, the two had learned to let Crowley voice their concerns, and to let Aziraphale toil the question over internally until a solution was found.
So when Crowley refused to question, Aziraphale tried very hard to refuse to puzzle over it.
The simplest answer could have been that their ruse had worked because God was simply not in Heaven that day. That She instead had followed Micheal in curiosity, or in a move to protect her Archangel as she walked into the Valley.
It was a simple answer.
It was the wrong answer.
Now, not entirely wrong. It was true, that Heaven was not concentrated in the way they'd all been lead to believe. It was not Holy Ground the way humans understood Her Earthly Homes. It's simply that Heaven and the Host are not interchangeable, and the Host was no more devoid or blessed of Her presence than any other generic place in existence. Just because She was not There, didn't mean She wasn't there.
And She certainly had not gone to Hell by any means. She had given that realm to Her most beloved, regardless of how it came to be. She still loved all Her children, regardless of how they hated Her, and took Her gift to the Fallen quite seriously. She'd given them a place with Her not, and She would respect that until the day they asked Her back; even knowing that that day would never come.
So, after the end that wasn't, unknown to all but Her and two of Her wayward children, there were two angels to have walked in Hell. And, unknown to all BUT Her, only one of them felt Hell at all.
Just as Heaven didn't burn Crowley, the heavy weight of Hell did not drown Aziraphale. Heaven did not burn the demon, because while he had rejected Her grace, he had accepted Aziraphale’s love, and so carried a spark of the principalities own light. Heaven saw this flame, and welcomed him as an old friend.
Hell could not consume Aziraphale’s grace, because his grace was no longer fed by the Host of Heaven; Had not since the moment he'd chosen to walked away from his platoon, and flee back to earth. Even before, it had been slowly cut off little by little with every reprimand for centuries. Abandoning his post was the final straw for the Host. But in this long time of restricted love, he'd instead found a new source of faith, driven forward by the compassion of a demon who shielded him from harm as he'd once done from the storm of the First Rain.
And both of them still returned to Her in their own ways. Neither had ever officially renounced her, although Crowley had spent much of his new life yelling up at Her. And after the wall, Aziraphale had pointedly never made an effort to talk to Her again. She would realize in sorrow that it appeared in the end, he'd forgotten how, instead trying to call Her though the other Host instead of just looking up directly.
So Hell did not turn on the angel of the Lord, because while he may still abstractly love his Lord, his grace was surrounded and protected by the love of a demon, and Hell let him pass unharmed.
----
And when he was marched into Hell the second time, Hell welcomed him with confusion. The Hordes of Hell didn't know it was the angels second visit, and he was doing his best to act surprised by the claustrophobic halls of dread and distraught, but it was almost like being received home in a way Heaven had not been since before the First War.
The Almighty had known when Crowley had been brought to Heaven, but She was all-knowing to begin with.
Lucifer aught to have known then Aziraphale was first in Hell, but he was allowing instead his most hated sister to walk freely in his home, and was too busy seething at the blatant way Michael allowed her grace to light his realm, to have heard Hell's curiosity at his second, smaller visitor.
There was no other angelic entity in his halls now, so when Duke Hastur returned with yet another cog in his vendetta against Eden's Serpent, Lucifer felt the ripple of Hell's recoil against the grace.
It was blatantly weaker than Michael, but Micheal's grace was blinding, and this was an angel both Host and Horde already knew that was out of favour. Lucifer had allowed Hastur, and Hastur alone, to continue to rage against Crowley. Beelzebub may have been twice shamed, but ze'd only zemself to blame for zer failed execution. Satan's son might have been turned against him, but Adam still lived. Ligur did not. So long as Hastur's vengeance did not involve any other of the Horde, he was free to do as he liked.
Which apparently involved bringing an angel to Hell. Just as long as he didn't have to see it, Lucifer didn't see the harm. His preternatural unfallen brethren would not sully his home for this angel, so he let Hastur be. The duke has lost the very brother who'd pulled him from the lake after their Fall. Destroying an angel was a just reward. Destroying an angel that apparently could not die via hellfire, according to Legion, so one that would find no escape or reprieve under the grieving demon's administrations.
Maybe Hell could test some of those theories finally.
And so, Hastur and the angel became filed away as out of sight, out of mind; Lucifer only pausing in his day to issue an order the Crowley was barred from returning to Hell unless discorporated. It went without saying that he was to be refused a new one. Maybe, if Lucifer was being generous, he'd allow the rebellious demon to console Hastur's captured angel between sessions. He would not take Hastur's project away, but he still felt rebellion should be rewarded in some measure, no matter how much hard work Crowley has cocked up with this new turn he's taken.
If curiosity struck him, he'd ask Legion how the Duke's pet project was going. The little beetle seemed uneasy about the updates; Lucifer would have to keep a closer eye on the demon's loyalties. He reeked of awe in regards to the angel; apparently he was impressed by Heaven's newest disgrace's composure during the Host's failed execution. Lucifer could respect that, but could not allow it to overshadow Legion's loyalty to him.
What could be worrisome was that Legion was not the only one whispering about the captured angel. Hastur was enjoying himself, but the angel was not breaking the way anyone had planned. He was distraught, and prone to weeping when left alone; but when he knew he was being observed, he was restrained. And worse - he was polite.
Even to Hastur, he was unflinchingly polite and civil. And worse, he was heard to have told a Duke of Hell that he understood Hastur's grief, and could not fault him for his need to seek retribution, but had the gall to tell him he would not truly feel better, and the violence would only leave him numb at best.
Understandingly, this did little to warm Hastur to him, and the violence rent upon the angel often took embarrassing long for the host to recover from, leaving Hastur raging instead at his fellow demons in the intern. Still, for the time being, Lucifer would still continue to allow it, but he had warned Prince Beelzebub to be mindful of the Duke's rage, and if he started permanently damaging members of the Horde, Lucifer would execute the angel himself, and be done with it.
Through it all, the demon Crowley had still not made a whisper on Earth or below, only adding fuel to Hastur's rage.
---
Time passes in Hell much differently than on Earth, and it's never constant. Time in Hell literally passes exactly how it feels. When you are an ageless entity, time means nothing, and there is no night or day or seasons to set a clock to. So if something feels like it was quick, it is. If something feels like a century, it is. It's an odd reflection of Heaven before the War, one that Heaven doesn't even subscribe to anymore. In Heaven, time is just as meaningless, because it is all time all at once. Armageddon and Eden exist in the same moment. It's also one of the reasons angels struggle with Earth so much, and yet while it takes Heaven so long to recall them home when they are sent out, because they don't understand specific points in time, just the general idea, and it can take decades after a job has been done for Heaven to open the doors back; after all, only the upper sphere have the power to fly freely back and forth. After the rebellion, Heaven doesn't understand at all, where at least Hell does, and manipulates it as it sees fit.
No one really is sure what that will mean in terms of an angel in Hell, but this is also an angel who has been on Earth since the concept of time began, so it seems to have adjusted to the passage as such already, and learns to understand how time in Hell works easily. Hastur wants their sessions of agony to last for an eternity. The angel clearly does not. So while the Duke gets to torture an angel for centuries, Aziraphpale would rather not, and is quite happy to only allow the Duke his pound of flesh for a few hours at most.
It drives Hastur into a rage, which he takes out of other denizens of Hell, but even those in the crossfire can't help but be amused at how quickly the angel has gotten under the skin of the hierarchy. More and more often, it seems the spectators are there less to watch an angel's grace be torn asunder, and more to watch Hastur lose his ever-damned mind when the angel starts calling the shots on his own torture sessions.
Very few demons have an imagination, but those who might be predisposed to such an affliction are starting to root for the bastard angel, simply to piss off a duke. They call out new ways to humiliate the angel, not in any means of causing the angel harm, but simply to watch Hastur's indignation in the implication that minor demons could do a better job then he is doing. Aziraphale might even encourage them, having noted that if one of the Horde makes the suggestion, Hatsur's pride will force him to refuse to do it. He himself goads Hastur about the hellfire, when the duke forgets he's supposed to be immune to it, and after one humiliation session, blindly reaches out to impulsive end the angel once and for all. Several faces of Legion are included in the onlookers that day, and they are a course of laughter as Hastur realises what he believes would have been a humiliating failure as the fire leaps at his call, and he dismisses the flames before the ruse can be discovered.
It does cause that session to end the violence not seen since the early days, and Aziraphale is left broken open in a way that takes even his understanding of time a very long time to recover from.
It also marks a dark turn to Hastur, who clearly is feeling the strain of his failure to draw Crowley out; he wants Crowley to be hurt, and the flash bastard doesn't even seem to care that his fellow conspirator is being torn apart in Hell. What had been something done with sadistic joy was now becoming acts of desperation, and it tainted this performance until the existence of Hell patronized each session less and less. Even those who did show up for the sadism could no longer see any art in Hastur's torture, and the Duke found his audience waning along with his patience.
His sessions started by carving out the angel's tongue - just for science; the screams didn't reach Crowley anyway, and were starting to irritated him instead of being him pleasure.
"I should just discorperate you and be done with," he told the angel after one session, gored wings reknitting themselves under bored observation. They were weak tattered things before Hastur had started in on them; set too low on the angel's form for true flight. They'd been the source of much early amusement; their uselessness being the only reason Hastur never bothered to just cut them off outright. Now they just twitched and shuddered, picked clean of feathery souvenirs for other demons, back when they'd had an audience to perform for, "Send you back to those bastards above to deal with. See if anything in Heaven's armoury can put you out of your misery."
He doesn't mean it as a kindness, even after all this time. Aziraphale does not take it as such, the boredom and weariness in a plan unfulfilled weighing the words too much for any condolences to be shared. "Too many down here are forged with hellfire. Might not even hurt you anyway."
He sits on the slab where Aziraphale is bound, paying the angel no real mind, even if said angel is watching him carefully. "Got a few down here I could borrow, I suppose. They won't kill a demon outright, but you cut deep enough and hard enough, and you can leave some good scars on the true core."
He smiles here, a gross murky look that reaches his eyes in a way Aziraphale has not seen yet. In the quiet of their otherwise empty cell, the Duke croons at him with a happiness he hasn't shown since the start. Back when he truly thought he could use the angel to hurt Crowley the way the demon had hurt him. "I got that flash bastard with one once, right after the Fall."
Aziraphale shudders next to him, the words clashing harshly with the radiating joy muddling his senses.
"Didn't like him in Heaven to start with, and when he was thrown down with the rest of us... really didn't think he'd survive the pit. Most of the ones that didn't pick a side didn't survive. Why should he be different? He never had the guts to raise a blade to those holier -than - thou bastards, why should he get to crawl out of the sulphur and stand with us?"
Aziraphale and Crowley both did not talk about the Rebellion, or what followed after until the garden. Neither one looked back at themselves from that time with any fondness. It was a time that both wanted buried and gone, and Aziraphale could feel his anger start to manifest that Hastur thought he had any right to share Crowley's lowest with anyone.
It didn't help that the more Hastur reminisced about the Rebellion and the Fall after, the more Aziraphale's tired mind wanted to think about his own actions in the War, and afterward. Crowley apparently had not wanted to fight. He would have been among those cast out for not backing Heaven.
"One of the blades from Heaven had Fallen down with us. I remember picking it up, hacking away at the cowards as they tried to crawl out after us."
Aziraphale had helped cast them out.
"Erased quite a few of them until our Dark Lord stopped me. Said we needed all the numbers we could get."
He didn't know Crowley then, could not remember the faces of those he'd tossed away. But a part of the Warrior - the part bled out of him after Eden - had understood on an instinctual level, that he'd likely cast Crowley out himself. Only a few Cherubs had been unwounded enough to gather up those who'd refused to defend the Almighty.
"I'd been elbow deep in cutting off pieces of the bastard at the moment. Always did hate leaving a job half done. Was pitiful, watching him drag himself around behind us like that. Crawling Crawly- "
Hastur never got to finish that thought.
Hell exploded in a blast of Holy Wrath, holding cells of tortured and twisted souls burning away in a vapour as the Holy Light expanded outward. Even those of weak taint, daring to look upon it, burned away in a flash.
Fandom: Good Omens (TV)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Aziraphale & Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Adam Young (Good Omens), Aziraphale & Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens), Crowley & Adam Young (Good Omens)
Characters: Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley (Good Omens), Hastur (Good Omens), Disposable Demon (Good Omens), Satan | Lucifer (Good Omens), Beelzebub (Good Omens), Adam Young (Good Omens), Wensleydale (Good Omens), Brian (Good Omens), Pepper (Good Omens)
Additional Tags: No beta we fall like Crowley, is it still 'headcanon' if you're discussing religion?, feature author's own personal outlook on religion, specifically Hell and God's relationship to it, Minor Character Death, Paul Adeyefa's character is named Legion in here, discussion of past mutilations, Aziraphale was a cherubim, Aziraphale was a warrior, Discussion of the Fall, Imprisonment, Abduction, mentions of torture, BAMF Aziraphale (Good Omens), Aziraphale is "just enough of a bastard to be worth knowing" (Good Omens), Post-Apocalypse, Nope'geddeon, Post-Canon, Time Manipulation, Wing Injury, hurt!Aziraphale, Hurt!Crowley, discussions of Pre-Canon, Crowley didn't fall - he was pushed, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling (Good Omens), Happy Ending, Aziraphale's True Form (Good Omens), lucifer is reasonable, aziraphale is not himself today, smite-y aziraphale, Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), lucifer is not luci (tv) but heavily influenced by him, possible self-harm, unintentional suicidal actions, Burns, Crowley's True Form (Good Omens)
Series: Part 1 of Every Step
Aziraphale worked very hard at being soft. He's been working very hard for more than 6000 years to be soft, and one demon is trying his patience on the matter, leading him on a smiting spree in hell.
aka - exploring my personal headcanon's of our fav duo's pasts, set sometime after the series ends. Tags will be expanded reflecting each new chapter to minimize spoilers. i'm not very nice to either of of our beloveds in this, but it all works out in the end.
title from 'I Will Always Love You' by Whitney Houston
Chapter titles are based on the prompt used for that day
I am not the first, nor the last, to ponder Aziraphale being a principality, instead of a cherubim, which scriptures say are the ones who guarded the gates of Eden. Given the line from the book: “Technically Aziraphale was a Principality, but people made jokes about that these days” and my tendency to make every thing hurt, I took this as our angel being demoted.
Getting an Angel of the Lord into Hell was not easy a feat. Not if the angel wanted to both retain their holy grace, and didn't actually want to be there in the first place. And with very, very few exceptions, most angels did not want to be in Hell. It was Hell, of course, a place of torment and anguish, things that echoed onto an angelic essences with the force of a battering ram. But also, the thing that made Hell different than anywhere else in existence and nonexistence was the fact is was the one place in all of creation that was not part of Her Creation.
In a paradox only an ineffable god could produce, it was a place She created that was not a part of Her. The only place that She was not. The only realm that an omnipresent God was not in, nor would She ever be.
She could be, if She wanted, and that's probably the biggest insult to the LightBringer, is that She could be the Light of Hell instead, but chose to let him be the beacon in his otherwise dark and dreaded realm. That the Morningstar's free will only extended to the fact She allowed him to have it.
It was something every demon instinctively knew; just as they knew it was best not to talk about it, lest they invoke the wrath of their ruthless Dark Lord.
So, Hell was a place purposely devoid of Her Grace. And for angels still aligned with Heaven, that severance was a crippling blow. Theories abounded that you could actually trigger a false 'fall' if you could hold an angel in Hell long enough; you could starve them to the point that they would consume their own grace and burn for it. Hell had tried to test it a few times, to see if they could catch an angel, could twist it upon itself; maybe before it even knew what had happened - could they Fall an angel and have no one noticed? Let one back into Heaven before the Host knew? Unfortunately for Hell, the very few times they had succeeded in dragging an angel into their realm, the holy being had eaten hellfire before they'd allow themselves to used for demonic entertainment.
Only one angel had walked into Hell willingly; Only Lucifer's Bane was strong enough to survive being cut off long enough from Her for long enough to 'visit.' Michael had come for the Trial of the Traitor, and had left quite shaken by many aspects of her visit. It had taken her months to shed the dread of Hell from her ethereal core.
At least, only one angel as far as anyone officially knew. And even unofficially, only two other knew anything to the contrary.
Because you see, on the same day a demon walked across Heaven without burning, an angel walked across Hell without drowning.
Crowley would prefer not to think about it; as things often worked for him, if he didn't think about it, it didn't happen. And if it was assumed something would work, it tended to do as he asked. Ironically, this was also his downfall just as often. He assumed the mobile network would go down - so it did. His included. He never thought to think that he wouldn't be included, so he was. So Crowley made a point to not think about the why's of their shared deception, and instead focus on that it would work.
So it did.
Alternatively, Aziraphale often wondered why. He often turned every problem over in his mind, over and over and over, until he worried himself into mental exhaustion, or his solved the problem. His own twist of irony was, while he'd always been like that to a point, he'd never been so neurotic about it until he'd meet Crowley in Eden. He certainly never asked aloud; That was Crowley's job. And while the demon was absolutely happy to question everything, he also was quick to remind Aziraphale that his voiced questions came at a great cost. And after six thousand years, the two had learned to let Crowley voice their concerns, and to let Aziraphale toil the question over internally until a solution was found.
So when Crowley refused to question, Aziraphale tried very hard to refuse to puzzle over it.
The simplest answer could have been that their ruse had worked because God was simply not in Heaven that day. That She instead had followed Micheal in curiosity, or in a move to protect her Archangel as she walked into the Valley.
It was a simple answer.
It was the wrong answer.
Now, not entirely wrong. It was true, that Heaven was not concentrated in the way they'd all been lead to believe. It was not Holy Ground the way humans understood Her Earthly Homes. It's simply that Heaven and the Host are not interchangeable, and the Host was no more devoid or blessed of Her presence than any other generic place in existence. Just because She was not There, didn't mean She wasn't there.
And She certainly had not gone to Hell by any means. She had given that realm to Her most beloved, regardless of how it came to be. She still loved all Her children, regardless of how they hated Her, and took Her gift to the Fallen quite seriously. She'd given them a place with Her not, and She would respect that until the day they asked Her back; even knowing that that day would never come.
So, after the end that wasn't, unknown to all but Her and two of Her wayward children, there were two angels to have walked in Hell. And, unknown to all BUT Her, only one of them felt Hell at all.
Just as Heaven didn't burn Crowley, the heavy weight of Hell did not drown Aziraphale. Heaven did not burn the demon, because while he had rejected Her grace, he had accepted Aziraphale’s love, and so carried a spark of the principalities own light. Heaven saw this flame, and welcomed him as an old friend.
Hell could not consume Aziraphale’s grace, because his grace was no longer fed by the Host of Heaven; Had not since the moment he'd chosen to walked away from his platoon, and flee back to earth. Even before, it had been slowly cut off little by little with every reprimand for centuries. Abandoning his post was the final straw for the Host. But in this long time of restricted love, he'd instead found a new source of faith, driven forward by the compassion of a demon who shielded him from harm as he'd once done from the storm of the First Rain.
And both of them still returned to Her in their own ways. Neither had ever officially renounced her, although Crowley had spent much of his new life yelling up at Her. And after the wall, Aziraphale had pointedly never made an effort to talk to Her again. She would realize in sorrow that it appeared in the end, he'd forgotten how, instead trying to call Her though the other Host instead of just looking up directly.
So Hell did not turn on the angel of the Lord, because while he may still abstractly love his Lord, his grace was surrounded and protected by the love of a demon, and Hell let him pass unharmed.
----
And when he was marched into Hell the second time, Hell welcomed him with confusion. The Hordes of Hell didn't know it was the angels second visit, and he was doing his best to act surprised by the claustrophobic halls of dread and distraught, but it was almost like being received home in a way Heaven had not been since before the First War.
The Almighty had known when Crowley had been brought to Heaven, but She was all-knowing to begin with.
Lucifer aught to have known then Aziraphale was first in Hell, but he was allowing instead his most hated sister to walk freely in his home, and was too busy seething at the blatant way Michael allowed her grace to light his realm, to have heard Hell's curiosity at his second, smaller visitor.
There was no other angelic entity in his halls now, so when Duke Hastur returned with yet another cog in his vendetta against Eden's Serpent, Lucifer felt the ripple of Hell's recoil against the grace.
It was blatantly weaker than Michael, but Micheal's grace was blinding, and this was an angel both Host and Horde already knew that was out of favour. Lucifer had allowed Hastur, and Hastur alone, to continue to rage against Crowley. Beelzebub may have been twice shamed, but ze'd only zemself to blame for zer failed execution. Satan's son might have been turned against him, but Adam still lived. Ligur did not. So long as Hastur's vengeance did not involve any other of the Horde, he was free to do as he liked.
Which apparently involved bringing an angel to Hell. Just as long as he didn't have to see it, Lucifer didn't see the harm. His preternatural unfallen brethren would not sully his home for this angel, so he let Hastur be. The duke has lost the very brother who'd pulled him from the lake after their Fall. Destroying an angel was a just reward. Destroying an angel that apparently could not die via hellfire, according to Legion, so one that would find no escape or reprieve under the grieving demon's administrations.
Maybe Hell could test some of those theories finally.
And so, Hastur and the angel became filed away as out of sight, out of mind; Lucifer only pausing in his day to issue an order the Crowley was barred from returning to Hell unless discorporated. It went without saying that he was to be refused a new one. Maybe, if Lucifer was being generous, he'd allow the rebellious demon to console Hastur's captured angel between sessions. He would not take Hastur's project away, but he still felt rebellion should be rewarded in some measure, no matter how much hard work Crowley has cocked up with this new turn he's taken.
If curiosity struck him, he'd ask Legion how the Duke's pet project was going. The little beetle seemed uneasy about the updates; Lucifer would have to keep a closer eye on the demon's loyalties. He reeked of awe in regards to the angel; apparently he was impressed by Heaven's newest disgrace's composure during the Host's failed execution. Lucifer could respect that, but could not allow it to overshadow Legion's loyalty to him.
What could be worrisome was that Legion was not the only one whispering about the captured angel. Hastur was enjoying himself, but the angel was not breaking the way anyone had planned. He was distraught, and prone to weeping when left alone; but when he knew he was being observed, he was restrained. And worse - he was polite.
Even to Hastur, he was unflinchingly polite and civil. And worse, he was heard to have told a Duke of Hell that he understood Hastur's grief, and could not fault him for his need to seek retribution, but had the gall to tell him he would not truly feel better, and the violence would only leave him numb at best.
Understandingly, this did little to warm Hastur to him, and the violence rent upon the angel often took embarrassing long for the host to recover from, leaving Hastur raging instead at his fellow demons in the intern. Still, for the time being, Lucifer would still continue to allow it, but he had warned Prince Beelzebub to be mindful of the Duke's rage, and if he started permanently damaging members of the Horde, Lucifer would execute the angel himself, and be done with it.
Through it all, the demon Crowley had still not made a whisper on Earth or below, only adding fuel to Hastur's rage.
---
Time passes in Hell much differently than on Earth, and it's never constant. Time in Hell literally passes exactly how it feels. When you are an ageless entity, time means nothing, and there is no night or day or seasons to set a clock to. So if something feels like it was quick, it is. If something feels like a century, it is. It's an odd reflection of Heaven before the War, one that Heaven doesn't even subscribe to anymore. In Heaven, time is just as meaningless, because it is all time all at once. Armageddon and Eden exist in the same moment. It's also one of the reasons angels struggle with Earth so much, and yet while it takes Heaven so long to recall them home when they are sent out, because they don't understand specific points in time, just the general idea, and it can take decades after a job has been done for Heaven to open the doors back; after all, only the upper sphere have the power to fly freely back and forth. After the rebellion, Heaven doesn't understand at all, where at least Hell does, and manipulates it as it sees fit.
No one really is sure what that will mean in terms of an angel in Hell, but this is also an angel who has been on Earth since the concept of time began, so it seems to have adjusted to the passage as such already, and learns to understand how time in Hell works easily. Hastur wants their sessions of agony to last for an eternity. The angel clearly does not. So while the Duke gets to torture an angel for centuries, Aziraphpale would rather not, and is quite happy to only allow the Duke his pound of flesh for a few hours at most.
It drives Hastur into a rage, which he takes out of other denizens of Hell, but even those in the crossfire can't help but be amused at how quickly the angel has gotten under the skin of the hierarchy. More and more often, it seems the spectators are there less to watch an angel's grace be torn asunder, and more to watch Hastur lose his ever-damned mind when the angel starts calling the shots on his own torture sessions.
Very few demons have an imagination, but those who might be predisposed to such an affliction are starting to root for the bastard angel, simply to piss off a duke. They call out new ways to humiliate the angel, not in any means of causing the angel harm, but simply to watch Hastur's indignation in the implication that minor demons could do a better job then he is doing. Aziraphale might even encourage them, having noted that if one of the Horde makes the suggestion, Hatsur's pride will force him to refuse to do it. He himself goads Hastur about the hellfire, when the duke forgets he's supposed to be immune to it, and after one humiliation session, blindly reaches out to impulsive end the angel once and for all. Several faces of Legion are included in the onlookers that day, and they are a course of laughter as Hastur realises what he believes would have been a humiliating failure as the fire leaps at his call, and he dismisses the flames before the ruse can be discovered.
It does cause that session to end the violence not seen since the early days, and Aziraphale is left broken open in a way that takes even his understanding of time a very long time to recover from.
It also marks a dark turn to Hastur, who clearly is feeling the strain of his failure to draw Crowley out; he wants Crowley to be hurt, and the flash bastard doesn't even seem to care that his fellow conspirator is being torn apart in Hell. What had been something done with sadistic joy was now becoming acts of desperation, and it tainted this performance until the existence of Hell patronized each session less and less. Even those who did show up for the sadism could no longer see any art in Hastur's torture, and the Duke found his audience waning along with his patience.
His sessions started by carving out the angel's tongue - just for science; the screams didn't reach Crowley anyway, and were starting to irritated him instead of being him pleasure.
"I should just discorperate you and be done with," he told the angel after one session, gored wings reknitting themselves under bored observation. They were weak tattered things before Hastur had started in on them; set too low on the angel's form for true flight. They'd been the source of much early amusement; their uselessness being the only reason Hastur never bothered to just cut them off outright. Now they just twitched and shuddered, picked clean of feathery souvenirs for other demons, back when they'd had an audience to perform for, "Send you back to those bastards above to deal with. See if anything in Heaven's armoury can put you out of your misery."
He doesn't mean it as a kindness, even after all this time. Aziraphale does not take it as such, the boredom and weariness in a plan unfulfilled weighing the words too much for any condolences to be shared. "Too many down here are forged with hellfire. Might not even hurt you anyway."
He sits on the slab where Aziraphale is bound, paying the angel no real mind, even if said angel is watching him carefully. "Got a few down here I could borrow, I suppose. They won't kill a demon outright, but you cut deep enough and hard enough, and you can leave some good scars on the true core."
He smiles here, a gross murky look that reaches his eyes in a way Aziraphale has not seen yet. In the quiet of their otherwise empty cell, the Duke croons at him with a happiness he hasn't shown since the start. Back when he truly thought he could use the angel to hurt Crowley the way the demon had hurt him. "I got that flash bastard with one once, right after the Fall."
Aziraphale shudders next to him, the words clashing harshly with the radiating joy muddling his senses.
"Didn't like him in Heaven to start with, and when he was thrown down with the rest of us... really didn't think he'd survive the pit. Most of the ones that didn't pick a side didn't survive. Why should he be different? He never had the guts to raise a blade to those holier -than - thou bastards, why should he get to crawl out of the sulphur and stand with us?"
Aziraphale and Crowley both did not talk about the Rebellion, or what followed after until the garden. Neither one looked back at themselves from that time with any fondness. It was a time that both wanted buried and gone, and Aziraphale could feel his anger start to manifest that Hastur thought he had any right to share Crowley's lowest with anyone.
It didn't help that the more Hastur reminisced about the Rebellion and the Fall after, the more Aziraphale's tired mind wanted to think about his own actions in the War, and afterward. Crowley apparently had not wanted to fight. He would have been among those cast out for not backing Heaven.
"One of the blades from Heaven had Fallen down with us. I remember picking it up, hacking away at the cowards as they tried to crawl out after us."
Aziraphale had helped cast them out.
"Erased quite a few of them until our Dark Lord stopped me. Said we needed all the numbers we could get."
He didn't know Crowley then, could not remember the faces of those he'd tossed away. But a part of the Warrior - the part bled out of him after Eden - had understood on an instinctual level, that he'd likely cast Crowley out himself. Only a few Cherubs had been unwounded enough to gather up those who'd refused to defend the Almighty.
"I'd been elbow deep in cutting off pieces of the bastard at the moment. Always did hate leaving a job half done. Was pitiful, watching him drag himself around behind us like that. Crawling Crawly- "
Hastur never got to finish that thought.
Hell exploded in a blast of Holy Wrath, holding cells of tortured and twisted souls burning away in a vapour as the Holy Light expanded outward. Even those of weak taint, daring to look upon it, burned away in a flash.